TEMPEST, THE

drama in five acts by William Shakespeare, first performed about 1611 and published in the First Folio of 1623 from an edited transcript, by Ralph Crane, of the author's papers. Like many of Shakespeare's other late plays, The Tempest tells of reconciliation after strife. The play opens with a storm raised by Prospero, who years earlier, as the rightful duke of Milan, had been set adrift with his daughter Miranda by his usurping brother, Antonio. Shipwrecked on an enchanted island, Prospero mastered the art of magic and liberated several good spiritsincluding Prospero's sprite Arielwho had been tormented by the sorceress Sycorax. Sycorax's son Caliban has become Prospero's slave. Prospero now raises the tempest to overtake Antonio and his courtiers, casting them on the shores of his island at the beginning of the play. With the arrival of the outsiders, the process of reconciliation begins. The party is brought to shore by Ariel, but Ferdinand, son of Alonso, the king of Naples, is separated from the others and is believed drowned. Ariel helps foil plots against Prospero by Caliban and against Alonso by Antonio. Ariel then appears to Alonso and Antonio as a harpy and reproaches them for their treatment of Prospero. Alonso, believing Ferdinand dead, is convinced that his death was punishment for Alonso's crime and has a change of heart. Prospero, persuaded that Antonio and company are repentant, reconciles all and prepares to return to Milan to reclaim his throne. The play has a great variety of ingredients. There is story enough, including two assassination plots. There is a group of quickly differentiated characters; there is elaborate dancing and singing; there is an inset entertainment, a marriage masque performed by the goddesses Iris, Ceres, and Juno; there is a theatrical quaint device, the introduction and vanishing of a banquet; there is a tender love affair; there are marvelous comic turns. Yet a mood of seriousness is felt throughout the play; questions about freedom, about the instinct for revenge, and the conflicting claims of generosity are being asked; there is a sense of subtle seriousness when Prospero speaks his cryptic epilogue. Most of the action of the plot has taken place in the past; only the climax of reconciliation and the events immediately leading up to it are represented. But, although the unity of time is almost preserved, the amount of mental progress, the number of mental events, is large. The newcomers to Prospero's island grope their way toward repentance; the prince finds his way to true love, after his previous tentative explorations; and Miranda awakens to womanhood. Caliban, the subhuman creature, rebels and then comes to learn the error of his ways; Ariel, the supernatural sprite, finds the means of regaining his freedom. Prospero resumes his political authority as duke and pardons all. The play has a most interesting double focus, geographically speaking. Openly it is a story of Naples and Milan, a world of usurpations, tributes, homages, and political marriages that is familiar in Jacobean tragedy. At the same time, the contemporary excitement of the New World permeates the playa world of Indians and the plantations of the colonies, of the wonders and terrors and credulities of a newly discovered land. A lesser dramatist would surely have set his play far away in the west of the Atlantic to take advantage of this contemporary excitement. Perhaps with a surer theatrical instinct, Shakespeare offered his audience a familiar Italianate fictional world, which then became shot through with glimpses of the New World.