When the King Alonso of Naples and his entourage sail home for Italy after attending the princess Claribel's wedding in Tunis, Africa, they encounter a violent tempest. After jumping overboard, everyone washes ashore on a strange island inhabited by the magician Prospero, who deliberately conjured the storm. Who is this Prospero and why does he produce the tempest? What is the power that he has over the spirits inhabiting the island, especially concerning the half human, half savage Caliban? A delightful romantic drama with undertones of betrayal and retribution, domination and subjugation, The Tempest remains to this day one of the more popular plays written by Shakespeare. The themes of freedom, friendship, repentance and forgiveness are beautifully interwoven, and by the end of the play, the tempest--both real and figurative--has calmed the most vengeful of avengers and washed away the sins of the most evil of wrongdoers. Known as 'The Bard of Avon', William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, around April of 1564. His father, John Shakespeare, was a successful local businessman and his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a wealthy landowner. In 1582, eighteen-year-old William married an older woman named Anne Hathaway. Soon they had their first daughter, Susanna, who was followed by twins Hamnet and Judith. Sadly, Hamnet died at the age of eleven. Translated into innumerable languages across the globe, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are undoubtedly the most studied works of literature in the English language. He was just as adept at writing comedies as he was tragedies, histories, and poetry. On top of this, he was also an actor. In 1599, he became one of the partners in the new Globe Theatre in London, and a part owner of his own theatre company called The Chamberlain's Men—a group of remarkable actors who were also business partners and close friends of Shakespeare. When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin King James of Scotland, The Chamberlain's Men was renamed The King's Men. Shakespeare died in 1616. Till date, his plays are performed all over the world and have been adapted into movies, comics, cartoons, operas, and musicals. introduction Shakespeare creates in The Tempest a world of the imagination, a place of conflict and ultimately of magical rejuvenation, like the forests of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. The journey to Shakespeare’s island is to a realm of art where everything is controlled by the artist figure. Yet the journey is no escape from reality, for the island shows people what they are, as well as what they ought to be. Even its location juxtaposes the “real” world with an idealized landscape: like Plato’s New Atlantis or Thomas More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s island is to be found both somewhere and nowhere. On the narrative level, it is located in the Mediterranean Sea. Yet there are overtones of the New World, the Western Hemisphere, where Thomas More had situated his island of Utopia. Ariel fetches dew at Prospero’s command from the “Bermudas” (1.2.230). Caliban when prostrate reminds Trinculo of a “dead Indian” (2.2.33) who might be displayed before gullible crowds eager to see such a prodigious creature from across the seas, and Caliban’s god, Setebos, was, according to Richard Eden’s account of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe (in History of Travel, 1577), worshiped by South American natives. An inspiration for Shakespeare’s story (for which no direct literary source is known) may well have been various accounts of the shipwreck in the Bermudas in 1609 of the Sea Venture, which was carrying settlers to the new Virginian colony. Shakespeare borrowed details from Sylvester Jourdain’s A Discovery of the Bermudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of Devils, published in 1610, and from William Strachey’s A True Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption . . . from the Islands of the Bermudas, which Shakespeare must have seen in manuscript since it was not published until after his death. He wrote the play shortly after reading these works, for The Tempest was acted at court in 1611. He may also have known or heard of various accounts of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world in 1519–1522 (including Richard Eden’s shortened English version, as part of his History of Travel, of an Italian narrative by Antonio Pigafetta), Francis Fletcher’s journal of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation in 1577–1580, Richard Rich’s News from Virginia (1610), and still other potential sources of information. Shakespeare’s fascination with the Western Hemisphere gave him, not the actual location of his story, which remains Mediterranean, but a state of mind associated with newness and the unfamiliar. From this strange and unknown place, we gain a radical perspective on the old world of European culture. Miranda sees on the island a “new world” in which humankind appears “brave” (5.1.185), and, although her wonder must be tempered by Prospero’s