Abstract
This study aims at analyzing the presence of the four elements in connection with events and characters in the play The Tempest from William Shakespeare, in particular in which way these fundamental principles are described, if they are part of positive harmony or if they are devious. It will be analyzed whether the characters can identify with one element or whether they may ambiguously contain the co-existence of them. Situations and dialogues are observed in order to find typical representations of the basic elements – as values of an established and divine order- juxtaposed to possible potentially dangerous shifts amongst them– as symptoms of a disruptive latent change which is lurking on society, in parallel with the strange and inexplicable change in the character of Prospero in the conclusive part of the play.