Epilogue to The Tempest - anthology.

Epilogue to The Tempest - anthology. The closing lines of English dramatist William Shakespeare's tragicomedy The Tempest (1611?) are often interpreted as Shakespeare's own farewell to the theater. The play is thought to be the last written solely by Shakespeare. It tells the story of Prospero, magician and former duke of Milan, who has been exiled and shipwrecked on an island. The Tempest is a masterful meditation on authorship and the process of creation, and on the ephemeral nature of art and life. As Prospero turns and addresses the audience in the epilogue, the voices of character, actor, and author emerge and intertwine. Epilogue to The Tempest By William Shakespeare PROSPERO: Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's mine own, Which is most faint. Now 'tis true I must be here confined by you Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardoned the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands. Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; And my ending is despair Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so, that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free. [He awaits applause, then] exit Source: The Complete Oxford Shakespeare. Wells, Stanley, Gary Taylor, John Jowett, and William Montgomery, eds. © 1994. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.