The Tempest : Playwright as Tyrant

In The Tempest, the final play that he wrote on his own, Shakespeare tests the fantasy of self-completeness a different way than in The Winter’s Tale -- by seeming to make that dream come true. Duke Prospero has been overthrown and cast unto a desert island, yet his ostensibly tragic fall has enabled him to transform himself into a magician who exercises absolute power over his new realm and his handful of subjects there, including his daughter Miranda, the spirit Ariel, and the “beast” Caliban. But if nothing happens on his island except what Prospero wants to happen, then everything that does happen reflects his desires, exposing his defects as much as his strengths. Having realized his fantasies more fully than any other Shakespearean character, Prospero now wants to become something better than those fantasies show him to be. Discovering through his magic that the enemies who overthrew him will be sailing past his island, Prospero shipwrecks them, not so much to avenge himself on them as to surrender his isolation to them for Miranda’s sake, so that she can escape the dual threats of Caliban and Prospero’s own tyrannical control.