"The Art Itself is Nature": Dissolution of the Human Form in Shakespeare's Green Worlds.

As Shakespeare's final sole-authored play, and the first featured play in his posthumous 1623 collection referred to as The First Folio, it is tempting to read Prospero's journey into the new world of magic and illusion as a metaphor for Shakespeare's career as a playwright. In Act I of William Shakespeare's I The Tempest i , Ariel, an elemental spirit bound in service to the human magician Prospero, sings of the shipwrecked King Alonso's human form transforming - his corporeal boundaries blending into the ocean floor as his body parts scatter into coral and pearls. Ariel's Nonhuman Utopia I The Tempest i is Shakespeare's only play that takes place entirely in the green world. [Extracted from the article]