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Grade 9 Notes: The Tempest
William Shakespeare · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702), Paper 1 Section A — not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · The Tempest
Almost nothing happens in The Tempest: a man with total power moves his enemies round an island for an afternoon and then decides what to do with them. Revise it as an argument rather than a plot. Learn the eight or so speeches that carry the play — Caliban on the island, on language and on the noises; Gonzalo's commonwealth; the revels; the rarer action; 'this thing of darkness'; the Epilogue — and for each one know exactly where it falls and what has just happened.
This page ends with William Shakespeare. Build your reading of The Tempest, teach it, then defend it against William Shakespeare.
What is this exam testing?
The Tempest is examined on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) in Paper 1, Section A: Shakespeare. You answer one question: a printed extract first, then the play as a whole. It is closed book — beyond the extract, every quotation comes from memory. Four objectives are credited on this question: AO1, AO2, AO3 (context) and AO4 (your own accuracy).
AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — Paper 1, Section A: Shakespeare
Paper 1 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes for both sections, so plan on about fifty minutes for this answer. The skill rewarded is the pivot: read the extract closely, then show the whole play growing out of it. On Pearson Edexcel 4ET1 the same codes mean different skills — here AO3 is context and AO4 is accuracy.
AO1 · A personal, critical response, supported by references (15% of the GCSE on Paper 1 — level with AO2)
What the examiner wants: An argument that answers the question through the extract and the whole play, evidenced from memory beyond the printed lines. On this play that means taking a view on the questions it leaves open: who owns the island, what power does to Prospero, whether the forgiveness lands.
Scoring highly: Decide your argument before you write, and use the extract as a specimen of it. Short memorised quotations — 'This island's mine', 'The rarer action', 'this thing of darkness' — embedded mid-sentence carry the whole-play half.
Top band vs the band below: The strongest answers hold an idea about the play as something Shakespeare made and test it where it strains: 'Prospero forgives' is an observation; 'Shakespeare makes forgiveness a calculation the forgiven man never answers' is a concept.
The common mistake: Narrating the plot. Almost nothing happens in this play, so a retelling runs out of material and earns little; or deciding Caliban is simply victim or simply villain in the first paragraph.
In your essay: Plan the pivot: two paragraphs on the extract, two on the play, one argument across them all, and a final paragraph that weighs it.
AO2 · Language, form and structure, with subject terminology (15% of the GCSE on Paper 1 — level with AO1)
What the examiner wants: Analysis of Shakespeare's methods in the extract's actual lines and in the play's larger shapes — verse and prose, songs and noises, parallel plots, the interrupted masque, the Epilogue's rhyme.
Scoring highly: Use the lines printed in front of you: read their metre and their placing. Caliban speaking verse among prose-speaking drunks is the most useful single observation on the play.
Top band vs the band below: Top answers read form as meaning: the revels speech's cause (a failed masque), the conditional in Ariel's 'were I human', the short rhyming lines of the powerless Epilogue.
The common mistake: Naming techniques without effects, and quoting the revels speech as a beautiful generalisation without its dramatic situation.
In your essay: At least one point about form or structure in the extract, and one pattern traced beyond it.
AO3 · Context — how the play relates to the times it was written in (7.5% of the GCSE on Paper 1 — half the weight of AO1 or AO2)
What the examiner wants: How the world of about 1610–11 shapes the play: voyages and settlement in the Americas, the 1609 Bermuda wreck, Montaigne's essay behind Gonzalo's commonwealth, the court masque. On this course AO3 is context.
Scoring highly: One clause at a time, welded to a line: Gonzalo's 'plantation' is the period's word for settlement, so even the kindest man in the play imagines founding a society on someone else's island.
Top band vs the band below: The best context generates a reading: Caliban's claim framed as inheritance and dispossession reads differently in a decade of colonial voyages.
The common mistake: Asserting the play is Shakespeare's farewell to the stage as fact, or a paragraph of Jacobean history touching no line.
In your essay: Two or three precise contextual clauses, each attached to a quotation.
AO4 · Vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (2.5% of the GCSE, on Paper 1)
What the examiner wants: Credit for the accuracy and range of your own writing, earned on this question.
Scoring highly: Controlled sentences and accurate names: Prospero, Caliban, Sycorax, Ferdinand, Gonzalo, Antonio, masque, soliloquy.
Top band vs the band below: At the top it is invisible: the writing is simply exact and varied.
