Author(s): S. Bavithra

Abstract: Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a play which has delighted many audiences and many readers. As Hazlitt said, “it is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare’s productions,” and he had shown in it all the variety of his powers. It is full of grace and grandeur. Though there is unanimity about the play’s quality, there is the greatest diversity of opinion as to what the play means. Here we can find Campbell, in 1838, suggesting that Prospero is Shakespeare himself and his magic is his dramatic art. We can learn from Lowell, in that Prospero represents imagination, Ariel is fancy, and Caliban stands for brute Understanding. Prospero is the master-spirit that has brooded invisible and moved in deep waters of the greater tragedies, and now come to shore on a lost net of the main to sun himself; lying by his wand and drowning his book “deeper than did ever plummet sound”. The play abides, after three hundred years dream of reconciliation; forcing tears, not by “pity and fear” but by sheer beauty; with a royal sense of the world, how it passes away, with a catch at the heart surmising hope in what is to come.

Keywords: William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Prospero and Magic, Imagination and Fancy, Reconciliation and Beauty

Article Info: Received: 07 Jul 2026; Received in revised form: 02 Aug 2026; Accepted: 05 Aug 2026; Available online: 11 Aug 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.114.43