Towards the end of the first scene of The Tempest, the phrase "We split" occurs five times in two lines. Through this repetition, Shakespeare encourages the audience to examine ways in which other "splits" pertain. There are, for example, divisions within the Italian city-states, where usurpation seems the rule. This splitting also involves division within families, pitting brother against brother and, arguably, son against father. Division also appears within the personalities of some of the major characters, most notably with regard to Prospero. Not only is he torn between revenge and forgiveness, but his minions Ariel and Caliban can be read as embodying, respectively, Prospero's intellect and his earthier, physical self. The division permeating the play finds a corollary in the "doubling" of the characters: for example, the clown Stephano is a parodic double of Prospero, even confining and controlling "spirits" of liquor and encasing them in wood, just as Prospero threatens to imprison Ariel within an oak tree. The comic premise would seem to insist that these divisions and doublings be resolved by play's end, but this paper suggests that such an apparent reintegration constitutes but one more of this magic play's many illusions.