The common mistake: Misspelling the names ('Prosperro', 'Calaban') and comma-splicing long analytical sentences.
In your essay: Keep the last two minutes of the fifty to proofread this answer for spelling and punctuation.
What to memorise for a closed-book answer
- 'This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother' and 'You taught me language' (Act 1 Scene 2).
- 'the isle is full of noises' (Act 3 Scene 2).
- 'We are such stuff / As dreams are made on' (Act 4 Scene 1).
- 'Mine would, sir, were I human' and 'The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance' (Act 5 Scene 1).
- 'this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine' and 'O brave new world' (Act 5 Scene 1).
Avoid. Reading the renunciation as Shakespeare's own farewell. It is unprovable and makes the speech smaller; treat it as something the character does.
The characters
Prospero
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.
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.
The strongest quotations
“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 →
Other readings
- 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.
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 Prospero? Teach it, then defend it against William Shakespeare →
Caliban
The island's native — monster, slave, would-be murderer and poet
Caliban is the son of the witch Sycorax and claims the island by inheritance. Prospero taught him language and was at first kind to him; after Caliban tried to rape Miranda, Prospero enslaved him. He curses, plots murder with the drunken Stephano and Trinculo, and kneels to a new master within minutes of meeting him — and he is also given the most beautiful speech in the play. Shakespeare refuses to make him simply victim or villain, and an answer that resolves him into one discards half the evidence.
Act 1 — the claim
“This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me.” — Caliban, Act 1, Scene 2
A property claim stated in legal terms: inheritance ('by Sycorax my mother') and dispossession ('tak'st from me'). Prospero does not dispute the inheritance; he answers with Caliban's attack on Miranda — a serious charge, but not an answer to the claim.
Methods: legal register · direct address
“You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is I know how to curse.” — Caliban, Act 1, Scene 2
'Profit' is a commercial word: the gift of language is audited and found to have one return. The line cuts both ways — an argument about what his education was for, and an admission of what he has become. He makes it in fluent verse.
Methods: commercial metaphor · irony
Caliban recalls that when Prospero first came he stroked him and taught him to name the sun and moon, 'And then I loved thee / And showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle'. When Prospero accuses him of trying to violate Miranda, Caliban answers 'O ho, O ho! Would't had been done!' — the play does not soften this.
Acts 2–3 — a new master, and the noises of the isle
Hiding from what he thinks is one of Prospero's spirits, Caliban is found by Trinculo and then Stephano, who gives him wine. He takes Stephano for a god, offers to kiss his foot and show him the island, and sings of freedom — 'Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban / Has a new master: get a new man' — while choosing a new servitude.
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.” — Caliban, Act 3, Scene 2
In the middle of persuading Stephano to murder Prospero, Caliban comforts the frightened drunks with a description of the island's music. He speaks verse while they speak prose. The speech ends 'when I waked, / I cried to dream again' — longing and loss from the character others call a monster.
Methods: verse against prose · sensory imagery · contrast with context
Acts 4–5 — the trash, and seeking grace
When Ariel hangs out glittering clothes, Stephano and Trinculo are distracted; Caliban alone calls them trash and urges the murder. Spirit-hounds chase all three away. In Act 5 Prospero acknowledges him — 'this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine' — and Caliban promises 'I'll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace.' What becomes of him when the Europeans sail is not said.
How Shakespeare builds Caliban in language and structure
Caliban curses fluently in verse in Act 1 — 'The red plague rid you / For learning me your language!' — so his eloquence is part of his argument.
With Stephano and Trinculo the scenes run in prose, and Caliban's move into verse for the noises speech marks him off from them.
Others name him with insults — 'monster', 'slave', 'thing' — while his own language is full of the island's detail: springs, berries, nests, sounds.
Structurally his plot parallels Antonio's: a sleeping victim, an argument from opportunity, a promise of rule.
Caliban in context
The play's links with accounts of voyages and settlement in the Americas make Caliban's claim of inheritance and dispossession readable as a native's claim.
The period's debate about nature and nurture shapes Prospero's verdict that nurture will never stick on him.
His final 'seek for grace' uses a religious word that can also mean favour, leaving his future open.
Relationships
- Prospero — Master and slave; Caliban's claim to the island is never answered, and Prospero's final word on him is ambiguous.
- Miranda — She taught him language; he attempted to rape her; she calls him 'Abhorred slave'.
