The Tempest Study Guide

The Tempest is a unique and beautiful play that focuses on love and forgiveness at the crossroad of betrayal and magic. The main actions happen on a small island somewhere near Italy. The ship crushes there after a storm. An old magician Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, who live there...

Looking for The Tempest characters? Find them all analyzed here! This article by Custom-Writing.org experts contains character descriptions and analysis of Prospero, Miranda, Alonso, and other characters, as well as The Tempest character map. 🗺️ The Tempest Character Map Below you’ll find The Tempest character map. It contains all the...

Shakespeare tends to focus on very specific issues in each of his masterpieces. In The Tempest, the themes of power and magic are the dominant ones. However, a little bit of attention is also drawn to the topic of colonization. Looking for The Tempest themes? Find them all described here!...

In case you are one of those who love getting into details or just a student who needs help with literature assignments, The Tempest analysis section prepared by Custom-Writing.org experts is what you need. Here, we discuss The Tempest genre and some details about the setting. There is also the...

Students’ life is a bumpy ride, and sometimes you can end up with several vital assignments all of which are due the next day. Custom-Writing.org experts have prepared a compilation of The Tempest essay topics. On this page, you’ll find best questions, prompts, title ideas on the Shakespeare’s play, together...

Have you already looked through our complete guide and still have questions? It’s not always easy to grasp the deep meaning of one topic or another just after reading someone else’s opinion. Or do you have an upcoming assignment on Shakespeare’s The Tempest? This section is the best way to...

In The Tempest, Caliban is the local half-monster who was unfortunate enough to become a slave. Prospero was trying to civilize him by giving language lessons. However, the only thing Caliban actually wants is freedom and his rightful land. He even plots against his master, but the murder plan never...

Tempest means a violent and intense storm. It is somewhat significant that The Tempest by Shakespeare opens up with the storm that carries the boat to the island. However, the detailed analysis of the plot and the characters reveals that the title is mainly related to the turmoil of emotions...

In Shakespeare’s play, Miranda is described as an innocent and empathetic girl. She is a relatively passive character and the only female character in The Tempest. She may seem quite naïve and helpless to the audience, but a few scenes can prove them wrong. She transcends her traditional gender role...

When Caliban finds new friends, Stephano and Trinculo, he asks them to help him with the assassination of his master. They plot to take away Prospero’s books to disarm him and kill him when he is taking a nap. To motivate his fellows, he promises that they would get control...

In Shakespeare’s play, Caliban is ultimately seen as Prospero’s slave. Their relationship highlights one of the central themes of The Tempest concerning colonialism and imperialism. He is the only native inhabitant on the island and is not treated well by his master. Caliban wishes ill to Prospero and wants to...

Shakespeare’s play includes characters of different levels of power. However, since the latter is one of the key play’s literary themes, the division between them is pretty straightforward. The characters who use magic are way more potent than the ones that don’t. Moreover, Prospero is considered to be in control...

There are many lines in The Tempest that Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, so it is hard to pick only one. As an example, the line where Miranda says, “O brave new world,” is perhaps the most famous one. Mostly, the noble characters speak in verse while the others use...

Prospero is the main character of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. He was betrayed by his brother and had to seek another home. A remote island appeared to be a nice place, so Prospero and his daughter settled there. Over the years, he has been planning revenge with the help of...

In the play, Prospero is presented as a magician who gets his fantastic powers from the books. There are a lot of things that he managed to achieve thanks to that power. However, by the end of The Tempest, Prospero swears to throw away all his books and put an...

In Shakespeare’s play, Ariel is portrayed as a magical spirit under Prospero’s control. Throughout the whole play, he has to complete different tasks the magician gives him. Every time Ariel hopes that it would be the last one, but he doesn’t get his freedom back until the end of The...

Caliban and Ariel live on the remote island which Prospero claimed and took under his control. Both characters of The Tempest have a similar fate since the magician forced them both to serve him. However, the significant difference between them is that Caliban is not treated as respectfully as Ariel....

