Themes in "The Tempest" by "Shakespeare"

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Themes in The Tempest

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep"

--Shakespeare

"Tempest is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare's productions and he has shown in it all the variety of his powers. It is full of grace and grandeur." These are the words said by Hazlitt which perfectly justifies the triage-comedy "The Tempest".

A great deal of this great play writer's biography cannot be written down for it have been lost in the limbo of the past or most of the essential facts were simply never recorded. However, enough information still remains s for us to sketch an outline of his life and work. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, the former being a glover of Stratford-on-Avon, the latter a woman of good Warwickshire stock. William was the eldest son baptized on April 26th 1564.

Of his boyhood nothing much is known, but it is known that he went to the local grammar school, where he received sound training in the classical education of the day. In November 1582, when Shakespeare was eighteen and a half, he married the daughter of a well-to -do yeoman, Anne Hathaway of Shottey, and their first child Susanna was born in May 1583.

The Tempest can be dated with some precision, since there is a record of a performance of it at court on November 1, 1611, and since it borrows some details from accounts of the travels and adventures of Sir George Somers in Bermuda which were not available in England before the fall of 1610.the tempest is the second shortest play of the whole canon in the First Folio edition in 1623 ,and has the fewest scenes. Theatrically ,however, its...