- Stephano — The drunk butler he takes for a god and plots with — a new master worse than the old.
- Ariel — The other servant, airy where Caliban is earthy; both were imprisoned or enslaved and both want freedom.
What Caliban stands for
- The dispossessed native: a reading strengthened by the play's links to accounts of voyages to the Americas.
- Nature against nurture: Prospero's 'born devil' against the poetry of the noises speech.
Why Shakespeare made Caliban
- To make the island's ownership a real question the play leaves open.
- To complicate every simple judgement by placing his best poetry inside his worst plot.
The strongest quotations
“I'll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace.” — Caliban, Act 5, Scene 1
His last promise. 'Grace' can be Christian grace or favour; either way it is a brief, uncertain ending to the play's most disputed character.
Methods: ambiguity · religious vocabulary
Caliban: all 12 quotations in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- A victim of colonisation whose claim to the island is never answered.
- A brutal figure whose attempted assault and murder plot justify Prospero's control.
- A figure the play deliberately refuses to resolve, with evidence for both readings placed in the same scenes.
Essay arguments
- Shakespeare gives Caliban an unanswered legal claim and the play's best poetry, so an audience cannot rest in Prospero's verdict of 'born devil'.
- Caliban's eager kneeling to Stephano shows that the play does not idealise him: he exchanges one master for a worse one.
In theme essays
- Colonisation and ownership: 'This island's mine'.
- Freedom and servitude: 'Has a new master: get a new man'.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Act 1 Scene 2 in which Caliban first appears. How does Shakespeare present Caliban here and across the play?
- Read the extract from Act 3 Scene 2 in which Caliban speaks of the isle. How far does Shakespeare make the audience sympathise with Caliban?
- How does Shakespeare use Caliban to explore ideas about ownership and freedom?
Think you understand Caliban? Teach it, then defend it against William Shakespeare →
Ariel
The servant spirit who keeps asking when he will be free
Ariel is a spirit Prospero freed from the cloven pine where Sycorax imprisoned him. He performs every task — the storm, the music, the harpy, the masque — with delight, and repeatedly asks for the freedom he was promised. His most important line is his remark in Act 5 that he would pity the prisoners were he human, which prompts Prospero's decision to forgive. A spirit reminds a man how to be human.
Act 1 — the storm and the request
“All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail!” — Ariel, Act 1, Scene 2
His first words are a formal, eager greeting. Ariel's service is willing — but within minutes he asks about his liberty.
Methods: formal address · exclamation
“Remember I have done thee worthy service, / Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served / Without or grudge or grumblings.” — Ariel, Act 1, Scene 2
Ariel lists his good service to claim the year's remission he was promised. The negatives ('no lies', 'no mistakings', 'without... grudge') show how carefully a servant must argue for his rights; Prospero answers with threats.
Methods: listing · negation · argument
Acts 3–5 — the harpy, and 'were I human'
As a harpy in Act 3 Scene 3 Ariel accuses Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian of their crime against Prospero, telling them only heart's sorrow can save them. In Act 4 he stages the masque and hangs out the glittering clothes. In Act 5 he reports that the prisoners are distracted with grief.
“Mine would, sir, were I human.” — Ariel, Act 5, Scene 1
Asked whether his affections would become tender if he saw the prisoners, Ariel answers with a conditional. A spirit who cannot feel names what a human would feel, and Prospero's next speech is the decision to forgive.
Methods: conditional · turning point
How Shakespeare builds Ariel in language and structure
Ariel speaks quickly and vividly, often in reports of what he has done, and sings the play's songs: 'Full fathom five', 'Where the bee sucks'.
His requests for liberty are careful arguments, listing his good service.
His most important line is a conditional — 'Mine would, sir, were I human' — that turns the play.
Ariel in context
Ariel belongs to the period's belief in spirits that could be commanded by learned magic.
His service is a model of labour bound by debt: freed from Sycorax's pine, he owes his time to Prospero.
Relationships
- Prospero — Freed by him, bound to him; the promised freedom is deferred until the final scene.
- Caliban — The other servant: Ariel is airy and willing, Caliban earthy and resentful.
- Sycorax — The witch who imprisoned him in a pine when he refused her commands.
What Ariel stands for
- Service and its terms: free labour with a release date that keeps being postponed.
- The agent of illusion: Ariel performs the theatre Prospero designs.
