SparkNotes - Tempest

Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 15581603) and James I (ruled 16031625), and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeares company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of Kings Men.

Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeares death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless. Shakespeares works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeares life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeares personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact and from Shakespeares modest education that Shakespeares plays were actually written by someone else Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidatesbut support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars. In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name.

The legacy of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeares plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and culture ever after. The Tempest probably was written in 16101611, and was first performed at Court by the Kings Men in the fall of 1611. It was performed again in the winter of 16121613 during the festivities in celebration of the marriage of King Jamess daughter Elizabeth. The Tempest is most likely the last play written entirely by Shakespeare, and it is remarkable for being one of only two plays by Shakespeare (the other being Loves Labors Lost) whose plot is entirely original. The play does, however, draw on travel literature of its timemost notably the accounts of a tempest off the Bermudas that separated and nearly wrecked a fleet of colonial ships sailing from Plymouth to Virginia.

The English colonial project seems to be on Shakespeares mind throughout The Tempest, as almost every character, from the lord Gonzalo to the drunk Stephano, ponders how he would rule the island on which the play is set if he were its king. Shakespeare seems also to have drawn on Montaignes essay Of the Cannibals, which was translated into English in 1603. The name of Prosperos servant-monster, Caliban, seems to be an anagram or derivative of Cannibal. The extraordinary flexibility of Shakespeares stage is given particular prominence in