The Complete Guide to The Tempest

A play about one decision

What The Tempest is, and why it has so little plot

Twelve years before the play begins, Prospero, Duke of Milan, was deposed by his brother Antonio with the help of Alonso, King of Naples, and set adrift with his small daughter Miranda and his books. They reached an island inhabited by Caliban, son of the dead witch Sycorax, and by the spirit Ariel, whom Sycorax had imprisoned in a pine. Prospero freed Ariel, took Caliban into his household, and, after Caliban attacked Miranda, enslaved him.

When chance brings Alonso, Antonio and their court sailing past the island, Prospero raises a storm, wrecks them without harming anyone, and spends one afternoon moving them about the island until they stand before him. The outcome is never in doubt because Prospero controls every event. What is in doubt is what he will do with his enemies when he has them — and the real drama is a man with total power deciding, in one speech, to stop using it.

Around that decision Shakespeare arranges arguments he declines to settle: who the island belongs to, whether service is slavery, whether forgiveness is received, and whether wonder is wisdom or inexperience. Revise the play as these arguments, not as a sequence of events.

What just happened

• Prospero was deposed and exiled twelve years ago.
• He rules an island with magic, served by Ariel and Caliban.
• He wrecks his enemies and brings them under his power in one afternoon.
• The climax is his decision to forgive.

Why it matters. Knowing that the play is built around one choice tells you what every scene is preparing.

What to remember

• Almost nothing happens — argue, do not narrate.
• The open questions are the essay questions.

How to read a play with no suspense

Control, speeches and silences

Because Prospero controls everything, the play has almost no suspense of plot. Its tension lies in character and judgement: how far Prospero's power has damaged him, how the other characters respond to being controlled, and whether his final mercy is real.

Most of the play's weight sits in a handful of speeches: Caliban's claim and his curse in Act 1, Gonzalo's commonwealth in Act 2, the noises speech in Act 3, the revels in Act 4, the rarer action, the renunciation and the acknowledgement of Caliban in Act 5, and the Epilogue. Learn where each falls and what has just happened.

Notice silences too. Antonio has no reply after being forgiven; Prospero never answers Caliban's claim to the island. In a play this carefully made, what is withheld is evidence.

Finally, notice how often the play repeats itself. Three servants, three plots against a ruler, three groups wandering the island, and two masters — Prospero and, briefly, Stephano — for Caliban. Shakespeare builds the play out of parallels so that an audience compares: Ariel with Caliban, Antonio with Caliban, Ferdinand's log-carrying with Caliban's. Almost every strong essay on this play is built on one of those comparisons, because the play itself is built on them. When you revise a scene, ask what other scene it is designed to be set beside, and you will usually find your second paragraph.

What just happened

• The play lacks suspense of plot.
• Its weight sits in about eight speeches.
• Its silences are deliberate.

Why it matters. This is how you turn a short, almost plotless play into a strong essay.

What to remember

• Place each speech in its situation.
• Read the silences.

Voyages, islands and settlers

The New World behind the island

The Tempest is usually dated to about 1610–11 and is known to have been performed at court in 1611. In those years accounts were circulating in London of an English ship carrying settlers to Virginia that was wrecked on Bermuda in 1609, and of the survivors' months on the island. The play's storm, its island and its newcomers who assume authority over a native inhabitant draw on that world of voyages and settlement.

This is why Caliban's claim — 'This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me' — is phrased as inheritance and dispossession. And it is why Gonzalo, imagining the ideal society he would found, uses the word 'plantation', the period's word for a colonial settlement.

Gonzalo's speech also draws on Montaigne's essay about the peoples of the New World, which John Florio translated into English in 1603. A serious contemporary idea about a society without property or rulers is spoken by a kind old man and jeered at by two men about to attempt a murder.

What just happened

• The play dates from about 1610–11.
• Accounts of a 1609 wreck on Bermuda were circulating.
• Gonzalo's commonwealth draws on Montaigne in Florio's translation.

Why it matters. This context explains why the play stages an argument about who owns the island.

What to remember

• 'plantation' is the vocabulary of settlement.
• Caliban's claim is framed as inheritance.

