The audience is introduced to the remaining characters and provided with all the background information necessary to understand their actions and motivations.

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  • The audience is introduced to the remaining characters and provided with all the background information necessary to understand their actions and motivations.

This very long scene is a means of explaining the background of the play to the audience.  It takes lace on the island on which the ship has been wrecked.  The first inhabitants we meet are Miranda and her father, Prospero. Miranda has seen the shipwreck and asks her father to help the victims, especially if he is responsible for causing the storm.  Prospero asures her that no harm has come to anyone and that he has used his magical powers entirely for her sake.  Then he tells her their history.

Twelve years earlier, when Miranda was not quite three years old, he, Prospero, was the due of Milan.  He had always loved books and had gradually devoted more and more of his time to study, leaving the task of ruling Milan to his brother, Antonio.  Slowly but surely, Antonio assumed increased powers until he was in full command of Milan in all but name. In a bid to take over the dukedom completely, Antonio appealed to King Alonso of Naples. He offered to pay Alonso an annual tribute in return for the kind’s help in dislodging Prospero. Alonso agreed and sent an army to help Antonio to depose Prospero.

Miranda asks why she and her father were not killed.  Prospero tells her that Antonio and Alonso had refrained from killing them because they were afraid of the reaction of the Milanese people, who had always loved him.  However, the insurgents condemned Prosper and Miranda to be cast adrift in an old, unseaaworthy vessel without said or oar, in the expectation that they would die at sea.  Fortunately, a nobleman called Gonzalo supplied them with food, water, clothing and, most important of all in Prospero’s eyes, his beloved books.  Because of Gonzalo’s help, they had managed to reach their present island, and, as soon as they were established there, Prospero was determined to have the upper hand. At this stage in the narrative, Prospero puts Miranda into a deep sleep so that the spirit Ariel can tell him what has been happening.

Ariel reports that he has obeyed Prospero’s commands to the letter.  He has separated Alonso’s ship from the rest of the fleet, causing them to believe that the king and his party have drowned.  He has frightened the courtiers so that they have abandoned ship.  He ahs seen to it that each one of them is safe although their party has been split up.  In particular, Alonso’s  son, Ferdinand, is alone, as Prospero had instructed, the ship is safe in the harbour and the crew is asleep.

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Ariel asks Prospero for his freedom and Prospero accuses him of ingratitude. Years before Prospero had arrived on the island, a witch called Sycorax had been banished there from Algeria.  While on the island, she had given birth to a son Caliban, and had imprisoned Ariel in a pine tree.  Ariel had been imprisioned in the tree for twelve years, during which time Sycorax had died, and he would have been left in the tree for ever if Prospero had not released him.  Ariel is told that he must continue to obey his master or risk being imprisoned in ...

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