The Tempest

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Issues to Consider While Reading The Tempest:

Contents 1 Themes 2 The Text 3 Characters 4 Formal Qualities of the Play 5 Criticism

Themes

• The Nature and Use of Political and Social Power -- Power: Legitimacy and Treachery
  • Prospero's fall from power in the Milan court
  • Prospero's treatment of Caliban, Ariel, and the shipwrecked passengers
  • Antonio's ambition
  • Plotting by Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban against Prospero / Plotting by Antonio and Sebastian against Alonso
• Captivity, Slavery, Freedom, and Resistance
  • Ariel and Caliban desire freedom, but seek it in different ways
  • Prospero himself is a captive on the island
  • Prospero enchants the nobles at various moments during the play, holding them against their will
  • Prospero, in the end, frees himself of his own magic
• Colonialism and the New World
  • Caliban: Miranda calls him a "savage" and refers to his "vile race" (I.2.350-361). Is Caliban a savage? Or is his "savagery" merely a projection of the European colonizers who visit the island? What are we to make of Prospero's failed attempt to "civilize" Caliban by teaching him language? What are we to make of Caliban's use of that language -- his cursing?
• Compassion, Reconciliation, and Forgiveness
  • Wrongs made right not through force, power, or ambition, but through grace and forgiveness
  • Tension between Prospero's desire to exact revenge on those who have wronged him and his ultimate forgiveness of those characters
• Travel and Exploration of the New World
• Magic and Witchcraft / Books and Reading -- Magic: Religion, Art, and Science
• The Acquisition of Language
• Marriage Plot
• The Writer as Artificer
  • connection between Prospero and Shakespeare

• Colonialism
• Reality and Illusion

The Text

• The Play as Shakespearean Romance or Tragicomedy (as opposed to History, Tragedy, or Comedy)
• Sources
• History of Performance
• Appropriations
  • Plays
  • Poems
  • Films
    • Forbidden Planet
    • Prospero's Books
    • Shakespeare Behind Bars

Characters

• Three large classes of characters:
  • court characters (ex. Alonso and Antonio)
  • common characters (ex. Stephano and Trinculo)
  • nonhuman characters (ex. Ariel and Caliban)
• Prospero
  • To what extent does Prospero represent Shakespeare himself?
  • What are we to make of Prospero's harsh treatment of Caliban? Of his more kindly (but still commanding) treatment of Ariel? Of his gentle treatment of Miranda? In what ways do all three represent various aspects of his character?
  • How does Prospero exercise his power?
• Caliban: monster?

Formal Qualities of the Play

• Use of Blank_Verse for courtly characters; prose for social inferiors such as Stephano and Trinculo
  • Exception: opening scene -- all characters speaking in prose, which emphasizes the ways in which the storm levels social distinction. Note the boatswain's line, "What cares these roarers for the name of king" (I.1.16-17)
• Ariel
  • Blank verse when speaking to Prospero
  • Songs, lyric verse when speaking to other characters
• Caliban
  • Nature of his language is at the heart of his conflicted character
  • Can speak blank verse to Prospero, prose to Stephano and Trinculo
  • Caliban as master of curses ("You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is I know how to curse (I.2.363-364)
• Dramatic Terms
  • Soliloquies
  • Stage Conventions
  • Dramatic Ironies

Criticism

Our Norton edition of the play provides many opportunities to explore criticism of the play.