Tempest AO3

Question 1

Joseph Warton

Answer 1

‘of all the plays of Shakespeare, the tempest is the most striking instance of his creative power’

Question 2

ST Coleridge (Caliban)

Answer 2

‘[Caliban is] in some respects a noble being: the poet has raised him far above contempt’

Question 3

ST Coleridge (Ariel)

Answer 3

‘He is a sort of creature of the earth, as Ariel is a creature of the air’

Question 4

ST Coleridge (politics)

Answer 4

‘in this play… are also shown the springs of the vulgar in politics, – of that kind of politics that is in-woven with human nature’

Question 5

William Hazlitt

Answer 5

‘the savage Caliban, half brute, half demon’

Question 6

Edward Dowden (Prospero)

Answer 6

‘His heart is sensitive, he is profoundly touched by the joy of the children, he is deeply moved by the perfidy of his brother… Prospero masters his own sensitiveness, emotional and intellectual’

Question 7

Edward Dowden (theme)

Answer 7

‘forgiveness and freedom: these are the keynotes of the play’

Question 8

EMW Tillyard

Answer 8

‘next to the word nature, ‘the chain of being’ was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century’

Question 9

G Wilson Knight

Answer 9

‘[Miranda and Ferdinand] are representative of beautiful and virtuous youth as drawn in former plays (Marina, Florizel and Perdita)’

Question 10

Frank Kermode’s reading

Answer 10

In Kermode’s reading, Prospero is the ‘artist’ who cultivates the ‘good seed’ that is Miranda and disciplines the ‘born devil’ who is Caliban

Question 11

Roger Poole

Answer 11

‘ironically it is Antonio and Sebastian, those products of height civilisation, whom music cannot touch’

Question 12

Paul Brown

Answer 12

Prospero’s speech exemplifies the cyclical nature of colonialist discourse, its endless need to produce an Other that destabilizes the system, hence requiring the system to impose order (228).

Question 13

William Tydeman (Prospero)

Answer 13

‘By the close, the master story-teller has to acknowledge that there are limitations to his no longer sovereign powers’ ‘the narrator clearly sees himself as more sinned against than sinning… guilt is diverted to Antonio’ ‘Prospero somewhat blandly excuses himself from any taint of weakness’

Question 14

Stephen Siddall

Answer 14

‘He has lived on a boundary between the world of men and spirits… he can never live in the world of the spirit and as a man he is fallible and subject to passions’

Question 15

Peter Reynolds

Answer 15

‘Prospero can distinguish between illusion and reality, and ultimately he opts for the imperfections of the latter’

Question 16

Ann Thompson

Answer 16

‘Women are notable absent from Shakespeare’s Tempest

Question 17

Barry Beck (island)

Answer 17

‘the island represents an enchanted locality where things do not work by the normal rules of time, space and physical action and reaction’

Question 18

Barry Beck (Caliban)

Answer 18

‘Caliban is the shadow of the island, and of Prospero’s mind’

Question 19

Richard Adams

Answer 19

‘order and authority are not fixed absolutely, but shift with time and place’ ‘in the course of the Tempest, then, we see a widespread upsetting of social order and organisation’

Question 20

Diana Devlin

Answer 20

[Caliban’s ‘be not afeared speech] ‘has the lightness and eagerness of a young lover’

Question 21

Harold Bloom

Answer 21

‘The Tempest is neither a discourse on colonialism nor a mystical testament. It is a wildly experimental state comedy, prompted ultimately, I suspect, by Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus’

Question 22

Virginia Mason Vaughn

Answer 22

‘Gonzalo’s assertion that all the Neapolitans have ‘found’ themselves during their afternoon on this enchanted island is overly optimistic, but he correctly judges that most of them were radically changed by the experience’

Question 23

Richard Jacobs

Answer 23

‘for all his stage-management [Prospero’s] the victim of one crucial circumstance above all: the fact that his daughter has grown up… the play explores most subtly in the area of father and daughter’

Question 24

Roy Booth (clothing)

Answer 24

[of Caliban’s gabardine]’ David Lindley… more imaginatively compares it with a Jewish gabardine worn by Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, suggesting that Shakespeare uses such a cloak as an ‘outsider garment’’

Question 25

Malcolm Hebron

Answer 25

‘In alchemy, a ‘tempest’ is the term for shifting out impurities from a mixture’

Question 26

Neil Bowen

Answer 26

‘the end of the play does not provide a simple return to social order; the rainbow Prospero produces for the masque is an illusion only’