Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Tempest, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loss and Restoration
Power
Magic, Illusion, and Prospero as Playwright
Colonization
Summary
Analysis
Ferdinand enters, carrying a heavy log. Having been imprisoned and put to work by Prospero, he delivers a soliloquy in which he says that Miranda's love, the cause for which he labors, eases the difficulty of the task.
Ferdinand continues to cheerfully accept his enslavement to Prospero.
Themes
Literary Devices
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Miranda enters. Prospero follows behind, unseen. Miranda urges Ferdinand not to work so hard and offers to help him. He refuses her help and asks her name, which she tells him, remembering too late her father's instruction not to do so. Ferdinand says that she is the most perfect woman he has ever encountered, and she returns the compliment. They declare their love for one another, and Miranda suggests that they marry, saying "I am your wife, if you will marry me; if not, I'll die your maid" (3.2.85-86). Ferdinand readily agrees. Looking on, Prospero blesses their love and secretly expresses his approval of the union.
The entire interaction between Miranda and Ferdinand has been carefully manipulated by Prospero to make them fall in love and marry. That Prospero watches their conversations unseen, makes his role as the "director" or "playwright" of their affair even more explicit.
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