Tempest essay questions

Pay particular attention to Trinculo’s speech about Caliban in Act II, scene ii, lines 18–38. This is one of the longest speeches in the play. How does it relate to larger thematic issues in the play, such as the difference between “men” and “monsters,” or the relationship between colonizers and the colonized?

1. Discuss one or more of the play’s comic scenes involving Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban. How do these scenes parallel and parody the main action of the play?

The Tempest essay focuses on one of Shakespeare’s plays that saw a great number of interpretations. It deals with both tragic and comic themes and has been hypothesized to be a play through which Shakespeare says farewell to his public but also a potential allegory for European colonizers. The Tempest also attracted feminist interpretations, in ...

Caliban is certainly one of the most complex and contradictory characters in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, at different points embodying the poetic, the absurd, the pathetic, and the savagely evil. For this reason, he is also one of the most interesting and fiercely debated of Shakespeare’s...