Why Shakespeare made Ariel
- To show a master-servant relationship maintained by debt and threat even when the service is willing.
- To give the play's turning point to a non-human voice.
The strongest quotations
“Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here.” — Ariel (reporting Ferdinand), Act 1, Scene 2
Ariel reports Ferdinand's cry as he leapt from the burning ship. The storm made a hell of the sea — a hell Ariel himself staged.
Methods: hyperbole · religious imagery
“Full fathom five thy father lies” — Ariel (song), Act 1, Scene 2
The song that leads Ferdinand, who believes his father drowned. The 'sea-change' it describes turns loss into something 'rich and strange' — an image of the transformation the play promises.
Methods: song · imagery of transformation
Ariel: all 6 quotations in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- A loyal servant who earns freedom through service.
- A servant whose loyalty is extracted by debt and fear.
- The source of Prospero's mercy: the reading that stresses 'were I human'.
Essay arguments
- Shakespeare uses Ariel's repeated requests for liberty to show that even willing service on the island is held in place by Prospero's threats.
- Ariel's 'were I human' is the hinge of the play: mercy is prompted by a spirit's remark.
In theme essays
- Freedom and servitude: the deferred release.
- Forgiveness and revenge: 'were I human'.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Act 1 Scene 2 in which Ariel asks for his liberty. How does Shakespeare present Ariel's relationship with Prospero here and across the play?
- How important is Ariel to Prospero's decision to forgive?
Think you understand Ariel? Teach it, then defend it against William Shakespeare →
Miranda
Compassion and wonder — and a world she has never seen
Miranda has grown up on the island with only her father and Caliban for company. She feels for the shipwrecked strangers, falls in love with Ferdinand at first sight, proposes to him herself and disobeys her father to speak to him. Her wonder at the court party in Act 5 — 'O brave new world' — is the most generous moment in the play and, given who she is looking at, demonstrably mistaken. Shakespeare shows both her goodness and the limits of an education in isolation.
Act 1 — compassion and first sight
“O, I have suffered / With those that I saw suffer!” — Miranda, Act 1, Scene 2
Her first speech is compassion for the people in the wrecked ship. The repetition of 'suffer' makes her pity active; it sets her apart from her father's controlled distance.
Methods: repetition · exclamation
She sees Ferdinand and takes him for a spirit; he takes her for a goddess. Prospero, pleased, pretends to suspect Ferdinand and makes him carry logs. Miranda pleads for him — her first disobedience.
Acts 3–5 — the proposal and the brave new world
“I am your wife, if you will marry me” — Miranda, Act 3, Scene 1
Miranda proposes. It is the play's boldest act of free will — and it happens inside her father's plan, while he watches unseen.
Methods: directness · dramatic irony
“O brave new world, / That has such people in't!” — Miranda, Act 5, Scene 1
She is looking at a group that includes the usurper of her father, a would-be murderer and the king who helped depose him. Prospero's reply, ''Tis new to thee', corrects without denying. Generosity and inexperience share one sentence.
Methods: exclamation · dramatic irony
Revealed playing chess with Ferdinand, she says 'Sweet lord, you play me false' — and that she would call it fair play anyway. Even the lovers' harmony includes a small accusation.
How Shakespeare builds Miranda in language and structure
Miranda's speech is full of exclamation and wonder: 'O, I have suffered', 'O brave new world', 'How beauteous mankind is!'
Her proposal to Ferdinand is plain and direct, unlike courtly love-talk.
Structurally she is often watched — by Prospero in Act 3, by the court in Act 5 — so her freedom is staged inside his plan.
Miranda in context
A daughter's marriage was a matter for her father; Prospero's arrangement of the match reflects that.
Her marriage to Ferdinand unites Milan and Naples, turning a political enmity into an alliance.
Relationships
- Prospero — A loving father who controls her life and arranges her marriage.
- Ferdinand — Love at first sight; she proposes, he accepts.
- Caliban — She taught him language; he attacked her; she calls him 'Abhorred slave'.
What Miranda stands for
- Wonder and innocence, set against experience.
- The future: her marriage joins Milan and Naples.
Why Shakespeare made Miranda
- To provide compassion and hope against the play's politics of power.
- To test what an education in isolation produces.
The strongest quotations
“How beauteous mankind is!” — Miranda, Act 5, Scene 1
Her wonder generalises from a group of guilty men to all humanity — moving and misplaced at once.
