Tempest critical quotes

• Auden

  "Gonzalo makes goodness easy by blinding himself to evil"
• Coleridge

  Ariel is "like a May-blossom kept suspended in the air by the fanning breeze"
• Kott

  "Violence, as the principle on which the world is based, will be shown in cosmic terms"
• Zimbardo

  "The heart of the play is not regeneration through suffering, but the eternal conflict between order and chaos"
• Hazli H

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

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

  "By using Prospero's language, Caliban is remoulded in the image of his master"
• Strehler and Simpson

  The island is "where civilisation, instead of recreating its lost paradise, creates a colony of ancient exploitation"
• Traversi

  Ferdinand and Miranda's relationship is "a symbolic ground for reconciliation"
• D. Lindley

  "Modern habits of mind do not accept, as Shakespeare's society generally did, that the authority of the duke over subject, master over servant, father over child is fundamentally unquestionable"
• D. Lindley

  "The play is often seen as a play about power and control, but perhaps should be regarded as a play about the illusion of freedom"
• Brooks

  The "symmetric structure of events gives the play the multiplicity of a hall of mirrors in which everything reflects and re-reflects everything else"
• Tillyard

  Prospero's decision to save Alonso is "proof of his already achieved regeneration from vengeance to mercy"
• Barton

  "A surprising amount of The Tempest depends on the suppressed and unspoken"
• Vaughan

  "Caliban's rhetoric invests the island with reality"
• Green

  "Prospero takes on an almost sadistic quality"
• Smith

  "Prospero controls the present and the character's pasts"
• McDonald

  "Language seduces the audience into a slate of stylistic suspension, an intuitive zone between sleep and wake"
• Thompson

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

  "Prospero seeks to monopolise the narrative"
• Kahn

  Prospero displays a "superb combination of power and control"
• Grindlay

  Sycorax is "uncannily similar" to Prospero
• Poole

  Antonio and Sebastian "are the real things of darkness"
• Grindlay

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

  "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"
• Yachnin

  "The Tempest is Shakespeare's most metatheatrical play"
• Riches

  "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"
• Palmer

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

  "Miranda is inexperienced but not naive"
• Kermode

  "Prospero is, therefore, the representative of art as Claiban is of nature"
• Said

  "Every empire tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate"
• Loomba

  "Prospero's takeover is both racial plunder and a transfer to patriarchy"
• Palmer

  "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"
• Ogel

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

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

  "Power and knowledge are inseparable"
• Kott

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

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

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

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