I recently re-read THE TEMPEST prior to attending The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of this play under the summer stars here in Boulder. Shakespeare (1552-1616) produced this emotionally-moving, poetic romance at the end of his career, in 1611, and published it in the First Folio in 1623. In fact, it was his last play.

It tells the story of Prospero, the exiled duke of Milan, and his beautiful daughter, Miranda, who have been stranded for twelve years on a desert island with two servants, the airy sprite Ariel (who Prospero rescued from being imprisonment in a tree) and the savage Caliban. Upon learning that his usurping brother Antonio is sailing near the island with the Neopolitan King Alonso's party, he uses his magic powers to conjure a sea storm that not only leaves the ship and its passengers wrecked on the island, but which also sparks a courtship between his daughter and the king's son, Ferdinand. The survivors of the wreck are separated into several groups, believing one another dead. Three subplots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban befriends two drunken crew members, whom he believes to have come from the moon, and drunkenly attempts to raise is own rebellion against Prospero. In another, Prospero works to establish the romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda. In the third subplot, Ariel thwarts a murder plot at Prospero's command.

The shipwrecked passengers are eventually reunited by island spirits to discover the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand. In the end, as its title suggests, THE TEMPEST is as much about the opening scene's violent storm, as the journey that brought Prospero to the island and the psychological storm--"the sea change"--leading him to quit his magic and his remote island to return to Milan.

G. Merritt

This was Shakespeare's final piece of work. He created the character of Prospero in the image of himself. Being the main character, he was toppled in a coup set in his homeland of Milan, was a God-like magician capable of initiating storms and other kinds of magic. By coincidence he saw his enemies in a ship riding towards his island. Where he lived with his daughter Miranda and the native "savage" Caliban.He brought his enemies on his island. And in turn he made them do many interesting things on the island. yet in the end it was all nice and happy, unlike the tragic mood of "Hamlet" or "Romeo and Juliet".

The language was great as usual with all of Shakespeare's great works. Prospero's last lines said also became Shakespeare's last words in terms of writing was concerned. There were plenty of comedy scenes in the play involving the mean spirited native Caliban, who was a servant of Prospero and attempted to rape his daughter, Miranda and later tried to kill him. As the plot went, all became comedies as Prospero saw through everything, the good and the evil, the well planned and the silly.

As many of his contemporaries during the time. Shakespeare despised the natives and saw them as savages. This became clear with Caliban. I found Shakespeare's depictions of him relentless and cruel, almost as if he was describing a pig.

But, overall, the story was very interesting. If you like Shakespeare, then you are sure to like this.

Of all the literary dreams of Shakespeare this one seems the most calming. Its begins with the tempest but comes to a most happy ending. Its action is in a day, and it is the one Shakespeare play that makes a pretence of observing the 'unities'. It has an enchanted atmosphere, and the words of Miranda are in a way its motto,
"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't! (V.i.181-4)
But to arrive at its reconciliations it must show first the disturbances of lust, and wrongminded ambition for kingship. There is much in play about the metaphor of playing itself. "The world is a stage" make its acts of reconciliation a kind of magical act.
A world of wonder is the dream of the king of all playwrights, close to his closing the factory down. The play was written in 1611 and is one of Shakespeare's last, and most memorable.

A very good play. Shakespeare (once again) creates a vivaceous and vivid story through the minds of three different kinds of people. A very beautiful and eloquent set of circumstances leading to just avengement.

True Shakespeare with a wealth of notes, explanations, and paraphrases. This makes a good study text.