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Is Prospero Just? Platonic Virtue In William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Anthony Jannotta

Undergraduate Review

The Tempest is often regarded, and rightly so, as Shakespeare’s last great play. Many scholars argue that Prospero is an analogue for Shakespeare himself, noting the similarities between Prospero’s illusory magic and Shakespeare’s poetic genius. The themes of imagination, illusion, and, indeed, theatre itself play an integral role. The line that is perhaps most often cited as evidence for this argument is Prospero’s speech directly after he breaks up the wedding masque in which he refers to “the great globe itself” (IV.i.153). There is a danger, however, in appealing to the author’s biography or treating the biography as paramount, namely …