Ferdinand, Ariel, Prospero and Miranda

The Tempest

William Shakespearec. 1611
Influence87th pct
Popularity61st pct
Shakespeare

Read this if you…

  • want shakespeare writing about a wizard/magic/monster
  • want his last top tier play

Skip this if you…

  • aren't willing to go slow, read notes, look up analyses of famous passages (only way to "get" shakespeare)
  • foolishly think shakespeare is overrated

Why It Matters

Shakespeare's goodbye to the stage is a play about forgiveness, power, and the choice to give up control. Plenty of readers see Prospero giving up his magic as Shakespeare himself laying down the pen. It's one of his most-performed and most-adapted plays, and its questions about colonialism and freedom have only gotten louder.

The Groblé Take

Banger, nice and short. Prospero is awesome

Connections

The lineage through The Tempest

Built Onwhat came beforeThe TempestThe Complete Es…MetamorphosesThe Aeneid

  • The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne. The Tempest built on it. - Gonzalo isn't improvising — he's quoting Montaigne - His commonwealth speech lifts *Of the Cannibals* almost verbatim from Florio's 1603 translation, the single clearest case of Shakespeare citing Montaigne - Read the essay first and you'll catch the irony Shakespeare is playing with — Montaigne's earnest meditation on the New World turned into a castaway's idle daydream
  • Metamorphoses by Ovid. The Tempest built on it. - Prospero's great renunciation speech isn't Shakespeare's invention — it's Ovid's - "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves" (5.1) is lifted, line by line, from Medea's invocation in *Metamorphoses* Book 7 - Read Ovid first and the magician's farewell turns uncanny: the most humane wizard in the canon borrows his power from a sorceress who used it for murder
  • The Aeneid by Virgil. The Tempest built on it. - *The Tempest* opens on a Virgilian storm — the shipwreck, the scattered survivors, the supernatural reckoning all trace back to the *Aeneid* - Shakespeare half-names his source: Gonzalo's "widow Dido" and the talk of Carthage and Tunis in 2.1 point straight at Virgil's queen - Ariel's harpy at the magical banquet is Aeneid Book 3 staged anew; knowing Virgil's voyage sharpens every echo on Prospero's island
See the full map
Gallery

Depicted in Art

Ferdinand kneels before Miranda in Prospero's cave; Prospero stands behind her with his book and staff while Caliban crouches on the right.

William Hogarth, 1736

Prospero, robed and bearded, leans toward the seated Miranda to tell her the story of their banishment to the island.

Henry Thomson

Miranda stands on a windswept cliff edge with her hair and dress flying back, watching her father's storm hurl a ship onto the rocks below.

John William Waterhouse, 1916

A ring of nude fairies dances along a moonlit beach as Ariel pipes overhead, summoning Ferdinand to the shore.

Richard Dadd, 1842

Ferdinand and Miranda meet wonderingly at center while Prospero watches and Ariel floats overhead.

Thomas Stothard

Ferdinand and Miranda lean intimately toward each other in a lushly painted island setting, lovers caught mid-conversation.

Frederick Richard Pickersgill

Prospero in his magician's robes commands the air-spirit Ariel, who rises to him as a winged youth crowned with light.

William Hamilton, 1797

An apocalyptic vision of cities collapsing into the sea, illustrating Prospero's 'cloud-capp'd towers... shall dissolve' speech from Act IV.

Samuel Colman, 1838

Prospero in his cell with Miranda beside him, while Caliban gathers wood behind; a distressed ship is just visible out at sea.

William Rimmer, 1850

Ferdinand is borne ashore on the back of the storm-waves, half-drowned, his body twisting in the surf.

Theodor von Holst

Caliban rendered as an angular, expressionist costume design — a stooped, bestial figure in jagged earth-tones.

Franz Marc, 1914

Ariel as a robed spirit-girl raising her arms in song over the sleeping mariners, in Dulac's signature jewel-bright watercolor.

Edmund Dulac, 1908

Prospero stands between Miranda and the crouching Caliban, framing the family conflict at the heart of Act I.

George Romney

Prospero, Miranda, Ariel and the assembled spirits gathered around Prospero's island cell in the foundational Act I exposition scene.

Thomas Stothard

Prospero, Miranda and Ferdinand grouped on the island, in Wheatley's elegant late-18th-century Conversation-Piece manner.

Francis Wheatley

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick$7.99$7.45

Folger Shakespeare Library

2004

Folger's the readable one. Text on one page, notes on the facing page, written in plain English instead of textbook-speak. Catches every word and reference you'd otherwise Google, without breaking the scene to do it.

Buy on Bookshop
#2

SparkNotes (No Fear Shakespeare)

2003

$7.99$7.45Buy
#3

Arden Shakespeare

2011

$18.40Buy

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Deep Dive

What It's About

Spoiler warning

This summary gives away plot details.

Notable Quotes

“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”

— Prospero, Act IV, Scene i

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

— Prospero, The Tempest

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