In
_The Tempest_ the poet employs a form of opening which otherwise he
reserves for tragedies. The first scene is simply an animated tableau,
calculated to arrest the spectator's attention, without conveying to him
any knowledge either of situation or character. Such gleams of character
as do, in fact, appear in the dialogue, are scarcely perceived in the
hurly-burly of the storm. Then, in the calm which ensues, Prospero
expounds to Miranda in great detail the antecedents of the crisis now
developing. It might almost seem, indeed, that the poet, in this, his
poetic last-will-and-testament, intended to warn his successors against
the dangers of a long narrative exposition; for Prospero's story sends
Miranda to sleep. Be this as it may, we have here a case in which
Shakespeare deliberately adopted the plan of placing on the stage, not
the whole crisis, but only its culmination, leaving its earlier stages
to be conveyed in narrative.[2] It would have been very easy for him to
have begun at the beginning and shown us in action the events narrated
by Prospero.
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