Учебное пособие 4 unit I. The renaissance 1485-1649

THE TEMPEST
The Tempest,
perhaps the most successful of the tragicomedies, was
written about 1611 and published for the first time in the 1623 Folio. The
play’s resolution suggests the beneficial effects of the union of wisdom and
power. In this play Prospero is deprived of his dukedom by his brother and
banished to an island. But he defeats his usurping brother by employing
magical powers and furthering a love match between his daughter and the
son of the king of Naples. At the play’s conclusion, Prospero surrenders his
magical powers. In this surrender some critics have seen Shakespeare’s own
relinquishment of the magic of the theater. In spite of the appealing
sentimentality of this idea, The Tempest was not Shakespeare’s last play, and
it is worth remembering that Prospero gives up his magic only to return to the
responsibilities of rule he had previously ignored.
«Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep». (Act I V, scene 1)
The closing lines of English dramatist William Shakespeare’s
tragicomedy The Tempest (1611?) are often interpreted as Shakespeare’s
own farewell to the theater. The play is thought to be the last written solely
by Shakespeare. It tells the story of Prospero, magician and former duke of
Milan, who has been exiled and shipwrecked on an island. The Tempest is a
masterful meditation on authorship and the process of creation, and on the
ephemeral nature of art and life. As Prospero turns and addresses the
audience in the epilogue, the voices of character, actor, and author emerge
and intertwine.
The Tempest is without doubt reflective in tone, especially on the end of
life, in its concerns with remembrance and forgiveness, the loss and
limitation of power, and the need for the reconciliation of the past, present,
and future.

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