Masques, magic and the theatre

Why Act 4 looks the way it does

The court masque was an expensive entertainment of music, dance, spectacle and allegory, often written for a wedding. In Act 4 Prospero stages one for Miranda and Ferdinand, with goddesses blessing the marriage — which is why it is stylised and concerned with fertility and chastity, and why its sudden interruption is so shocking to those watching on stage.

Prospero's magic is learned from books, and his renunciation borrows from the witch Medea's invocation in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The play thus describes the art he gives up in a sorceress's words, complicating any simple idea of 'good' magic.

The play stands first in the First Folio of 1623, though it is one of Shakespeare's last. Some readers hear in Prospero's farewell to his art a farewell to the theatre; that cannot be proved, and an essay is stronger treating the renunciation as something the character does.

What just happened

• The masque was a real court form, often for weddings.
• The renunciation borrows from Ovid's Medea.
• The farewell-to-the-stage idea is only a reading.

Why it matters. These facts explain the play's spectacle and complicate Prospero's magic.

What to remember

• The masque is interrupted by Caliban's plot.
• Present the farewell idea as a reading.

Act 1: the storm and the stories

Shipwreck, exposition, two servants and a meeting

Scene 1 is a shipwreck in which rank counts for nothing: the Boatswain asks what the roaring waves care for the name of king. Scene 2 reveals that Prospero made the storm and saved everyone. He tells Miranda their history — his study, his brother's treachery, their exile — repeatedly checking that she is listening, then sends her to sleep.

Ariel reports the storm and asks for his promised liberty; Prospero reminds him of Sycorax's pine and threatens him with an oak. Caliban curses and states his claim to the island and his complaint about the language he was taught; Prospero and Miranda answer with contempt and the charge of his attempted assault.

Ariel's song leads Ferdinand, who believes his father drowned, to Miranda. They fall in love at once; Prospero, pleased, pretends suspicion and makes Ferdinand carry logs so that the prize will not seem too light.

What just happened

• The storm is revealed as Prospero's work.
• Prospero tells Miranda their history.
• Ariel asks for freedom; Caliban claims the island.
• Ferdinand and Miranda meet and fall in love.

Why it matters. Act 1 sets out every relationship of power the play will examine.

What to remember

• Three servitudes: Ariel, Caliban, Ferdinand.
• The claim that is never answered.

Act 2: two islands of conspiracy

The court party and the comic plot

Alonso grieves for Ferdinand while Antonio and Sebastian mock Gonzalo, who imagines an ideal commonwealth on the island. Ariel's music puts the others to sleep; Antonio persuades Sebastian to murder his brother the king, exactly as Antonio once took Milan. Ariel wakes Gonzalo just in time.

Elsewhere Caliban, hiding from a spirit, is found by Trinculo the jester and Stephano the drunken butler. Stephano gives him wine; Caliban takes him for a god, offers to show him the island and kneels as his subject, singing of freedom while choosing a new master.

What just happened

• Gonzalo describes his ideal commonwealth.
• Antonio tempts Sebastian to kill Alonso.
• Caliban kneels to Stephano.

Why it matters. The play repeats usurpation at two social levels, so each plot comments on the other.

What to remember

• Antonio has not changed in twelve years.
• Caliban's 'freedom' is a new servitude.

Act 3: love, a murder plot and a harpy

Every group brought into Prospero's power

Ferdinand carries logs; Miranda offers to help; they exchange vows, and Miranda proposes — watched unseen by Prospero, who blesses the match he engineered. Caliban persuades Stephano to murder Prospero and seize his daughter, telling him to take the books first; when Ariel's music frightens the drunks, Caliban comforts them with the speech about the isle's noises.

A banquet appears before the exhausted court party and vanishes; Ariel, as a harpy, accuses Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian of their crime against Prospero. Alonso is broken; Antonio and Sebastian draw their swords. Prospero, watching, declares his enemies are now in his power.

What just happened

• Miranda and Ferdinand pledge themselves.
• Caliban plots murder and speaks of the isle's music.
• Ariel's harpy accuses the guilty men.
• Prospero has all his enemies in his power.

