Tempest Quotes Flashcards

• Greenblatt


  Prospero's banishment is "on an island that serves as a kind of experimental space for testing the ethics of authority."
• Frye


  Prospero "appears to have been a remarkably incompetent ruler of Milan."
• Stone

  (3.3 anti-masque)

  3.3 is an "anti-masque", as well as Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban dressing up in Act 4.
• Wilson

  (dreams speech farewell theatre)

  Prospero's Act 5 "we are such things are dreams are made of" speech is Shakespeare's own "farewell to the theatre".
• 1st November 1611


  Date of first performance
• Bate

  (rights Caliban Ariel free)

  "We have gone quite a long way towards recognising the rights of Caliban. Next, we will need to set Ariel free."
• Wells

  (romance criticism appreciation)

  "The Tempest is a romance containing built-in criticism of romance; not a rejection of it but an appreciation of both its glories and its limitations."
• Sergis

  (Doran Ariel marionette puppeteer)

  Doran's 2017 production meant that as Ariel, "the actor becomes both the marionette and the puppeteer at the same time."
• Serkis

  (Doran magic imagination)

  Doran's 2017 production aims to "match the magic of Shakespeare's imagination."
• Lamb


  "All our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the sense to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient."
• Warton

  (transported rapt dream)

  "We are transported into fairyland; we are rapt in a delicious dream."
• Coleridge

  (Shaekspeare prophet)

  Shakespeare "is rather to be looked on as a prophet than as a poet."
• McDonald

  (action verse)

  "Like the play's action, the verse is often elliptical."
• Wright

  (verse tension conflicts)

  "One fifth of verse lines are short or shared, which shows tension and interpersonal conflicts."
• Kott

  (island laws world)

  "On Prospero's island, the laws of the real world apply."
• Foucoult

  (power knowledge)

  "Power and knowledge are inseperable"
• Grindlay

  (joke male anxieties)

  Prospero's paternity joke "reveals profound male anxieties about the power that comes with a woman's ability to bear child."
• Ogel

  (wife virtuous women)

  Although Prospero's wife "was virtuous, women as a class are not".
• Jacobs

  (Prospero ignorance inability)

  Prospero's "ignorance of the Claribel story is an emblem of that inability" (to keep Miranda his own forever).
• Grindlay

  (Clariben between ownership)

  "Claribel is caught between the two men in her life that claim ownership of her."
• Grindlay

  (Claribel trigger)

  "Claribel is a plot trigger."
• Jacobs

  (loose sweet meat black)

  "I'm struck by the word 'loose', as if Claribel is being seen as a bit of sweet white meat to be tossed to a wild black animal."
• Palmer

  (complicit benevolent enslavement)

  "The play is complicit in the mythology of benevolent colonialism: the benefits that Prospero brings justify his seizure of the island and enslavement of Caliban."
• Coleridge

  (Caliban noble contempt)

  Caliban is "in some respects a noble being; the poet has raised him far above contempt."
• Hazlitt

  (Caliban deformity redeemed)

  Caliban's "deformity, whether of body or mind, is redeemed by the power and truth of the imagination displayed in it."
• Kermode

  (Prospero representative Caliban)

  "Prospero is, therefore, the representative of Art as Caliban is of Nature."
• Kermode

  (Miranda, inexperienced)

  "Miranda is inexperienced but not naive"
• Palmer

  (Romantics, Prospero, Shakespeare)

  "For the Romantics, Prospero came to resemble Shakespeare himself".
• Riches

  (soul, audience judge, admirable)

  "He cares only for his soul, both in this world and the next, which he asks the audience to judge. Such honesty and self-realisation is more admirable than the most awful magic."
• Yachnin

  (metatheatrical)

  "The Tempest is Shakespeare's most metatheatrical play."
• Hebron

  (renounces, guilt, duties)

  "When Prospero renounces his magic art, it is not a sign of guilt, but a necessary step to resuming his worldly duties as a duke."
• Grindlay

  (Sycorax, autonomy control)

  Sycorax takes control of "her female autonomy and independence" in an "attempt to take control over fertility".
• Poole

  (Antonio and Sebastian, darkness)

  Antonio and Sebastian "are the real things of darkness".
• Auden

  (art transform grieves)

  "That art cannot thus transform men grieves Prospero greatly."
• Grindlay

  (Claribel conveniently happy)

  "Claribel's marriage is conveniently and permanently reshaped into a happy-ever-after."
• Grindlay

  (Sycorax similar)

  Sycorax is "uncannily similar" to Prospero.
• Kahn

  (Prospero power control)

  Prospero displays a "superb combination of power and control."
• Vaughan

  (Prospero monopolise narrative)

  "Prospero seeks to monopolise the narrative."
• Thompson

  (Miranda internalised patriarchal)

  Miranda has fully "internalised the patriarchal assumption that a woman's function is to provide a legitimate succession."
• Thompson

  (Miranda raison d'etre)

  For Prospero, Miranda is "his raison d'etre, her marriage and children his promise of immortality."