ABSTRACT
Prospero’s tense account to Miranda of his brother’s past treachery and of his own expulsion, with her, from Milan, is history in the making—a rendering of the past by one who has a compelling interest in telling it as he does, as if recounting its only possible truth. It is not difficult to imagine alternative versions, which would instead emphasize Prospero’s responsibility for the events culminating in his overthrow. I am less concerned with how Prospero remembers his past, however, than with how the play remembers its past, with how The Tempest looks back on, and takes its place within, Shakespearean history. I am concerned with how The Tempest recalls and retells some motifs central to the development of Shakespeare’s drama, with how it acts upon a history that is internal to that body of work.
