"All eyes": Prospero's Inverted Masque

Abstract

For Theatre audiences the central moment in The Tempest is more likely to be Prospero's revels than the "revels" speech long anthologized for readers as one of the beauties of Shakespeare. In performance die nuptial masque for Ferdinand and Miranda, suddenly resplendent and suddenly dissolved, displays Shakespeare's most elaborate stage spectacle, and it is on the force of that moment that the more famous speech reflects.