The island, before Prospero's cell
The longest scene in the play. Prospero finally tells Miranda who she is, summons Ariel, curses Caliban, and watches Ferdinand fall in love.
Summary
Miranda comes in distraught — she has watched the ship break up from the shore and is sure good men have drowned. Prospero, calmly, sets her down on a rock and tells her the storm was his and no one has been harmed. Then, with a long-delayed deliberateness, he tells her who she is. Twelve years ago he was Duke of Milan and one of the most learned men in Europe. He left the running of the dukedom to his brother Antonio. Antonio, with the support of Alonso, King of Naples, seized the dukedom and put Prospero and the three-year-old Miranda into "a rotten carcass of a butt" and pushed them out to sea. Only Gonzalo's secret provisioning of food, water, and Prospero's books kept them alive. Miranda, hearing the story for the first time, falls asleep — Prospero's magic again.
He summons Ariel. Ariel reports on the storm: the ship is hidden in a deep cove, the mariners are asleep below decks under a charm, the passengers are scattered across the island, all unharmed. Ariel reminds Prospero, with practiced edge, that he was promised liberty for this work. Prospero, irritated, reminds him of the cloven pine — Sycorax had trapped him in it for twelve years; Prospero released him and is owed gratitude. Ariel agrees to one more day's service and is sent off to take the shape of a sea-nymph, invisible to all but Prospero.
Caliban is called from his cave, curses Prospero in three lines, and reminds him with bitter clarity that the island was his by inheritance from his mother before Prospero arrived. Prospero answers with the rape attempt. Caliban does not deny it; he wishes it had been completed. He is sent for wood. Then Ariel, invisible, leads Ferdinand on stage on a thread of music — "Come unto these yellow sands" — and Ferdinand, who believes his father drowned, follows the song. He sees Miranda; she sees him. The recognition is total and immediate. Prospero, secretly delighted, plays the suspicious father, accuses Ferdinand of being a spy, and freezes him with magic. The trial that will fill Act 3 has begun.
- Scene 1A ship in a storm. The Boatswain orders the noblemen below — the waves care nothing for a king's name. The mariners come up crying...
- Scene 2The play's longest scene. Prospero finally tells Miranda the story of their exile, summons Ariel, curses Caliban, and stages the...
- Scene 3The shipwrecked court on another beach. Gonzalo sketches his utopian commonwealth; Antonio and Sebastian mock him. Ariel puts most...
- Scene 4Caliban hides under a cloak from a downpour. Trinculo crawls in under the same cloak. Stephano arrives drunk with a barrel of...
- Scene 5Ferdinand carries logs for Prospero; Miranda slips out and offers to do it for him; they refuse each other tenderly and exchange...
- Scene 6Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo plot Prospero's murder — but Caliban warns to seize his books first. Ariel, invisible, sets them...
- Scene 7A magical banquet appears in front of the starving courtiers; as they reach for it, Ariel descends as a harpy, the food vanishes...
- Scene 8Prospero presents Ferdinand and Miranda with a wedding masque of goddesses. Halfway through he remembers Caliban's plot and ends...
- Scene 9Prospero forgives every man who wronged him, breaks his staff, and drowns his book. Ferdinand is restored to Alonso; Miranda gives...
- Scene 10Prospero alone on stage, his magic gone, asking the audience for the breath of their applause. The man who has spent the play...