ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter presents The Tempest as the late play in which Shakespeare toys with undoing the subtle theology of his earlier plays by actually putting a plot-controlling god on stage. While sometimes taken as a morality tale about over-reaching humans, something like the way the Chorus of Marlowe’s Faustus interprets its title character’s fall, The Tempest manifests an anarchy, built into the hierarchy of Prospero’s island, that disallows any reading of a humanity constrained to its proper place. Rather than splitting off the human and divine, the play demonstrates their deep parallels and suggests that our desire for a non-human “god of power” may be a theological mistake. Borrowing from Hegel’s account of a speculative Good Friday, this chapter argues that The Tempest, with its interactions of humans, spirits, and powerful sorcerer, becomes Shakespeare’s theatrical Good Friday, where the playwright experiments with a competitively transcendent God only, ultimately, to lay this god to rest.