Methods: exclamation · irony
Miranda: all 6 quotations in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- An innocent heroine of compassion and courage.
- A daughter whose choices are managed by her father throughout.
- A figure of the play's ambivalence about wonder: generous and wrong at once.
Essay arguments
- Shakespeare gives Miranda real acts of will — disobedience, a proposal — but places them inside Prospero's plan.
- Her 'brave new world' sets innocence against experience, and the play does not say which is right.
In theme essays
- Power and control: her courtship is arranged.
- Magic, illusion and theatre: the chess game revealed like a stage picture.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Act 3 Scene 1 in which Miranda and Ferdinand pledge themselves. How does Shakespeare present Miranda here and across the play?
- How does Shakespeare use Miranda to explore innocence and experience?
Think you understand Miranda? Teach it, then defend it against William Shakespeare →
The themes
Power and control
Prospero has total power on the island, and the play examines what it does to him and to everyone under it.
Every event in the play is Prospero's design: the storm, the separation of the survivors, the music, the banquet, the masque, the hounds. The play shows power in three relationships — over Ariel by debt and threat, over Caliban by pain, over Miranda and Ferdinand by arrangement — and in three rival plots to seize power: Antonio's past usurpation of Milan, Antonio and Sebastian's attempt on Alonso, and Caliban's plot with Stephano.
“What cares these roarers for the name of king?” — Boatswain, Act 1, Scene 1
In the storm a working sailor tells the noblemen that rank means nothing to the waves. The opening scene questions authority — and the next scene reveals that the storm itself was ordered by a greater power.
Methods: rhetorical question · metaphor
Context that changes the reading. The play's world of deposed dukes and usurping brothers belongs to a period in which the legitimacy of rulers was a live question; the three parallel plots let an audience compare ambition at every social level.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'Shakespeare stages one act of treachery three times — in Milan, in Naples, among the drunks — so that the comic plot strips the dignity from the serious ones.'
8 quotations on Power and control in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
Think you understand Power and control in The Tempest? Teach it, then defend it →
Colonisation and ownership
Who does the island belong to? Caliban's claim is stated in the first act and never answered.
Caliban says the island was his by his mother and was taken from him; Prospero responds with an accusation, not a counter-claim. Gonzalo imagines the society he would found if he had 'plantation of this isle' — the contemporary word for settlement. Stephano, a drunk butler, plans to be king of it within an hour of landing.
“This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother” — Caliban, Act 1, Scene 2
The claim the play never settles.
Methods: legal register
Context that changes the reading. The play is usually dated to about 1610–11, when accounts were circulating of a ship of English settlers bound for Virginia wrecked on Bermuda in 1609 and of the colonists surviving there. Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth draws on Montaigne's essay on the peoples of the New World, available in English in John Florio's translation of 1603. Knowing this explains why the island's ownership is framed as an inheritance and a dispossession.
Another reading. Readings that stress colonisation account for most of Caliban's lines; they must also account for his attempted assault on Miranda and his eager kneeling to Stephano.
10 quotations on colonisation and ownership in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
Think you understand colonisation and ownership in The Tempest? Teach it, then defend it →
Forgiveness and revenge
The play builds towards one decision: will Prospero punish his enemies or forgive them?
By Act 3 Scene 3 Prospero has his enemies 'in my power'. Ariel's harpy speech accuses them; Alonso is broken by grief and guilt, while Antonio and Sebastian draw swords on the air. In Act 5 Ariel's remark that he would pity them were he human leads Prospero to choose 'the rarer action'.
The forgiveness is not received equally. Alonso repents and restores the dukedom; Antonio says nothing at all after being forgiven. The silence makes the reconciliation uncertain: mercy is offered, and the play declines to say whether it lands.
Context that changes the reading. For the play's first audiences, Christian teaching made mercy a virtue and expected forgiveness to answer penitence: sorrow for sin and a changed life. The harpy's demand for 'heart's sorrow / And a clear life ensuing' is that language. It explains why Alonso, who repents and restores the dukedom, receives forgiveness fully, while Antonio, who shows no penitence and never answers, leaves the reconciliation uncertain.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'The play's climax is a choice made in a speech, and its most eloquent response is a silence.'
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Freedom and servitude (minor)
Three kinds of servitude on one island — Ariel's, Caliban's and Ferdinand's — invite comparison.
