SOURCE: "The Tempest," in Shakespeare: The Four Romances, W. W. Norton & Company, 1989, pp. 123-157.
In the following essay, Adams provides an account of the sources, structure, themes, and characterization of The Tempest.
Three facts about … [The Tempest]—all true, all of questionable import—frame any discussion of the drama. It was Shakespeare's last complete play, if not the last work he did for the theater; unusually among the dramas, it occupies restricted space and limited time, that is, observes the "unities"; and though there are some sources and many analogues for particular details of scene, action, or verbal expression, no single source provided the armature for [The Tempest]—as the core of [Pericles] derives from the legend of Apollonius, the main component of [Cymbeline] from Decameron II.9, and most of [The Winter's Tale] from Pandosto. All three of these facts can be made to point toward a single conclusion, that Shakespeare worked on [The Tempest] with particular care—hence that if he cherished an allegorical (but more properly a metaphorical) message to be delivered to the world, he probably delivered it here. The play has been so often approached from this point of view that a commentator writing in the late 20th century might well—if only to make the ulterior meaning work for a living—look around for another approach. And in fact there are some indicators that point in quite the contrary direction. The Tempest makes use of an exotic setting, non-human or quasi-human characters, spectacles, and considerable music, all of which divert the eye and ear without necessarily giving the analytic mind much to linger on. The major plot elements, such as a rightful ruler and a usurping brother, a lost princess discovered by her susceptible prince, were long-familiar ingredients of Shakespeare's narrative practice. Not exactly in opposition to the first view of the play, this second set of qualities implies that the poet may have been more concerned to evoke feelings and moods than to express a direct set of correspondences. Metaphor and allegory depend on a second level of reference that can be reached from the first and related to it. Perhaps the deeper meanings being sought in [The Tempest] are phantoms rising from the practice of demanding more certainties than the poet was ever of a mind to deliver. Though applicable to all the romances, this dilemma has attached itself with particular tenacity over the 19th and 20th centuries to The Tempest.
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