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A Modern Perspective: The Tempest

By Barbara A. Mowat

Somewhat past the midpoint of The Tempest, King Alonso and his courtiers reach a temporary still point in their journey on Prospero’s island. Shipwrecked, they have searched for the lost Prince Ferdinand; now, exhausted, they give up the search. Into this moment of fatigue—and, for Alonso, despair—at the center of what Gonzalo calls their “maze,” enters the maze’s monster: a Harpy who threatens them with lingering torment worse than any death. For Alonso, the Harpy’s recounting of his long-ago crimes against Prospero is “monstrous”; maddened, he rushes off to leap (he thinks) into the sea, to join (he thinks) his drowned son Ferdinand.

King Alonso’s confrontation with the Harpy ( 3.3.23 –133) brings together powerfully The Tempest ’s intricate set of travel stories and its technique of presenting key dramatic moments as theatrical fantasy. The presentation of dancing islanders, a disappearing banquet, and a descending monster is the first big spectacle since the play’s opening tempest. The unexpected appearance of these island “spirits,” combined with the power of the Harpy’s speech, gives the Harpy confrontation a solidity within the story world that seems designed to rivet audience attention. At the same time, audience response to the scene is inevitably colored by curiosity about the “quaint device” that makes the banquet vanish and by awareness of Prospero looking down on his trapped enemies from “the top,” commenting on them in asides, and obtrusively turning the Harpy/king encounter into make-believe, first by telling us that the Harpy was only Ariel reciting a speech and, second, by reminding us, just before Alonso’s desperate exit to join Ferdinand in the ocean’s ooze, that Ferdinand is, at this moment, courting Miranda.

The double signals here—to the powerful moment within the story and to the deliberate theatricality with which the moment is staged—reflect larger doublenesses in this drama. They reflect, first of all, major differences in the temporal and spatial dimensions of the drama’s “story” and its “play.” The Tempest ’s “story” stretches over more than twenty-four years and several sea journeys; it embeds elements of the mythological voyages of Aeneas and of Jason and the Argonauts, of the biblical voyages of St. Paul, and of actual contemporary voyages to the new world of Virginia. The “play” that The Tempest actually presents is, in contrast, constricted within a plot-time of a single afternoon and confined to the space imagined for an island. 1 Through this particular doubling, Shakespeare creates in The Tempest a form that allows him to bring familiar voyage material to the stage in a (literally) spectacular new way.

The “story” that The Tempest tells is a story of voyages—Sycorax’s journey from Algiers, Prospero and Miranda’s journey from Milan to the island in the rotten carcass of a butt, Alonso’s voyage from Naples to Tunis across the Mediterranean Sea and thence to the island—and, on the island, a set of journeys (Ferdinand’s journey across yellow sands; Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo’s through briers and filthy-mantled pools, and Alonso and his men’s through strange mazes) that lead, finally, back to the sea and the ship and to yet another sea journey. This complex narrative, with its immense span of chronological time, its routes stretching over most of the Mediterranean, its violent separations and losses and its culmination in royal betrothals and restorations, is the kind of story told in the massive novels, popular in Shakespeare’s time, called Greek Romances. The Tempest ’s story could have filled one or more such romance volumes or could have been presented in a narrative-like drama such as Shakespeare himself had created in Pericles and The Winter’s Tale . Instead, within the brief period of The Tempest ’s supposed action, the narrative of the twenty-four or more years preceding the shipwreck of King Alonso and his courtiers on the island—worked out by Shakespeare in elaborate detail—is told to us elaborately. The second and third scenes of The Tempest —that is, 1.2 . and 2.1 —contain close to half the lines in the play, and close to half of those lines are past-tense narration. Through Prospero, through Ariel, through Caliban, through Gonzalo, through Sebastian, through Antonio, characters in our presence (and our present) tell us their pasts.

If we take the sets of narratives embedded in 1.2 and 2.1 and roll them back to where they belong chronologically, the first story (and the most fantastic) is that of the witch Sycorax, her exile on the island, her “littering” of Caliban there, and her imprisoning of Ariel ( 1.2.308 –47)—twelve years before Prospero is thrust forth from Milan. That thrusting-forth is the subject of the next story (next chronologically, that is): the narrative of Antonio’s betrayal of Prospero and of Prospero and Miranda’s sea journey and arrival on the island ( 1.2.66 –200). Then comes the story of what happened on the island during the next twelve years, a story in which narratives that tell of Caliban ( 1.2.396 –451), of Ariel ( 1.2.287 –306, 340 –47), and of Miranda and Prospero ( 1.2.205 –8) overlap and intersect. Finally comes the story from the most recent past—the story of the Princess Claribel and her “loathness” to the marriage arranged by her father ( 2.1.131 –40), of Claribel’s wedding in Tunis ( 2.1.71 –111), of the return journey of Alonso and his courtiers ( 2.1.112 –17), and of the shipwreck as described by Ariel ( 1.2.232 –80).

One of the most powerful features of the form Shakespeare crafted in The Tempest is that this detailed, complex narrative, told us in the first part of the play, keeps reappearing within the play’s action. The story of the coup d’état that expelled Prospero “twelve year since,” for example, is made the model for the Antonio/Sebastian assassination plot (“Thy case, dear friend,” says Sebastian to Antonio, “shall be my precedent: as thou got’st Milan, I’ll come by Naples” [ 2.1.332 –34]); the story appears at the center of the Harpy’s message ( 3.3.86 –93); and it is told yet once again by Prospero when, in the play’s final scene, he attempts to forgive Antonio ( 5.1.80 –89). Caliban’s story—“this island is mine”; “I serve a tyrant”—is told by him again and again. The story of Sycorax, who died years before the dramatic “now,” is alluded to so often—her powers described one last time by Prospero even as the play is ending ( 5.1.323 –26)—that she seems to haunt the play, as does the absent, distant, unhappy Claribel.

As the play reaches its conclusion, each of the stories recounted in the early narrative scenes is conjured up a final time, though the pressure now is toward the future—toward the nuptials of the royal couple, toward a royal lineage with Prospero’s heirs as kings of Naples. As that virtual future is created, the structuring process of the opening scenes is reversed: where narrative was there incorporated into the play, now the play opens back out into the next pages of the narrative from which it had emerged. As we watch and listen, the play we have been experiencing moves into the past, becomes a moment in the tale Prospero promises to tell to the voyagers—“such discourse as . . . shall make [the night] / Go quick away: the story of my life / And the particular accidents gone by / Since I came to this isle” ( 5.1.361 –64). As Alonso notes, this is a “story . . . which must / Take the ear strangely” ( 5.1.371 –72).

