How Shakespeare Breaks all the Rules....

How The Tempest Breaks all the Rules....

With all that in mind...how should we read this?

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

Thank you!

Justice vs Mercy

How does the last act change the attitude toward revenge in The Tempest?

What propels Prospero's change of heart?

What about the treatment of Caliban?

Shakespeare famously deals with the question of revenge vs mercy in his plays. In Hamlet, Hamlet must act to avenge his father--his hesitation to do so is his fatal flaw. In Romeo and Juliet, the clans' desire for revenge kills the two lovers. In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock must be punished by law because he's gone too far in extracting his own personal revenge.

Shakespeare's Plays: Genres

Love

Shakespeare is famous for love stories. Sad tales of love being thwarted by forces out of the characters' control (Romeo and Juliet), comedies taht keep lovers apart with lots of polot twists and then reunite them at the end. But...what about the Tempest?

http://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/education/english/types-of-shakespearean-plays

What Genre might we place The Tempest in? For what reason?

How does defining it as that genre rather than another affect how we read it and for what purposes?

Theme: Rulers and Subjects

Shakespeare had supported the ruling class and their right to rule in previous plays. How do the character, language, and actions of Prospero in the Tempest complicate this idea of royal support?

• Shakespeare came of age after the war of Roses in which the Lancasters and Yorks fought for control of England. Henry Tudor of the Lancasters won, and Queen Elizabeth was his grandaughter, though the fact she was a woman caused some other issues of succession.
• Most of Shakespeare's history plays were meant to legitimize the rule of the Tudors. In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died, and King James the 1st, a Scottish King whose mother had tried to claim the English throne, became King.
• The Tempest was written ~1610
• King James had just been married, and the masque in Act IV was originally performed at his wedding
• Prospero has been deposed by the plottings of his brother

The Tempest is also part of a group of four plays (including Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and Pericles) that literary critics refer to as the "romances." (Not the kind of romances that feature a scantily clad woman and guy with bulging muscles on the book cover.) These plays were written at the end of Shakespeare's career and share a few things in common. Let's take a quick peek at our handy-dandy checklist of elements that are common in Shakespeare's "romance" plays to see how The Tempest fits into the genre:

• Elements of magic and the fantastic: Prospero is a magician who whips up a storm and sends his airy sprite on crazy missions all over the island. Check.
• A long, wandering journey: Okay. The action of the play only takes place during the course of a day but, just think about what Prospero and Miranda have gone through during the twelve years leading up to the play's opening scene—they're booted out of Milan and set adrift at sea before landing on a remote island, where they live for a really long time before finally getting the chance to return to Italy. Check.
• Obsession with the concept of loss and recovery: Check. This is the most important element of Shakespeare's "romances." So much has been lost (or seems to have been lost) in this play but, in the end, most characters gain something far better. Prospero, for example, loses his kingdom and twelve years of his life in Milan, but he also gains a new son in law and learns that vengeance is far less important than forgiveness. We could go on... but you get the idea. (Schmoop)

When The Tempest came out, the "tragicomedy" had recently been brought into the English theater scene (by John Fletcher, who would eventually replace Shakespeare as principal writer for the King's Men).

Its principle elements were pastoral settings (shepherds, shepherdesses, fuzzy lambs, etc.), misunderstandings or mix-ups about love, and potentially tragic consequences that are happily avoided by some magical intervention