from crimes would pardon'd be, / Let your indulgence set me free. " Gentle breathe of yours my sails / Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want / Spirits to enforce, Art to enchant; And my ending in despair, / Unless I be reliev'd by prayer, Which pierces so, that it assaults / Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon'd be, / Let your indulgence set me free. One view The Epilogue can be examined upon is the fact that the artist, be it Shakespeare or Prospero as his creation declares himself detached from moral ties directed to towards the third party and, with refrence to Prospero’s use of power, the other characters of the play. This is a very important aspect in both the general basis of human nature and as the driving force of the artist, in this case Shakespeare. The Epilogue clearly claims that the cause-effect event-chain created by the artist was built free of ties - therefore to be judged with the appropriate honesty and freedom of attitude. One may question the necessity for such a statement, but considering the importance of theatre during Shakespeare’s era it has a certain logicality. Just as a true human, the human of the Natural Laws, is justified to assume a superhuman position, an artist, the creator, is justified to practice unconditional freedom. Freedom is and element of the Natural Law - the system of necessities to justify a meaningful existence. However as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stated, freedom necessarily involves the property of responsibility. Man has unconditional freedom and self-defined moral ties yet he is responsible for following his own will with regard to his own value system. If responsibility is not utilized, man takes s step towards animal qualities, he does not fulfil the Natural Law. A similar pattern of freedom and responsibilities is presented in The Epilogue. Shakespeare has utilized unconditional freedom not only...
