This chapter explores Eliot’s relationship with Shakespeare as a wellspring of creative and destructive energies embodied in the transformative potential of the ‘sea-change’. It charts Eliot’s gradual immersion in a ‘Shakespearean’ tradition, and the ways in which his creative relationship with The Tempest was coloured by others’ responses to the play. Henry James thought it ‘the rarest of all examples of literary art’, regarding it as the closest literary rendering of the creative force, as well as the primary exemplar of the riches this force can produce. Eliot’s comments on The Tempest suggest that he shared James’s interest in the play. He also seems to have shared with the Shakespearean critic Edward Dowden a categorisation of the ‘last plays’ as a grouping that included Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Cymbeline. Eliot’s enthusiasm for the work of his contemporary G. Wilson Knight suggests a shared understanding of the spiritual dimensions of the play. These three writers add their glosses to Eliot’s Tempest, yet certain aspects of his approach to the play remain resolutely his own, emphasising some energies and submerging others.