Study Guide for The Tempest
Romance as a Genre
 Name romance arbitrary (N. Frye popularized); not used by WS or in Elizabethan times; first recorded 1659
 Frye argues these plays rely "on operatic conventions of romance" especially "mythic descent" symbolized by
"nature's power of renewal". They offer us "'an imaginative model of desire' in which death it an unnatural force".
Also, Frye argues there is a "logical evolution toward romance in S's work."
 R.G. Hunter; popular view "comedies of atonement"; others call this "renewal...recovery of lost royalty despite the
acknowledged tragedy of human life and the terrific presence of evil"
 Also called Atragicomedies@ B tragedy is narrowly averted by magic, providence, grace, and/ or forgiveness
 Revival prompted by popular taste; Blackfriars Theatre courtly audience; not classical or medieval but influenced
by Sidney's Arcadia and Spenser's FQ.
 Court masque revival in the early 17th century hugely influential on all drama of the time; masque particularly
important politically
 Youth/Age: "women cause regenerative transformation of elders”: "Where regular comedy deals with freeing
sexuality from the ties of the family, these late romances deal with freeing family ties from the threat of sexual
degradation" with young women standing as "emblems of the state of innocence which their elders have lost" (C.L.
Barber, Ernest Schanzer)
Biographical/ Source/ Context
 Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage? Follows Cymbeline, Pericles, Winter’s Tale, but precedes Cardenio (Lost),
All’s True / Henry VIII (1613), and Two Noble Kinsmen (collaboration (?) with Fletcher, or Fletcher wrote all of
it). Since Globe burned during a production of All’s True, it is a literal farewell.
 Show 1611; again 1612-3 winter marriage festivities Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine
 Text first appears in First Folio (as first work).
 Island both Mediterranean and Bermudas; Virginia Colony sailed from Plymouth 1609 in the Sea Adventure; ran
aground on Bermudas, "sedulously avoided by sailors because of dire reports which circulated concerning it,
causing it to be called the Isle of Devils" but actually charming; assumed to be founded by Dido and Aeneas in
pamphlets WS read; Montaigne's cannibal essay (Florio)
 part of inspiration for Milton's Comus
 Play contains elements of most other Shakespeare plays—sea voyage, revenge plot (Hamlet), magician figure,
father/ daughter bond (Othello, Lear), brother rivalry, court intrigue, control of daughters. Miranda as Virginia.
Structural Issues
 Importance of sleep and illusion—Shakespeare gets this from Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond’s
famous question, “What do I know?” How do we know what we know is true? Play neatly structures metaphor for
life; characters’ experience is “rounded with a sleep.”
 Three strands of plot (though not much actual action); each of 3 strands concludes in a spectacle: Conspiracies end
with disappearing banquet; drunks with Caliban ends with parade in stolen finery; Ferdinand and Miranda ends
with masque of classical goddesses.Antecedent action (Exposition) all given in second scene; undramatic
exposition discourse or “unscenes.” WS "acknowledges the danger when he has P several times accuse Miranda of
not attending while he tells his story"
 Propsero as Shakespeare or Prospero as Lear/ Brabantio; Caliban speaks in verse though Stephano and Trinculo
speak in prose; "he is associated with the background of the magic island, which is created largely by poetry"
(Noble (?) Savage).
 Play has three endings. Masque or Revels, Prospero’s “farewell,” and Prospero’s epilogue.
 Double plot—minor plot mirrors aristocratic plot, parodies it
Themes
 meaning of P's magic, meaning of his abjuration of it, meaning of his apparent change of heart
 Recent fashion is colonialism issues: Leo Marx's seminal essay where "Prospero's colonializing triumph...[affirms]
an intellectual and humanistic ideal of high civilization
 Emphasis on spectacle: masques, goddess, music, monsters, invisible people; hero is "a man who puts on shows"
 What is "natural"? continued from Lear through WT. "Nothing natural I ever found so noble"--Prospero's art; man
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included in medieval "nature". "Is the natural man a Caliban, with no innate moral concerns or ability to
comprehend the interests and needs of others [Edmund?] He aspires to freedom, which for him may mean only
self-indulgence"
Importance of art—repetition of the word “art” in 1.2. “Lie there, my art…I have with such provision in my
art…art ignorant of what thou art”. Connection of words to art. Books – Ariel “the the syllable.”
illusion/ reality; actor "creates" illusions; a "shadow", yet literally "real"; WS implies world also a "shadow"
servitude/ freedom: Antonio's seizure of power before beginning=rebellion against authority, usurpation of power,
freedom vs. servitude. Prospero as real Power.
- Drama as Magic. Metaphors concerning drama.
Time. P's magic depends (like drama) on Timing. The word now occurs seventy-nine times in the course of the
play. Present emphasized over past; "this present hour" etc.
Father and daughter story; only Comedy of Errors and Tempest observe the Unities. Worked through
father/daughter plot in Pericles
Metamorphosis by Ovid—an influence. Kinds of transformation that occur in the play.
Politics
 Recent fashion is colonialism issues: Leo Marx's seminal essay where "Prospero's colonializing triumph...[affirms]
an intellectual and humanistic ideal of high civilization:
o Felperin equates to Heart of Darkness
o Paul Brown: "paradoxical mutuality of Prospero and Caliban whereby...Caliban's swooning raptures over
the island's sweet airs represent 'a utopian moment whereby powerlessness expresses a desire for
powerlessness"
o Greenblatt: WS insists on a mysterious resemblance between Caliban and Prospero; attraction of Western
imagination to the Wild Man in terms of being able to colonize it
 Caliban and Ariel, Prospero’s two servants, are seen as different aspects of same processes.
 Desire, appetite, body vs. imagination
 The double nature of the colonized. Ariel no better off with Prospero than Sycorax, except for prospect of eventual
freedom. Prospero must learn forgiveness from Ariel and acceptance from Caliban (“this thing of
darkness…I acknowledge mine”)
 Ariel is the magical “east”; Caliban is the worst stereotype of colonized peoples, though he speaks the best poetry
 Caliban as a blend of all colonized people (Setebos is Patagonian god; cannibal is native American; also contains
African, East Indies, etc. )
 Scene at beginning—irrelevance of class. Is it affirmed or negated?
 Tempest as Court Masque: who are the players? What political interest is served? What undercurrents or criticisms
can we detect?
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Burthen Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell.
Tempest, Act 1, scene 2
Richard III, Act 1, scene 4
1.1 Boatswain, Sailors, aristocrats on boat. How to stage this scene? Gonzalo’s optimism; faith in providence, design, fate.
1.2 Prospero, Miranda, Caliban, Ariel introduced; Miranda and Ferdinand “set up.” Ariel orchestrates Prospero’s plot “to
the syllable.” Ferdinand subjected to service
2.1 Gonzalo’s utopianism. Gonzalo is half Adam and half Polonius. Contrast with bad Europeans Sebastian and Antonio.
2.2 Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo—minor plot mirrors majors plot; satirizes