Summary Grade 12 notes on The Tempest by Shakespeare
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English Home Language
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12th Grade
A quick detailing of The Tempest, specifically focusing on quotes, themes and symbols, and characters to be able to understand The Tempest and additionally (possibly) be able to draft a constructive essay on this play.
“You taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how
to curse.”
This speech, delivered by Caliban to Prospero and Miranda, makes clear in a very
concise form the vexed relationship between the colonised and the coloniser that lies
at the heart of this play. The son of a witch, perhaps half-man and half-monster, his
name a near-anagram of “cannibal,” Caliban is an archetypal “savage” figure in a
play that is much concerned with colonization and the controlling of wild
environments. Caliban and Prospero have different narratives to explain their current
relationship. Caliban sees Prospero as purely oppressive while Prospero claims that
he has cared for and educated Caliban, or did until Caliban tried to rape Miranda.
Prospero’s narrative is one in which Caliban remains ungrateful for the help and
civilization he has received from the Milanese Duke. Language, for Prospero and
Miranda, is a means to knowing oneself, and Caliban has in their view shown
nothing but scorn for this precious gift. Self-knowledge for Caliban, however, is not
empowering. It is only a constant reminder of how he is different from Miranda and
Prospero and how they have changed him from what he was. Caliban’s only hope for
an identity separate from those who have invaded his home is to use what they have
given him against them.
The Tempest 1
, “but the mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead and
makes my labours pleasures.”
Ferdinand speaks these words to Miranda, as he expresses his willingness to
perform the task Prospero has set him to, for her sake. The Tempest is very much
about compromise and balance. Prospero must spend twelve years on an island in
order to regain his dukedom; Alonso must seem to lose his son in order to be
forgiven for his treachery; Ariel must serve Prospero in order to be set free; and
Ferdinand must suffer Prospero’s feigned wrath in order to reap true joy from his
love for Miranda. This latter compromise is the subject of this passage from Act III,
scene i, and we see the desire for balance expressed in the structure of Ferdinand’s
speech. This desire is built upon a series of antitheses—related but opposing ideas:
“sports . . . painful” is followed by “labour . . . delights”; “baseness” can be undergone
“nobly”; “poor matters” lead to “rich ends”; Miranda “quickens” (makes alive) what is
“dead” in Ferdinand. Perhaps more than any other character in the play, Ferdinand is
resigned allowing fate to take its course, always believing that the good, will balance
the bad in the end. His waiting for Miranda mirrors Prospero’s waiting for
reconciliation with his enemies, and it is probably Ferdinand’s balanced outlook that
makes him such a sympathetic character, even though we actually see or hear very
little of him on stage.
“that when I waked I cried to dream again”
This is a part of Caliban’s speech where he conveys the wondrous beauty of the
island and the depth of his attachment to it, as well as a certain amount of respect
and love for Prospero’s magic, and for the possibility that he creates the “[s]ounds
and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.” - it also indicates that Caliban’s
delivery of this speech is proof that his words can be gentle and not only used for
cursing.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life
is rounded with a sleep.”
Prospero says these lines just after he remembers the plot against his life and sends
the wedding masque away in order to deal with that plot. The sadness in the tone of
the speech seems to be related to Prospero’s surprising forgetfulness at this crucial
moment in the play: he is so swept up in his own visions, in the power of his own
magic, that for a moment he forgets the business of real life. From this point on,
The Tempest 2
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