Important Quotes From The Tempest

Quotes From The Tempest That Actually Matter

Most people remember "our little revels are ended" and call it a day. There's more to this play than that. I've been teaching this play for years, and the same students keep pulling the wrong lines when they need to defend an argument. Here's what actually shows up on exams, in papers, and in productions.

The line "we are such stuff as dreams are made on" comes from Act 1, Scene 2. Prospero says it about the magic he just performed, not about human life in general. People misquote this constantly. He's talking to Miranda about the spectacle he put on, and it means the illusion is insubstantial. The full passage runs: "Our revels now are ended. These our actors, / As I foretold you, were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air." You're better off citing the complete thought instead of the fragment. "The insubstantial pageant faded" is part of the same speech. It's easy to lift that one phrase out of context and make it sound like Prospero is meditating on mortality. He's not. He's wrapping up a political performance he staged to force his brother's repentance. The distinction matters when you're writing about power versus art in the play.

Important Quotes From The Tempest That Teachers Actually Look For

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here" comes earlier in Act 1, Scene 2. Prospero tells Miranda this when they watch the shipwreck survivors on the island. It's one of the most quoted lines from the entire canon, and it's almost always used wrong. Prospero isn't saying the island is evil. He's saying the people who arrived look monstrous because of what the storm did to them. Alonso and his court appear as demons only because of the chaos Prospero engineered. The line is about perception, not theology. Caliban's "you taught me language; and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse" from Act 1, Scene 2 is the one students reach for when they want to talk about colonialism. It's a defensible reading, but it's also the most overworked quote in the entire Shakespeare portfolio. If you use it, pair it with something that shows Caliban's relationship to the island itself. Otherwise you're just repeating what every other essay writer has said since the nineteen-eighties. Ariel's "where the great globe itself" speech in Act 4 is where the play gets its most famous imagery about unity and dissolution. It's the anticlosing masque speech, and it's meant to be ephemeral. Prospero interrupts it himself, which is the whole point. The quote about "the thick lips" isn't about race in any straightforward way. It's about political consequence. Ariel's telling Prospero that Alonso is suffering for what he did to Prospero and Miranda. The imagery is deliberately uncomfortable because Prospero is supposed to feel discomfort about how far he's gone.

Prospero's "ye elements" invocation in Act 4, Scene 1 is the most theatrically loaded passage in the play. It's where he calls on the forces of nature to dissolve his masque. "Resolve into a mist and Create again / As petty as an cloud." The technical detail nobody mentions is that this speech was likely revised for the 1623 First Folio. The earlier version in the manuscript was shorter. If you're citing the line about resolution, note which text you're using. Different editions handle the stage directions around this speech differently, and it changes how you read the pacing. "Now my charms are all o'erthrown" is Prospero's renunciation speech. It's Act 5, Scene 1. This is where he breaks his staff and drowns his book. Students treat it like a simple victory speech. It's not. Prospero is admitting that his art has limits and that he can't control everything. The line about "this rough magic I here abjure" is followed by him saying he'll need "a deeper than in prouder dress / Of ceremony" to get what he actually wants. He's not renouncing magic because he's become good. He's renouncing it because it didn't work the way he expected. I ran into a problem last semester with a student who was writing about Prospero's power and kept citing "I've rendered me infinite" as evidence that Prospero sees himself as godlike. The line is actually spoken by Ariel after Prospero promises him freedom. Ariel is the one feeling infinite, not Prospero. The confusion comes from a punctuation difference in different editions. Some put the line as Ariel's, some attribute it ambiguously. Check your edition before you build an argument on it.

Trinculo and Stephano's "these wines be good" exchange in Act 2 is comic relief on the surface, but it's also the moment where the lower-class characters discover alcohol on the island and immediately start planning rebellion. The joke is that they're drunk before they've even met Caliban properly. It's easy to skip this scene when you're working with a short reading list, but it's structurally important. The drunken conspiracy mirrors Prospero's own manipulation. Everyone in this play is getting something to drink or taking something they shouldn't. "O brave new world, that has such people in't" is Miranda's line in Act 5. It's quoted constantly out of context because it sounds hopeful. Miranda is looking at a group of drunken pirates and a cursed native, and she means exactly what she says. The irony isn't subtle. She has no sense of what she's seeing because Prospero controlled her entire world. The line works as dramatic irony for the audience, not as sincere optimism. Pointing that out will get you further in a paper than treating it as a genuine moment of wonder.