Throughout William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, various instances of Prospero’s dialogue go unheard by other characters in the play; these lines are delivered through selectively audible asides, which can only be heard by the audience. Once the...

Foils are common in Shakespeare—a pair of characters, usually very different but sharing certain commonalities, each highlighting the other’s qualities by contrast. Ariel and Caliban, despite both being servants of Prospero, act as foils to each...

In both the Tempest and the Dialogues of Plato, the protagonists, Prospero and Socrates, make references to dreams and death, often correlating them to each other. These similarities are evident in two specific quotes, one from each work, which I...

Shakespeare’s work, “The Tempest”, under the framework of the 21st century, may seem like a normal –even boring– play about a powerful man who takes advantage of a native person in order to conquer his island. No contemporary person would think it...

The Tempest, is about a marooned sorcerer, Prospero who was exiled from both his land and his ruling position in Naples. As a result of this, Prospero is seething with rage. He uses his magical powers to crash the king-who happens to be his...

In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louise Pratt proposes the idea of “contact zones” as areas of interaction between cultures in the New World. Pratt defines “contact zones” as areas where cultures “meet, clash and grapple […] often in contexts...

Sounds and noises play an important role in any book. All kinds of noises and sounds used by the author are significant in adding “flavor” to the story. Without such noises, readers would perceive the book as “flat” and it may become hard to...

Given that William Shakespeare was writing in a period when ‘blackness [was] one of the many qualities, physical or otherwise, that isolate[d] and acutely degrade[d] those who possess[ed] it’, and ‘the male dominance over women and children in the...

“It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships,” said Albert Memmi in his influential book entitled The Colonizer and the Colonized. This statement...

In almost every respect, Gonzalo's ideas on how best to govern an island relate directly in some form to Prospero's existing reign. Gonzalo, an honest, sage, aging councilor first openly asserts his vision of a perfect society while meandering...

A post-colonial interpretation of The Tempest is an interpretation which has gained popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century. This particular reading of the play implies that Shakespeare was consciously making a point about...

Images of the fierce and powerful sea are prevalent throughout Shakespeare's The Tempest. The play opens on a terrible storm at sea and all of the ensuing action takes place on an island that, by definition, is surrounded by ocean on all sides....

Caliban is certainly one of the most complex and contradictory characters in Shakespeare's "The Tempest", at different points embodying the poetic, the absurd, the pathetic, and the savagely evil. For this reason, he is also one of the most...

In William Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, the playwright intertwines love and magic, creating one of play's the major themes. Prospero, the protagonist, uses magic to plan the events of this comedy. The first act of magic is the tempest...

In Shakespeare's romance, The Tempest, Miranda instructs Caliban, "I endowed thy purposes / With words that made them known" (I.ii.357-8), affirming the power of language to transform the insubstantial into a forceful and purposeful entity. As...

The abandoned damsel, the lonely daughter, the beautiful virgin... In The Tempest, Shakespeare depicts all of these ideal constructions of womanhood in his character Miranda. However, looking closely at the text reveals that Shakespeare had a...

The epilogue of Shakespeare's The Tempest, while separate from the body of work preceding it due to the nature of an epilogue, it is an integral part of the work. It provides resolution to an otherwise unresolved piece, and the piece actually...

Unholy Mothers: Mothers as Negative Characters in Richard III, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest

by, Barret Buchholz

April 15, 2005

The mothers presented in Shakespeare's plays encompass a broad range of social positions, personalities,...

While the magic of Prospero, the deposed duke of Milan at the center of Shakespeare's The Tempest, is frequently associated with art or creativity, this reading of the text seems incompatible with a substantial amount of textual evidence. Most...

The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touched

The very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such provision in mine art

So safely ordered that there is no soul-

No, not so much perdition as an hair

Betid to any creature in the vessel

Which...

The introduction of Ariel in the second scene of The Tempest raises some of the central issues in William Shakespeare's 17th-century play. Most notably, the themes of power, nature, and magic prove to be integral in shaping the audience's...

In the plays of Shakespeare, readers can find several issues of human nature addressed. In Othello, Shakespeare addresses jealously and racism. In King Lear, he addresses pride and love. In Romeo and Juliet, he examines fate. In The Tempest and...

One of the significant conflicts within Renaissance culture was how to rationalize the many instances of violence which took place in a society with such strong Christian values. While some preached from the New Testament of the importance of love...

Characters in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Tempest use stories to explain personal history or change the course of events. These are no simple tales; rather, they are complex and thought-provoking means of enriching each play and carrying action...