By folding the story into the play and then unfolding the play into its own virtual narrative future, Shakespeare creates a form in which past and future press on the present dramatic moment with peculiar intensity. We sense this throughout the play, but see it with special clarity in the confrontation between Alonso and the Harpy. The Harpy brings the past to Alonso as a burden Alonso must pick up—an intolerable burden for Alonso, who goes mad under the simultaneous recognition of his guilt and its consequences, given to him as Time Past, Time Present, and Time Future. In Time Past: “you . . . / From Milan did supplant good Prospero, / Exposed unto the sea . . . / Him and his innocent child” ( 3.3.87 –90); in Time Present: “for which foul deed, / The powers . . . have / Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures / Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, / They have bereft” ( 90 –94); and finally, in Time Future: “Ling’ring perdition . . . shall step by step attend / You and your ways, whose wraths to guard you from— / Which here, in this most desolate isle, else fells / Upon your heads—is nothing but heart’s sorrow / And a clear life ensuing” ( 95 –101). This pressure of past and future on the present moment—a pressure that is created in large part by the way Shakespeare folds chronological time into plot-time, and that we feel throughout the play in Prospero’s tension, in Ariel’s restiveness, in Caliban’s fury—makes believable in The Tempest that which is normally suspect: namely, instant repentance, instant inner transformation. Because the dramatic present is so permeated with the play’s virtual past, so pressured by the future—the six o’clock toward which the play rushes, after which Time as Opportunity will be gone—that Alonso’s anguished repentance, his descent into silence, madness, and unceasing tears, his immediate surrender of Milan to Prospero and the reward of being given back his lost son—can all take place in moments, and can, even so, seem credible and wonderful.

The interplay between The Tempest ’s elaborate voyage story and its tightly constricted “play” is not the only doubleness toward which the drama’s Harpy/king encounter points us. It points as well to two kinds of travel tales embedded in the drama: ancient, fictional voyage narratives and contemporary travelers’ tales buzzing around London at the time the play was being written. The Harpy/king encounter is shaped as a sequence of verbal and visual events that in effect reenact and thus recall ancient confrontations between harpies and sea voyagers. In each of these harpy incidents—from the third century B.C. Argonautica through the first century B.C. Aeneid to The Tempest itself—harpies are ministers of the gods sent to punish those who have angered the gods; they punish by devouring or despoiling food; and they are associated with dire prophecies. The Tempest ’s enactment of the harpy encounter is thus one in a line of harpy stories stretching into the past from this island and this set of voyagers to Aeneas, and through Aeneas back to Jason and the crucial encounter between the terrible harpies (the “hounds of mighty Zeus”) and the Argonauts. 2 In replicating the sequence of events of voyagers meeting harpies, combining details from Jason’s story and from the Aeneid, Shakespeare directs attention to the specific context in which such harpy confrontations appear and within which The Tempest clearly belongs—that of literary fictional voyages.

At the same time, he surrounds the encounter with dialogue that would remind his audience of present-day voyages of their own fellow Londoners. Geographical expansion, around-the-world journeys, explorations of the new world of the Americas had heightened the stay-at-homes’ fascination with the strange creatures reported by travelers. Real-world creatures like crocodiles and hippopotami, fantastic creatures like unicorns and griffins, reported monstrosities like the men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders—all were, at the time, equally real (or unreal) and equally fascinating. The dialogue preceding the Harpy’s descent in The Tempest centers on such fabulous creatures. When the supposed “islanders”—creatures of “monstrous shape”—appear, bringing in the banquet, Sebastian says: “Now I will believe / That there are unicorns, that in Arabia / There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix / At this hour reigning there.” “Travelers ne’er did lie,” says Antonio, “Though fools at home condemn ’em.” Gonzalo adds, “If in Naples / I should report this now, would they believe me? / If I should say I saw such islanders . . . ” ( 3.3.26 –36). It is into this dialogue-context that the Harpy descends—that is, into a discussion of fantastic travelers’ tales and fabulous creatures.

When the Harpy—one of these creatures—actually appears, claps its wings upon the table, and somehow makes the food disappear ( 3.3.69 SD), she is very real to Alonso and his men—as real as the harpies were to Jason and to Aeneas; as real as the hippopotami and anthropophagi were to fifteenth-century explorers; as real as is Caliban, the monster mooncalf, to his discoverers Stephano and Trinculo. The attempts to kill the Harpy are classical responses—that is, they are the responses of Jason and Aeneas when confronted by the terrible bird-women. The response of Stephano and Trinculo to their man-monster is a more typically sixteenth-century response to the fabulous. When, for example, Stephano finds Trinculo and Caliban huddled under a cloak and thinks he has discovered a “most delicate monster” with four legs and two voices, he responds with the greed that we associate with Martin Frobisher and other sixteenth-century New World explorers who brought natives from North America to England to put on display: “If I can recover him,” says Stephano, “and keep him tame and get to Naples with him, he’s a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat’s leather. . . . He shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly” ( 2.2.69 –81). Trinculo had responded with equal greed to his first sight of the frightened Caliban:

What have we here, a man or a fish? . . . A strange fish. Were I in England . . . and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man. Any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.

( 2.2.25 –34)

While the finding and subjugating of “wild men” was a feature that ancient and new-world voyage stories held in common (for example, Jupiter promises that Aeneas, as the climax of his sea journeys, will “wage a great war in Italy, and . . . crush wild peoples and set up laws for men and build walls” 3 ), Prospero’s subjugation of Caliban has a particularly New World flavor. The play itself, no matter how steeped it is in ancient voyage literature and no matter how much emphasis it places on its Mediterranean setting, is also a representation of New World exploration. While it retells the stories of Aeneas and of Jason, it also stages a particular Virginia voyage that, in 1610–11, was the topic of sermons, published government accounts, and first-person epistles, many of which Shakespeare drew on in crafting The Tempest . The story, in brief, goes as follows: A fleet of ships set out in 1609 from England carrying a new governor—Sir Thomas Gates—to the struggling Virginia colony in Jamestown. The fleet was caught in a tempest off the coast of Bermuda. All of the ships survived the storm and sailed on to Virginia—except the flagship, the Sea-Venture, carrying the governor, the admiral of the fleet, and other important officials. A year later, the exhausted and dispirited colonists in Jamestown were astounded when two boats sailed up the James River carrying the supposedly drowned governor and his companions. The crew and passengers on the flagship had survived the storm, had lived for a year in the Bermudas, had built new ships, and had made it safely to Virginia. News of the happy ending to this “tragicomedy,” as one who reported the story called it, soon reached London, and many details of the story are preserved in The Tempest .

