The Tempest
• ACT I, Scene i
A summary: The storm and the ship
• A violent storm rages around a small ship at sea. The master of the ship calls for his
boatswain to rouse the mariners to action and prevent the ship from being run aground by
the tempest. Chaos ensues.
• Some mariners enter, followed by a group of nobles comprised of Alonso, King of Naples,
Sebastian, his brother, Antonio, Gonzalo, and others.
• These men have just come from Tunis, in Africa, where Alonso’s daughter, Claribel, has
married the Tunisian prince.
• It soon becomes clear that the noblemen are merely in the way and are preventing the crew
from doing their best to save the ship and the Boatswain tells them to get below-decks.
Despite protest from Gonzalo, the Boatswain is unmoved. He will do what he has to in order
to save the ship, regardless of who is aboard.
• Sebastian and Antonio curse the Boatswain in his labours, masking their fear with profanity.
Gonzalo orders the mariners to pray for the king and the prince.
• There is a strange noise—perhaps the sound of thunder, splitting wood, or roaring water—
and the cry of mariners. Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo, preparing to sink to a watery
grave, go in search of the king.
• Analysis – the spectacle of the tempest: magic and illusion
• Even for a Shakespeare play, The Tempest is remarkable for its extraordinary breadth of
imaginative vision. The play is steeped in magic and illusion. As a result, the play contains a
tremendous amount of spectacle, yet things are often not as they seem.
• This opening scene certainly contains spectacle, in the form of the howling storm (the
“tempest” of the play’s title) tossing the little ship about and threatening to kill the
characters before the play has even begun.
• In addition to this spectacle, the play also uses its first scene to hint at some of the illusions
and deceptions it will contain.
• The play begins toward the end of the actual story, late in Prospero’s exile. Its opening
scene is devoted to what appears to be an unexplained natural phenomenon, in which
characters who are never named rush about frantically in service of no apparent plot. In
fact, the confusion of the opening is itself misleading, for as we will learn later, the storm is
not a natural phenomenon at all, but a deliberate magical conjuring by Prospero, designed
to bring the ship to the island.
• The tempest is, in fact, central to the plot.
• Analysis
• The apparently chaotic exchanges of the characters introduce the important motif of
master-servant relationships. The characters on the boat are divided into nobles, such as
Antonio and Gonzalo, and servants or professionals, such as the Boatswain. The mortal
danger of the storm upsets the usual balance between these two groups, and the
Boatswain, attempting to save the ship, comes into direct conflict with the hapless nobles,
who, despite their helplessness, are extremely irritated at being rudely spoken to by a
commoner. The characters in the scene are never named outright; they are only referred to
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, in terms that indicate their social stations: “Boatswain,” “Master,” “King,” and “Prince.” As
the scene progresses, the characters speak less about the storm than about the class
conflict underlying their attempts to survive it—a conflict between masters and servants
that, as the story progresses, becomes perhaps the major motif of the play.
• The Boatswain observes that social hierarchies are flimsy and unimportant in the face of
nature’s wrath. “What cares these roarers,” he asks, referring to the booming thunder, “for
the name of king?” (I.i.15–16). The irony here, of course, is that, unbeknownst to the
occupants of the ship, and to the audience, the storm is not natural at all, but is in fact a
product of another kind power: Prospero’s magic.
• Act II, Scene ii, Part 1
• A summary – the backstory
• Prospero and Miranda stand on the shore of the island, having just witnessed the shipwreck.
Miranda entreats her father to see that no one on-board comes to any harm. Prospero
assures her that no one was harmed and tells her that it’s time she learned who she is and
where she comes from. Miranda seems curious, noting that Prospero has often started to
tell her about herself but always stopped. However, once Prospero begins telling his tale, he
asks her three times if she is listening to him. He tells her that he was once Duke of Milan
and famous for his great intelligence.
• Prospero explains that he gradually grew uninterested in politics, however, and turned his
attention more and more to his studies, neglecting his duties as duke. This gave his brother
Antonio an opportunity to act on his ambition. Working in concert with the King of Naples,
Antonio usurped Prospero of his dukedom.
• Prospero tells how he and Miranda escaped from death at the hands of the army in a barely
seaworthy boat prepared for them by his loyal subjects. Gonzalo, an honest Neapolitan,
provided them with food and clothing, as well as books from Prospero’s library.
