The Tempest: Shakespeare And Prospero

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 There can be no doubt that The Tempest contains numerous references
to the theater, and while many of Shakespeare's plays make reference to the
dramatic arts and their analogy to real life (e.g., "all the world's a * stage"),
 it is in this, his last play, that the Bard most explicitly  acknowledges that the
 audience is viewing a show. Thus, in the play's final  scene (Act I, scene i., ll.148ff),
 Prospero tells his prospective son-in-law  Ferdinand that the revels at hand
are almost at an end, that the actors are
 about to retire, and that the "insubstantial pageant" of which he has been
a part has reached its conclusion. It is, in fact, tempting to equate the
 character of Prospero with that of his creator, the playwright
Shakespeare.
 When Prospero sheds his magician's robes in favor of his civilian attire
as  the Duke of Milan, with the benefit of hindsight that this is
Shakespeare's last work and his crowning achievement, we are disposed to associate the
 learned sorcerer with the Bard of Avon. How far we are to take this
 identification, however, is moot.
Prospero of The Tempest, like Shakespeare in his late Romance period, is a
 mature man with a daughter (Shakespeare, in fact, had two daughters, his
 only son dying in childhood) at the height of his intellectual and
creative  powers. Prospero is a polymath, a scholar with a magic book from an entire
 library that so absorbed him that it was, "dukedom large enough" (I, ii.
 l.110). Prospero displays a tinge of regret for having neglected his
worldly office as Duke of Milan in favor of the life of the mind. Similarly, as
 virtually all of Shakespeare's biographers have observed, the Elizabethan
 playwright's knowledge was exceedingly broad, leading many to speculate
that  he pursued a number of vocations before settling into a life in the
theater, and we know from textual correspondences that Shakespeare was broadly read
 and th...