Ferdinand (The Tempest – A Work in Progress)

Ferdinand was a character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

His love for Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, was the focus of one of the play's three major plot lines. (PROSE: The Tempest – A Work in Progress)

Fictional biography

First thoughts

In his earliest working notes for the play, Shakespeare pondered over it being a boy/girl love story featuring feuding fathers who were Kings or Dukes of somewhere in Italy, possibly Milan or Naples, later settling on Dukes of Milan. He developed a storyline in which one Duke had deposed the other and exiled the deposed Duke to an island which ended in the usurper being shipwrecked on the island and the deposed Duke murdering him. However, Shakespeare scrapped this "revenge tragedy" upon reminding himself the brief was for a romantic comedy, revising the plot so that the boy and girl would get married and the deposed Duke would forgive the usurper rather than kill him, after which "everybody goes home". Shakespeare considered the possibility of the shipwrecked ship being undamaged in order to allow everyone to go home at the end but deemed this a "bit implausible", highlighting in addition to this the already-quite-large coincidence that the usurper Duke ended up on the same island as the deposed Duke, though he also acknowledged that he "got away with it" in both The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night.

With regard to more specific details, Shakespeare wished to work in a chess scene due to it being a "popular craze". He thought the boy and girl could play a game together, though also noted a match between the Dukes and a chess-themed song and dance as potential alternatives to this. (PROSE: The Tempest – A Work in Progress)

Following Forbidden Planet

At some point, the Tenth Doctor became aware Shakespeare was struggling to write his play. He sent him a battery-powered Blu-ray player and a copy of Forbidden Planet to draw inspiration from, reasoning that it was "not stealing" because the film was based upon the version of The Tempest Shakespeare was about to write.

Filled with fresh thoughts, Shakespeare, having decided that Prospero was not just a Duke but also a wizard who studied books of magic, removed the coincidence of the two Dukes ending up on the same island, with Prospero causing a storm using his magic staff which forcefully brought the ship there. The magic shipwreck also served to explain why only the usurper Duke, the King of Naples, the Duke's son, the courtiers and the funny servants came to shore. The boat was located on the other side of the island, with the rest of its crew as its occupants all asleep inside.

With specific regards to the boy and girl subplot, Shakespeare determined that the girl was Prospero's daughter, who was exiled to the island with him and had never seen any other men. "Overcome" by the new arrivals, she experienced love at first sight upon meeting the boy for the first time. Additionally, in order to check that the boy was truly worthy of his daughter, Prospero used new addition Ariel to put him "through the mill a bit".

Later, coming to the play's conclusion, Shakespeare outlined that all three different plot lines (including the love story) would be "sorted out" by Prospero and Ariel. He wavered over whether this was "too easy" and if he could claim it was a deliberate Deus ex machina to impress Johnson. Brushing aside these concerns, he stated in his notes his belief that he was "nearly there" and that the rest of the story would "write itself". Finally, Shakespeare informed the Doctor that he just needed to think up some character names. Telling him "Ah, might be able to help you with that", the Doctor listed off two moons of Uranus, Miranda and Ferdinand, thus giving the boy and girl their names. (PROSE: The Tempest – A Work in Progress)

Behind the scenes

Although the connection is not made in The Tempest – A Work in Progress, Ferdinand was the son of Alonso, King of Naples in the real world's version of The Tempest.