Editors Reads Verdict
Shakespeare's valediction — a play in which magic, forgiveness, and the renunciation of power are held in a balance that grows richer and more ambiguous with every reading.
What We Loved
- Prospero's epilogue, in which he directly addresses the audience and asks for release, is one of the most resonant final speeches in all theatre
- Ariel and Caliban are complementary visions of the colonized — one who serves gracefully in expectation of freedom, one who rebels without hope of winning
- The play's brevity and formal concentration give it an almost musical unity — it observes the classical unities of time, place, and action more strictly than any other Shakespeare play
Minor Drawbacks
- Prospero can feel controlling to the point of coldness — his manipulation of Miranda's romantic life in particular sits uneasily with modern readings
- The comic subplot involving Stephano and Trinculo does not reach the heights of Shakespeare's best low comedy
Key Takeaways
- → Prospero's decision to break his staff and drown his book — to relinquish magical power — is the play's central moral act, and it comes with visible reluctance
- → Caliban's claim that 'This island's mine' was largely ignored until the post-colonial readings of the twentieth century, which transformed the play's critical history
- → The play stages forgiveness not as a generous release of feeling but as a deliberate, difficult choice made despite continuing anger
- → Ariel's desire for freedom and Prospero's delay in granting it gives the master-servant relationship a moral complexity that the plot cannot resolve cleanly
| Author | William Shakespeare |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Pages | 256 |
| Published | January 1, 1611 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Drama, Classic Literature, Classic Fiction |
The Tempest Review
The Tempest is Shakespeare’s last word — the final play he wrote alone — and it reads like a man settling accounts. Prospero has spent twelve years on an enchanted island, mastering magic, raising his daughter, and waiting for the moment when fate delivers his enemies within reach. When that moment comes, he does not destroy them. He forgives them. The play is about what it costs to do that, and whether the forgiveness is entirely real.
This is a play in which everything is controlled — by Prospero, and through Prospero by Shakespeare. The storm of the opening scene, which appears to be a catastrophe, is a controlled deception; no one actually drowns. Miranda’s love for Ferdinand is engineered: Prospero arranges their meeting and then, for reasons the play makes deliberately opaque, harasses Ferdinand to test him. Ariel executes every plan. Even Caliban’s conspiracy is known and managed. The island is a theatre, and Prospero is its director.
What makes this disturbing rather than merely neat is Caliban. His claim to the island — “This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother” — is not refuted, only overridden. Twentieth-century post-colonial criticism found in him a figure of extraordinary contemporary relevance, and the play has been read by writers from Aimé Césaire to Derek Walcott as a template for the colonial relationship. Shakespeare seems to have intuited this ambivalence: Caliban’s language is some of the most beautiful verse in the play, and Prospero cannot quite dismiss him.
The epilogue, in which Prospero steps out of the fiction and asks the audience to release him with their applause, has been read since the Romantic period as Shakespeare’s farewell to his art. Whether that reading is literal or not, it is the right tone on which to close a career.
This Folger Shakespeare Library edition provides a clean text with notes attentive to both the theatrical and the post-colonial dimensions of the play.
Reviewed edition: Folger Shakespeare Library / Simon & Schuster (ISBN 0743482832)
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Tempest" about?
Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, has been stranded on an enchanted island for twelve years with his daughter Miranda, the spirit Ariel, and the monster Caliban — until his enemies' ship is wrecked nearby. Believed to be Shakespeare's final solo-authored play, The Tempest functions as both a romance about forgiveness and a meditation on art, power, and colonialism.
What are the key takeaways from "The Tempest"?
Prospero's decision to break his staff and drown his book — to relinquish magical power — is the play's central moral act, and it comes with visible reluctance Caliban's claim that 'This island's mine' was largely ignored until the post-colonial readings of the twentieth century, which transformed the play's critical history The play stages forgiveness not as a generous release of feeling but as a deliberate, difficult choice made despite continuing anger Ariel's desire for freedom and Prospero's delay in granting it gives the master-servant relationship a moral complexity that the plot cannot resolve cleanly
Is "The Tempest" worth reading?
Shakespeare's valediction — a play in which magic, forgiveness, and the renunciation of power are held in a balance that grows richer and more ambiguous with every reading.
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