The Tempest
1611
- english literature: shakespeare criticism
- english literature: shakespeare texts
- plays / drama
- literary criticism
- classics
- for national curriculum key stage 3
- play
- performing arts
- english drama
- tragicomedy
The story
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skilful manipulation. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit King Alonso of Naples to the island. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's lowly nature, the redemption of the King, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.
What it’s like
Spacious, airy verse on a sea-battered island: the page holds bright, clean images of sparkling water, spirits that sing and vanish, and a magician's cell lit by his own conjuring rather than by any real sun. The voice is elevated but supple, shifting from rough sailors' bark to courtly ornament to tender blank-verse lyricism, and the reading pace is unhurried, with long speeches that open into music and quick exchanges that snap like rigging. Its mood is wistful and quietly magical, a warm, bittersweet calm with a current of old grievance running underneath. Read it on a slow afternoon, in a hammock or beside an open window, or aloud to a room. The violence is threatened rather than shown: a storm that frightens but doesn't harm, a plot to murder that is foiled before it lands, and some sharp verbal cruelty and mocking humiliation, with no gore and no sexual content on the page. The people's arcs run from bitterness toward forgiveness, with an aging magician learning to let his anger go. It suits readers who love theatrical language, those looking for a gentle, reflective classic, and students meeting Shakespeare for the first time.
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