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.”
Language Register
Predominantly blank verse with strategic prose for comic and lower-class characters; the Epilogue uses rhymed couplets to signal formal closure
Syntax Profile
Prospero's verse is the play's most elaborate: long periodic sentences that defer the main verb, controlling the listener the way Prospero controls the island. Ariel's songs are in short tetrameter lines — lighter, more musical than the play's dominant pentameter. Caliban speaks in both verse and prose: verse for his soliloquies and lyrical moments, prose for comic scenes. Miranda's syntax is the simplest in the play — direct, unguarded, often exclamatory. The Epilogue's rhymed couplets create formal closure through sound, each rhyme a bolt being drawn.
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.
Era-Specific Language
N/A — see 'brave new world', which entered common English from this play
A courtly entertainment form popular under James I, featuring allegorical figures, elaborate staging, and audience participation by nobles
Abundance, plenty — archaic agricultural term used in the masque's harvest imagery
In Elizabethan/Jacobean usage, 'splendid' or 'fine,' not courageous — crucial for Miranda's 'brave new world'
A chilblain or cracked heel — Antonio uses it to dismiss conscience as a minor physical irritation
How Characters Speak — Class & Identity
Prospero
Elaborate, controlling verse — long sentences with subordinate clauses, frequent imperatives. He lectures, commands, and explains. Rarely asks.
A man who has lived alone with a captive audience for twelve years. His language is the language of someone who has not had to negotiate — only to decree.
Ariel
Songs, short tetrameter lines, eager declaratives. Ariel speaks the most musically of any character. Never argues, only reports and performs.
A spirit entirely in service — language that serves rather than claims. The one time Ariel teaches (the compassion speech) the language becomes briefly simple and direct.
Caliban
Alternates between lyrical verse (island speeches, curses) and blunt prose (conspiracy scenes). His curses are phonetically heavy — plosive consonants, open vowels.
A character Shakespeare refuses to flatten. Caliban has a full poetic register; it is suppressed, not absent. His eloquence coexists with his rage.
Miranda
Declarative, direct, syntactically simple. No subordinate clauses of false modesty. 'I am your wife, if you will marry me' has no hedging.
Raised without social scripts or female decorum models, Miranda speaks desire without euphemism. This reads as naivety or radical honesty depending on the production.
Gonzalo
Elevated, verbose, optimistic to the point of obliviousness. His utopia speech is long-winded and self-contradicting — he speaks more words to less effect than anyone in the play.
The good man who means well but doesn't see clearly. His language is generous but not sharp. He is the play's moral conscience and its gentle comic figure simultaneously.
Antonio
Economical, insinuating, pragmatic. Refuses elevated moral language. Uses 'kibe' for conscience, 'perpetual wink' for death. The shortest path to the corrupt conclusion.
A man who has silenced his own conscience so thoroughly that the language of conscience has become foreign. He has almost no verse in Act V — he barely speaks. The silence is more chilling than anything he could say.
Narrator's Voice
The Tempest has no narrator — but Prospero functions as the play's authorial surrogate. He is simultaneously a character within the drama and its controlling intelligence. His relationship to the audience is most explicit in the Epilogue, where the fiction drops and a man — actor, character, author — speaks plainly.
Tone Progression
Act I
Commanding, expository, storm-charged
Prospero establishes his world and his grievances. The tone is authoritative — everything serves his plan.
Acts II-III
Comic-sinister, conspiratorial, building
Parallel plots develop — political conspiracy above, comic conspiracy below, romance threading through both. Tension builds through contrast.
Act IV
Ceremonial, then abruptly elegiac
The masque is the play's formal peak. Its sudden interruption and 'Our revels now are ended' shift the register to something deeply personal and melancholic.
Act V and Epilogue
Judicial, then tender, then naked
Prospero pronounces his judgments, forgives, releases, and strips himself of everything. The Epilogue is the barest moment in all of Shakespeare — a man without power asking for mercy.
Stylistic Comparisons
- A Midsummer Night's Dream — another enchanted island/forest comedy where a controlling figure manipulates lovers; but Puck is amoral where Ariel is anxious for freedom
- Hamlet — both protagonists delay action and philosophize; but Hamlet's revenge fantasies destroy him where Prospero's chosen renunciation saves him
- King Lear — another aging ruler who relinquishes power; Lear does it foolishly and is destroyed; Prospero plans the renunciation and survives it
Key Vocabulary from This Book
Notable words used in this text — click to see full definitions