Purification as a To-Be: The Tempest and Shakespeare’s World of Imagery

As the greatest playwright and poet in the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare, a pious Christian for a life-long time, laid in the rich symbolical Christian tone and religious implications his devout and personalized beliefs in Christianity bestowed upon his humanism ideal. In his play The Tempest, Shakespeare contains much deep meaning by using tempest as his title. The storm or tempest imagery, which appears in the beginning of the play, is entrenched within the ideological heritage of the Bible. In the Bible, the storm is associated with dichotomous extremes of hideousness and beauty, punishment and salvation. The tempest is not only destructive, but constructive as well. Through the tempest, the characters suffer from the purgatory and then achieved the regeneration and redemption. With the help of music, they reach the final fulfillment. Through the study of the tempest imagery, this essay confirms Shakespeare’s humanist concerns and the theme of love.