Why it matters. From here the play can only move to revenge or mercy.

What to remember

• Caliban's best speech is inside his worst plot.
• Only Alonso is moved by the harpy.

Act 4: the masque and the revels

Theatre that breaks off

Prospero gives Miranda to Ferdinand, warning against sex before marriage, and stages a masque of goddesses. Midway he remembers Caliban's plot and stops it. He tells the lovers that the revels are ended, that the spirits have melted into air, that the great globe will dissolve, and that 'We are such stuff / As dreams are made on'. He is visibly disturbed.

Ariel hangs out glittering clothes; Stephano and Trinculo grab at them while Caliban calls them trash. Prospero and Ariel set spirit-hounds on all three.

What just happened

• Prospero blesses the betrothal and stages a masque.
• He interrupts it, remembering Caliban's plot.
• He speaks the revels speech, disturbed.
• The conspirators are chased by spirit-hounds.

Why it matters. The play's most famous speech comes out of a failed piece of theatre.

What to remember

• Read the revels speech in its situation.
• Caliban sees the clothes are trash.

Act 5 and the Epilogue: mercy and release

The decision, and what it leaves unsettled

Ariel reports the prisoners' grief and says he would pity them were he human. Prospero decides that 'The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance', renounces his magic, and promises to break his staff and drown his book. He forgives Alonso and Antonio — Antonio does not answer — and reveals Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess.

Miranda sees the court and cries 'O brave new world'; Prospero replies ''Tis new to thee'. Caliban is brought in; Prospero acknowledges him — 'this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine' — and Caliban promises to seek for grace. Ariel is freed. In the Epilogue Prospero, without his magic, asks the audience to set him free with their applause.

What just happened

• Ariel's remark prompts Prospero's mercy.
• Prospero renounces his magic.
• Antonio is forgiven and silent.
• Prospero asks the audience for release.

Why it matters. The ending supplies reconciliation while withholding its confirmation.

What to remember

• 'The rarer action' is a choice.
• The forgiven man says nothing.

The people on the island

Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, Miranda — and the court

Prospero is wronged and learned, protective and controlling, threatening and finally merciful; his power is presented as a condition with symptoms. Caliban is given an unanswered claim and the play's best poetry alongside an attempted assault and a murder plot. Ariel serves with delight and keeps asking for freedom, and his remark about pity turns the play. Miranda brings compassion and wonder, and a judgement limited by her isolation.

Around them, Antonio is the cold centre, unrepentant and silent; Gonzalo is decent, mocked and ineffectual; Alonso is the one guilty man moved to grief; Stephano and Trinculo turn usurpation into farce; Ferdinand is well behaved by design.

What just happened

• Prospero's power and mercy are both real.
• Caliban cannot be reduced to victim or villain.
• Ariel and Miranda each push Prospero towards mercy or wonder.

Why it matters. Questions on characters reward holding contradictions together.

What to remember

• Antonio's silence.
• Gonzalo mocked by worse men.

Prospero: power with symptoms

Wronged, learned, controlling — and finally merciful

Prospero is easy to admire and hard to like. He was genuinely wronged: his brother took his dukedom and set him adrift with a three-year-old child. He is learned, he saves everyone from the storm he raises, and he arranges a happy marriage for his daughter. Yet the play shows, scene after scene, what absolute power has done to him. He cannot tell his story without checking that Miranda is listening. When Ariel asks for the freedom he was promised, Prospero reminds him at length of what he was rescued from and threatens to peg him inside an oak for twelve winters. He punishes Caliban with cramps and pinches. He pretends to suspect Ferdinand and makes him carry logs.

These are symptoms. A man who controls everything is irritable, impatient, quick to remind others of their debts, and unable to leave anything to chance. Shakespeare shows him losing his composure in Act 4, when the memory of Caliban's plot breaks up his own masque and he tells the lovers he is vexed and his old brain is troubled.

That is why the decision in Act 5 matters. When Ariel says that he would pity the prisoners were he human, Prospero chooses the rarer action. He does not say his anger has vanished; he says virtue is finer than vengeance. Then he gives up the instrument of his power. The renunciation can be read as a sacrifice, as a man escaping something that was harming him, or — in the Epilogue — as a final piece of stagecraft that hands the last word to the audience.

