Last performed in 1996
Synopsis | Smart Guide
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Synopsis
Shakespeare's Ideas and Accomplishments in The Tempest
The Tempest is the final play written in its entirety by Shakespeare. In many ways it is also the culmination of his art, an original and polished work which conveys the mellow wisdom of age. Underneath a surface shimmering with magic and music, the playwright offers his audience a deep pool of poetry, themes, and character relationships. The play dates from 1611, just before Shakespeare's retirement from the London theater and return to his native village of Stratford-upon-Avon. His work during the preceding two decades represents perhaps the greatest creative achievement by an individual in all human history. The Tempest was produced at court on November 1, 1611, and the following year it was part of the festivities surrounding the royal wedding of King James' daughter Elizabeth and Prince Frederick V of Germany, both of them sixteen-year-olds.
The tone and themes of The Tempest make it an especially fitting statement from a man about to leave the public arena once and for all. Like Prospero in the play's final scene, Shakespeare surrenders his power to enchant when he gives up the magic of the theater. The world view reflected in the play is at once realistic and optimistic. Shakespeare depicts evil, tragedy, and suffering as part of a supernaturally ordained plan that culminates in repentance, forgiveness, love, and recovery of that which was lost. One major way in which Shakespeare conveys this positive view of life is through references to providential design. Divine direction accounts for the events that produce the play's happy ending. Both Prospero and Alonso lose in order to gain something better.
Without violating a 1606 ordinance forbidding the use of God's name onstage in any way that could be construed as profane, Shakespeare alludes to a personal, benevolent deity in The Tempest as Providence. The playwright likely drew the idea for linking allusions to Providence with the paradox of loss and restitution from a well-known incident of his own day. Several important elements of the play reflect his familiarity with contemporary accounts of an actual 1609 shipwreck. A fleet of nine vessels carrying over 500 colonists from Plymouth, England, to Virginia was caught in a tempest off the Bermudas.
The flagship, The Sea-Venture, split and was forced aground on the coast of Bermuda, where its passengers spent the winter awaiting its repair. The pamphlets recounting their plight emphasize providential care and direction. The accounts also furnished Shakespeare information about sea voyages, tempests, shipwrecks, and exotic New World landscapes. William Strachey, who recorded the events in a 1610 letter, describes the island as a place "feared and avoided [by] all sea travelers alive above any other place in the world." He continues, "Yet it pleased our merciful God to make even this hideous and hated place both the place of our safety and means of our deliverance."
Shakespeare's beautifully positive ending in The Tempest goes beyond the deliverance which produced a happy ending to the real-life catastrophe described by Strachey. By extolling love and forgiveness as transcendent virtues in a world so evil that brother would kill brother, Shakespeare reveals profound insight into both human nature and the universe at large. Above all, however, The Tempest is a marvelous story set in a landscape governed by magic and pervaded with music. It is little wonder that this play has been greatly loved by audiences for its appeal to the mind and the imagination as well as the heart.