• A summary – Ariel’s tempest
• Having brought Miranda up to date on how she arrived at their current home, Prospero
explains that sheer good luck has brought his former enemies to the island.
• Prospero charms Miranda to sleep with his magic. When she is asleep, Prospero calls forth
his spirit, Ariel. In his conversation with Ariel, we learn that Prospero and the spirit were
responsible for the storm of Act I, scene i. Flying about the ship, Ariel acted as the wind, the
thunder, and the lightning. When everyone except the crew had abandoned the ship, Ariel
made sure, as Prospero had requested, that all were brought safely to shore but dispersed
around the island. Ariel reports that the king’s son is alone. He also tells Prospero that the
mariners and Boatswain have been charmed to sleep in the ship, which has been brought
safely to harbour. The rest of the fleet that was with the ship, believing it to have been
destroyed by the storm, has headed safely back to Naples.
• A summary – Prospero’s “project” begins
• Prospero thanks Ariel for his service, and Ariel takes this moment to remind Prospero of his
promise to take give him his freedom from servitude.
• Prospero does not take well to being reminded of his promises, and he chastises Ariel for his
impudence. He reminds Ariel of where he came from and how Prospero rescued him. Ariel
had been a servant of Sycorax, a witch banished from Algiers (Algeria) and sent to the island
long ago. Ariel was too delicate a spirit to perform her heinous commands, so she
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, imprisoned him in a “cloven pine” (I.ii.279). She did not free him before she died, and he
might have remained imprisoned forever had not Prospero arrived and rescued him.
• Reminding Ariel of this, Prospero threatens to imprison him for twelve more years if he does
not stop complaining. Ariel promises to be more polite.
• Prospero then gives him a new command: he must make himself like a nymph of the sea
and be invisible to all but Prospero. Ariel goes to do so, and Prospero, turning to Miranda’s
sleeping form, calls upon his daughter to awaken. She opens her eyes and, not realizing that
she has been enchanted, says that the “strangeness” of Prospero’s story caused her to fall
asleep.
• Analysis – Prospero’s history
• Act I, scene ii opens with the revelation that it was Prospero’s magic, and not simply a
hostile nature, that raised the storm that caused the shipwreck. From there, the scene
moves into a long sequence devoted largely to telling the play’s background story while
introducing the major characters on the island. The first part of the scene is devoted to two
long histories, both told by Prospero, one to Miranda and one to Ariel.
• If The Tempest is a play about power in various forms (as we observed in the previous scene,
when the power of the storm disrupted the power relations between nobles and servants),
then Prospero is the centre of power, controlling events throughout the play through magic
and manipulation. Prospero’s retellings of past events to Miranda and Ariel do more than
simply fill the audience in on the story so far. They also illustrate how Prospero maintains his
power, exploring the old man’s meticulous methods of controlling those around him
through magic, charisma, and rhetoric.
• Analysis – Prospero’s rhetoric
• Prospero’s rhetoric is particularly important to observe in this scene, especially in his
confrontation with Ariel. Of all the characters in the play, Prospero alone seems to
understand that controlling history enables one to control the present —that is, that one can
control others by controlling how they understand the past .
• Prospero thus tells his story with a highly rhetorical emphasis on his own good deeds, the
bad deeds of others toward him, and the ingratitude of those he has protected from the
evils of others. For example, when he speaks to Miranda, he calls his brother “perfidious,”
then immediately says that he loved his brother better than anyone in the world except
Miranda (I.ii.68).
• He repeatedly asks Miranda, “Dost thou attend me?” Through his questioning, he
commands her attention almost hypnotically as he tells her his one-sided version of the
story. Prospero himself does not seem blameless. While his brother did betray him, he also
failed in his responsibilities as a ruler by giving up control of the government so that he
could study. He contrasts his popularity as a leader—“the love my people bore me”
(I.ii.141)—with his brother’s “evil nature” (I.ii.).
• Analysis – Prospero’s exercise of power
• When speaking to Ariel, a magical creature over whom his mastery is less certain than over
his doting daughter, Prospero goes to even greater lengths to justify himself. He treats Ariel
as a combination of a pet, whom he can praise and blame as he chooses, and a pupil,
demanding that the spirit recite answers to questions about the past that Prospero has
taught him. Though Ariel must know the story well, Prospero says that he must “once in a
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