What just happened

• Prospero is wronged, learned and protective.
• His power shows symptoms: threats, reminders, irritability.
• He chooses mercy and renounces his magic.

Why it matters. Questions on Prospero test whether you can hold his virtues and his harshness together.

What to remember

• The oak threat to Ariel.
• 'The rarer action' is a comparison.

Caliban: the character the play will not settle

Claim, curse, crime and poetry

Caliban is introduced as a monster and a slave, and the play gives him more than either label can hold. In his first scene he states a claim to the island by inheritance from his mother, and Prospero does not dispute it — he answers instead with the charge that Caliban tried to violate Miranda. Caliban does not deny it; he wishes it had been done. Shakespeare places the strongest argument for Caliban and the strongest argument against him in the same exchange.

He is articulate in his anger: taught language, he says, his profit is that he knows how to curse. With Stephano and Trinculo he is drunk, credulous and eager to serve a new master, offering to kiss his foot and show him every fertile part of the island — exactly what he once did for Prospero. And then, in the middle of a murder plot, he comforts the frightened drunks with the most beautiful speech in the play: the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not, and when he wakes from his dreams he cries to dream again.

At the end Prospero acknowledges him — 'this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine' — and Caliban promises to be wise and seek for grace. Whether that is reform, submission or survival, the play does not say. The strongest answers do not decide what Caliban is; they show how the play stops anyone deciding.

What just happened

• Caliban's claim is answered with an accusation.
• He curses, kneels to a new master and plots murder.
• He speaks the play's finest poetry.
• His ending is brief and ambiguous.

Why it matters. Caliban is the play's most disputed figure and the subject of many questions.

What to remember

• Hold the evidence in tension.
• Verse among prose in Act 3 Scene 2.

Ariel and Miranda: service and wonder

Two characters who move Prospero

Ariel performs every illusion in the play — the storm, the music that leads Ferdinand, the harpy, the masque, the glittering clothes, the hounds — and enjoys it. But he keeps asking about his freedom, and his arguments are careful: he has done worthy service, told no lies, served without grudge or grumbling. Prospero's answers mix promises and threats. Ariel's single most important line comes in Act 5, when he says that his affections would become tender for the prisoners, were he human. The play's turn to mercy is prompted by a spirit.

Miranda's first words are compassion for the shipwrecked: she has suffered with those she saw suffer. She disobeys her father to speak to Ferdinand and proposes marriage herself — yet her father watches, unseen, having arranged the meeting. Her final cry of wonder at the court party, 'O brave new world', is the most generous line in the play and, since the people she admires include her father's enemies, a mistake. Prospero's ''Tis new to thee' answers her without cruelty.

What just happened

• Ariel performs Prospero's illusions and asks for freedom.
• His remark about pity prompts Prospero's mercy.
• Miranda shows compassion, courage and wonder.
• Her 'brave new world' is corrected by experience.

Why it matters. Both characters show what Prospero's power is surrounded by: service and innocence.

What to remember

• 'were I human'.
• ''Tis new to thee'.

The court party: Antonio, Gonzalo, Alonso, Sebastian

Guilt, decency and the man who does not answer

Antonio is the play's cold centre. He took his brother's dukedom twelve years ago, and within an hour of landing on the island he persuades Sebastian to murder Alonso and take the crown of Naples. When Sebastian asks about conscience, Antonio says he does not feel that deity in his bosom. When Ariel's harpy accuses him, he draws his sword on the air. When Prospero forgives him, he says nothing at all.

Gonzalo is the opposite: the counsellor who, when Prospero was set adrift, supplied him with food, water, clothes and the books he valued above his dukedom. He tries to comfort the grieving Alonso and imagines an ideal commonwealth on the island, and he is mocked throughout by Antonio and Sebastian. Prospero embraces him as his true preserver. Gonzalo shows that goodness in this world can be ineffectual and still worth having.

