This is the fourth post in the series. To start from the beginning, click here.
The next group of images cluster around Ariel’s other song, “Where the bee sucks, there suck I” (5.1.88); like in our last group, however, the two images work to present very different interpretations of Ariel’s character and the play. John Anster Fitzgerald’s Ariel (c. 1858) focuses entirely on the sentimental, beautiful aspects of this song whereas Henry Fuseli’s Ariel (1800-1810) focuses instead on the darker, more macabre lines of this song. The song is worth quoting in its entirety to flesh out this difference:
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. (5.1.88-96)
The next group of images cluster around Ariel’s other song, “Where the bee sucks, there suck I” (5.1.88); like in our last group, however, the two images work to present very different interpretations of Ariel’s character and the play. John Anster Fitzgerald’s Ariel (c. 1858) focuses entirely on the sentimental, beautiful aspects of this song whereas Henry Fuseli’s Ariel (1800-1810) focuses instead on the darker, more macabre lines of this song. The song is worth quoting in its entirety to flesh out this difference:
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. (5.1.88-96)
Fitzgerald’s watercolor merges the wholly positive images in this song—lying in the bell of the cowslip and living under a blossoming summer’s bough—into an image of a beautiful, androgynous figure reclining on the bough of a blooming tree that is filled with fanciful, diurnal birds. The stinging bee, the nocturnal owl, and the bat are nowhere to be seen.
Fuseli's oil painting, in contrast, emphasizes some of the darker aspects of this passage. Ariel flies on the back of a bat, which he controls with a star-studded rein. The sky behind him is mostly dark, which creates an ominous atmosphere in the painting. Underneath him, Ferdinand and Miranda lean in closely, and they appear to be moments away from embracing. Of course, in the play itself, we know that Ariel does not arrive in this scene by flying over them. He sings the song while dressing Prospero in the latter’s ducal attire. Ferdinand and Miranda are later discovered to be playing at chess (5.1.173. s.d.). Fuseli’s imaginative reworking of the scene suggests that Ariel has cast a spell over the lovers, and that the spell has its roots in dark magic even if the love itself is enlightening.
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