What happens in The Tempest

A ship founders in a roaring storm, its passengers crying out as the deck splits and they leap into the sea. The wreck is no accident. It is the work of Prospero, once Duke of Milan, who has lived twelve years on a near-empty island with his daughter Miranda. He finally tells her the story he has kept hidden: his brother Antonio, helped by Alonso, King of Naples, seized the dukedom and set Prospero and the infant Miranda adrift to die. They survived, and on this island Prospero has grown powerful in magic. The men who betrayed him are aboard that ship, and he has raised the tempest to bring them ashore. His airy servant, the spirit Ariel, has scattered the survivors across the island unharmed, and longs for the freedom Prospero keeps promising.

Prospero rules two servants. Ariel obeys out of gratitude and the hope of release. Caliban, the island’s native, a deformed creature Prospero once taught and now keeps as a slave, obeys only out of fear and resentment. The shipwrecked party splits into groups. Ferdinand, the king’s son, washes up alone and is led by Ariel’s music to Prospero’s cell, where he and Miranda fall in love at first sight. This is exactly what Prospero wants, but he hides his pleasure and pretends to suspect Ferdinand of treachery, setting him to haul logs to test whether his love is true.

Elsewhere the king’s lords wander, grieving. Alonso believes Ferdinand drowned. While Ariel charms most of them to sleep, the treacherous Antonio whispers to the king’s brother Sebastian that they should murder Alonso in his slumber and seize Naples for themselves. They draw their swords, but Ariel wakes the others just in time, and the plot is foiled before it lands.

A third group plays the same crime as farce. Caliban meets two drunken survivors, the butler Stephano and the jester Trinculo, and takes Stephano’s wine for divine power. He bows to them as gods and urges them to kill Prospero in his sleep, burn his books, and take the island, dangling Miranda as a prize. Drunk and greedy, the men agree, but Ariel sows confusion among them, and Prospero knows their every step.

With the lovers tested and proven, Prospero blesses their union and conjures a masque of goddesses to celebrate. He breaks it off abruptly, remembering Caliban’s conspiracy, and sets spirits in the shape of hunting dogs to chase the three would-be assassins through bog and briar. Then he draws his enemies together at last. He charms the whole court into a circle, helpless and amazed, and stands before them as the wronged duke they thought long dead.

Here Prospero chooses mercy over revenge. He forgives Antonio, who shows no remorse, and reclaims his dukedom. He reveals Ferdinand alive and at chess with Miranda, restoring a son to the grieving Alonso and binding the two houses through the children’s marriage. The drunken conspirators are sent off shamed, and Caliban, scolded, resolves to seek grace. Ariel restores the ship, whole and crewed, ready to carry everyone home to Italy. As his final act, Prospero promises Ariel the freedom he has earned, then breaks his magic staff and vows to drown his book of spells, laying down his power for good. Alone at the end, he turns to the audience and asks, with the storms all stilled, to be set free by their applause.