"The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance." - Act 5 
 It became apparent to me that while this is a Shakespeare play, it was not a typical Shakespeare play. It seems to borrow more from the Classical-era or antiquity in form (which makes sense, this being a late Renaissance work), but it was less like what I am use to reading from him. This play also contained some extended singing parts (not as much as As You Like It, but a few) and has by far more stage direction written in it than any Shakespeare I have yet read. Shakespeare wanted this play to stand-out and performed in a very specific way. I can understand when reading/watching this, why people say this is a play about the concept of acting and writing a play. But there is obviously more to examine. 
 Shakespeare re-visits two familiar concepts: shipwrecks and areas full of magical creatures. As this is a comedy, I knew from the beginning people were gonna get married at the end of this play...but The Bard pulled a fast one and designated stock rom-com couple were married a full Act before the end of the play. The musical pieces and the masque (proto-ballet) sequence was an interesting twist. And because of extensive stage notes, I knew exactly what Shakespeare was wanting in these performances. This setting made it feel like Shakespeare was putting on a more mature A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 Of course, we have to get to the two characters that stood out to me and made me forget this was a comedy. Since WWII, but really even before the 20th century, this play has had an interesting history with colonialism and post-colonial theory. We watch this play in the 21st century when the after-effects of colonialism are far too sadly on display in the current events. This play seems to be critiquing colonialism during its relative beginning in England. Shakespeare had already hinted on these things in plays like The Merchant of Venice and Othello, but now he shows it head-on. The characters of Caliban (the deformed, neanderthal-like son of a powerful Algerian witch) & Ariel a fairy and native of the island are examinations of indigenous people who either resist or collaborate (the two characters, respectively) with a colonizing/occupying force. The current events of Shakespeare's day and his reading of Des Cannibales by Michel de Montaigne influenced him to portray this debate of colonialism's "pros and cons" in his final major play. Caliban represented the resisting types: the indigenous American that won't accept "proper civilization," the African that refuses to be enslaved (in Shakespeare's day, most of enslaved in England's slave trade were located in England (six more years before Jamestown had its first Africans). The Americas were still mostly Iberian territory), but most pressingly the perpetually rebellious Irish. These groups, filtered through Montaigne, represented one side while Ariel the fairy spirit that loathed its enslavement, but was ever the loyal, noble savage represents the sort of doomed barbarian that the Roman historian Tacitus wrote about (ironically Tacitus was referring to the barbaric Britons of his day).Caliban:"This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, 
 Which thou tak'st from me. When thou cam'st first, 
 Thou strok'st me and made much of me, wouldst give me 
 Water with berries in't, and teach me how 
 To name the bigger light, and how the less, 
 That burn by day and night; and then I lov'd thee, 
 And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle, 
 The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile. 
 Curs'd be I that did so! All the charms 
 Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! 
 For I am all the subjects that you have, 
 Which first was mine own king. 
 "You taught me language, and my profit on't 
 Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you, 
 For learning me your language!" - Act I scene 2 Now the only thing else to talk about here is the question that academics love to ask about this play: was it Shakespeare's commentary about playwriting in-general and his retirement from it? I have three answers: somewhat to the first part, I don't know and no literally to the second part. This did look like Shakespeare's commentary on the process of being a playwright using the character Prospero and his "magic" as a stand-in for Shakespeare and his skill. Now to use that to answer the second part of the question...I just don't know. I will excerpt the epilogue and you can judge for yourself, but i don't know (and honestly do not care). Now for a more literal answer...no because he went back (probably because of money trouble) and wrote Henry VIII. 
 "Epilogue 
 Prospero: Now my charms are all o'erthrown, 
 And what strength I have's mine own, 
 Which is most faint: now, 'tis true, 
 I must be here confin'd by you, 
 Or sent to Naples. Let me not, 
 Since I have my dukedom got 
 And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell 
 In this bare island by your spell; 
 But release me from my bands 
 With the help of your good hands. 
 Gentle breath of yours my sails 
 Must fill, or else my project fails, 
 Which was to please. Now I want 
 Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; 
 And my ending is despair, 
 Unless I be reliev'd by prayer, 
 Which pierces so that it assaults 
 Mercy itself, and frees all faults. 
 As you from crimes would pardon'd be, 
 Let your indulgence set me free."