The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0453  Monday, 18 February 2002

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From:           Martin Steward <
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Date:           Saturday, 16 Feb 2002 13:05:49 -0000
Subject: 13.0436 Re: Shakespeare's The Tempest
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0436 Re: Shakespeare's The Tempest

Don Bloom is "not at all enamored of the ending of" The Tempest, "and find[s] it difficult to understand by any theory". I'm not sure that this is a "theory", exactly, but I hope it offers a coherent reading of the play's conclusion.

As I have argued in a previous post, Prospero finds out that "only the power of God Himself is experienced as being 'beyond the control' of the ruler's subject-audience, and because the ruler is not God, any attempt to engender allegiance to the ruler-as-God merely results in eschatalogically driven, metaphysical angst sub specie