DOES THE TEMPEST DISAVOW LONELINESS?
DOES THE TEMPEST DISAVOW LONELINESS? (AUDEN’S VIEW). I was very pleased to see that Hilton Als interprets THE TEMPEST in the light of what he rightly calls “Auden’s astonishing poem based on the play, ‘The Sea and the Mirror’.” Als says that “Ultimately ….Shakespeare was writing about the disavowal of loneliness, a theme that Auden took up….” However, I don’t agree completely with Als. I think loneliness is a major theme of “The Sea and the Mirror”, but I don’t think there is a disavowal of loneliness in either THE TEMPEST or “The Sea and the Mirror.”