Ariel serves willingly with a release date that keeps moving; Caliban is compelled and punished with cramps and pinches; Ferdinand carries logs as a courtship test, briefly. Caliban celebrates 'freedom' by kneeling to a new master. At the end Ariel is freed, and Prospero himself asks the audience to 'set me free'.
“Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban / Has a new master: get a new man.” — Caliban, Act 2, Scene 2
His song of freedom is sung as he chooses a new servitude — the play's sharpest irony about liberty.
Methods: song · irony
Freedom is also a question for the masters. Prospero was once a duke so absorbed in his books that he let his brother govern; on the island he is bound to his plan as tightly as his servants are bound to him. His renunciation frees him from his own power, and the Epilogue makes his release depend on the audience. The play asks whether anyone on the island — master or servant — is free, and it gives the clearest answer only to Ariel, who is released to the elements.
Context that changes the reading. Service was the ordinary order of a household in the period: masters and servants, each with duties. The voyages of the years around 1610 added another pattern, in which newcomers set native people to work. Ariel's service resembles a bound servant's, Ferdinand's a brief test, and Caliban's — compelled, punished, on land he claims as his — reads most like the forced labour of the voyages.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'Every servant on the island wants freedom, and even the master ends by asking to be released.'
10 quotations on Freedom and servitude in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
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Magic, illusion and theatre (minor)
Prospero's magic works like theatre: storms, banquets and masques staged for an audience, ending with a magician asking for applause.
The storm is a performance; the banquet vanishes; the masque of goddesses is performed by spirits for the lovers; the revels speech calls the whole world an 'insubstantial pageant' that will dissolve. In the Epilogue Prospero, his charms 'all o'erthrown', asks the audience for applause to release him.
Context that changes the reading. The masque was a real, expensive court entertainment, allegorical and spectacular, often for a wedding; Act 4 stages one. The play is known to have been performed at court in 1611, and was first printed in the First Folio of 1623, where it stands first.
Another reading. Some readers take Prospero's farewell to his art as Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre; this is unprovable, and an answer is stronger treating it as something the character does.
11 quotations on magic, illusion and theatre in the The Tempest quote bank, analysed →
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Context
Context: the world behind the play
The Tempest is usually dated to about 1610–11 and is known to have been performed at court in 1611; it was first printed in the First Folio of 1623, where it is the first play. It is one of Shakespeare's last plays. Some readers hear in Prospero's renunciation a farewell to the stage; that is a reading, and it cannot be proved.
Accounts of the wreck of an English ship bound for Virginia on Bermuda in 1609, and of the survivors' time there, were circulating in London. The play's island, its native inhabitant and its newcomers who assume authority draw on that world of voyages and settlement — which is why Caliban's claim is framed as inheritance and dispossession.
Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth draws on Montaigne's essay about the peoples of the New World, published in English in John Florio's translation of 1603. A serious contemporary idea is spoken by a kind old man and mocked by two would-be murderers.
The masque in Act 4 imitates a real court form: allegorical, musical, spectacular, often celebrating a marriage. And Prospero's renunciation speech borrows from the witch Medea's invocation in Ovid's Metamorphoses, so the magic he abjures is described in the words of a sorceress — which complicates any sense that his art was simply 'white' magic.
Use this in an essay. Weld context to a line: 'Gonzalo's word plantation, the contemporary vocabulary of settlement, makes even the play's kindest man imagine founding a society on somebody else's island.'
The writer's craft
Structure: one island, one afternoon
The action takes place on one island in about four hours, and characters keep mentioning the time. The plots run side by side and converge: the lovers, the court party, the drunks and Caliban, all moved by Prospero and Ariel. The play opens with a storm and then the longest exposition in Shakespeare, and its climax is a change of mind rather than an event.
The shape of the play
| Act | What happens | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Storm; Prospero's story; Ariel and Caliban; Ferdinand and Miranda meet | Power and its relationships set out |
| 2 | Court party: Gonzalo's commonwealth, the plot on Alonso; Caliban meets Stephano | Treachery repeated at two levels |
| 3 | Log-carrying and betrothal; the murder plot; the harpy | Enemies brought into Prospero's power |
| 4 | Masque interrupted; revels speech; hounds | The artist loses composure |
| 5 | Forgiveness; renunciation; release; Epilogue | The decision, and its limits |
Methods: verse and prose, sound, parallel scenes
- Verse and prose: the court speaks verse, Stephano and Trinculo prose; Caliban moves into verse for the noises speech.
