The Tempest

Prospero, deposed Duke of Milan, raises a storm to wreck his enemies on the island where he has lived with his daughter Miranda, the spirit Ariel and the enslaved Caliban. Magic, masque and colonial encounter share a stage. Then he drowns his book.

Why it is set. Popular at both levels. Best answers handle power and colonisation without flattening Caliban into a symbol, and they notice that this ‘comedy’ is structured like a revenge play that chooses forgiveness.

Plot

1. 1

   The storm

   A ship carrying Alonso, Ferdinand, Antonio and others seems to wreck. Miranda begs her father to stop the tempest. Prospero tells her their history: twelve years ago his brother Antonio usurped Milan, with Alonso’s help.

2. 2

   Three plots on the island

   Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love under Prospero’s supervision. Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo plot a drunken coup. Antonio and Sebastian plot to kill Alonso. Ariel manages all three strands for Prospero.

3. 3

   Masque and interruption

   Prospero stages a betrothal masque for the lovers, then remembers Caliban’s plot and breaks it off: ‘Our revels now are ended.’ Theatre and power are the same tool.

4. 4

   Reckoning

   Ariel reports that the court party is imprisoned and penitent — or at least desperate. Prospero chooses virtue over vengeance. Caliban’s plot is comically dismantled.

5. 5

   Release

   Identities are revealed, Ferdinand is restored to Alonso, Prospero frees Ariel, reclaims Milan, and in the epilogue asks the audience to release him with applause. Caliban’s future is famously unresolved.

Characters

• Prospero

  Magician; deposed duke

  Director, father, coloniser, revenger, artist. His books are power. The play asks whether giving that power up is grace or just another performance of control.

• Miranda

  Prospero’s daughter

  ‘O brave new world’ is wonder and irony — she has not seen it. Her compassion in the opening scene is the play’s moral starting point.

• Ariel

  Air spirit

  Bound servant who wants freedom. Gender-flexible in performance. Ariel’s reminder of pity is what turns Prospero toward forgiveness.

• Caliban

  Inhabitant of the island

  Son of Sycorax; taught language and then cursed in it. Monster in the court party’s eyes, poet of the island (‘the isle is full of noises’), and a problem the play will not solve.

• Ferdinand / Alonso / Antonio

  The Italian court

  Ferdinand is the dynastic future. Alonso can repent. Antonio, notably, is given almost no repentance — Shakespeare leaves a cold spot in the reconciliation.

Themes

• Power and forgiveness

  The plot is a revenge machine that stops. Forgiveness is staged as the higher magic — but Prospero still controls every reveal. Is mercy another form of rule?

• Colonisation and otherness

  Postcolonial readings (since Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête) see the island as a New World encounter: language as gift and weapon, Caliban as dispossessed native, Prospero as settler-magus. The text supports this and also resists a single allegory.

• Art, illusion, theatre

  Storm, banquet, harpy, masque, epilogue: the play never stops reminding you it is a play. Prospero’s ‘revels’ speech is a farewell to theatre often read as Shakespeare’s.

• Nature and nurture

  Caliban’s ‘nurture’ and Miranda’s education, the court plots versus the island’s noises: what can be taught, and what is ‘natural’? The categories keep collapsing.

• Freedom and servitude

  Ariel’s term of service, Caliban’s slavery, Ferdinand’s log-pile, the sailors under hatches — almost everyone is bound. The epilogue transfers the last bondage to us.

Key quotations

Learn speaker, location, and what the line is doing — not the words alone.

• You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse.

  Caliban · I.2

  Colonial education as injury. Language is both the islander’s loss and his weapon. A key A Level quotation.

• Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here.

  Ariel (quoting Ferdinand) · I.2

  The storm as moral X-ray. The ‘devils’ are the court, not the island.

• O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!

  Miranda · V.1

  Wonder that Prospero immediately ironises: ‘’Tis new to thee.’ Innocence meets a court that has already plotted murder.

• Our revels now are ended… We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.

  Prospero · IV.1

  Theatre, life and dissolution in one movement. The insubstantial pageant is both masque and mortality.

• The isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

  Caliban · III.2

  The ‘monster’ speaks the play’s most delicate poetry. Any reading that only hears Caliban as brute has not heard this.

• As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free.

  Prospero (Epilogue) · Epilogue

  The magician becomes an actor asking for applause. Mercy, prayer and the business of theatre collapse into one couplet.

Exam notes

• Caliban and Ariel are a pair: earth and air, curse and song, two kinds of servitude.
• Do not ignore the comic plot — it parodies the court conspiracy.
• Masque, music and stage direction are methods. Write about them.
• Context: Bermuda shipwreck pamphlets, Jacobean masque, colonial Virginia — used to read the island, not to replace it.

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