The Tempest — Paper 1 Section A (Shakespeare)

The Tempest (c. 1611) is one of Shakespeare's last plays and a late-Romance: not quite tragedy, not quite comedy. On Edexcel 1ET0/01 Section A you have 20 marks (12 AO1+AO2, 8 AO3) and you respond to a printed extract plus the wider play. AO4 is not assessed here.

Form and structure

A five-act play observing the classical unities (one place — the island; one day — twelve hours; one main action — Prospero's reckoning). The compressed timescale gives the play a ritual, masque-like quality. Acts 4 and 5 turn from revenge plot to forgiveness plot — the structural pivot of the play.

Themes that score

• Power and usurpation — Antonio usurped Prospero from Milan; Prospero rules Caliban's island; Stephano and Trinculo plot to usurp Prospero. Shakespeare presents power as a recurring temptation.
• Colonialism — Prospero arrives on an inhabited island and enslaves Caliban. Caliban's "this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother" makes the colonial reading textual, not imposed.
• Magic and art — Prospero's books and staff are also Shakespeare's. Many critics read Prospero as a self-portrait of the playwright in his last play.
• Forgiveness and reconciliation — "the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance" (Act 5). The play ends with Prospero releasing Ariel and abjuring his magic.
• Father–daughter — Prospero and Miranda. Miranda's "O brave new world" is voiced both with wonder and (the audience knows) naivety.

AO3 context

• 1611 first performance — Britain's colonial moment. The 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture off Bermuda is a likely source.
• Shakespeare's last solo-authored play. Many read the epilogue ("Now my charms are all o'erthrown") as Shakespeare's farewell to the stage.
• Postcolonial readings (Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête, 1969) recover Caliban as a colonised figure resisting Prospero's tongue.

Common pitfalls

• Treating Caliban as "the monster". Engage critically: the play's language gives him some of its most beautiful poetry ("the isle is full of noises").
• Forgetting the masque (Act 4). It is structural, not decorative — Prospero stops it because he remembers Caliban's plot.
• Reading Prospero as wholly heroic. The play is more morally ambiguous than that.