Among the details may be the disturbing picture of the relationship of the “settlers” and the “Indians” in Jamestown, represented perhaps in Caliban and his relationship with Prospero. In one of the documents used by Shakespeare in writing The Tempest, William Strachey describes an incident in which “certain Indians,” finding a man alone, “seized the poor fellow and led him up in to the woods and sacrificed him.” Strachey writes that the lieutenant governor was very disturbed by this incident, since hitherto he “would not by any means be wrought to a violent proceeding against them [i.e., the Indians] for all the practices of villainy with which they daily endangered our men.” This incident, though, made him “well perceive” that “fair and noble treatment” had little effect “upon a barbarous disposition,” and “therefore . . . purposed to be revenged.” The revenge took the form of an attack upon an Indian village. 4

As we read Strachey’s account today, we find much in the behavior of the settlers toward the natives that is appalling, so that the account is not for us simply that of “good white men” against “bad Indians,” as it was for Strachey. In the same way, whether or not this particular lieutenant governor and these treacherous “Indians” are represented in The Tempest, Shakespeare’s decision to include a “wild man” among his island’s cast of characters, and (as Stephen Greenblatt notes) to place him in opposition to a European prince whose power lies in his language and his books, 5 raises a host of questions for us about the play. The Tempest was written just as England was beginning what would become massive empire-building through the subjugating of others and the possessing of their lands. European nations—Spain, in particular—had already taken over major land areas, and Shakespeare and his contemporaries had available to them many accounts of native peoples and of European colonizers’ treatment of such peoples. Many such accounts are like Strachey’s: they describe a barbarous people who refuse to be “civilized,” who have no language, who have a “nature” on which “nurture will never stick” (as Prospero says of Caliban). Other accounts describe instead cultural differences in which that which is different is not necessarily inferior or “barbarous.” When Gonzalo says (at 2.1.157 –60), “Had I plantation [i.e., colonization] of this isle . . . And were the King on ’t, what would I do?” he answers his own question by describing the Utopia he would set up ( lines 162 –84), taking his description from Montaigne’s essay “Of the Cannibals.” In this essay, Montaigne (“whose supple mind,” writes Ronald Wright, “exemplifies Western civilization at its best” 6 ) argues in effect that American “savages” are in many ways more moral, more humane people than so-called civilized Europeans.

As with so much of The Tempest, Caliban may be seen as representing two quite different images. Shakespeare gives him negative traits attached to New World natives (traits that seem to many today to smack of racist responses to the strange and to the Other) while giving him at the same time a richly poetic language and a sensitive awareness of nature and the supernatural. He places Caliban in relation to Prospero (as Caliban’s master and the island’s “colonizer”), to Miranda (as the girl who taught Caliban language and whom he tried to rape), and indirectly to Ferdinand (who, like Caliban, is made to carry logs and who will father Miranda’s children as Caliban had wished to do). Shakespeare thus creates in the center of this otherworldly play a confrontation that speaks eloquently to late-twentieth-century readers and audiences living with the aftereffects of the massive colonizing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and observing the continuing life of “empire” in the interactions between the powerful and the formerly colonized states. 7 As many readers and audiences today look back at the centuries of colonization of the Americas, Africa, and India from, as it were, Caliban’s perspective, The Tempest, once considered Shakespeare’s most serene, most lyrical play, is now put forward as his representation, for good or ill, of the colonizing and the colonized. 8

This relatively new interest in the colonization depicted in The Tempest has had a profound impact on attitudes toward Prospero. For centuries seen as spokesman for Shakespeare himself, as the benign, profound magician-artist who presides like a god over an otherworldly kingdom, Prospero is now perceived as one of Shakespeare’s most complex creations. He brings to the island books, Old World language, and the power to hurt and to control; he thus figures an early form of the colonizer. But he carries with him other, complicating associations. He is, for example, a figure familiar in voyage romances popular in Shakespeare’s day. The hermit magician (or exiled doctor, or some equivalent) in Greek Romance tales comes to the aid of heroes and heroines, protects them, heals them, often teaches them who they really are. In such stories, the focus is always on the lost, shipwrecked, searching man or woman—that is, on the Alonso figure or the Ferdinand or the Miranda figure. In The Tempest, Prospero, the hermit magician, is center stage, and the lost, shipwrecked, and searching are seen by us through him and in relation to him. Prospero thus carries a kind of power and an aura of ultimately benevolent intention that complicates the colonizer image.

Prospero is also the creator of the maze in which the other characters find themselves—“as strange a maze as e’er men trod,” says Alonso ( 5.1.293 )—and thus carries yet other complicating associations. The scene of the Harpy/king encounter opens with Gonzalo’s “Here’s a maze trod indeed through forthrights and meanders,” a statement that picks up suggestively Ovid’s description of that most infamous of mazes, created by Daedalus to enclose the Minotaur. The Daedalus story has unexpected but rich links with The Tempest . Daedalus, the quintessential artist/engineer/magician, built the maze to sty the monstrous creature that he had helped to bring into being. (It was sired by a bull on King Minos’ queen, but it was Daedalus who had lured the bull to the queen, encasing her, at her urgings, in the wooden shape of a cow.) Having built the maze, Daedalus (in Golding’s 1567 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis ) “scarce himselfe could find the meanes to wind himself well out / So busie and so intricate” was the labyrinth he had created (Book 8, lines 210–20).

The story of the maze and its Minotaur is a familiar one, involving the sacrifice of Greek youths to the bloodthirsty Minotaur, an annual horror that stopped only with Theseus’ slaughter of the Minotaur and his escape from the maze through the aid of King Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, whom Theseus marries and then abandons. Less familiar is the connection between the story of the maze and that of Daedalus and his son Icarus’ flight from the island of Crete:

Now in this while [when Theseus was overcoming

the Minotaur] gan Daedalus a weariness to take

Of living like a banisht man and prisoner such a time

In Crete, and longed in his heart to see his native

But Seas enclosed him as if he had in prison be.

