Summary A level English Literature notes for The Tempest
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Course
Drama - The Tempest
Institution
WJEC
The document that I created for The Tempest which helped me get an A* in English literature in 2024; includes the different sections of the mark scheme - quotes, critics and context. Contains a large quote bank with the most important quotes from each scene alongside an analysis of each quote. Ther...
With essay titles with quotations, use the quotation more like a critic than basing your whole
argument on it.
In introduction can list five or six relevant moments, but state that you will look at two or three.
Have working definitions for magic, vision.
Machiavellian – Ant and Seb plot to murder Alonso; Steph and Trinculo plot to murder Prospero;
Antonio overthrowing Prospero. Do not say Prospero is Machiavellian. Steph and Trinculo driven
by class anguish and desire for Miranda.
Use the word structure – structured around the telling and retelling of violent usurpation. In
general spell out meaning a bit more.
Quote bank
Quotation Analysis
Act 1 Scene 1: -- dramatic, media res opening;
- Opening stage directions: “[a symbol of chaos + breakdown order;
tempestuous noise of thunder and Jacobean spectacular theatre.
lightning are heard]” Playhouses of the time were
equipped with fireworks and
thunder-sheets. Nothing to suggest
this isn't a real storm.
Ship = closed setting; microcosm of
- Class tensions: Boatswain giving society and class system.
instructions “keep your cabins” and
“what cares these roarers for the name -- equality under nature, nature
of the King?” vs Gonzalo trying to assert ultimately most powerful above
his authority: “I'll warrant him for human divisions. G’s character
drowning.” revealed in near-death experience –
functions as a ‘test.’
- Mariners: “All lost! To prayers, to -- prayer is one of the first and last
prayers! All lost!” notes of the play.
- Sebastian: “let’s take leave of him.” -- Seb’s real character coming out in
extreme conditions; already
abandons loyalties to the King, his
brother.
Scene 2:
- M: “if by your art, my dearest father, -- establishing P’s power over natural
you have put the wild waters in this world; “art” denotes P’s magic
roar, allay them.” powers.
-
- M: “had I been any God of power” -- parallel to “if I were human” -
characters casting moral judgement
on P, potentially teaching him a
lesson.
- P: “the direful spectacle of the wreck” -- P putting on a show; reminder that
this is theatrical
- P: “canst thou remember a time before
, we came unto this cell? I do not think -- P has control over M’s memory;
thou canst, for then thou wast not out controlling narrative version of how
three years old.” they got onto the island.
- M: describes her memory: “rather like a -- haziness, unreliable nature of
dream” memory.
- P describes how he lost power: “for the -- lost power to his brother because
liberal arts without a parallel; those he was too focused on studying – to
being all my study, the government I a Jacobean audience this would be a
cast upon my brother.” serious dereliction of duty.
- P: “I thus neglecting worldly ends... in -- contrast P presents between “evil”
my false brother awakened an evil and “good” and “falsehood” and
nature, and my trust, like a good parent, “trust,” but he is admitting to
did beget of him a falsehood in its “neglecting” his duties.
contrary as great as my trust was.”
- M: “how came we ashore?” P: “by -- God’s benign plan for the universe.
providence divine.” -- Ariel is associated w the higher
- A: “to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, elements; speed quickening.
to ride on the curled clouds” -- revelation that it was indeed P who
- P: “hast thou spirit performed to point began tempest; theatrical
the tempest that I bade thee?” “Who “performed.” Idea of psychological
was so firm, so constant, that this coil punishment “infect.”
would not infect his reason?”
- A: “on their sustaining garments not a -- cleansing in water – baptism,
blemish, but fresher than before.” and metaphorical rebirth + metaphorical
the mariners supposing they saw “his death of the King.
great person perish.”
- P to Ariel: “dost thou forget from what -- forcing Ariel to relive painful
torment I free thee... hast thou forget memories as a means of control;
the foul witch Sycorax... hast thou forgot malign power; abuse of power.
her.”
- P: “thy groans did make wolves howl, -- he is acting w same malign power
and penetrate the breasts of ever-angry as Sycorax; highlighted through use
bears,” but threatens to “rend an oak of same verb “howl”
and peg thee in his knotty entrails till
thou hast howled away twelve winters.”
- P: “thou earth” -- Caliban is opposite of Ariel,
associated w lower elements.
- P to Caliban: “thou poisonous place, got
by the devil himself upon thy wicked -- C immediately throws back curses
dam” ... C: “as wicked dew as e’er my at P; more linguistically equal
mother brushed... drop on you both!” relationship than P and A.
- C: “the island’s mine by Sycorax my
mother, which thou tak’st from me.” -- C as the voice of truth, rightful
- C: “I loved thee, and showed thee all the ruler of the island. Establishing his
qualities o’th’isle, the fresh springs, nature with relationship; part of the
brine pits...” island.
- C: “I am all the subjects that you have”
- P: “thou didst seek to violate the honour
of my child.” -- reminds us of limits of Prospero’s
- C: “you taught me language and my power.
profit on’t is I know how to curse.” -- P suggests that C tried to rape
, Miranda.
-- violence of C’s language is
- Ariel singing; doggerel verse, acquired.
nonsensical – trying to discombobulate,
disorientate.
- F: “this music crept by me upon the -- psychological torture but music
waters, allaying both their fury and my also symbol of harmony –
passion with its sweet air.” announcing that F is part of the
- Ariel: about F’s father: “of his bones are island. “crept” = bewitching and
coral made; those are pearls that were dreamlike.
his eyes.”
-- sea as an agent of transformation;
- M and F first meet: M: “I might call him ameliorated death by drowning –
a thing divine, for nothing natural I ever precious elements of nature.
saw so noble”; he refers to her as “O
you wonder!” -- courtly Rennaissance love
- F: “I am the best of them that speak this tradition; interchange of hyperbolic
speech, were I but where ‘tis spoken” praise.
and “myself am Naples.”
- Prospero orchestrating the situation -- F immediately tries to assert his
with asides: “it goes on, I see, as my soul rank but awareness that title does
prompts it... it works” not apply on the island – he had been
- Power play between P and F – F draws stripped of his identity on the
his sword but “[is charmed from shipwreck.
moving]” by Prospero.
- P to M: “thou think’st there is no more
such shapes as he, having seen but him
and Caliban.”
-- awareness of innocence/ naivety of
Miranda.
Act 2 Scene 1:
- Adrian: “the air breathes upon us here -- optimistic vs pessimistic
most sweetly” vs Sebastian “as if it had perspective on island; duality of
lungs, and rotten ones.” island – benign and malign nature.
- Alonso: “my son is lost, and, in my rate, -- metaphorical death of son and
she too, who is so far from Italy... no, no daughter; long, mournful vowel
he’s gone.” sounds.
- Gonzalo commonwealth speech: “I’th -- vision of power; utopian; imagining
commonwealth I would by contraries ruling the island.
execute all things... I would with such
perfection, sir, t’excel the golden age.”
- Ariel sends everyone except Alonso, -- sleep as a kind of metaphorical
Sebastian and Antonio asleep. death; vulnerable state. Sleep and
- Seb and Ant consider killing the King: dream motif allows characters to
- A: “my strong imagination sees a crown distance themselves from the plot.
dropping upon thy head” -- another vision of power.
- A: “thou let’st thy fortune sleep---die,
rather...” -- power-hungry; also explicit
- A: “my brother’s servants were my connection between sleep and death.
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