The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written between late 1610 and mid-1611, and thought to be one of the last plays he wrote on his own. It appeared in the First Folio of 1623, where it is listed first among the comedies, although its tone mixes comic and tragic elements. Modern criticism groups it, together with other late works, under the category of late romance, marked by reconciliation, family ties and a mythical atmosphere.

The action takes place on a remote island after a storm that opens the play aboard a ship at sea. Prospero, the former Duke of Milan and a magician, was overthrown twelve years earlier by his brother Antonio, with the help of Alonso, King of Naples. He reached the island with his daughter Miranda, and there he rules over Caliban, a native inhabitant he has subjugated, and over Ariel, an airy spirit he freed and keeps in service. When a ship carrying his enemies passes nearby, Prospero raises the tempest that drives them ashore, and from there he sets out a plan of revenge that splits the castaways into groups: the young Ferdinand, who falls in love with Miranda; the jester Trinculo and the butler Stephano, who plot a failed rebellion alongside Caliban; and the noblemen, whom Ariel watches over as he thwarts a plot to murder the king.

The play includes a wedding masque, a spectacle within the play in which classical goddesses bless the union of Miranda and Ferdinand on condition that they keep chaste until marriage. This scene, along with the magic, music and spirits, has been linked to the Jacobean court's taste for masques and to King James I's well-known interest in witchcraft, a deeply serious matter at the time. The play was first performed in 1611 at Whitehall Palace and was staged again in February 1613 to celebrate the marriage of Elizabeth Stuart to Frederick V, Elector Palatine.

The resolution comes when Prospero forgives his enemies, recovers his dukedom and renounces his magic. Ariel is set free, and Miranda and Ferdinand are married. Many readers have seen Prospero's abandonment of magic as Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage, though this reading is interpretive rather than documented.

Since the nineteenth century the play has been read in very different ways. Rubén Darío and José Enrique Rodó reinterpreted it in an American key, with Caliban as a symbol of North American expansionist materialism and Ariel as an emblem of Ibero-American spirituality. From postcolonial criticism, Caribbean and African writers have analysed Prospero as a figure of the European colonizer and Caliban as the colonized people, while feminist critics have focused on Miranda as an object of exchange between men. Its influence extends to opera, literature, the visual arts and numerous stage and film adaptations worldwide.