Then thought he: though both Sea and land King

Minos stop fro me,

I am assured he cannot stop the Aire and open

It is at this point that Daedalus turns to “uncoth Arts” (i.e., magic), bending “the force of all his wits / To alter natures course by craft”—and he constructs the famous wings that take him home, at the cost of the life of his son, who falls into the sea and drowns.

When Prospero stands “on the top,” looking down and commenting on the trapped figures below him, he to some extent figures the magician/artist Daedalus. Throughout the play he, like Daedalus, is almost trapped in his own intricate maze, an exile who “gan . . . a weariness to take / Of living like a banisht man and prisoner such a time,” who “longed in his heart to see his native Clime,” and who thus bent “the force of all his wits” and his magic powers to find a way to get himself and his child home. The associations of Prospero with Daedalus, his maze, and his magic flight are less accessible to us today than they would have been to a Renaissance audience. But the sense of Prospero’s weariness, of his hatred of exile, of the danger facing him as he heads back to Milan having abjured his magic—these complicating emotional factors, even without a specific awareness of the Daedalus parallels, are available to us. We notice them especially in Prospero’s epilogue, where he begs our help in wafting him off the island and safely back home.

Like The Tempest itself, then, Prospero is complicated, double. He, like the play, is woven from a variety of story materials, and like the play he represents a particular moment, the moment at which began a period of colonizing and empire-building that would completely alter the world, leaving a legacy with which we still live. But he, like the play, also embodies ancient stories of travel and exile and the emotions that accompany them. And The Tempest ’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century retellings and sequels (Browning’s “Caliban on Setebos,” Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête, Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror,” and such film versions as Forbidden Planet and Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, to name but a few) suggest that those stories and emotions have continued to intrigue. The magician fascinates, the journey and the maze still tempt, despite the near certainty that magic—like all power—tends to corrupt and that islands and labyrinths hold as many monsters as they do “revels.”

• I am using the word “story” here both in its general sense of a narration of events and in the more particular sense that translates the Russian formalists’ term “fabula”—that is, the events sequenced in chronological order. The formalists contrast the “fabula” with the “szujet”—the fiction as structured by the author (a term I translate as “play”). See Keir Elam’s The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), pp. 119–26.
• See Barbara A. Mowat, “‘And that’s true, too’: Structures and Meaning in The Tempest ,” Renaissance Papers 1976 , pp. 37–50. The pertinent sections of the Argonaut stories are Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2:178–535, and Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 4:422–636; Virgil’s account of the Harpies as encountered by Aeneas and his men is found in the Aeneid 3:210–69.
• Aeneid , Book I, lines 261–64 (Guildford trans.).
• “A True Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight,” in A Voyage to Virginia in 1609 , ed. Louis B. Wright (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1964), pp. 1–101, esp. pp. 88–89.
• “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century,” in Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 23–26.
• Stolen Continents: The “New World” Through Indian Eyes (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993).
• See Edward W. Said, “Empire, Geography, and Culture” and “Images of the Past, Pure and Impure,” in Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), pp. 3–14, 15–19.
• For example, in “Nymphs and reapers heavily vanish: the discursive con-texts of The Tempest ,” Alternative Shakespeares , ed. John Drakakis (pp. 192–205), Francis Barker and Peter Hulme state that “the discourse of colonialism” is the “dominant discursive con-text” for the play.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 26, 2020 • ( 1 )

Many commentators agree in the belief that The Tempest is the last creation of Shakespeare. I will readily believe it. There is in The Tempest the solemn tone of a testament. It might be said that, before his death, the poet, in this epopee of the ideal, had designed a codicil for the Future. . . . The Tempest is the supreme denouement, dreamed by Shakespeare, for the bloody drama of Genesis. It is the expiation of the primordial crime. The region whither it transports us is the enchanted land where the sentence of damnation is absolved by clemency, and where reconciliation is ensured by amnesty to the fratricide. And, at the close of the piece, when the poet, touched by emotion, throws Antonio into the arms of Prospero, he has made Cain pardoned by Abel.

—Victor Hugo , Oeuvres complètes de Shakespeare

It is inevitable, given the position of The Tempest as William Shakespeare’s final solo dramatic work, to hear in Prospero’s epilogue to the play, Shakespeare’s farewell to his audience:

Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint. . . . . . 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 pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free.

Prospero bows out on a note of forgiveness, the tone that finally rules the play along with an affirmation in the essential goodness of humanity. It has been tempting, therefore, to view Prospero’s sentiment and his play as Shakespeare’s last word, his summation of a career and a philosophy, what critic Gary Taylor has called “the valedictory culmination of Shakespeare’s life work.” First performed at court on November 1, 1611, before the playwright’s exit to Stratford, The Tempest , however, is technically neither Shakespeare’s finale nor requiem. Two years later Shakespeare was back in London, collaborating with John Fletcher on The Two Noble Kinsmen, Henry VIII, and the lost play Cardenio. As intriguing as the biographical reading is, it is only one of The Tempest ’s multiple layers of meaning and significance. Called by critic T. M. Parrot, “perhaps the best loved of all Shakespeare’s plays,” and by William Hazlitt as among the “most original and perfect of Shakespeare’s productions,” The Tempest continues to be one of the most performed and interpreted plays in the canon, generating (and withstanding) autobiographical, allegorical, religious, metaphysical, and more recently postcolonial readings. The play’s central figure has likewise shifted from Prospero, who fascinated the romantics, to Miranda, who has claimed the attention of feminists, to Caliban, who is exhibit A in the reading of the play as “a veritable document of early Anglo-American history,” according to writer Sydney Lee, containing “the whole history of imperialist America,” as stated by critic Leslie Fiedler. The Tempest has served as a poetic treasure trove and springboard for other writers, with allusions detectable in John Milton’s Comus , T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, W. H. Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror, and countless other works. Based on its popularity, persistence, and universality, The Tempest remains one of the richest and most fascinating of Shakespeare’s plays.

