https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=138 Renaissance science tended to be characterized by its taste for spectacular shows. Although they differed from their continental counterparts in many ways, English scientists were no exception to this rule, as can be gauged from the examples of Drebbel’s submarine or Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. It is no surprise, therefore, that in both The Tempest and Doctor Faustus science primarily takes the form of a series of varied spectacles. In this paper, I will argue that science is the means by which Prospero produces spectacular illusions which enable him to control and manipulate the minds and senses of his enemies. But scientific illusion is a sword that cuts both ways and the triviality of Faustus’s puppet shows suggests that Prospero’s science, too, may not be as « potent » as he claims. At the end of the play, science, this powerful instrument of Prospero’s domination, is eventually discarded as a mere dream. Both plays therefore convey an ambivalent image of science. They suggest that the scientist’s reliance on illusion is both a strength and a weakness. While providing him with a way to hold his audience under sway, it also lends a transitory and « insubstantial » quality to his scientific activity. Not everybody agreed with such a pessimistic vision of science, though: for Francis Bacon, although the scientist should also be able to create illusions of all sorts, his prime aim is to control nature so as to produce enduring, permanent and very real effects for the benefit of mankind. Shakespeare en devenir N°2 — 2008 fr jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:31:36 +0100 jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:31:36 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=138 0