The Tempest

The Tempest by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a strange one. Prospero starts the play as a revenger, and his authoritarian disposition towards his daughter, Ariel and Caliban provides plenty of scope for modern day readers to see the character as an upholder of patriarchy, colonialism and racism. But at the end of the play, there’s a swerve away from revenge and towards high-minded forgiveness. Prospero overcomes his baser nature – which the play elsewhere associates with conspiring courtiers, drunken louts and 'savage' men in faraway lands. He is the stage manager as hero, whereas in most Shakespeare plays the stage-manager tends to be the villain (see in particular Iago and Edmund). He is not as compromised as the 'Duke of Dark Corners' in Measure for Measure – whereas that play's ending descends into farce, The Tempest strikes a more wistful tone. Prospero's magic engineers a happy ending – a restoration of the natural order, with natural slaves put in their place and the rightful rulers reassuming theirs. Shakespeare's contemporary audience may have accepted this at face value. A modern audience may find it harder to do so.

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