The Sea and the Mirror

The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest, is a long poem by W.H. Auden, written 1942–44, and first published in 1944. Auden regarded the work as “my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to have been Shakespeare’s.”

The poem is a series of dramatic monologues spoken by the characters in Shakespeare's play after the end of the play itself. These are rendered in a variety of verse forms from villanelles, sonnets, sestinas, and finally Jamesian prose, the forms corresponding to the nature of the characters e.g. Ferdinand addresses Miranda in a sonnet, a form traditionally amenable to expressions of love.

The poem begins with a "Preface" ("The Stage Manager to the Critics"), followed by Part I, "Prospero to Ariel"; Part II, "The Supporting Cast, Sotto Voce, spoken by individual characters in the play, each followed by a brief comment by the character of Antonio; and Part III, Caliban to the Audience, spoken by Caliban in a prose style modelled on that of the later work of Henry James. A "Postscript" ("Ariel to Caliban, Echo by the Prompter") closes the work. The poem is dedicated to Auden's friends James and Tania Stern.

It was first published in 1944 together with Auden's long poem, his Christmas Oratorio "For the Time Being" in a book also titled For the Time Being.

A critical edition with introduction and copious textual notes by Arthur Kirsch was published in 2003 by Princeton University Press. Auden’s burgeoning relationship with Shakespeare’s corpus can also be seen in his Lectures on Shakespeare, also edited by Kirsch, delivered 1946/7 and diligently reconstructed from student notes.

Caliban to the Audience, the longest section by far of the work, is a prose poem in the style of Henry James. In it, Auden reflects on the nature of the relationship of the author (presumably Shakespeare) to the audience of The Tempest, the paradoxes of portraying life in art, and the tension of form and freedom. Edward Mendelson asserts that Auden took six months to arrive at its form but the result was a work the poet favoured above all others for many years.

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