SOURCE: Robinson, James E. “Time and The Tempest.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 63, no. 2 (April 1964): 255-67.

In the essay below, Robinson maintains that Shakespeare shows all the characters, but most especially Prospero, struggling against the urgent pressure of time to carry out their schemes within the brief duration of the present moment.

In discussions of The Tempest, Shakespeare's use of the “unity of time” is usually dutifully referred to and then too often dismissed as unimportant or incidental. I propose to show, however, that the time of The Tempest is very much of the nature of The Tempest. Derek Traversi has pointed out that a time theme is prominent in Shakespeare's last plays: referring to Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, he explains that the passage of time accentuates the problems of maturity and in that way is involved in “the theme of ‘nature’ and its...