Importance of Setting in The TempestShakespeare's enchanted island in The Tempest is a restorative pastoral setting, a place where "no man was his own" and a place that offers infinite possibilities to the people who arrive on its shores. Although the actual location of the island is not known, Seneca's Worlds aptly describes its significance for the work: it represents the "edges of things, the remotest coasts of the world." At the edge of reality, the island participates in both the natural and the supernatural, both the imaginary and the real. It allows for the exploration of both man's potential and his limits, his capacity for reform through art and his affinity with political and social realities. It is precisely in constructing this opposition between art and reality and in giving Shakespeare's novel the freedom to explore humanity free from the worries of everyday life that the setting of The Tempest is crucial to its overall dramatic design. The only scene in the play that does not take place on the island is the opening storm scene. That in itself is an important use of the setting. It alludes to the fact that the characters' social assumptions will capitulate when exposed to adversity: we have the boatswain seemingly inappropriately commenting on no one aboard the ship that he "loves more than myself." In reality the opposite is true. In the court scene we are introduced to the characters Antonio and Sebastiano, interested in political gain despite the difficult situation in which they find themselves. In this regard the setting works to present the idea that our social conditioning transcends time and place. The inference is that if political contention can take place on an enchanted island in the middle of the present... in the middle of paper... magic and music. The contrast between the representative characters and the magical art of The Island does not resolve itself, rather, it leaves the audience in what Russ McDonald has called “a marginal condition between expectation and understanding, affirmation and skepticism, comedy and tragedy” . The setting functions to present both the world of art and that of reality in order to affirm the transcendent human desire for power and order, as well as affirm the world of art as a means of dealing with reality. Bibliography/Works CitedMeller, A., Moon , GT Literary Shakespeare (1993) Sydney: Canon PublicationsLesson on “The Tempest” (1988) C. HolmesShakespeare, W. The Tempest. Ed. Sutherland, JR (1990)Mikhail M. Morozor, (1989)“The individualization of Shakespeare's characters through images”, Shakespeare Survey.