The Tempest is a composite work with elements derived from multiple sources. Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals,” whose romantic primitivism is satirized in Gonzalo’s plan for organizing society on Prospero’s island in the second act, is a possible source. So, too, are a German play, Comedy of the Beautiful Sidea, by Jacob Ayrer, about a magician prince whose only daughter falls in love with the son of his enemy, and several Italian commedia dell’arte pastoral tragicomedies set on remote islands and featuring benevolent magicians. Accounts of the Sea-Venture, the ship sent to Virginia to bolster John Smith’s colony that was wrecked on the coast of Bermuda in 1609, may have furnished Shakespeare with some of the details for the play’s opening storm. However, the most substantial borrowing for the plot of The Tempest comes from Shakespeare’s own previous plays, so much so, that scholar Stephen Greenblatt has described The Tempest as “a kind of echo chamber of Shakespearean motifs.” The complications following a shipwreck revisits Twelfth Night ; the relocation of court society to the wilderness is featured in As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which also employs spirits and the supernatural to teach lessons and settle scores. The backstory of The Tempest —Prospero, the former duke of Milan, usurped by his brother—recalls  Hamlet and King Lear . Miranda’s being raised in ignorance of her past and status as well as the debate between nature and nurture echo Pericles and The Winter’s Tale. Like both, The Tempest mixes light and dark, tragic and comic elements, yet compared to their baroque complexity, the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays after Macbeth obeys the Aristotelian unities of place and time (the only other Shakespearean play to do so is The Comedy of Errors ), with its action confined to Prospero’s island, taking place over a period roughly corresponding to its performance time.

The Tempest begins with one of the most spectacular scenes in all of Shakespeare: the storm at sea that threatens the vessel whose passengers include King Alonso of Naples, his son Ferdinand, and Prospero’s hated brother Antonio, the usurping duke of Milan. Their life-and-death struggle enacted on stage is subjected to a double focus as Prospero reassures his daughter, Miranda, distraught over the fate of the passengers and crew, that he controls the tempest and that their danger is an illusion. The disaster, which he calls a “spectacle,” is artifice, and the play establishes an analogy between Prospero’s magic and the theatrical sleight of hand that initially seemed so realistic and thrilling. Prospero stands in for the artist here: Both magician and playwrights are conjurors, able to manipulate nature and make others believe in a reality without substance. The contrast between illusion and reality will be sounded throughout the play, suggesting that The Tempest is a metadrama: a play about playwriting and the power and limitations of the imagination. Prospero finally tells his daughter how they arrived on the island; how his brother, Antonio, joined in a conspiracy with Alonso to usurp his place as duke of Milan; how 12 years before Prospero and Miranda were set adrift at sea, provisioned only by a compassionate Neapolitan, Gonzalo. Friend and foes, aboard the vessel Prospero has seemed to wreck, are now under his control on the island where Prospero intends to exact his vengeance. Prospero, therefore, will use his long-studied magical arts to stage a reckoning for past offenses. The play proceeds under Prospero’s direction with a cast that either cooperates or complicates his intentions. Serving him are the ethereal Ariel, whom Prospero promises to free after completing his bidding, and the contrasting earthly and brutish Caliban, a witch’s son, whom Prospero says he has “us’d thee / (Filth as thou art) with human care, and lodg’d thee / In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate / The honor of my child.” Prospero, therefore, controls symbols of both sides of human nature: aspects of the imagination and fancy and baser instincts that come in conflict on the island as the play progresses.

As playwright Prospero must juggle three subplots: Miranda’s relationship with Ferdinand, the son of Alonso, who mourns his loss at sea; the plotting of Prospero’s brother, Antonio, and the king’s brother, Sebastian, to murder Alonso and seize his throne; and Caliban’s alliance with the jester Trinculo and butler Stefano to kill Prospero and reign in his stead. The first goes so well—Miranda and Ferdinand fall in love at first sight—that Prospero tests Ferdinand’s fidelity by appearing to punish him by making him his servant. Ferdinand, however, proves his devotion by gladly accepting his humiliation to be near Miranda. Prospero ends Ferdinand’s penance and testing in the first scene of act 4, declaring: “All thy vexations / Were but my trials of thy love, and thou / Hast strangely stood the test.” To seal the nuptial vows a ritual masque is performed by various mythological goddesses and pastoral figures. In the midst of the dance Prospero stops the performance to deliver one of the most celebrated speeches in all of Shakespeare’s plays:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Jaques in As You Like It asserted “All the world’s a stage,” and Macbeth described life as “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.” Prospero’s speech suggests the transience of both human life and art, with its reference to “the great globe,” the name of Shakespeare’s theater, that, along with towers, palaces, and temples, “shall dissolve . . . like this insubstantial pageant.”

Made aware by Ariel of Caliban’s conspiracy with Trinculo and Stefano, Prospero distracts them from their purpose of murder by rich attire, which Trinculo and Stefano put on before being set upon by spirits. Their comic rebellion is matched by the more serious plot of Antonio and Sebastian to kill Alonso. An assassination attempt is halted by the appearance of spirits providing a banquet for the hungry men. Just as they try to satisfy their hunger the food disappears, replaced by Ariel, “like a harpy,” who accuses Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio of their crimes against Prospero and delivers their sentences:

. . . But remember, For that’s my business to you, that you three From Milan did supplant good Prospero; Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it ,Him, and his innocent child; for which foul deed The powers, delaying not forgetting, have Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, They have bereft; and do pronounce by me Ling’ring perdition, worse than any death Can be at once, shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from— Which here, in this most desolate isle, else fall sUpon your heads—is nothing but heart’s sorrow, And a clear life ensuing.

Prospero, approving of Ariel’s performance, declares, “They now are in my pow’r,” and the play turns on how he will decide to use that power.

At the start of the fifth act Prospero announces the climax of his plan: “Now does my project gather to a head,” with his victims now imprisoned to confront their guilt and fate. It is Ariel who shifts Prospero from vengeance to forgiveness by saying, “Your charm so strongly works ’em / That if you now beheld them your affections / Would become tender.” Ariel’s suggestion of what should be the reaction to human suffering shames Prospero into compassion:

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, One of their kind, that relish all as sharply, Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art? Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury Do I take part. The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance. They being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel; My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore, And they shall be themselves.

Prospero turns away from revenge and the pursuit of power that had formerly ruled the destinies of so many Shakespearean heroes, including Hamlet, Macbeth , and many more. Prospero changes the plot of his play at its climax and then turns away from his art to reenter the human community:

. . . But this rough magic I here abjure. And, when I have required Some heavenly music—which even now I do— To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book.

The end of Prospero’s plot, his art, and the play conjoin. Ariel returns with the prisoners, and Prospero pardons all, including his brother, before reclaiming his dukedom and reuniting father and son. Miranda, overcome by so many nobles on their formerly deserted island, declares:

O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in’t!

Prospero, more soberly and less optimistically, responds to her words: “’Tis new to thee.” Finally, Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo are brought in. The lowly status and ridiculousness of the latter two are exposed, prompting Caliban to assert:

I’ll be wise hereafter, And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass Was I to take this drunkard for a god, And worship this dull fool!

