Tempest

In the epilogue of A Midsummer's Night Dream, Puck speaks to the audience directly not as an actor or a character in a play, while in The Tempest, Prospero is still in character but begs the audience to set him free so he can return to Naples. For Puck, King Oberon and all the other actors are mere shadows, exactly as Theseus described the actors in the play-within-a-play, and his statement seems to dissolve the distance between the actors and the audience. Everyone in the play has been dreaming or is part of a dream, and so is the audience in the theater, so no one can even know for certain if there is any distinction between reality and illusion. Prospero has also used magic and illusion to deceive and confuse his enemies, and in fact the entire island is magical. While in control of sprites like Ariel, he...
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