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Prospero in The Tempest — character analysis

The Tempest · William Shakespeare · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702), Paper 1 Section A — not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Grade 9 Notes

In one sentence. The wronged duke with absolute power — and the decision not to use it

Prospero was Duke of Milan until his brother Antonio, with the help of Alonso, King of Naples, deposed him and set him adrift with his three-year-old daughter Miranda. For twelve years he has ruled an island with magic learned from his books, served by the spirit Ariel and the island's native Caliban. When chance brings his enemies past, he raises a storm and spends one afternoon bringing them under his power. The play's real drama is not whether he can punish them — he can — but whether he will. Shakespeare makes him wronged, learned, protective and finally merciful, and also irritable, controlling and a master who threatens and keeps a slave. The renunciation of his magic at the end is a decision, not a disposition, which is what makes it matter.

This study ends with William Shakespeare. Build your reading of Prospero in The Tempest, teach it, then defend it against William Shakespeare.

How Prospero develops

Act 1 — the storm-maker and the storyteller

Act 1 Scene 1 is a shipwreck; Act 1 Scene 2 reveals that it was made, and that its maker has saved everyone aboard. Prospero then tells Miranda, for the first time, who they are — and keeps checking that she is listening: 'Dost thou attend me?' The long story is the first exercise of his power in the play: power over what is known.

“I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated / To closeness and the bettering of my mind” — Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2

His own account admits a fault: he handed government to his brother so that he could study. 'Neglecting' is his word. The play never lets him be simply wronged — his love of books made the usurpation possible, and his books are now the source of his power.

Methods: self-revealing narration · irony

“If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak / And peg thee in his knotty entrails till / Thou hast howled away twelve winters.” — Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2

Ariel has asked for the freedom he was promised. Prospero answers by reminding him of the pine Sycorax trapped him in and threatening a worse prison. The violent verbs — 'rend', 'peg', 'howled' — show that the relationship called service is held together by the memory of rescue and the threat of its reversal.

Methods: threat · violent verbs · imagery of imprisonment

Acts 3–4 — the director, and the revels interrupted

“My high charms work, / And these mine enemies are all knit up / In their distractions. They now are in my power” — Prospero, Act 3, Scene 3

After Ariel, as a harpy, accuses the three guilty men, Prospero watches with satisfaction. 'In my power' is the moment the play turns from revenge to the question of what to do with it.

Methods: possessive pronouns · turning point

“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” — Prospero, Act 4, Scene 1

The most famous lines in the play arrive because Prospero has broken off his own masque on remembering Caliban's plot. 'Stuff' is a fabric word: people are made of dream-material. 'Rounded' means both surrounded and completed. A speech about the whole world dissolving is offered as an apology for being distracted — and he is visibly agitated straight afterwards.

Methods: metaphor · pun · dramatic context

Act 5 — the rarer action, and the Epilogue

“The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance.” — Prospero, Act 5, Scene 1

The decision the play has withheld. It follows directly from Ariel's remark that his own affections would be tender, were he human. 'Rarer' means both less common and finer: mercy is chosen as the harder and better act. It is a comparison, not a conversion — he does not say his anger has gone.

Methods: antithesis · alliteration · turning point

“this rough magic / I here abjure” — Prospero, Act 5, Scene 1

He renounces his art, promising to break his staff and drown his book. 'Break' and 'drown' are violent verbs, the language of destroying something he does not trust himself to keep rather than calmly laying it down.

Methods: renunciation · violent verbs

He forgives Alonso, and forgives Antonio in a sentence that also calls him wicked and demands his dukedom back. Antonio never replies. Prospero acknowledges Caliban — 'this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine' — and frees Ariel. In the Epilogue he stands without his magic and asks the audience to release him with their applause: 'Let your indulgence set me free.' The man who controlled everyone now depends on the people watching.

How Shakespeare builds Prospero in language and structure

Prospero speaks commanding blank verse, often in long speeches, and his questions are checks on attention ('Dost thou attend me?'). The exposition turns a lecture into a scene by making the telling itself a sign of character.

His threats use violent physical verbs — 'rend', 'peg', 'pinch', 'cramps' — revealing the force behind the courtly surface.

Structurally he is the play's director: he watches scenes from above or unseen (the betrothal, the harpy), so the audience sees his control as well as his feelings.

In the Epilogue his verse changes to short rhyming couplets of four stresses: the duke's blank verse is gone with his magic, and the form itself is humbled.

Prospero in context

A deposed ruler regaining his place speaks to the period's concern with legitimate authority and usurpation.

His renunciation borrows the words of Medea's invocation in Ovid's Metamorphoses, linking his art to a sorceress's.

Readings of him as a coloniser draw on the voyages and settlements of the period; readings of him as an artist draw on the masque and the Epilogue.

Relationships

  • Miranda — A protective father who arranges her marriage without her knowing it is arranged, and pretends to oppose it so the prize will not seem too light.
  • Ariel — Master of a spirit he freed from Sycorax's pine; he relies on Ariel's service and keeps deferring the promised freedom.
  • Caliban — Master of a slave who claims the island; Prospero calls him a born devil, and at the end acknowledges him as 'mine'.
  • Antonio — The brother who usurped him; forgiven, and silent.

What Prospero stands for

  • Absolute power: the play studies what holding all of it does to the person who holds it.
  • The artist: storm, banquet and masque make him a stager of spectacles, and the Epilogue makes the comparison open.

Why Shakespeare made Prospero

  • To build a climax out of a choice rather than an event: everything leads to whether he will forgive.
  • To keep him morally complex, so that an audience must judge his mercy against his threats and his slave.

Prospero — the strongest quotations, analysed

“A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick” — Prospero, Act 4, Scene 1

His verdict on Caliban sets nature against nurture. The play then gives Caliban its most beautiful speech, so Prospero's verdict is one side of an argument the play leaves open.

Methods: antithesis · nature/nurture

“'Tis new to thee.” — Prospero, Act 5, Scene 1

His reply to Miranda's 'brave new world'. Four words puncture her wonder without denying it: experience answering innocence.

Methods: understatement · irony

Prospero: all 12 quotations in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →

Readings you could defend

More than one reading of Prospero can win the debate. These are the credible alternatives — argue one, and know the others.

  • A wise and wronged ruler who chooses mercy: the reading the last act most invites.
  • A coloniser and a controlling master whose power has made him harsh, and whose mercy comes only when his enemies are helpless.
  • A figure for the artist, whose magic is theatre; this reading is sometimes extended to Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage, which cannot be proved and should be presented only as a reading.

Essay arguments

  • Shakespeare presents Prospero's power as a condition with symptoms — the demands for attention, the threats to Ariel, the reminders of debt — so the renunciation reads as escape as much as sacrifice.
  • The climax is a decision: 'The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance' is a choice between two possible acts, prompted by a spirit.
  • The Epilogue makes the all-powerful duke dependent on the audience, the final reversal of the play's power.

Prospero in theme essays

  • Power and control: the storm, the threats, the renunciation.
  • Forgiveness and revenge: 'The rarer action'.
  • Magic, illusion and theatre: the revels speech and the Epilogue.

Questions that get asked

  • Read the extract from Act 1 Scene 2 in which Prospero speaks to Ariel. How does Shakespeare present Prospero's power here and across the play?
  • Read the extract from Act 5 Scene 1 in which Prospero decides to forgive. How far is Prospero presented as merciful?
  • How does Shakespeare use Prospero to explore the relationship between power and control?

Think you understand it?

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  1. Teach it — Explain your reading of Prospero in The Tempest to Ember, an AI pupil who has not made one, and answer the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
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  3. Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.

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