The Tempest has a remarkable introduction, opening the play with a tremendous amount of spectacle, threatening to kill the characters before the play has even begun; this immediately seizes the attention of the audience and makes them feel as if they were almost caught in the tempest themselves, this adds to the success of the introduction.

In terms of stagecraft in the seventeenth century when the play was written the effect of the introduction would be very different considering that special effects were largely left to the audience's imagination. I think that in the seventeenth century the introduction to the play would have been more effective because it leave's things to the imagination. Shakespeare's stage would have been almost entirely bare without many physical signs that the actors were supposed...