The central preoccupations of almost all his plays are there in The Tempest: the story of brother betraying brother; the corrosive power of envy; the toppling of a legitimate ruler; the dangerous passage from civility to the wilderness; the dream of restoration; the wooing of a beautiful young heiress in ignorance of her social position; the strategy of manipulating people by means of art, especially through the staging of miniature plays-within-plays; the cunning deployment of magical powers; the tension between nature and nurture; the father’s pain at giving his daughter to her suitor; the
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