The Tempest: Writer's Methods and Techniques (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Shakespeare employs various dramatic devices and literary techniques to convey meaning, and your exam question on The Tempest requires you to analyse the methods that achieve Shakespeare’s overall aims. 

Here we will explore the way Shakespeare uses:

• Form and structure

• Stagecraft 

• Language 

• Imagery and symbolism 

Form and structure

The Tempest is a Shakespearean romantic comedy. This means that Shakespeare has chosen to use comic conventions to deliver themes or convey meaning. It is useful to consider the genre (opens in a new tab) of the play in your analysis, as this is a writer’s method. You should therefore analyse the way the play uses comic conventions or patterns to deliver ideas. 

Shakespearean comedies generally follow a five-part structure:

• In the exposition (opens in a new tab) and rising action (opens in a new tab) of a comedy, the playwright generally uses deception to foreshadow (opens in a new tab) the play’s main conflict:

  • In The Tempest, Shakespeare depicts a magician, Prospero, tricking the king’s men by creating a storm

• Ariel is a similarly magical character who serves to mock, warn, and trick the characters from the very start, and this causes confusion:

  • For example, Ferdinand hears invisible songs before he is trapped, and Gonzalo is given a secret warning from an invisible voice

• Comedies usually introduce a love dilemma that involves silly misunderstandings: 

  • The Tempest’s romantic dilemma involves Miranda, Ferdinand and Prospero

  • Humour is created with dramatic irony (opens in a new tab) as audiences hear Prospero’s asides and soliloquies (opens in a new tab) detailing his plots 

  • The audience are complicit in Prospero’s plans and tricks, such as when he makes Ferdinand suffer to prove he is worthy enough for his daughter Miranda

• As usual for comedies, there is a comic villain, a character who schemes and plans:

  • Caliban is the vengeful villain in The Tempest, a typically abused, mad character who is inevitably unsuccessful in his treacherous plans

• The play ends like most comedies, with a wedding and a peaceful resolution:

  • Ferdinand and Miranda’s wedding is typically surreal, with spirits and songs

  • Prospero forgives Antonio and, with his dukedom returned, sets sail for Milan

Stagecraft 

• The Tempest, like many of Shakespeare’s plays, has a dramatic opening scene to engage the audience and, often, to illustrate how nature can unsettle humans:

  • Stage directions ask for “tempestuous noise” to accompany a ship at sea

• Through the play, bells and songs unsettle and confuse the newcomers to the island:

  • Ferdinand, for instance, says he has been “drawn” by sounds, and attributes supernatural qualities to the island

  • He shows his confusion in the coupled rhetorical question (opens in a new tab), “Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?“

• In a comedy like The Tempest, deception and disguise create humour:

  • Audiences are prompted to laugh at and mock characters, like when an invisible Ariel creates confusion between Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo

  • Characters in disguise create humour: Prospero has a magic cloak that can make him invisible and allows him to play tricks on others

• The Tempest makes use of the comic convention of slapstick humour to present characters who are either misguided or foolish, sometimes both:

  • For example, in the scene in which Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano get drunk, they misunderstand one another, and fight

Language

• Shakespeare’s plays are particular in that they use both dramatic and literary techniques, meaning the characters speak in sophisticated, poetic language: 

  • The characters either speak in blank verse (opens in a new tab), formal verse (opens in a new tab), or prose (opens in a new tab), depending on the scene and the status of the character 

• Verse which does not rhyme but uses the rhythm of iambic pentameter (opens in a new tab) is used to heighten the mood or present a character as intelligent or noble:

  • It is often used in a soliloquy (opens in a new tab), such as Caliban’s in Act 1 Scene 2, to emphasise extreme, imbalanced emotions

  • For example, Caliban bitterly complains, “In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me/The rest o' the island”

• However, a rhyming couplet (opens in a new tab) depicts a sophisticated character concluding key ideas:

  • In Prospero’s soliloquy in the epilogue the lines rhyme. For example: “As you from crimes would pardoned be,/Let your indulgence set me free”

  • Ariel and the other spirits use rhyming couplets in songs, such as “Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell./Hark, now I hear them, ding dong bell”

  • This sounds like a magic spell, and contributes to a surreal mood

• Prose (lines without rhyme or steady rhythm) present less serious scenes, such as when the drunk Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano argue with each other

Imagery and symbolism 

• The play is titled after a storm and is set on an island, so weather is a useful symbol for representing the strange and unsettling human experiences:

  • In the exposition (opens in a new tab), Miranda describes “wild waters” and a sky that seems to “pour down stinking pitch”, using personification (opens in a new tab) to show nature as violent 

  • Caliban uses the weather to insult Prospero and Miranda, calling for “A south-west blow on ye/And blister ye all o’er”

  • Another example is in Act 3 Scene 3, when stage directions ask for “Thunder and lightning” alongside Ariel’s frightening appearance as a mythical “harpy”

  • In Act 5, a reformed Prospero promises “calm seas, auspicious gales” 

• Shakespeare explores the advantages and disadvantages of knowledge and power via the symbolism of books that allow his protagonist (opens in a new tab) to perform magic:

  • Prospero suggests knowledge brings power by comparing his “library” to a “dukedom”

  • The motif (opens in a new tab) of “charms” and “arts” connote to both trickery and learning 

  • In the denouement (opens in a new tab), Shakespeare suggests knowledge (and the power it affords) is a blessing and a curse: Prospero pleads to be free from his “arts”

  • Prospero’s frustration with his knowledge is conveyed with alliteration (opens in a new tab) and imagery: “deeper than did ever plummet sound/I'll drown my book”

• The symbolism of books and the power they bring is illustrated in Caliban’s dialogue:

  • Arguably, because of his experience under Prospero’s harsh rule, he appears certain that knowledge brings autonomy

  • When scheming to kill Prospero he tells Stephano and Trinculo, “Remember first to possess his books”, adding, “without them he’s but a sot” (a drunk fool)

• While knowledge is symbolised by books, deception may be symbolised by chess:

  • In Act 5 Scene 1 Miranda, playing chess with Ferdinand, tells him, “you play me false”

  • This is ironic as the audience knows it was Prospero who deceived her

  • In this scene, Prospero’s power is illustrated by his superior knowledge, alluding perhaps to his cunning manoeuvres, much like a chess game

  • Prospero reunites Ferdinand and Alonso as if he has not been orchestrating events since the shipwreck