Imagery in The Tempest, by William Shakespeare Essays -- Tempest essay

William Shakespe bes bend The Tempest utilizes extensive imagery which goes beyond merely creating atmosphere and backcloth or emphasizing the major themes of the play. The supernatural plays a considerable berth in the play, thus so does the use of imagery, which is more extensive and slightly different from many other of Shakespeares works. The imagery is used as a mediator of supernatural powers, to emphasize the natural scene of action, and establish the ravish island which becomes vivid through such a wealth of single features and of concrete touches. Therefore throughout the play imagery serves a much big role than creating atmosphere, and is true(a)ly involved in most aspects of the play. In The Tempest, the actual catastrophe is at the beginning, and not at the end or in the middle of the play. And everything derives and develops from this beginning. Thus the images in this first scene that act as links with the previous events have not the function of p reparing what is to come they are rather a reminiscence, or an afterthought, they keep awake our remembrance of what has happened. The air in which an actual event, by means of the imagery, pervades and overcasts the whole play is a good instance of Shakespeares technique, sometimes employed by him in his subsequent plays, of transforming frequently used symbolic imagery into actual incident. The sea-storm lingering in our memory, together with the recollection of wind, water and conflicting elements, thus constitutes one of the main(prenominal) streams of imagery which, from the instant scene onwards, flow through the play. In the second scene, we are still under the impression of what we have witnessed just forward and, accordin... ... The examination of the imagery in The Tempest showed how vividly, sensuously and precisely this nature- foundation was represented. As we have already said, this concreteness and realness conveyed through the imagery, constitutes a counterpart to the world of the supernatural in this play. The supernatural, in being based on starchy reality, gains probability and convincing power. Bibliography Shakespeare, W. The Tempest. Ed. Sutherland, J.R. (1990) G. Wilson Knight, (1932) The Shakespearean Tempest, Oxford Elizabeth Holmes, (1976) Aspects of Elizabethan imaginativeness, Oxford Mikhail M. Morozor, (1989)The Individualization of Shakespeares Characters through Imagery, Shakespeare Survey. Kenneth Goddard, Imagery and Drama (1992) University Journal B. Thompson, (1995) Notes on The Tempest