SOURCE: “Providence, Authority, and the Moral Life in The Tempest,” in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. XVI, 1983, pp. 235-63.

In the following essay, Grant surveys the moral purpose of The Tempest as both a theodicy and a disputation on the political structure of society.

Ad hoc enim homines congregantur, ut simul bene vivant, quod consequi non posset unusquisque singulariter vivens; bona autem vita est secundum virtutem; virtuosa igitur vita est congregationis humanae finis.

thomas aquinas

The interpretation of literature in terms of larger ideas has led to so many abuses that much contemporary criticism is threatening to retreat into aesthetic or exegetical detachment. But any such retreat is based on illusion. What has happened is merely that an entirely proper fastidiousness has mistaken its object. It is ideologies that are at fault not the disciplines (the custodians of these larger ideas) they have requisitioned.¹ The latter are as much a...