Prospero — Is Shakespeare Writing About Himself?

2026-06-02

At the end of The Tempest, Prospero breaks his magic staff and drowns his book of spells. Then he steps forward and delivers a speech directly to the audience, asking them to release him with their applause. A handful of his characters speak epilogues; none asks so plainly to be set free. No other ending in the canon feels quite so much like a goodbye.

The Tempest was written in 1610-11 and first performed at court on 1 November 1611. It is the first play in the First Folio of 1623, placed at the head of the Comedies. It is Shakespeare's last play written entirely on his own. He co-wrote Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher afterward. The Tempest is the last thing he authored alone, and scholars have been reading it as autobiography ever since.

The Autobiographical Case

Prospero is a writer who has spent years on a remote island, controlling everything around him through his art. His art is magic in the play. On stage, magic and theatre look like the same thing: lighting, sound, spectacle, illusion, the power to make audiences see and feel things that are not physically there.

When Prospero says "Our revels now are ended" in Act 4, Scene 1, he describes life itself as a performance. "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep." The speech does not sound like a duke addressing his court. It sounds like a playwright addressing the whole project of the theatre.

Then in Act 5, Scene 1, he gives it all up: "I'll break my staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, / And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I'll drown my book." Those lines, read biographically, describe a writer retiring from writing.

The Problem with That Reading

Prospero is not straightforwardly sympathetic. He enslaved Caliban, the island's original inhabitant, using him for labour while insisting Caliban should be grateful for the education. He controls his daughter Miranda so completely that she has no frame of reference except the one he provides. He uses Ariel as a servant for twelve years, dangling the promise of freedom to ensure obedience.

He is a controlling father, a coloniser, and an employer who exploits people who depend on him. The play does not ask you to ignore any of this. Caliban's description of the island says it plainly: "the isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not." It is the most beautiful description of a home in the play, delivered by the person who lost it.

If Prospero is Shakespeare, Shakespeare built self-criticism into the identification.

Forgiveness and Its Limits

The central drama of The Tempest is Prospero arranging for his enemies (the men who stole his dukedom years before) to be shipwrecked and placed in his power, so he can choose whether to take revenge or forgive them.

He chooses forgiveness. He says so directly in Act 5: "The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance." But he does not choose it easily. His spirit Ariel prompts him, telling Prospero that if he saw these men as they now are, confused and suffering and powerless, his human feelings would be moved. Prospero replies: "Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling / Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, / One of their kind... be kindlier moved than thou art?"

That is a man talking himself into compassion, not someone who arrived there naturally.

The Ambiguous Ending

The play ends with everyone reconciled. Prospero gets his dukedom back. Miranda will marry Ferdinand. Caliban is left on his island. Ariel gets his freedom. It should feel like resolution.

It does not, quite. Caliban does not get back what was taken from him. Prospero's enemies are forgiven but not reformed. The final speech is the Epilogue: Prospero on stage, stripped of his powers, asking the audience to applaud so he can leave:

"As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free."

Whether that is Prospero speaking or Shakespeare speaking, nobody has ever fully decided.

Read more on The Tempest characters page: Prospero and explore the themes of The Tempest.