Shakespeare's Life and Times introduces you to the world Shakespeare lived and worked in. This section of the Internet Shakespeare Editions is like a shelf of books, each of which is listed in the navigational bar beneath the page header. Each book, in turn, is divided into chapters dealing with related topics.

William Shakespeare Shakespeare is renowned as the English playwright and poet whose body of works is considered the greatest in history of English literature.

A storm strikes a ship carrying Alonso, Ferdinand, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Stephano, and Trinculo, who are on their way to Italy after coming from the wedding of Alonso’s daughter, Claribel, to the prince of Tunis in Africa. The royal party and the other mariners, with the exception of the unflappable Boatswain, begin to fear for their lives. Lightning cracks, and the mariners cry that the ship has been hit. Everyone prepares to sink.

The play begins with a scene of upheaval. The courtiers are bound for a place where nothing is as it seems, and big changes await them. In this scene, they get their first taste of powerlessness. The wildness of nature (in reality a spell worked by Prospero) has turned the tables on them, so that someone who would normally be their subject, the Boatswain, now gives them orders.

Give Big Billy Shakespeare a standing ovation: The Tempest is his swan song. It's hard to think of Shakespeare as being "over" when he’s considered to be the best playwright in English (daaang)—this guy's plays still transcend fashion or style or faddishness. It's as ridiculous to say that Shakespeare's plays are over as it is to say that, oh, picnics or roller coasters or stargazing is over. Some things are immortal.

Theme is a pervasive idea, belief, or point of view presented in a literary work. Themes in The Tempest, a masterpiece of William Shakespeare, present the issue of freedom and confinement, including themes of betrayal, compassion, and love. Some of the major themes in The Tempest have been analyzed below.

This resource is designed as a reference guide for teachers. We have listed the major
themes and motifs within The Tempest and provided examples of scenes where you can
study them.

The play has been placed throughout the ages among comedies or more recently in the section of tragi-comedies too but revenge, even if it ends differently, is a thematic concern in the play.

This statement discusses how discovery can occur: suddenly and surprisingly, or from a process. Additionally, it presents some potential motivations for this: curiosity – a desire to find something out; necessity – a need to understand or find something; and wonder – an emotional response to discovery that compels individuals to further discoveries.

Many commentators agree in the belief that The Tempest is the last creation of Shakespeare. I will readily believe it. There is in The Tempest the solemn tone of a testament. It might be said that, before his death, the poet, in this epopee of the ideal, had designed a codicil for the Future. . . . The Tempest is the supreme denouement, dreamed by Shakespeare, for the bloody drama of Genesis. It is the expiation of the primordial crime.

The Tempest has been widely popular and diversely controversial since the second decade of the seventeenth century. Although critics have often rebuked the Restoration dramatist John Dryden for mangling Shakespeare’s text (with major help from Sir William Davenant), they appreciate his presumably reliable affirmation that the original Tempest, besides a performance at Whitehall in 1611 and another at court in 1613, flourished at the Blackfriars. Dryden’s testimony, along with the play’s pride of place in the Folio of 1623, establish The Tempest as a favourite from the outset, and its ongoing popularity is well documented.