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.”
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The Tempest
William Shakespeare (1611) · 80pages · Renaissance / Jacobean · 9 AP appearances
Summary
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.
Why It 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 o...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Predominantly blank verse with strategic prose for comic and lower-class characters; the Epilogue uses rhymed couplets to signal formal closure
Narrator: The Tempest has no narrator — but Prospero functions as the play's authorial surrogate. He is simultaneously a charac...
Figurative Language: 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.
Historical Context
Jacobean England (1603-1625) — the reign of King James I, early colonialism, the Bermuda pamphlets: The colonial context is not incidental to The Tempest — it is the play's engine. Prospero arrived on an island, found an indigenous inhabitant, gave him language, and enslaved him. This is the patt...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Prospero says he neglected his duties because he was 'rapt in secret studies.' Is his usurpation partly his own fault? Does the play want us to see him as entirely innocent?
- Caliban says 'You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is I know how to curse.' What is Shakespeare saying about the relationship between language, power, and colonialism?
- Ariel is bound to Prospero by debt — he was freed from the pine tree — and by the threat of re-imprisonment. Is Ariel's service willing or coerced? Can it be both?
- In Act IV, Ariel tells Prospero that his own affections would 'become tender' if he were human, seeing the suffering court. Prospero decides to forgive. What does it mean that a spirit teaches a human about compassion?
- Miranda's 'O brave new world / That has such people in't!' is one of the most ironic lines in Shakespeare. Explain the irony. Is Miranda naive, or is her wonder valuable despite its ignorance?
Notable Quotes
“What cares these roarers for the name of king?”
“This island's mine by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me.”
“You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is I know how to curse.”
Why Read This
Because it is the shortest, most concentrated version of every question Shakespeare asks across his entire career: What is justice? What is freedom? Does art make you a god or a man? Can you forgive someone who hasn't apologized? And it does this ...