Alonso, who helped depose Prospero, is the guilty man who changes. Grief for Ferdinand and the harpy's accusation break him; he restores the dukedom and asks Prospero's pardon. Sebastian, Alonso's brother, follows Antonio's lead and, at the end, makes jokes. The four men show the range of responses to guilt that the ending has to accommodate.

What just happened

• Antonio plots a second usurpation and never repents.
• Gonzalo saved Prospero and is mocked by worse men.
• Alonso is moved to grief and restores the dukedom.

Why it matters. The court party tests whether Prospero's forgiveness can change anyone.

What to remember

• Antonio's silence.
• Gonzalo, Prospero's preserver.

Ferdinand, Stephano and Trinculo

A prince who carries logs, and two men who would be kings

Ferdinand, Alonso's son, is well behaved by design. Led by Ariel's music and believing his father drowned, he meets Miranda and loves her at once. Prospero calls him a spy and a traitor and sets him to carry logs — the same work Caliban does — so that the prize will not be won too lightly. Ferdinand says the labour is light because Miranda weeps at it. He is not meant to be a complex character; the courtship tests Prospero's plan more than it tests him.

Stephano, a drunken butler, and Trinculo, a jester, are the comic plot. Within an hour of landing they have found a monster, been taken for a god, and agreed to murder the island's ruler and make Stephano king with Miranda as his queen. Their plot is the court's plot in low dress: Antonio and Sebastian plan the same crime in better verse. When Ariel hangs out glittering garments, the two would-be kings grab at the clothes while Caliban, the slave, tells them it is trash.

The comic plot deflates the serious one. Ambition and usurpation look absurd when a drunk butler pursues them — and an audience laughing at Stephano is invited to notice that Antonio is doing the same thing.

What just happened

• Ferdinand serves as a log-carrier to win Miranda.
• Stephano and Trinculo plot to rule the island.
• Caliban alone sees the glittering clothes are trash.

Why it matters. These characters let the play compare servitude and ambition at different levels.

What to remember

• Ferdinand's labour parallels Caliban's.
• The drunks' plot mirrors Antonio's.

The big ideas

Power, ownership, forgiveness, freedom, illusion

• Power and control: what total power does to the person who holds it.
• Colonisation and ownership: a claim to the island stated and never answered.
• Forgiveness and revenge: a choice made in a speech, met by a silence.
• Freedom and servitude: three servants, and a master who ends by asking to be freed.
• Magic, illusion and theatre: storm, banquet, masque and an Epilogue asking for applause.

What just happened

• Five themes run through the play.
• They meet in Act 5.
• None is settled simply.

Why it matters. Linking themes in one argument lifts an answer.

What to remember

• Use one speech to show two themes.
• Tie every theme to a quotation.

How Shakespeare writes it

Verse and prose, sound, parallels

Verse and prose sort the island: the court speaks verse, the drunks prose, and Caliban moves into verse for the noises speech — a metrical shift that complicates any simple judgement. The play is full of songs, music and noises, which Caliban names. Parallel scenes — Antonio tempting Sebastian, Caliban tempting Stephano — invite comparison. The revels speech's images of towers and palaces dissolving gather the play's vocabulary of melting and vanishing, and the Epilogue's short rhyming lines humble the duke's blank verse.

What just happened

• Verse and prose mark characters and moments.
• Sound is a constant resource.
• Parallel plots comment on each other.

Why it matters. AO2 rewards analysis of these methods in any extract.

What to remember

• Caliban's verse among prose.
• The Epilogue's changed form.

Close reading: Caliban's first scene

Act 1 Scene 2 — the claim and the curse

Caliban is summoned with insults — Prospero calls him slave and worse — and enters cursing in verse. Then he makes his case. The island was his by Sycorax his mother, and Prospero took it. When Prospero first came he stroked him, gave him water with berries in it, and taught him to name the bigger light and the lesser; and Caliban loved him and showed him the fresh springs, the brine-pits, the barren places and the fertile. Now he is kept in a rock and denied the rest of the island.

The speech's structure is an argument: inheritance, kindness given, kindness repaid with knowledge, dispossession. Prospero's answer changes the subject to the attempted assault on Miranda. Miranda then reminds Caliban that she taught him to speak, and Caliban replies that his profit is that he knows how to curse.

