Question

How does Shakespeare mingle romance and realism in the Tempest

Answer 1

By 1611, when The Tempest was probably written, Shakespeare's audiences had reason to count on certain basic returns from romantic comedy or tragicomedy. Above all, Sidney and Jonson notwithstanding, they could expect to travel widely—in place, in time, in the realm of imagination generally. The ultimate liberation offered was not from the spiritual oppression of tragedy, not even from the 'real' world, but from the tyranny of logic itself, the narrow bounds of possibility recognized by the rational mind. So much is at least implicit in most recent criticism of Shakespearean romantic drama. What I wish to propose here is that The Tempest takes these principles farther than its predecessors in order to subvert them. The fantastic elements that proclaim its genre prove, in the end, as insubstantial as Prospero's spirit-actors and, like them, vanish into thin air to leave disturbing resonances.