The_Tempest__Shakespeare_And_Prospero

The Tempest: Shakespeare And Prospero  There can be no doubt that The Tempest contains numerous references to the theater, and while many of Shakespeare's plays make reference to the dramatic arts and their analogy to real life (e.g., "all the world's a * stage"),  it is in this, his last play, that the Bard most explicitly  acknowledges that the  audience is viewing a show. Thus, in the play's final  scene (Act I, scene i., ll.148ff),  Prospero tells his prospective son-in-law  Ferdinand that the revels at hand are almost at an end, that the actors are  about to retire, and that the "insubstantial pageant" of which he has been a part has reached its conclusion. It is, in fact, tempting to equate the  character of Prospero with that of his creator, the playwright Shakespeare.  When Prospero sheds his magician's robes in favor of his civilian attire as  the Duke of Milan, with the benefit of hindsight that this is Shakespeare's last work and his crowning achievement, we are disposed to associate the  learned sorcerer with the Bard of Avon. How far we are to take this  identification, however, is moot. Prospero of The Tempest, like Shakespeare in his late Romance period, is a  mature man with a daughter (Shakespeare, in fact, had two daughters, his  only son dying in childhood) at the prospero, shakespeare, play, miranda, time, theater, now, life, ariel, start, stage, shakespeare's, period, performance, part, own, milan, island, iii, ferdinand, fact, elizabethan, creator, been, of, very, tempest, speculate, says, same, role, remaining, prospero's, pageant, need