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Shakespeare's writing, particularly in the time after the sonnets, shows a constant preoccupation with the problems of individuation. The problem of how man may be able to renounce the child's longing for parental love and shelter, and to live a life of his own without such demands is the constantly recurring theme. “The Tempest” as well deals with this question and represents the final answer which Shakespeare arrived at.
To submit “The Tempest” to a psychological interpretation and analysis is tempting for the reason that it is in all essential parts the product of Shakespeare's own imagination; no “sources” of any importance are known. Thus it promises a direct insight into Shakespeare's creative imagination and the underlying motives and problems. In addition it is a play which challenges our wits by many obscure and irrational passages. We sense meaning in them without being able to grasp it easily. It may be as well to start our analysis with the most glaring of these puzzles.
What strikes one as most puzzling on reading “The Tempest” is that Shakespeare at the height of his mastery as a playwright, suddenly seems to have violated all the basic rules of dramatic art. In a play one ought to see what happens as action on the stage and the enfolding of the action ought to awake the spectator's sympathetic interest. He should be able to fear and rejoice with the persons on the stage and to share their emotions. In “The Tempest” an unusually large part of the story is only recounted, not acted out on the stage. The whole story of how Prospero was deprived of his dukedom by his treacherous brother; how he and his daughter come to the island on which the play is set; and how he managed to live there during the last twelve years, we only hear narrated. and the same is true of the story of Ariel's enslavement by the witch Sicorax, and