Key Quote
“"Now my charms are all o'erthrown, and what strength I have's mine own, which is most faint"”
Prospero · Epilogue
Focus: “faint”
Prospero's epilogue — addressed directly to the audience — strips away all magical power and reveals the vulnerable human beneath, dependent on the audience's mercy for release.
Technique 1 — DIRECT ADDRESS / BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL
In the Epilogue, Prospero speaks directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall (the invisible barrier between stage and audience). This transforms the relationship between performer and spectator: Prospero/Shakespeare is no longer a controlling magician but a supplicant (one who humbly asks for something), requesting applause as an act of mercy. The power dynamic has completely reversed — the audience now holds the power.
The word 'o'erthrown' suggests both 'overturned' and 'defeated' — Prospero's magic has not merely been set aside but defeated by his own choice. This voluntary relinquishment of power distinguishes Prospero from tyrants: he chooses weakness, making his vulnerability an act of moral courage rather than failure.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
Prospero achieves the play's ultimate progression: from absolute power to chosen powerlessness. This is not regression but its opposite — moral growth expressed through surrender. By giving up magic, Prospero acknowledges that true strength lies not in control but in vulnerability (the willingness to be exposed and at risk). His progress is paradoxical: he becomes stronger by becoming weaker.
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Technique 2 — ANALOGY — MAGIC/THEATRE/COLONIALISM
The Epilogue creates a triple analogy (a comparison between things that share common features): Prospero gives up magic, Shakespeare gives up playwriting, the coloniser must give up control. These three renunciations are structurally identical — all involve a powerful figure choosing to relinquish their capacity to manipulate. Shakespeare's retirement from the theatre becomes an argument for the ethical necessity of yielding power.
The adjective 'faint' — meaning both 'weak' and 'barely perceptible' — reduces Prospero to his most human. After commanding spirits, controlling nature, and manipulating everyone on the island, he stands alone, declaring himself 'faint.' This bathos (a sudden descent from the elevated to the mundane) is deliberately anti-climactic: the play does not end with a grand gesture but with a small, honest confession of frailty.
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Context (AO3)
SHAKESPEARE'S RETIREMENT
The Tempest (c. 1611) is widely considered Shakespeare's final solo-authored play. The Epilogue's request for release — 'Let your indulgence set me free' — is read as Shakespeare asking his audience's permission to retire, transforming theatrical convention into personal farewell.
THE MASQUE TRADITION
Jacobean masques were elaborate court entertainments celebrating royal power. Shakespeare's Epilogue inverts the masque tradition: instead of glorifying power, it dramatises its surrender. The play moves from spectacle (Act 4's masque) to simplicity (the Epilogue), rejecting display in favour of humility.
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WOW — VOLUNTARY SERVITUDE & POWER (Foucault / La Boétie)
Étienne de La Boétie's *Discourse on Voluntary Servitude* (1576) asked why people obey tyrants — concluding that power depends on the consent of the governed. Prospero's Epilogue dramatises La Boétie's insight in reverse: the ruler voluntarily surrenders power and asks the governed (audience) for mercy. Foucault would note that Prospero's renunciation does not destroy power but redistributes it — from the stage to the audience. The audience always had the power to leave, to boo, to refuse to engage. Prospero's confession merely makes this power visible. Shakespeare's final insight is that art — like magic, like colonialism — only works because people agree to believe in it. The moment they withdraw their consent, 'charms are all o'erthrown,' and power dissolves into the 'faint' reality of a lone human asking to be set free.
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