There seem to be too many things that Prospero does, showing how manipulative he is. The character possessing such a power uses it to alter the events in the play and force others to obey. However, one of his actions shows it most clearly. Prospero uses magic to put his...

Alonso is the king of Naples in the play. Together with the members of the royal party, he gets into the storm and ends up on an unknown island. It appears to be a pretty tragic occurrence since his son, Ferdinand, goes missing. By the end of the play, Alonso...

Caliban is the only islander found by Prospero and Miranda in the play. Even though he shows quite a negative attitude towards other characters throughout the whole story, there is something positive in him. Caliban loves his homeland, and he is ready to share all the knowledge he has about...

It is believed that Shakespeare created his masterpiece in 1610 or 1611. However, it is hard to judge which data is correct. The evidence shows that the first performance of The Tempest was in November 1611. Moreover, it appears to be one of the last plays ever written by Shakespeare....

In the original play, Ariel is a spirit that was trapped on the island. When Prospero freed him, he made Ariel his servant in return. Therefore, throughout The Tempest, the spirit has to attend to the magician’s wishes. In the Balinese production, Ariel resembles an animal and flies around instead...

Gonzalo is a member of the royal party who appears to be on the boat with the others. He is the king’s counselor and the one who is worried about Alonso the most. Throughout the play, he tries to do everything to help the king and protect him from the...

Shakespeare included the themes of colonialism and imperialism in The Tempest for a reason. Moreover, they are most clearly represented through Prospero and Caliban’s relationship in the play. Prospero is pictured as a typical colonizer who doesn’t respect the locals and only wants to take over the land for personal...

It may not appear obvious, but there is an example of linguistic imperialism in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Prospero and Caliban have a pretty complicated relationship which reflects a typical situation between the colonizer and the locals at the time. It results in the unpleasant occurrence of language barrier and misunderstanding,...

Usually, Shakespeare’s The Tempest is classified as a comedy. There are all the aspects pointing out at it, such as humorous situations and many misunderstandings that end up being clarified. A happy celebration of marriage at the end also aligns with it. However, some of the play’s scenes include tragic...

Among the different productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there are some that can be clearly considered an interpretation. For example, the audience would know that the one in which Prospero shows sympathy to Caliban is far from the original. The magician doesn’t actually act as fair and kind towards his...

Shakespeare’s The Tempest is generally considered a comedy. The plot is based on a series of misunderstandings that turn out to be comic by the end of the play. Moreover, no one dies, even though some of the characters get lost or upset. However, there are some small elements of...

In both the Utah Valley University and Balinese productions, several characters from the play are pictured very similarly. The interpretations of Prospero, Caliban, and Ariel appear to be the same in both perceptions. The main character is shown as a powerful magician who made the islander and the spirit his...

Many important characters in The Tempest appear in the first scene of the play. Sebastian is one of them. It already seems like he and Antonio are up to something, but the audience remains clueless until the play ends. Sebastian is the king’s brother who attempts a murder later on....

Caliban is not presented as the most pleasant character of The Tempest. While Prospero rules over him, Miranda is simply afraid of the islander. Indeed, he is portrayed as an angry, uneducated, and untidy man. The girl feels threatened by him and tries to stay away from him as much...

Shakespeare’s The Tempest raises a few quite important and relevant literary themes. One of them is colonization. It was a popular topic back then, and its main issues are well represented in the play. However, power may be considered the central theme in The Tempest and goes throughout the whole...

Even though Shakespeare’s The Tempest is considered to be a comedy and maybe a romance, there are some elements of a tragedy. It is especially noticeable in the first two acts. Some of the events just don’t align with the standard genre categorization of this play. One of them is...

Shakespeare seems to have a very definite view on colonization which is reflected in The Tempest. All the issues that Prospero has with Caliban, the native to the island, prove the main idea of the play. Unfortunately, Caliban is treated like a handicapped monster by almost every character. There are...