Having reestablished order and a harmonious future in the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand, Prospero delivers on his promise to free Ariel before turning to the audience to ask for the same compassion and forgiveness he has shown. As Prospero has released the spirit Ariel, we are asked to do the same for Prospero. We now hold the power and the art to use it as we will:

. . . Now ’tis true I must be here confined by you Or sent to Naples. Let me not ,Since I have my dukedom got, And pardoned the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands.

If the play is not Shakespeare’s last will and testament, there scarcely can be a better: a play that affirms essential human goodness while acknowledging the presence of human evil, written in the full powers of the imagination, while conscious of its limitations and responsibilities.

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“The Tempest” by William Shakespeare Literature Analysis Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
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In his play The Tempest, William Shakespeare illustrates the transformation of many characters who have to re-evaluate their values, attitudes, and perceptions. This paper is aimed at discussing such a person as Ferdinand whose love for Miranda is one of the main themes explored in this play. He has to discover several important qualities such as responsibility and ability to love. These are the things that he lacks at the beginning of this play. This person is important for the author because he demonstrates how love can change an individual, his behavior, and perception of the world. These questions should be examined more closely.

It should be noted that Ferdinand is present in the first scene, but he does not take part in the conversation. Certainly, one can assume that he is frightened. Moreover, Ferdinand is forced to accept that his life can soon end. Nevertheless, it is not possible to make accurate conjectures about his experiences. Overall, one can argue that Prospero is able to test Ferdinand’s qualities and intentions. Aerial, who serves Prospero, separates Ferdinand from his father; as a result, Ferdinand comes to the belief that his father and friends have perished. Therefore, he is forced to act independently. This character quickly forgets about his loss, when he sees Miranda and falls in love with her.

To a great extent, this example indicates the flippancy or light-mindedness of this character. He promises to make Miranda “the queen of Naples” without even mentioning his father Alonso, who could have died (Shakespeare 45). Moreover, it does not even occur to Ferdinand that he cannot fulfill his promise. This is one of the details that can attract readers’ attention.

Additionally, Fernando’s affection for Miranda bears a close resemblance to lust at least at the beginning. He does not think about the need to care about Miranda However, he eventually understands that Miranda is different from other women. The following quote illustrates Ferdinand’s experiences,

‘for several virtues

Have I liked several women; never any

With so full soul’ (Shakespeare 93).

In other words, he sees that this girl can transform him. By allowing Ferdinand to talk to Miranda, Prospero enables this character to reject his previous outlook. In particular, Ferdinand learns that he can be fully dedicated to another person. Moreover, he understands that love implies some responsibility for the wellbeing and dignity of a woman. For instance, he assumes an obligation to arrange a formal marriage with Miranda (Shakespeare 121). In the past, he did not act in this way, because his behavior was driven mostly by lust, rather than love. This is the main change that Ferdinand undergoes. To some extent, this transformation was caused by Prospero manipulations. His magic makes other people discover their true selves. This is one of the main arguments that can be put forward.

On the whole, these examples indicate that Prospero’s actions prompt Ferdinand to discover the hidden qualities. In particular, Ferdinand discovers that he can be committed to the needs of another person. Shakespeare focuses his attention on the behavior of this character because in this way he tries to show love should not be confused with lust. Ferdinand’s transformation highlights the difference between these notions. This is one of the main aspects that should be taken into account by the readers of this play.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.

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The Tempest Themes

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The Tempest

By william shakespeare, the tempest essay questions.

To what extent can Prospero can be considered the protagonist of the play?

Many would agree that Prospero is the protagonist of the play, given that he starts out as a sympathetic character who has been robbed of his station and betrayed by his brother. However, Prospero is not a straightforward or traditional hero. Instead, he relies on his magic to control and manipulate others on the island while also maintaining control over his young adult daughter, Miranda. While audiences are likely to sympathize and root for Prospero's success, the play presents a rather nuanced portrait of its protagonist, leading many to compare Prospero to the playwright whose dedication to their craft outweighs their sense of social or filial duty. When Prospero renounces his magic at the end of the play, he is in many ways restored to hero status, having recognized that his ability to control others is a dangerous power to wield.

In what ways is Caliban a representation of colonization?

Caliban is the only character in the play who is native to the island on which The Tempest takes place. As such, he has long been interpreted as a figure of the effects of colonization and specifically of English imperialism. Caliban is treated by Prospero and Miranda as both a monster, a pupil, a son, and a servant: he is grateful to be able to curse Miranda in her own language, but later uses that same language with mastery and eloquence. The play stops short of expressing a direct judgement of English colonization, instead using the relationship between Prospero and Caliban to explore the complex social and filial dynamics that arise from imperial pursuits.

How does Miranda change over the course of the play?

One quality of Miranda's that is stressed throughout the play is her purity and innocence. Both Prospero and Ferdinand appear interested in preserving her virginity, if for different reasons (Ferdinand for assurance that any children they have will be biologically his, and Prospero for continued control over his surroundings). However, as the play develops, Miranda starts to show signs of budding autonomy – specifically sexual autonomy. She all but demands that Ferdinand marry her, and in so doing makes a choice on her own that reflects her growth from a girl to a woman. Prospero's preoccupation with Miranda's continued purity is therefore challenged by Miranda's own expression of love for Ferdinand, showcasing how even Prospero's magic cannot prevent his daughter from maturing.

Why must Prospero relinquish his powers at the end of the play?

At the end of the play, Prospero renounces his magical powers in order to restore his dukedom. However, he does not do so simply to return to power. Instead, Prospero comes to realize that it was his commitment to his magic that led to his usurpation and exile in the first place. When he agrees to renounce his books, he is really agreeing to be a more committed leader and to relinquish false power – his ability to control his surroundings and the experiences of others – for real and meaningful power in the form of political leadership.

Why do many see Prospero as a representative of Shakespeare himself?

Prospero is often compared to the William Shakespeare because of his dedication to his craft – specifically, the craft of creating whole worlds out of nothing, a task that parallels the role of the early modern English dramatist. Shakespeare wrote The Tempest toward the end of his career, and many see Prospero as the manifestation of the Bard's own reckoning with his departure from the theater. Indeed, Prospero's final speech – in which he asks for applause from the audience in order to be set "free" – is frequently understood as Shakespeare's personal farewell to the English stage.

