The Tempest in "The Game of Chess"

“Those are pearls that were his eyes” is a quote from one of Ariel’s songs in The Tempest (Act I, Scene II). Ferdinand, who has only recently arrived on Prospero’s island, hears the song and follows the nameless and invisible voice to Prospero and Miranda. Ariel’s song refers to Ferdinand’s drowned father who assisted in the treachery that overthrew Prospero, Duke of Milan.

Unlike the evocations of Cleopatra, Dido, and Philomel, The Tempest reference seems a little harder to place in the context of “The Game of Chess.” It is not just a story, but a specific quote that Eliot uses, forcing a closer look at the Shakespearean play. Ferdinand has just landed on a magical island as a result of a shipwreck orchestrated by Prospero. Unsure of where he is or whether any of his fellow mates have survived, Ferdinand laments his ill-fortune, in addition to the death of his father. The knowledge of the allusion slightly changes the reading of the poem. It offers a smoother transition to the “Shakespeherian Rag,” because it is about Shakespeare. Yet it makes the jump from Shakespeare of the past to Shakespeare of the present (represented by a phonograph tune). For Eliot, who throughout the poem juggles time and space on a strange continuum, this is just one more example of the range her covers. The Shakespeare connection also heightens the depth of the man’s despair in response to the aggressive woman who asks “Do you remember nothing?” Apparently the man remembers something, but rather than answer, he thinks the words from Ariel’s song. The fact that Ariel is invisible when he sings to lure Ferdinand also potentially has bearing on the Eliot poem. In many ways, the man is invisible, he neither talks, nor seems to think without prompting.

In researching the Tempest, I also came across another game of chess that Eliot may or may not have had in mind. At the end of the play, Prospero pulls back a curtain and reveals Miranda and Ferdinand playing chess. At this point they are already engaged and Prospero has warned Ferdinand against “untying [Miranda’s] virginal knot” until marriage. In light of the sexual politics suggested by a game of chess, it was interesting to find it in Shakespeare as well.