There is a word that chimes through the play: free. As always in Shakespeare, the meaning is never pinned. It's always suggested like in an echo chamber. Each echo amplifies and nourishes its sound. Caliban wants his freedom. Ariel wants his freedom, but it's not the same freedom. For Prospero, freedom is undefinable. It is what he is looking for throughout the play. The young Prospero, plunged into his books, searching for the occult, was a prisoner of his dreams. On the island, we may think he became free because he had acquired all the magical powers a man can acquire. But a magician plays with powers that do not belong to humanity. It is not for a man to darken the midday sun, nor to bring the dead out of their graves.
At the beginning of the play, Prospero uses all his powers to create a tempest, one so powerful that he can bring the ship carrying his brother, who has stolen his dukedom, into his power. Revenge devours him and he has not yet mastered his own nature, his own tempest. And in the middle of the play, he unexpectedly faces the end of his exile. He had never foreseen that two drunks and a slave could put his own life in danger. He escapes with cunning and humour, but at the same time he understands that he has to quit magic, what he calls his art, and above all to forever renounce revenge.
Prospero opens himself, he realises that he cannot find his freedom alone, he cannot stay on his Island anymore, and he must free his slave Caliban and faithful spirit Ariel, forgive his brother, let his beloved daughter Miranda leave him and marry his nephew Ferdinand, and then he asks for his own freedom from whom?
