The Use Of Power In Shakespeare's The Tempest

In Shakespeare’s the Tempest, many different aspects are explored to the main character Prospero’s use of magic and how he uses it to manipulate those around him including his daughter. During the wedding masque scene Prospero gets very upset and leads into a deep monologue that explores themes that we see in the play. Prospero is upset due to the loss of power and authority he has set on the island and this is because of how he uses his magic to manipulate his daughter Miranda and his slave Caliban
The first reason Prospero is so upset during the wedding masque and a confirmation that he is losing a grip on the power and authority he established on the island, is because he remembers that Caliban and his a few others men on the island from

Prospero starts off by stating that everything is an illusion and everything is simply temporary and this is symbolized with the wedding masque because the goddesses he summoned are only illusions that dissolved at his command. This also connects with his loss of power with Miranda because of the fact that he raised his young daughter to so pure and innocent by manipulation and now that she is married and going from girl to woman, he losses that power he once had over her which further proves that the power he has created for himself is not going to last him forever and with will end. In the second half of his speech he talks about dreams and that life starts by waking up from a deep sleep to it ending in an eternal sleep. In the speech he says: “like this insubstantial pageant faded,/ Leave not a rack behind.”(Shakespeare 4.1.172-173) What he is trying to communicate to us and realizes from that speech is that, what we have is not forever, and that when we die, all our possessions and materialists items will be left behind and in Prospero’s case he can’t take his magic books with him when he dies so he won’t have that power