The Tempest

Romance

A tempest as a symbol of all romances (Shakespeare’s late fairy-tale dramas) is getting a theatrical meaning in The Tempest. The tempest changes Shakespeare’s romance to a play in a play and a theatre in a theatre. Everything what happens in The Tempest happens in Prospero’s theatre workshop. The real meaning of this fantastic play consists in purely Shakespearean themes, in his connection of illusion and reality, idea and existence, in the theme of eternal metamorphoses. Such themes permeate through all Shakespeare’s dramas, but are endowed with a special meaning in this drama written just before his departure from London to Stratford. As if it were a review play closing his own theatrical life in the summary of themes.