"Dost thou hear?" On the Rhetoric of Narrative in The Tempest

The essay explores the rhetorical performance of story-telling and its disrupting effects on the theatrical space and the island's reality. By mapping out the narrative recurrence and by examining the discursive theatrical potential of the characters' rhetoric, it illustrates the intricate pattern of counterpoint and duplication of story-telling and its opening the play's world up to a number of possible other worlds, that challenge expectations and engage the audience, both on and off stage, in a game in inferences