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power. In Andersen’s story, the Little Mermaid ultimately loses the Prince to a human Princess; in Disney’s film, Ursula transforms herself into a slender young woman and almost succeeds, as Ariel’s rival, in marrying Prince Eric. The Little Mermaid finally ends festively. Where Andersen’s mermaid only gains hope for salvation after 300 years of selfless work, Ariel gets a splendid dress and a big wedding, attended by both mer-people and humans.

The addition to Andersen’s story of certain features—parental blocks, the festive ending, the movement in and out of an enticing, but dangerous place beyond the law—all suggest that Disney’s writers are familiar with Northrop Frye’s influential analysis of Shakespearean comedy (1949).4 Frye observes that Shakespeare’s comic plots, modeled on Roman New Comedy, work to remove blocks to youthful desire according to a basically Oedipal pattern. The blocks are embodied in a senex or representative of the older generation, who often competes with a young man for a young woman. In Shakespeare, the senex may appear as the young woman’s father. He insists that she follow his wishes for her sexual choice, but need not overtly compete for physical possession of her. After the young lovers undergo a journey, the blocking laws and values of the senex give way to those of the “green world” sympathetic to the younger generation’s desires.

The quest of Disney’s Ariel follows closely the implicitly Oedipal pattern of Frye’s “The Argument of Comedy.” The Little Mermaid’s opening minutes establish that Ariel has strong desires that contest her father’s plans for her. The crab Sebastian, like Philostrate in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is orchestrating performances for his lord, King Triton. They are to feature Ariel singing for her father, but she is instead busy exploring a sunken human ship. Her absence angers the King. Although many journalists note Ariel’s desire for human things, for material possessions, Ariel says she has many things already, but that she wants more. To this extent, she is driven by desire itself more than by consumerism. Accordingly, the Calvinist restrictions on desire that lead to a loss of body for Andersen’s mermaid become, in Disney, the father’s prohibition on mixing with the human world. Sebastian sums up her father’s blocking action with a deceptively charming calypso song that ends, “Someone needs to nail that girl’s fins to the floor.’’

The comic structure of The Little Mermaid suggests Shakespeare generally, but the characters of Ariel the mermaid and other figures point specifically to The Tempest. Shakespeare’s Ariel is a sprite, not

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