Top 50 Quotes You Need for Your Essay from The Tempest

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#11: “My high charms work,/And these, mine enemies, are all knit up/…They are now in my power” 

• Characters: Prospero 
• Technique: monosyllabic, aside
• Act III, Scene III

#12: “All hail, great master!…I come/ To answer thy best pleasure, be ‘t to fly,/To swim, to dive into the fire…/…task/Ariel and all his quality”

• Characters: Ariel 
• Technique: flattery, blank verse
• Act I, Scene II

#13: “Your charm so strongly works ‘em,/ That, if you now beheld them, your affections/Would become tender” 

• Characters: Ariel, to Prospero
• Technique: monologue, repetition of “you” 
• Act V, Scene I

#14: Thou shalt be as free/As mountain winds: but then exactly do/All points of my command” 

• Characters: Prospero, to Ariel
• Technique: simile, enjambment
• Act I, Scene II

Quotes from the Tempest about Betrayal from The Tempest

#15: “Full fathom five thy father lies”

• Characters: Ariel
• Technique: fricative, rhyme
• Act I, Scene II

#16: “Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our generation you shall find”

• Characters: Gonzalo
• Technique: blank verse
• Act III, Scene III

#17: “As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer that by his cunning hat cheated me of the island”

• Characters: Caliban
• Technique: prose, synecdoche
• Act III, Scene II

#18: “There be some sports are painful, and their labour/ Delight in them sets off…/The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead/And makes my labours pleasures” 

• Characters: Ferdinand
• Technique: monologue, blank verse
• Act III, Scene I

#19: “My strong imagination sees a crown/Dropping upon thy head”

• Characters: Antonio, to Sebastian
• Technique: allegory, plosives
• Act II, Scene I

#20: “Sweet lord, you play me false”

• Characters: Miranda, to Ferdinand
• Technique: symbolism, allegory for regicide, 
• Act V, Scene I

#21: “Look, he’s winding the watch of his wit, by and by it will strike” 

• Characters: Sebastian
• Technique: repetition, alliteration
• Act II, Scene I

Quotes about Revenge from Prospero from The Tempest

#22: “At this hour/Lie at my mercy all mine enemies”

• Characters: Prospero
• Technique: alliteration
• Act IV, Scene I

#23: “The rarer action is/In virtue than in vengeance” 

• Characters: Prospero
• Technique: alliteration, anaphora, internal rhyme, epiphany
• Act V, Scene 

#24: “Most wicked sir, whom to call a brother/would even infect my mouth, I do forgive/ Thy rankest fault” 

• Characters: Prospero, to Antonio
• Technique: trochaic verse
• Act V, Scene I

#25: “Tell your piteous heart/There’s no harm done”

• Characters: Prospero, to Miranda
• Technique: monosyllabic, iambic meter, irony
• Act I, Scene II

The Tempest Quotes about Colonialism

#26: “A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes/With words that made them known”

• Characters: Miranda, to Caliban
  
• Technique: Irony, juxtaposition
• Act I, Scene II 

#27: “Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,/Which is not yet performed me”

• Characters: Ariel, to Prospero
  
• Technique: Blank verse
• Act I, Scene II

Caliban Quotes about Colonialism from The Tempest

#28: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/ Is, I know how to curse”

• Characters: Caliban
• Technique: prose, rhyme
• Act I, Scene II

#29: “Why what a fool was I to this drunken monster for a God”

• Characters: Caliban, about Trinculo and Stephano
• Technique: oxymoron, irony
• Act V, Scene I\

#30: “Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself/Upon thy wicked dam”

• Characters: Prospero, to Caliban
• Technique: blank verse
• Act I, Scene II

#31: “The clouds methought would open and show riches/ Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked/ I cried to dream again”

• Characters: Caliban
• Technique: Blank verse, metaphor, imagery, The Green World
• Act III, Scene II

The Tempest Quotes about Family 

#32: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bed fellows”

• Characters: Trinculo
  
• Technique: internal rhyme
• Act II, Scene I

#33: “Good wombs have borne bad sons”

• Characters: Miranda, to Prospero
  
• Technique: irony, juxtaposition, plosives
• Act I, Scene II

#34: “I am your wife if you will marry me./If not, I’ll die your maid.”

• Characters: Miranda, to Ferdinand
• Technique: repetition, prose
• Act III, Scene I

#35: “The jewel in my dower, I would not wish/Any companion in the world but you,/Nor can imagination form a shape/Besides yourself to like of” 

• Characters: Miranda
  
• Technique: Metaphor, blank verse
• Act III, Scene I

#36: “All thy vexations/Were but trials of thy love, and thou/Hast strangely stood the test” 

• Characters: Prospero, to Ferdinand
  
• Technique: blank verse
• Act IV, Scene I

#37: “Do not smile a me that I boast of her/For though shalt find she will outstrip all praise/And make it halt behind her” 

• Characters: Prospero, to Ferdinand 
  
• Technique: monologue
• Act IV, Scene II

#38: “Look down, you gods,/And on this couple drop a blessed crown”

• Characters: Gonzalo
  
• Technique: Biblical reference, Divine Right of Kings
• Act V, Scene I

#39: “Awake, dear heart, awake. Thou hast slept well. Awake” 

• Characters: Prospero
  
• Technique: repetition, personification
• Act I, Scene II

The Tempest Quotes about Men VS Nature

#40: “How many goodly creatures are there here!/How beauteous mankind is!”

• Characters: Miranda
  
• Technique: exclamatory
• Act V, Scene I

#41: “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”

• Characters: Prospero
  
• Technique: blank prose, Caliban referred to as a ‘thing’
• Act V, Scene I

#42: “I might call him. A thing divine, for nothing natural. I ever saw so noble”

• Characters: Miranda
• Technique: contrast, ‘thing’ is seen as a blessing
• Act I, Scene II 

#43: “Thou most lying slave,/Whom stripes may move, not kindness!”

• Characters: Prospero
  
• Technique: monosyllabic, prosaic verse
• Act I, Scene II

#44: “He’ll be hanged yet, though every drop of water swear against it and gape at widest to glut him”

• Characters: Gonzalo
  
• Technique: nature as a threatening force, The Green World
• Act I, Scene I

#45: “Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks/Our frustrate search on land” 

• Characters: Alonso
  
• Technique: fricatives
• Act III, Scene III

#46: “As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed/…/Drop on you both!…/And blister you all o’er”

• Characters: Caliban, to Prospero and Miranda
  
• Technique: Blank verse 
• Act I, Scene II

Quotes from The Tempest about The Green World 

#47: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here”

• Characters: Ariel
  
• Technique: Biblical allusion, exaggeration, irony
• Act I, Scene II

#48: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep”

• Characters: Prospero
  
• Technique: Soliloquy
• Act IV, Scene I

#49: “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness”

• Characters: Miranda, to Prospero
  
• Technique: exaggeration
• Act I, Scene II 

#50: “Be not afeared. The isle is full of noises,/Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not” 

• Characters: Caliban
  
• Technique: Blank Verse
• Act III, Scene II

#51 (bonus!): “These our actors/As I foretold you, were all spirits, and/Are melted into air, into thin air”

• Characters: Prospero
  
• Technique: Repetition, soliloquy, meta-theatre
• Act IV, Scene I

What is Caliban’s first line in the play?

“As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed
With raven’s feature from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye
And blister you all o’er!”

• Act I, Scene II

What is the last line of The Tempest?

“Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.”

• Act V, Epilogue