“Excellent Dumb Discourse”: Silence and Grace in Shakespeare\u27s Tempest

Critics have commented on the poetic thinness of The Tempest, and some have expressed surprise that the play has such great imaginative impact in spite of its paucity of poetic and theoretical effect. The language is characteristic of Shakespeare\u27s late plays, terse, sparse, lacking the rhetorical embellishment and exuberance of his earlier style. It is relatively scarce in imagery, and what there is of it remains concrete and sensuous, rather than assuming the resonance of metaphor or symbol which is vitally integrated into imaginative conception. Hallett Smith, observing this thinness of texture, wonders why this should be...critics find it difficult to account for the effect the play has upon them