The Tempest Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Tempest is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

why does miranda have such immediate empathy for the men in the ship?

Because of her nature

I'm not sure how you felt. Prospero is simply winding up his plan. I think Prospero has tempered both his anger and his revenge. I think he is ready to grant mercy to those that have wronged him. He is also ready to give Ariel her promised...

significance of the storm in the Opening act

In The Tempest, the storm at sea serves as the plot's inciting event. The storm washes Prospero 's enemies onto the island's shore, placing them at his mercy. In this sense the tempest or storm represents a disturbance of the social order. It also...

Study Guide for The Tempest

The Tempest study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Tempest
• The Tempest Summary
• The Tempest Video
• Character List

Essays for The Tempest

The Tempest literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Tempest.

• Similarities Between Principal Characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest
• A Post-Colonial Interpretation of The Tempest
• The Fierce and Mighty Sea; The Dramatic Function of the Powerful and Ever Present Ocean in The Tempest
• The Sensitive Beast: Shakespeare's Presentation of Caliban
• Love and Magic Intertwined

Lesson Plan for The Tempest

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Tempest
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Tempest Bibliography

E-Text of The Tempest

The Tempest E-Text contains the full text of The Tempest

• List of Characters

Wikipedia Entries for The Tempest

• Introduction
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Essays on The Tempest

The Tempest is a timeless play by William Shakespeare that offers a myriad of themes, characters, and plot points to explore. Choosing the right essay topic is crucial to producing a compelling and insightful piece of writing. In this guide, we will discuss the importance of selecting the right topic, offer advice on how to choose one, and provide a detailed list of recommended essay topics.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Topic

Choosing the right topic is crucial when writing an essay about The Tempest. The play is rich in symbolism, themes, and complex characters, offering a wide range of potential topics to explore. A well-chosen topic can make the writing process more enjoyable and help you produce a more engaging and insightful essay.

When selecting a topic for your essay on The Tempest, consider your interests, the themes you find most compelling, and the aspects of the play you want to explore in-depth. It's also important to consider the requirements of the assignment and the audience for your essay. Aim to choose a topic that allows you to demonstrate your understanding of the play and offers ample opportunities for analysis and interpretation.

30+ The Tempest Essay Topics for Your Academic Writing

Are you looking for an interesting and unique topic for your essay on The Tempest? Look no further! We have compiled a list of over 30 essay topics that cover a wide range of themes and elements from this classic play by William Shakespeare.

Themes and Motifs

• The use of magic and supernatural elements in The Tempest
• The theme of power and control in the play
• Colonialism and imperialism in The Tempest
• The concept of freedom and servitude in the play
• The role of forgiveness and reconciliation in the play
• Familial relationships and the theme of forgiveness
• Nature versus nurture in the character of Caliban
• The theme of colonization and imperialism

Characters Analysis

• An analysis of Prospero's character and his role as a father and a ruler
• The portrayal of Ariel as a symbol of freedom and captivity
• Caliban as a representation of the oppressed and the other
• The role of Miranda in the play and her relationships with other characters
• Exploring the character development of Ferdinand throughout the play
• The role of Caliban as a symbol of colonialism
• The portrayal of power and authority through the character of Alonso

Symbolism and Imagery

• An exploration of the significance of the tempest in the play
• The use of music and sound as a symbol in The Tempest
• The significance of the island as a setting in the play
• The portrayal of the masque as a reflection of the play's themes
• An analysis of the use of clothing and disguise in the play
• The use of symbolism in The Tempest
• The significance of the storm in the opening scene
• Shakespeare's use of language and imagery in the play
• The role of music and sound in The Tempest
• The use of comedy and humor in the play

Plot and Structure

• An examination of the role of the storm in the opening scene
• The use of the supernatural elements to drive the plot forward
• An analysis of the resolution and the restoration of order in the play
• The role of the subplot involving Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban
• An exploration of the play's use of comedy and tragedy

Comparative Essays

• Comparing The Tempest with other Shakespearean plays
• The Tempest and the theme of revenge in other literary works
• Comparing the portrayal of magic in The Tempest and other works of literature
• The Tempest and its relation to the genre of tragicomedy

With these diverse and thought-provoking essay topics, you are sure to find the perfect inspiration for your academic writing on The Tempest. Whether you're interested in analyzing the play's themes, characters, symbolism, or plot, there are numerous avenues for exploration within the text. By choosing a topic that resonates with you and allows for in-depth analysis, you can produce a compelling and insightful essay that showcases your understanding of Shakespeare's timeless play. Happy writing!

Tempest Revenge Quotes

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Stuff: Power and Magic in The Tempest

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The Power of Love in William Shakespeare’s Play The Tempest

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The Use of Words to Paint: Looking at The Language as an Art in The Tempest

The ulterior theme in the character of miranda from the tempest, analysis of prospero's behavior in the tempest, daughters: the principal driving force in the tempest, the power over "the other": isolation and injustice in literature, elemental powers in shakespeare’s the tempest, shakespeare’s criticism of colonialism in acts 1 and 2 of the tempest, analysis of prospero and ariel relationship in the tempest, "creator" and "creature" monsters in the tempest and frankenstein, the obsessive creativity of prospero in the tempest, the refinement of caliban in the tempest, comic elements in our country's good and the tempest, the combination of love and witchcraft in the tempest, the story of joseph in shakespeare’s the tempest vs. the spirit of revenge in montaigne’s cannibals, significance of the menacing force of the sea in the tempest, the use of stories as a literary device in the tempest and othello, a cinematic perspective of the relationship between art and nature in the tempest, another version of prosperity: undermining the authority of prospero, the influence of caliban and ariel on prospero, the shakespearean dystopia of aldous huxley.

November 1, 1611

• William Shakespeare

Shakespearean Comedy, Tragicomedy

Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Ferdinand, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco, Trinculo, Stephano, Juno, Ceres, Iris, Master, Mariners, Boatswain, Nymphs, Reapers

c.1611 by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s tragicomedy is about a major act of betrayal, ill treatment, the development of magic arts and a plot of revenge.

Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Ferdinand, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco, Trinculo, Stephano, Juno, Ceres

The play is set on a remote island and Prospero's home is near the shore. The island is inhabited by spirits, lead by Ariel, who have magical powers.

