Power Struggles & Rebellion
Gonzalo’s Utopian Vision (Act 2, Scene 1)
While the shipwrecked nobles explore the island, the elderly counsellor Gonzalo imagines an ideal commonwealth: “No sovereignty … All things in common nature should produce / Without sweat or endeavour.” He envisions a world without hierarchy, property, or labour. This speech draws on Michel de Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals” (1580), which argued that indigenous peoples lived more natural and virtuous lives than Europeans.
Antonio and Sebastian mock Gonzalo mercilessly, but Shakespeare uses the speech to raise serious questions. Is civilisation an improvement on nature, or a corruption of it? The utopian vision is naive — Gonzalo says ‘no sovereignty’ while imagining himself as king of this commonwealth — but it highlights real philosophical debates about power, property, and human nature that connect to the play’s colonial context.
Gonzalo’s utopian speech echoes Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals,” which Shakespeare almost certainly read. The contradiction — imagining a world without sovereignty while placing himself in charge — highlights the impossibility of escaping power structures entirely.
Antonio and Sebastian’s Conspiracy
While others sleep, Antonio tempts Sebastian to murder his brother Alonso, King of Naples, and seize the crown. Antonio’s temptation mirrors his earlier overthrow of Prospero. He argues that the sleeping king is as good as dead: “What a sleep were this / For your advancement!” The plan parallels Macbeth — a sleeping ruler, an ambitious subordinate, a whispered temptation — but here, Ariel intervenes to wake the sleepers before the murder can happen.
Antonio is the play’s most morally unredeemed character. He shows no remorse for overthrowing his brother, and his willingness to repeat the crime suggests that villainy is habitual for him. Significantly, Antonio never answers Prospero’s forgiveness. His only line in the final scene sneers that Caliban is “no doubt marketable,” so Shakespeare leaves it ambiguous whether he is reformed at all.
The Antonio-Sebastian conspiracy echoes the murder of Duncan in Macbeth: a sleeping ruler, an ambitious plotter, and a whispered temptation. But Shakespeare changes the outcome. In Macbeth, the murder succeeds and leads to catastrophe. In The Tempest, Ariel prevents it, and the play moves towards forgiveness rather than revenge. This reflects the shift in Shakespeare’s late romances from tragedy to reconciliation.
Caliban’s Rebellion (Act 2, Scene 2 — Act 3, Scene 2)
Caliban encounters Trinculo and Stephano — a jester and a drunken butler — and immediately offers to serve them: “I’ll show thee every fertile inch o’ th’ island; / And I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.” His willingness to worship Stephano reveals both his desperation and his vulnerability. He trades one master for another, suggesting that the colonised subject cannot easily escape the structures of servitude.
Yet Caliban’s rebellion is also politically motivated. He proposes a plan to kill Prospero: “Why, as I told thee, ’tis a custom with him / I’ th’ afternoon to sleep. There thou mayst brain him.” This is a genuine plot to overthrow the island’s ruler — a third conspiracy alongside Antonio’s usurpation and the Antonio-Sebastian plot. Shakespeare presents political ambition as universal, not limited to the educated or noble.
Three separate groups conspire for power: Antonio overthrew Prospero in the past; Antonio and Sebastian plot against Alonso; Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo plot against Prospero. Shakespeare suggests that the desire for power operates at every level of society.
Caliban’s Poetry
Despite being presented as “savage,” Caliban speaks some of the play’s most beautiful poetry. His famous speech about the island — “Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, / Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not” — reveals a sensitivity and emotional depth that contradicts Prospero’s characterisation of him as a “thing of darkness.” The speech suggests that Caliban has a profound spiritual connection to the island that the European characters lack.
This is one of Shakespeare’s most important juxtapositions. The character dismissed as subhuman produces the most humane and lyrical language in the play. It forces the audience to question who the real “savages” are — Caliban, who loves the island, or the Europeans who scheme for power on it.
Stephano and Trinculo provide comic relief but also serve a structural purpose. Their bumbling conspiracy to kill Prospero mirrors Antonio’s sophisticated political treachery. By showing ambition at every social level — from dukes to drunken servants — Shakespeare suggests that the desire for power is a fundamental human drive, not a product of education or status. Their distraction by Prospero’s “glistering apparel” (shiny clothes) in Act 4 shows how easily they are manipulated by superficial wealth.