The Tempest
William Shakespeare (1611)
“Shakespeare's final solo play: a magician who controls everything finally chooses to give it all up — and asks the audience to set him free.”
At a Glance
Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, lives on a remote island with his daughter Miranda, the spirit Ariel, and the enslaved Caliban. Using magic, he raises a storm to shipwreck the men who usurped his dukedom. Over a single day, he engineers Ferdinand and Miranda's love, exposes his enemies, confronts his own desire for revenge, and ultimately chooses forgiveness. He buries his staff, drowns his books, and sails home — releasing Ariel, freeing Caliban, and, in the Epilogue, asking the audience to free him with their applause.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The Tempest is the first play in the First Folio (1623), placed there by Shakespeare's fellow players — suggesting they considered it either his last play, his best, or both. It is the primary source text for postcolonial literary criticism in the Anglophone tradition, with Caliban becoming one of the most politically analyzed characters in world literature. The play introduced 'brave new world' and 'what's past is prologue' into the English language.
Diction Profile
Predominantly blank verse with strategic prose for comic and lower-class characters; the Epilogue uses rhymed couplets to signal formal closure
High, but differently distributed than in Hamlet or Macbeth. The play's figurative language concentrates around elements: air (Ariel), earth (Caliban), water (the sea, the island's springs), fire (Prospero's magic). Characters are aligned with elements and their metaphors extend those alignments throughout.