Two things should shape an essay on this scene. First, the claim is never answered, and the substitution of an accusation for an answer is what tells an audience the title is genuinely in doubt. Second, the accusation is real and serious, and Caliban's response to it is shocking. Shakespeare builds the scene so that neither sympathy nor condemnation can settle.

What just happened

• Caliban states his claim to the island.
• He recalls Prospero's early kindness and his own help.
• Prospero answers with the assault on Miranda.
• Caliban says language taught him only to curse.

Why it matters. This scene is the foundation of every essay on Caliban, ownership or education.

What to remember

• The claim is answered with an accusation.
• Both arguments are placed in one exchange.

Close reading: the rarer action

Act 5 Scene 1 — the decision to forgive

Ariel reports that the king, his brother and Antonio are distracted, and that the good old Gonzalo weeps. Prospero asks whether Ariel thinks his own affections would become tender; Ariel answers that his would, were he human. Prospero takes the remark as a rebuke: if a spirit that is only air can feel for them, should not he, who is one of their kind?

His decision is phrased as a comparison: though their wrongs struck him to the quick, he will side with his nobler reason against his fury, because the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance. The alliteration of 'virtue' and 'vengeance' balances the two options; 'rarer' means both less common and finer. He adds a condition that is easy to miss: they being penitent, his purpose extends no further.

The renunciation follows at once, in a speech invoking elves and spirits and listing the powers he has used — darkening the sun, raising storms, opening graves — before he abjures this rough magic. Its verbs are violent: he will break his staff and drown his book. Then the forgiveness begins, and with it the play's last question: Antonio, forgiven, says nothing.

What just happened

• Ariel says he would pity the prisoners were he human.
• Prospero chooses virtue over vengeance.
• He renounces his magic in violent terms.
• The forgiveness meets Antonio's silence.

Why it matters. This is the play's climax: a decision, not an event.

What to remember

• 'they being penitent' — a condition.
• Break and drown.

The revels speech in its place

Why the most famous lines come from a failure

The revels speech is often quoted as Shakespeare's wisdom about life. In the play it is something more surprising. Prospero has just staged a masque for Miranda and Ferdinand — goddesses, music, a dance of nymphs and reapers — and in the middle he suddenly remembers Caliban's plot against his life. The masque collapses. Ferdinand notices that his father-in-law is in some passion that works him strongly.

Prospero then tells him to be cheerful: the revels are ended, the actors were spirits and have melted into thin air, and like this insubstantial pageant the towers, palaces, temples and the great globe itself shall dissolve and leave not a rack behind. 'We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.' He immediately apologises: he is vexed, his old brain is troubled.

Read in place, the speech shows a man whose own theatre has failed, reaching for a vision of everything dissolving while he is visibly upset. The beauty and the agitation belong together, and an answer that keeps both is far stronger than one that lifts the lines out.

What just happened

• The masque is interrupted by Prospero's memory of the plot.
• He speaks of the world dissolving like a pageant.
• He admits he is vexed and troubled.

Why it matters. The speech is a common extract, and its situation is the key to analysing it.

What to remember

• Cause: a failed masque.
• Effect: beauty spoken in agitation.

Close reading: the isle is full of noises

Act 3 Scene 2 — poetry inside a murder plot

The scene is mostly comedy. Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are drunk; invisible Ariel interrupts in Trinculo's voice and sets the others quarrelling; Caliban explains how to murder Prospero — seize his books, then batter his skull or cut his windpipe — and promises Stephano Miranda as a prize. Then Ariel plays a tune, and the two Europeans are terrified.

Caliban comforts them. He tells them not to be afraid; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not; sometimes a thousand instruments hum about his ears, and voices that, if he has just woken from a long sleep, make him sleep again; and then in dreaming the clouds seem to open and show riches ready to drop on him, so that when he wakes he cries to dream again.

Three things matter. The speech is in verse in a scene of prose, so its form marks it out. Its content is knowledge and love of the island, the one thing nobody disputes Caliban possesses. And it sits inside a plot to kill a sleeping man. Shakespeare refuses to choose between the brute and the poet; the best answers refuse too.

