Ferdinand and Miranda Love Scene

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Miranda is a unique and exquisite creation of the poet's magic. She is his ideal maiden, brought up from babyhood in an ideal way — the child of nature, with no other training than she received from a wise and loving father — an ideal father we may say. She reminds me of Wordsworth's lovely picture of the child whom nature has adopted as her own:— And nature on this enchanted island is more than nature anywhere else on earth, for the supernatural — that which is beyond and above nature — is added, through the potent and benign art of Prospero. He has been her teacher too — a loving teacher with ample leisure for the training of this single pupil, the sole companion, comfort, and hope of his exile life. He says:— "Here in this island we arriv'd; and here Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit Than other princess can, that have more time For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful." Miranda and Ferdinand. From The Tempest. Published 1882 by P.G. Thomson; Cincinnati, Ohio. An excellent education, the worldly-wise may say, for the maiden on the lonely isle, if she is to live there all her days with her wise and watchful father for sole companion and guardian; but will she not make a fool of herself if she is suddenly removed from this isolated existence to the ordinary surroundings of her sex? How will this child of nature behave in the artificial world of "society?" We may trust Shakespeare to solve this problem successfully, but who else than he could have done it? Who else would have dared to bring this innocent and ignorant creature — ignorant at least of all the conventional ways of social life — face to face with a lover, and that lover a prince, the flower of courtly cultivation and gallantry, as her very first experience of the new world to which she is destined to be transferred? The result is one of the highest triumphs of
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