Jul 23, 2008

The Tempest | Prospero and Shakespeare

How closely should we identify Shakespeare with Prospero? Essay focuses on this question given the fact that it was the Bard's last play. Discusses Prospero's role as "stage manager."

There can be no doubt that The Tempest contains numerous references to the theater, and while many of Shakespeare's plays make reference to the dramatic arts and their analogy to real life (e.g., "all the world's a stage"), it is in this, his last play, that the Bard most explicitly acknowledges that the audience is viewing a show. Thus, in the play's final scene (Act I, scene i., ll.148ff), Prospero tells his prospective son-in-law Ferdinand that the revels at hand are almost at an end, that the actors are about to retire, and that the "insubstantial pageant" of which he has been a...