This joyous play, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up his stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill. Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, who is living on an enchanted island, has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore--as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda, with an eminently suitable young prince, and, most important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.

Shakespeare creates in The Tempest a world of the imagination, a place of conflict and ultimately of magical rejuvenation, like the forests of A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It. The journey to Shakespeare's island is to a realm of art where everything is controlled by the artist figure. Yet the journey is no escape from reality, for the island shows people what they are, as well as what they ought to be. Even its location juxtaposes the "real" world with an idealized landscape: like Plato's New Atlantis or Thomas More's Utopia, Shakespeare's island is to be found both somewhere and nowhere...

Introduction 

The Tempest On Stage 

The Tempest On Screen

The Playhouse

THE TEMPEST 

Date and Text 

Textual Notes

Shakespeare's Sources 

Further Reading 

Memorable Lines