Prospero uses magic to conjure a storm and torment the survivors of a shipwreck, including the King of Naples and Prospero’s treacherous brother, Antonio. The King’s young son Ferdinand, thought to be dead, falls in love with Prospero’s daughter Miranda. Their celebrations are cut short when Prospero confronts his brother and reveals his identity as the usurped Duke of Milan. The families are reunited and all conflict is resolved. Prospero grants Ariel his freedom and prepares to leave the island.

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” “What's past is prologue.”

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Understanding the Key Provisions and Impact of Article 5 of the Constitution

This essay about Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution explains the structured yet flexible process for amending the Constitution, highlighting its role in maintaining the document’s relevance and stability over more than two centuries. It covers the two methods for proposing and ratifying amendments, their impact on American governance, and significant amendments that have shaped society and law, emphasizing the balance between federal and state powers.

How it works

Article 5 assures two courses of initial letter for suggestion corrections and two courses for ratification they, provides both applicable, so and stability in constitutional administration.

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Understanding the Key Provisions and Impact of Article 5 of the Constitution . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/understanding-the-key-provisions-and-impact-of-article-5-of-the-constitution/ [Accessed: 28-Jun-2024]

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Books | Remembering Don De Grazia, a nurturing force on…

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Books | remembering don de grazia, a nurturing force on the literary scene.

He had dropped out of Warren Township High in Gurnee; lived for a time near Rogers Park and worked construction; joined the National Guard and spent 18 months at basic training at what was then Fort Benning, Georgia; got his GED and sampled a few colleges before landing as a fiction writing major at Columbia College; worked at Metro as a bouncer and security guard.

They remembered how he got his Master of Fine Arts degree and finished his novel “American Skin” and went about the arduous, years-long business of getting it published and watched it earn high praise and attract interest from the movie business; worked and became great friends with Irvine Welsh, the prolific Scottish author, with whom he collaborated on a play; orchestrated all manner of public reading events across town; met and married a writer/actress named Siera Cerny. Seventeen months ago, they had a baby girl they named Daisy Ella.

There was so much to a life cut so short. Later some of his friends shared more.

Joe Shanahan , owner of Metro/Smart Bar and Gman Tavern: “We have lost another Chicago gem. … Don was a co-conspiring cultural troublemaker that helped mix his and others literary work and music as part of Columbia College curriculum in and out of the classroom. As part of Story Week at Metro, we collaborated on many projects. My wife, Jennifer, introduced me to him. He was her classmate of hers at Columbia. We became fast friends over our love of music/books and he was hired to work at Metro. He told me from his invisible vantage point and his exposure to the punk/metal scene of that era helped in his writing of ‘American Skin.’”

Bill Hillman , author of “Mozos: A Decade Running With the Bulls of Spain” and other books, and professor at East-West University in downtown Chicago: “Don was the great mentor of my life. He brought me to Nichiren Buddhism which I practice daily. He was a fiercely loyal friend when violence sparked up. His classes improved my writing and he inspired me to be a professor. I wouldn’t be an author and professor without him. I will continue to teach ‘American Skin’ for the rest of my career because the characters challenge young people to think about identity, philosophy, and what it means to be American in a uniquely Chicago way. It’s a classic. So was he.”

Randy Albers , professor and Chair Emeritus of Fiction Writing at Columbia College: “I had the great privilege of being Don’s first fiction teacher … and of being the chair of his department after he moved through our writing program and became a much-beloved faculty member. … He could write the grittiest, most hard-assed street stories, but at their heart, they were incredibly humane tales of people trying to make their way through a challenging, often threatening world. … He was honest, reflective, a writer’s writer, but he loved the real world in all its panoply of experiences as much as the fictional. He fought passionately for what he believed in and sought deep connection.”

Don Evans , founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame: “Don spoke with great respect and admiration for so many young artists. He freely contributed his talents to countless upstart journals, live lit initiatives like Windy City Story Slam and other creative projects. He was an instrumental part of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He also started a bunch of his own enterprises such as the incredible literary series like Ex Libris at Soho House and Come Home Chicago. He was driven to explore and celebrate great literature — especially Chicago literature — and give other writers a platform.

Toya Wolfe , author of the prize-winning novel “Last Summer on State Street” and a former student of De Grazia: “I wish I had more eloquent words. He was a champion of me and my work. He took me from a baby writer to a professional.”

Sheryl Johnston , an entertainment publicist and friend of De Grazia’s since the early 1990s: “We met in a fiction writing class we took and I liked him immediately — he was impossible not to like — and as we worked on various projects over the years and I watched him be supportive and nurturing to, well, everybody. He was also so sweet and so funny.”

There are plenty more, all over the internet and at the funeral there were plenty of tears, some hugs, a few smiles. The crowd was peppered with people wearing softball jerseys; De Grazia was the manager and pitcher of the team named (in letters across the uniform front) the Lee Elia Experience, a reference to the former Cubs manager and his famous tirade about fans booing their own team. Most all at the funeral knew that De Grazia died June 13 of a heart attack following a game.

“At least he was doing what he loved,” one person said.

Sadly true but then this was a man who loved almost everything life had to offer.

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Frederick Crews, Withering Critic of Freud’s Legacy, Dies at 91

A literary critic, essayist and author, he was a leading voice among revisionist skeptics who saw Freud as a charlatan and psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience.

By Scott Veale

Frederick Crews, a literary critic and a leading skeptic in the contentious scholarly debate over the achievements and legacy of Sigmund Freud, died on Friday in Oakland, Calif. He was 91.

His wife, Elizabeth Crews, on Monday confirmed the death.

Mr. Crews, a professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, was the author of more than a dozen books. Most recently, he wrote “Freud: The Making of an Illusion,” a deeply researched evisceration of Freud’s reputation and therapeutic insights that drew wide critical attention when it came out in 2017.

He was a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books, where his essays and reviews explored the works Melville, Twain and Flannery O’Connor, among other authors. He also examined broader subjects like recovered memory therapy, the Rorschach test, alien abduction cases and, particularly, psychoanalysis, which he considered a pseudoscience, as well as the scourge of what he called Freudolatry.

As a young professor at Berkeley, Mr. Crews made a splash in 1963 with “The Pooh Perplex,” a best-selling collection of satirical essays lampooning popular schools of literary criticism of the time; they carried titles like “A Bourgeois Writer’s Proletarian Fables” and “A.A. Milne’s Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex.”

Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Gerald Gardner called it a “virtuoso performance” and “a withering attack on the pretensions and excesses of academic criticism.” (In 2001, Professor Crews published “Postmodern Pooh,” a fresh takedown of lit-crit theories.)

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