Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban, from The Tempest

What appears to be a single multi-figured composition on this sheet are, in fact, two variant studies (divided by a vertical line right of center) for the shipwreck scene from Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest.On the left side of the sheet, Miranda, daughter of the magician Prospero, implores her father to stop the storm he has unleashed. A few vertical lines and a pair of heads in alternate positions suggest the figure of Prospero. To Miranda’s immediate right crouches the monster Caliban. On the sheet’s other half, Miranda clings to a more graphically developed Prospero. A curlicue at far right may indicate Caliban.