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• 1 2017-03-21T07:45:21-07:00 The Tempest 18 Page introducing unit/module on The Tempest plain 2017-04-07T14:17:51-07:00 What is The Tempest About?
  For a plot synopsis, see the Folger edition's opening page. For a real understanding of the play, you'll need to read Shakespeare's The Tempest using the assigned edition for your course, a specific edition required by your professor (strongly recommended). If your professor has not required a specific or hard-copy edition, you may choose your own from your favorite library or read the digital edition (linked previously) produced by the Folger Shakespeare Library. Avoid relying on internet summaries or modern-language re-tellings. 
  
  With respect to genre,The Tempest is a Romance, a generic category that scholars began using to describe plays in the 19th century. Shakespeare and his contemporaries might not have used this term, and the plays we typically identify within this category––Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale Pericles, Henry VIII, or All is True and The Two Noble Kinsmen––at first glance don't seem to have much in common with one another. But, we can make a few generalizations about how these other plays work that also resonate with The Tempest. First, their plots all center around loss and restoration, but even though they have happy endings and are missing the blood and death we associate with tragedies, they are not necessarily comic in tone. Characters in them typically travel significant distances, and the plots tend to be sprawling both narratively and geographically. Moreover, those travels are often travails--that is, characters in romance must undergo great hardship before they are allowed happiness. Moreover, because of the extreme nature of their hardship, restoration often requires something more significant than mere human agency; typically the conclusions in romances are enabled by divine providence or other supernatural means. Finally, though romances may feature couples in their plots, the focus our playwright is trained on families or dynasties more so than the young lovers. While two people may get together, we are supposed to see what their union means for some larger unit involved, not because we actually like them or care about them as individuals in love. 
  
  The play explores the following larger themes and concepts:
  
  Relationships between Parents and Children (And Other Family Relationships)
  Like most of Shakespeare’s Romances, The Tempest explores the general dynamics of the family more so than the internal or psychological workings of the individual. There are aristocratic as well as royal families in the play, but the familial relationships depicted therein are not always conventional (or “nuclear” families, in our modern sense). Pay attention to the ways in which Shakespeare presents familial bonds and hierarchies within families.
  
  Old and New Worlds: Bermuda, Milan, Tunis, Argier, England
  Characters in The Tempest all find themselves on an island, but Shakespeare tells us that a variety of circumstances occasion each person’s arrival there; the play charts geographical movement from European locales to regions that were considered exotic and strange to Shakespeare’s audiences. Note the ways in which characters talk about the island itself––the “brave new world that has such people in it” (as Miranda says)––and other places.
  
  The Theater of Magic, and the relationship between Power and Spectacle
  Prospero loses his dukedom while spending too much time with his books of magic; he re-claims it through his own use of magic and that of his servants. In many Consider the other characters in the play who have access to supernatural (vs. natural) resources and forces or have other forms of power. To what extent are characters able to exercise political authority without magic? To what extent is there a hierarchy of magical powers? What kinds of magic do we see in the play? Consider, too, the ends for which characters use magic; often, its use produces some kind of spectacle for an audience. How does magic serve the acquisition or loss of governing power and the authority to rule? 
  
  Servitude and Slavery
  The play stages multiple forms of labor relations that range from filial or chivalric service to indentured servitude and slavery. How does The Tempest construct the dynamics of physical and mental/intellectual labor? What kinds of practices does it attempt to naturalize as right, appropriate, and normal? To what extent does the text suggest that master-laborer relations are unjust? To what extent do laborers have rights to liberty, and how much room do they have to negotiate the limits of their service? What are the rewards of service, and how might service differ from servitude?
  
  Monsters, Cannibals, and Dead Indians
  Related to the play’s exploration of servitude and service is the play’s treatment of Caliban. Considered by many scholars to be a dramatization of a colonial encounter with the Americas, The Tempest offers a portrayal of a culture indigenous to the island (or at least pre-dating Prospero’s arrival there). How does Shakespeare suggest Caliban’s basic humanity? How does Shakespeare’s depiction suggest his monstrousness? Is there an argument in the play about whether England is justified in colonial expansion?