Shakespeare wisly commented on the power of hate when he stated, “Hate pollutes the mind”(Shakespeare), alluding to the strength and danger of hate. Shakespeare combined this idea of the strength of hate with The Tempest’s motif of forgiveness through a play-wide theme. Shakespeare's The Tempest is thought to be one of the last plays ever written by Shakespeare, and is about a character named Prospero who seeks to get revenge on his brother Antonio who stole his dukedom in Milan. In Shakespeare's play The Tempest the motif of forgiveness develops into the theme that it is easier to hate than to forgive through rhetorical devices such as imagery, prose, and blank verse.
In The Tempest Shakespeare depicts the characters inability to forgive with his use of imagery. In Act 1 Imagery emphasizes Prospero's hate towards Caliban when he exclaims, “if thou murmur’st, I will rend an oak and peg thee in his knotty entrails till thou hast howled away twelve winters”(1.2.294-296). This use of imagery places focus on Prospero's desire to hate Caliban rather than to forgive him. Similarly Act 1 portrays this inability to forgive when Caliban expresses his hate
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Prospero’s displays his ability to forgive through blank verse when he warns “take with you your companions. As you look to have my pardon, trim is handsomely”(5.1.291-292). By utilizing blank verse during Prospero’s apology Shakespeare singles out this piece of dialogue from the rest of the dialogue in which Prospero speaks in Prose and is unable to forgive. Finally near the end when Prospero confronts Antonio he expresses forgiveness despite the hate he feels when he exclaims “for you most wicked sir, whom to call brother would even infect my mouth, I do forgive”(5.1.130-131). Shakespeare with this utilization of blank verse emphasizes the difficulty Prospero faced in his path from hate to