11.2.6

Reconciliation & Revenge - Quotes

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Quotations About Reconciliation

Even though the play is full of attempts at revenge, The Tempest is defined by forgiveness and reconciliation.

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Happy outcomes (denouement)

  • 'O, rejoice / Beyond a common joy, and set it down / With gold on lasting pillars: In one voyage / Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis, / And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife / Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom / In a poor isle and all of us ourselves / When no man was his own.'
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Miranda's joyful last words

  • 'How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world / That has such people in’t!'

Quotations About Revenge

Prospero and Caliban seek revenge throughout the play. Each has varying levels of success.

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Prospero's desire for revenge

  • 'I have done nothing but in care of thee, / Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter,'.
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Magic and revenge

  • While Antonio and Sebastian are planning to kill the king:
    • 'Solemn and strange music' fills the stage
    • Ariel enters in the form of a harpy: 'I and my fellows are ministers of fate.'
  • Prospero creates this scene to scare the men about to commit treason.
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'Loved thee'

  • Caliban talks of how he 'loved thee [Prospero]', but the torture he suffered was an act of betrayal and Caliban is angered by this. This leads him to seek revenge, even though he ultimately doesn't succeed in getting revenge.

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