Five-minute digest
The Tempest
Summary
The Tempest opens with a ship breaking apart in a storm off a remote island. On shore, the magician Prospero tells his fifteen-year-old daughter Miranda that he was once Duke of Milan. Absorbed in his books, he left the government to his brother Antonio, who, helped by Alonso, King of Naples, deposed him twelve years before and set father and child adrift in a rotten boat; the kind counsellor Gonzalo supplied them with food, clothes and the books Prospero valued above his dukedom. Now fortune has brought his enemies near, and Prospero has raised the storm through his spirit Ariel, whom he freed from the cloven pine where the witch Sycorax imprisoned him and who serves on the promise of liberty. Prospero also commands Sycorax's son Caliban, who claims the island as his own inheritance; Prospero once taught and housed him until Caliban attempted to violate Miranda, and now he hauls wood and curses. The passengers come ashore unharmed in separate groups. Prince Ferdinand, led by Ariel's song to believe his father drowned, meets Miranda and the two fall in love at first sight; Prospero, to test him, makes him a prisoner and sets him to carry logs. Elsewhere Alonso grieves for his son while Gonzalo imagines an ideal commonwealth; when Ariel charms the others asleep, Antonio urges Alonso's brother Sebastian to murder the king, and Ariel wakes Gonzalo just in time. Caliban, meeting the jester Trinculo and the drunken butler Stephano, worships Stephano for his wine and plots with them to kill Prospero and seize his books. Ariel, appearing as a harpy over a vanishing banquet, accuses Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian of their crime against Prospero and leaves them distracted with guilt. Prospero blesses the betrothal of Ferdinand and Miranda with a masque of the goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno, breaks it off when he remembers Caliban's plot, and sets spirit hounds on the conspirators. In Act V, moved by Ariel's report of the captives' suffering, he chooses forgiveness over revenge, renounces his magic, and appears to the court in his ducal robes. Alonso restores his dukedom and asks pardon; Antonio says almost nothing; Ferdinand is discovered playing chess with Miranda; the ship is found whole. Prospero sets Ariel free, Caliban resolves to seek grace, and in the Epilogue Prospero, his charms overthrown, asks the audience to release him by their applause and their prayers. Probably written in 1610-11 and performed at court in November 1611, the play stands first in the First Folio of 1623.
Top Lessons
The rarer action
Prospero has every enemy in his power by Act V and every reason to punish them. Ariel's pity for the captives shames him into choosing forgiveness, which he calls a rarer action than vengeance. The play shows that power is proved more truly in mercy than in punishment.
Rule of oneself before rule of others
Prospero lost Milan because he neglected government for study, and on the island he governs spirits and men by force. Ferdinand must earn Miranda by labor and restraint, and Prospero ends by mastering his own fury. Shakespeare places self-government at the root of every other kind.
Master and servant
Ariel serves for the promise of freedom; Caliban serves under compulsion and curses the teacher who gave him language. The play lets both voices speak and does not settle the question of Prospero's right to the island. In the end Prospero acknowledges Caliban as his own.
Such stuff as dreams
After the masque vanishes, Prospero says the whole world will dissolve like a pageant and that human life ends in sleep. The play holds together delight in art and a sober sense of mortality, and its last word is a request for pardon.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“You taught me language, and my profit on ’t Is, I know how to curse.”
Frequently cited
“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.”
Frequently cited
“We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”
“A solemn air, and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains”
Frequently cited
“the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance”
Frequently cited
“O brave new world That has such people in ’t!”
“I’ll be wise hereafter, And seek for grace.”
Frequently cited
“As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free.”
Medical Lens
Prospero's magic works largely on minds and bodies: he induces sudden sleep in Miranda and the courtiers, punishes Caliban with cramps, side-stitches and pinches, and leaves Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian in fits of distraction that the play treats as guilt made visible. Their cure in Act 5 is music, called the best comforter to an unsettled fancy, which reflects the Renaissance belief, later gathered in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), that music could temper disordered passions and restore the mind. Alonso himself says a madness held him. The comic plot shows drunkenness as a counterfeit religion, with Caliban worshipping the bottle-bearer Stephano. Prospero's own vexed and beating mind after the masque, his troubled old brain, and his plan to think of his grave every third thought touch on age and mortality. Reading the courtiers' state as a specific modern disorder would go beyond the text.
- Act 1, Scene 2; Act 2, Scene 1
Prospero charms Miranda asleep, and Ariel brings a heavy, sudden sleep on all the courtiers except Antonio and Sebastian.
- Act 1, Scene 2; Act 4, Scene 1
Prospero threatens and punishes Caliban and the conspirators with cramps, aches and pinches sent by spirits.
- Act 2, Scene 2; Act 3, Scene 2
Stephano's wine makes Caliban drunk and devoted; the three conspirators plot while tipsy.
- Act 3, Scene 3; Act 5, Scene 1
Ariel's harpy speech leaves the three men of sin distracted; Prospero restores them with solemn music, and Alonso says a madness held him.
- Act 4, Scene 1; Act 5, Scene 1
Prospero walks to still his beating mind, confesses his old brain is troubled, and says every third thought will be his grave.