The Tempest in the context of "Prospero"

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⭐ Core Definition: The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that he wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest (bad storm), the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where Prospero, a magician, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants: Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes, including magic, betrayal, revenge, forgiveness and family. In Act IV, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-a-play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language.

Although The Tempest is listed in the First Folio as the first of Shakespeare's comedies, it deals with both tragic and comic themes, and modern criticism has created the category of late romance for this and others of Shakespeare's later plays. The Tempest has been widely interpreted in later centuries. Its central character Prospero has been identified with Shakespeare, with Prospero's renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage. It has also been seen as an allegory of Europeans colonizing foreign lands.

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👉 The Tempest in the context of Prospero

Prospero (/ˈprɒspər/ PROS-pər-o) is a fictional character and the protagonist of William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

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The Tempest in the context of Sycorax

Sycorax /ˈsɪkəræks/ is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1611). She is a vicious and powerful witch and the mother of Caliban, one of the few native inhabitants of the island on which Prospero, the hero of the play, is stranded.

According to the history provided by the play, Sycorax, while pregnant with Caliban, was banished from her home in Algiers to the island on which the play takes place. Memories of Sycorax, who dies several years before the main action of the play begins, define several of the relationships in the play. Relying on his filial connection to Sycorax, Caliban claims ownership of the island. Prospero constantly reminds Ariel of Sycorax's cruel treatment to maintain the sprite's service.

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The Tempest in the context of Sea Venture

Sea Venture was a seventeenth-century English sailing ship, part of the Third Supply mission flotilla to the Jamestown Colony in 1609. She was the 300 ton flagship of the London Company. During the voyage to Virginia, Sea Venture encountered a tropical storm and was wrecked, with her crew and passengers landing on the uninhabited Bermuda. Sea Venture's wreck is widely thought to have been the inspiration for William Shakespeare's 1611 play The Tempest.

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The Tempest in the context of Shakespeare's late romances

The late romances, often simply called the romances, are a grouping of William Shakespeare's last plays, comprising Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest. The Two Noble Kinsmen, of which Shakespeare was co-author, is sometimes also included in the grouping. The term "romances" was first used for these late works in Edward Dowden's Shakspere (1877). Later writers have generally been content to adopt Dowden's term.

Shakespeare's plays cannot be precisely dated, but it is generally agreed that these comedies followed a series of tragedies including Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare wrote tragedies because their productions were financially successful, but he returned to comedy towards the end of his career, mixing it with tragic and mystical elements. Shakespeare's late romances were also influenced by the development of tragicomedy and the extreme elaboration of the courtly masque as staged by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. The subjects and style of these plays were also influenced by the preference of the monarch, by Shakespeare's ageing company and by their more upper class audiences.

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The Tempest in the context of Caliban (character)

Caliban (/ˈkælɪbæn/ KAL-i-ban), the subhuman son of the sea witch Sycorax, is an important character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

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The Tempest in the context of Imaginary friend

Imaginary friends (also known as pretend friends, invisible friends or made-up friends) are a psychological and a social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than physical reality.

Although they may seem real to their creators, children usually understand that their imaginary friends are not real.

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The Tempest in the context of Aimé Césaire

Aimé Fernand David Césaire (/sˈzɛər/; French: [ɛme fɛʁnɑ̃ david sezɛʁ]; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word négritude in French. He founded the Parti progressiste martiniquais in 1958, and served in the French National Assembly from 1945 to 1993 and as President of the Regional Council of Martinique from 1983 to 1988. He was also the Mayor of Fort-de-France for 56 years, from 1945 to 2001.

His works include the book-length poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), Une Tempête, a response to William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, and Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism), an essay describing the strife between the colonizers and the colonized. Césaire's works have been translated into many languages.

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