The Tempest took the lead slot in the First Folio – possibly guided by political factors. The publication of the Folio coincided with a misogynistic injunction issued by James VI & I instructing London’s clergy to rebuke women for impropriety. Playwrights and poets followed suit, pandering to the monarch’s prejudices by using their work to moralise. Certainly, The Tempest’s depiction of an obedient daughter who submits to her father’s total control over her marital and procreative destiny, while modestly upholding her own chastity, would have appealed to the king’s chauvinism.
A strong theme is the presentation of women as conduits for male dynastic power. Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, are marooned on an island following the usurpation of the former’s dukedom by his brother. Miranda soon becomes the focus of her father’s plans to restore his bloodline to its rightful place in the world.
Conceived at a time when various European kingdoms were beginning to colonise the New World, the play also evokes imagery of virgin land and bountiful natural resources ripe for exploitation, drawing parallels between Miranda’s pure body and the enticing island she and her father inhabit.