- Sound: songs, music and noises run through the play, and Caliban names them.
- Parallel scenes: Antonio tempting Sebastian and Caliban tempting Stephano use the same moves.
- Imagery of dissolving: the revels speech's towers and palaces melting into air.
- Withheld resolution: Antonio's silence and Caliban's brief promise.
Symbols and motifs
- The staff and the book: the instruments of Prospero's power, broken and drowned.
- The sea: it brought Prospero, brings his enemies, and will receive his book.
- Sleep and dreams: characters fall asleep on command; 'such stuff as dreams are made on'.
- The chess game: harmony with an accusation of cheating inside it.
Key relationships
- Prospero and Ariel: service held by debt and threat, ending in release.
- Prospero and Caliban: master and slave, ending in an ambiguous acknowledgement.
- Prospero and Antonio: wronged and wronger, ending in forgiveness and silence.
- Miranda and Ferdinand: love arranged and also freely chosen.
Exam technique: from the extract to the whole play
Place the extract in the afternoon: what Prospero has just done and what he is about to decide. Every important speech is doing something in a situation. Then read its form — verse or prose, who interrupts — before bridging.
Reliable bridges
- Caliban's claim (Act 1 Scene 2) to 'this thing of darkness' (Act 5).
- The oak threat to Ariel (Act 1) to his release (Act 5).
- 'In my power' (Act 3 Scene 3) to 'the rarer action' (Act 5).
- The interrupted masque (Act 4) to the Epilogue.
Beyond the syllabus — ideas to make an essay memorable
The play keeps nearly to one place and one afternoon. Characters keep naming the hour; the action runs about four hours. The compression makes every plot simultaneous, converging on Prospero.
One crime, staged three times. Antonio's past usurpation of Milan, Antonio and Sebastian's attempt on Alonso, and Caliban's plot with Stephano repeat the same treachery at three social levels.
The magic Prospero gives up is described in a witch's words. His renunciation speech borrows Medea's invocation from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which unsettles the idea that his art was purely good.
The forgiven man says nothing. After Prospero forgives him, Antonio has no reply. In a carefully finished play, the silence is the most eloquent thing in the last act.
The play's first word on the island's ownership is never answered. Prospero meets Caliban's claim with an accusation, not a counter-claim.
It stands first in the First Folio of 1623, though it is one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote.
Thesis statements
- Shakespeare presents Prospero's power as a condition with symptoms, and his renunciation as a decision that could have gone the other way.
- Caliban is built so that sympathy cannot settle: an unanswered claim and the play's best poetry sit beside an assault and a murder plot.
- The play's climax is a change of mind prompted by a spirit, and its most eloquent response is Antonio's silence.
- Three servitudes on one island let the play compare what freedom means for Ariel, Caliban and Ferdinand.
- The revels speech is not serene wisdom but the response of a man whose own theatre has just failed.
- Miranda's 'brave new world' puts generosity and inexperience in one sentence, and the play refuses to separate them.
Essay plans
How does Shakespeare present Prospero's power in Act 1 Scene 2 and across the play?
Thesis: Prospero's power is total and costly: the play shows its symptoms before it shows his choice to give it up.
- The storm revealed as manufactured; 'Dost thou attend me?' — control over knowledge.
- The oak threat to Ariel; the cramps for Caliban — power held by debt and pain.
- 'They now are in my power' (Act 3 Scene 3) — revenge within reach.
- 'The rarer action' and 'I'll drown my book' — a decision, with violent verbs.
- The Epilogue — the duke dependent on the audience.
How far does Shakespeare make the audience sympathise with Caliban?
Thesis: The play keeps sympathy unsettled by placing Caliban's strongest claims beside his worst acts.
- 'This island's mine' — a claim answered with an accusation. Context: voyages and settlement.
- 'You taught me language' — education audited; and his answer about Miranda.
- Kneeling to Stephano — a new master, not freedom.
- 'the isle is full of noises' — verse amid prose, beauty inside a murder plot.
- 'this thing of darkness... mine' and 'seek for grace' — an ending that refuses to close.
Think you understand it?
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- The Complete Guide to The Tempest — the whole text, told properly, in 25 chapters.
- The Tempest key quotes — the whole quotation bank, analysed, by character and theme.
- The Tempest · All set texts · The 4ET1 specification