The epilogue

• 'Please you draw near'
• Prospero's final words were probably intended to invite the other characters into the cell
• But they could also be taken as an invitation to the audience to enter into a new and intimate relationship with Prospero himself

Act 5 Scene 1

We can have no idea up to this point what Prospero intends to do with his victims

Even Ariel, the disembodied spirit incapable of human sympathies is moved to plead for them

• Prosper seems to have been affected by this
• Perhaps even made ashamed by the extremes to which he has pursued his revenge
• The rarer actions is / In virtue than in vengeance

Fully in command of himself he can utter his reproach with out the angry excitement that he showed when he first told Miranda of the injuries he had suffered and is even able to extend his forgiveness to his brother

Antonio and Alonso have few words to say. Perhaps they hear the threat of future blackmail when Prospero says

• at this time / I will tell no tales.

Caliban seems to reach some kind of enlightenment

• I'll be wise hereafter, / and seek for grace.

Act 4 Scene 1

Prospero's anger is also the frustrated anger of the Renaissance humanist and educational theorist, once optimistic about the ability of nurture to improve upon and even transform nature

The theory fails - not, as Prospero sees it,because of any fault in his methodology, but because his pupils have been essentially good or bad by nature

Caliban urges them on, gaining an ascendency over them which is expressed first in his speech - verse and not prose - and then in his contempt for their greedy seizure of the 'trumpery'

Now Prospero is a truly terrifying figure: we know that he is able and willing to inflict great pain, and he has given ample demonstrations of his power to paralyse  and disarm any one who opposes him

• At this hour / Lies at my mercy all mine enemies

Act 3 Scene 2

Non-stop drinking has given Stephano, flattered by the servile grovellings of his 'servant monster', illusions of grandeur which respond readily to Caliban's suggestions


Caliban is showing new depths to his baseness: his tongue had been liberated by the alcohol, and with vindictive impotence he urges Stephano to do what he himself  dare not do

• 'brain him'

Most of the seven deadly sins have been released in this single, initially comic scene:

• Anger, pride, gluttony, envy, covetousness, lust - and perhaps sloth too, in Stephano's lazy refusal to hear Trinculo's warning

Act 3 Scene 1

Like one of the knights in medieval chivalric fiction


It is a meeting of innocence and experience.

• The sophisticated Ferdinand knows the conventions of courtship and is fluent in it's vocabulary
• Miranda knows nothing od such niceties and easily takes the initiative
• "Do you love me" when the response is satisfactory, the consequence, for Miranda, is obvious
• "I am your wife if you will marry me; / If not, I'll die your maid"
• Doesn't understand the grand gestures and subtleties of courtship - needs it spelled out

Act 2 Scene 3

The mood of the play shifts into comedy

• At first it is a crude, farcical comedy, laughing at the Elizabethan delight in creatures from the New World
• But more serious issues arise when Caliban kneels and worships the 'brave god' with the 'celestial liquor'

The native inhabitants of the New World presented many ethical problems to the European colonists, and the moral issues were widely debated

• Caliban presents himself to Stephano with the same hospitality that he had shown to Prospero twelve years earlier
• "I'll show you the best spring; I'll pluck thee berries /  I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough"
• Although Trinculo mocks, Stephano seizes the offer of service, only too ready to exploit the 'monster'

Act 2 Scene 1

A certain edginess is beginning to set into the jesting


Antonio's arguments are witty and persuasive, and Sebastian seems to be dazzled by the rhetoric and slow to comprehend the meaning

• "But for your conscience?"
• "Ay, sir, where lies that?"
• The answer confirms Antonio' status as one of Shakespeare's blackest villains
• He is guilty of ingratitude, treachery, and since he intended Prospero to die, fratricide