The Tempest / The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.]

A displaced ruler who commands magic engineers a storm that strands his enemies on the isolated island where he lives with his daughter. He employs the airy spirit Ariel and contends with the earthy native Caliban while the young woman encounters a shipwrecked prince, and comic and treacherous subplots unfold among the mariners and nobles. The narrative stages elaborate illusions and tests that expose ambition, guilt, and loyalty, forcing confrontations between usurpation and authority. It closes as the magician confronts the moral consequences of his power, moves toward forgiveness, and relinquishes his supernatural art to rejoin ordinary human life.