Analisis de La tempestad - William Shakespeare

Some people say that Shakespeare wrote this play to please, not to teach. What do you think?

It is very possible that Shakespeare wrote the play “The Tempests” (1994) to please an audience with a desire for happy endings. If “The Tempest” is compared with other Shakespeare works such as “Rome and Juliet” (Shakespeare, 1597) the context is very different. I am not an expert on Shakespeare but it is hard to oversee the huge differences when two of his literary works are compared. In “Romeo and Juliet” the end is sad and tragic unlike “the Tempest” which is happy and joyous. I can’t say that I have read many of Shakespeare literary works to compare or to make an appropriate judgment. The reality is that Shakespeare just wanted to have good reviews, especially since this was his last play. I feel Shakespeare wanted to leave a good taste in the mouth of the critics and please the audience and did not follow his contemporary narrative style.

I am very inclined to think that Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest” as a feel good play where everyone could enjoy the tough exterior of a wizard with a heart of gold. In a way “The Tempest” reminds me of the work of Theodor Dr. Seuss Geisel “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” where the antagonist feels the power of love and forgives years of suffering and hardship, not before everyone else around, somehow, feels the same. This type of situations are an attempt of Shakespeare to make the audience feel the same and not to teach them about real life.

In “The Tempest” the love between Miranda and Ferdinand is the catalyst that changes Prospero.  I can almost picture Prospero as the Grinch when his “small heart grew three sizes that day. And then - the true meaning [of love] came though” (Seuss, 1957) and exonerates of guilt everyone around. Prospero quickly forgets the plot of Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban to kill him or the twelve years of exile. For me this is something that only happens in cartoons and not in real life. At the end of the story I see Prospero as a politician preaching morality when defeated by its contender when he says “Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part. The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance. They being penitent, the sole drift of my purpose doth extend not a frown further.” (Shakespeare, 1994, Act 5, Scene 1 Lines 25 to 30).

Although “The Tempests” attempts to teach us about forgiveness and the power of love, I don’t believe the overall play was anything but an experiment to please Shakespeare readers.  

Who or what is most responsible for restoring order [in The Tempest] and justice to the events surrounding the main characters? Explain with plenty of text evidence.

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