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The Tempest

Themes and motifs

• The theatre
• Magic
• Nature vs. Nurture
• Love
• Power
• Reconciliation
• God and humanity
• Colonialism
• The storm
• Masque

Interpretation and criticism

Modern criticism of The Tempest tends to be grouped under political, postcolonial, and feminist approaches.

• Genre
• Dramatic structure
• Postcolonialist
• Feminist
  • Thompson, Ann (1999)
• Political
  • Power and social structure
  • In The Tempest, power is repeatedly contested
    • Boatswain vs. King and Courtiers
    • Antonio vs. Prospero
    • Ariel and Caliban vs. Prospero
    • Stephano vs. Prospero
    • Miranda (Ferdinand) vs. Propsero
  • Political critics have tended to focus on Prospero's usurpation by Antonio.
  • Greenblatt, Stephen (1988)
  • Kott, Jan (1965) Shakespeare Our Contemporary
• Performance
  • Covered in Afterlife section
• Psychoanalytic
  • The ambivalences and ambiguities have prompted much Psychoanalytic criticism
  • anxiety about absent mothers vs. sibling rivalry
  • Sexual anxiety
    • Prospero's incestous lust for Miranda
    • Prospero using Miranda as sexual bait to get an excuse to enslave Caliban
    • The sicklemen in the masque represent castration
  • Prospero imposes his memory of past events on Ariel and Caliban
  • Wish fulfilment: the play ends with Prospero not getting what he wants, sexually and socially alone
  • Milan as mother that Antonio usurps
  • Cannot be proved or disproved, highly speculative
  • Some critics discuss it as a psychiatric case history
  • Nevo, Ruth
• Postmodern