I recently watched a recording of The Tempest. It was one of the most beautiful plays I have ever seen, and it might have to top Hamlet as my favorite Shakespeare. I don’t know how I have never gotten around to reading or watching it before now, but I want to eat this play, I want to digest it, I want it to become a part of me.
There’s one bit I want to discuss: The introduction of Caliban seems, to me, to hold the whole pattern of the story, which is, in a sense, a story of story. Caliban tells his story, and you begin to think Prospero quite wicked until Prospero explains his reasons. I suppose, the same thing happens earlier when Prospero consols his daughter. She sees the storm and thinks the story one thing until Prospero can quieten her enough to get his story out.
The whole play, in a way, is something of that inversion, over and over again, and even to the last, in some sense, the overturning of the whole plan of revenge into a systematic plan of Forgiveness. I shall want on my tombstone some apt quote from this. I must memorize Prospero’s closing prayer. I am enamored of this play.
Tale Told 