The Tempest - Course Introduction
Give Big Billy Shakespeare a standing ovation: The Tempest is his swan song. It's hard to think of Shakespeare as being "over" when he’s considered to be the best playwright in English (daaang)—this guy's plays still transcend fashion or style or faddishness. It's as ridiculous to say that Shakespeare's plays are over as it is to say that, oh, picnics or roller coasters or stargazing is over. Some things are immortal.
Sadly, though, the bald man himself was very much mortal. And The Tempest, written between 1610 and 1611, was William Shakespeare's final play. (If you're nitpicky, it's the last play he wrote entirely by himself.)
Its action revolves around an aging magician who has been living in exile with his young daughter on a remote island for twelve years. Over the course of a single day, Prospero uses his magic to whip up the titular tempest to shipwreck the men responsible for his banishment. He then proceeds to dazzle and dismay the survivors (and the audience) with his art as he orchestrates his triumphant return home… where he plans to retire in peace.
For a lot of audiences and literary scholars, Prospero seems like a stand-in for Shakespeare, who spent a lifetime dazzling audiences before retiring in 1611, shortly after The Tempest was completed. Not only is the play chock-full of self-conscious references to the workings of the theater, but its epilogue seems to be a final and fond farewell to the stage.
When Prospero (after giving up the art of magic he's spent a lifetime perfecting) appears alone before the audience he confesses, "Now my charms are all o'erthrown, / And what strength I have's mine own," we can't help but wonder if Shakespeare is speaking through this character here.
Regardless of whether or not our man Shakespeare intended for us to understand the epilogue as a big adios to his own art, the play does seem to be a nice capstone to a brilliant career because The Tempest revisits some of the most important issues and themes to have emerged from Shakespeare's previous plays.
Whether you're a magical realism nut or a sucker for a good love story, a fan of drunken mayhem or obsessed with devious plots, a bitter cynic or a wide-eyed believer in the milk of human kindness, The Tempest will deliver.
Come on. What else could you possibly expect from the play that capped the career of a guy so talented in the play-penning department that he's known simply as The Bard?