What just happened

• Caliban plans Prospero's murder in detail.
• Ariel's music frightens Stephano and Trinculo.
• Caliban comforts them with a speech of beauty and longing.

Why it matters. This is the speech that defeats every simple reading of Caliban.

What to remember

• Verse among prose.
• 'I cried to dream again'.

Close reading: the Epilogue

The magician without his magic

After the others leave, Prospero comes forward alone. His charms are all overthrown, he says, and what strength he has is his own, which is most faint. He asks the audience not to keep him on this bare island now that he has his dukedom and has pardoned the deceiver, but to release him from his bands with the help of their hands — their applause — and to fill his sails with their gentle breath.

The form has changed: short rhyming lines rather than the duke's blank verse. The vocabulary is of debt and prayer: without their help his ending is despair, unless he is relieved by prayer, and as they would be pardoned for their own crimes, he asks their indulgence to set him free. The man who controlled every event in the play is now dependent on the people watching.

The Epilogue can be read as humility, as a plea for forgiveness that mirrors the forgiveness he has just given, or as a last piece of stagecraft. It also makes the audience part of the play's argument about freedom: everyone on the island has asked to be released, and now the master asks too.

What just happened

• Prospero speaks without his magic.
• The verse becomes short rhyming lines.
• He asks the audience to release him.

Why it matters. The Epilogue completes the play's reversal of power.

What to remember

• Charms overthrown; strength his own.
• Freedom asked by the master himself.

Ways of reading the play

Readings to weigh

• A play of forgiveness and renewal — complicated by Antonio's silence.
• A play about colonisation — which must also account for Caliban's assault.
• A play about the theatre — the magician as dramatist, the Epilogue as argument.
• A study of absolute power and its effect on the holder.
• A pessimistic play in which nobody is truly changed.

What just happened

• Several readings are well supported.
• Each emphasises different evidence.
• The strongest answers weigh two.

Why it matters. AO1 rewards a personal response that tests alternatives.

What to remember

• Present readings as readings.
• Support each with a quotation.

Writing the answer

Paper 1 Section A: the extract, then the whole play

On AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) the play is examined in Paper 1, Section A: a printed extract, then the play as a whole, closed book, credited on AO1, AO2, AO3 (context) and AO4 (accuracy). Allow about fifty minutes. Decide your argument in the first few minutes — who owns the island, what power does to Prospero, whether forgiveness lands — and write it down.

A plan that fits the time

• Place the extract in the afternoon.
• Two paragraphs on the extract's language and form.
• Two paragraphs bridging to other acts.
• Context as clauses, not paragraphs.
• A judgement paragraph, then proofread for AO4.

Avoid. Retelling the storm, deciding Caliban in the first paragraph, quoting the revels speech without its cause, and treating Act 5 as a complete reconciliation.

What just happened

• One question: extract then whole play.
• AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO4 are credited.
• About fifty minutes.

Why it matters. Knowing the task lets you plan both halves.

What to remember

• Argue from the open questions.
• Keep time to proofread.

A worked example: from the claim to the acknowledgement

How one extract opens onto the whole play

Suppose the extract is Caliban's first scene and the question asks how Shakespeare presents the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. Close reading notices the legal shape of the claim, the memory of early kindness, the accusation that replaces an answer, and the curse that turns education into a debt.

Bridge forwards to Act 3 Scene 2, where Caliban plots Prospero's death and speaks of the isle's music in verse, and to Act 4, where Prospero calls him a born devil on whose nature nurture can never stick. Then bridge to the end: 'this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine'. The relationship that began with the question of ownership ends with a word of ownership — but 'mine' may now mean possession, responsibility or self-recognition.

Use this in an essay. Model topic sentence: 'The play begins the relationship with a claim of ownership Prospero will not answer and ends it with a claim of ownership Caliban does not answer, and the word mine has changed meaning in between.'

What just happened

• Analyse the claim and the curse closely.
• Bridge to the noises speech and 'born devil'.
• End with 'this thing of darkness'.

Why it matters. The pivot from extract to whole play is the skill this question rewards.

What to remember

• Name both ends of every bridge.
• Let 'mine' carry the argument.