Category: The Tempest

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s final plays, and it tells the story of Prospero, a sorcerer and rightful Duke of Milan, who was betrayed and left to die on a remote island with his daughter Miranda. With the help of his magic and the spirit Ariel, Prospero conjures up a tempest to bring his enemies to the island and seek revenge. However, he ultimately chooses forgiveness and reconciliation over vengeance. The play explores themes of power, justice, and forgiveness, as well as the relationship between nature and civilization. Its complex characters, fantastical elements, and poetic language continue to captivate audiences and inspire adaptations and interpretations in various forms of media.

Browse the text of The Tempest entire play here.

Guest Post : Shakespeare’s Travels

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Scotland – the famous setting for Macbeth

Should you ever decide to embark on a tour of the locations of Shakespeare’s plays you’d find yourself with a long itinerary. The bard’s quill pen roamed the world, from Egypt and Syria to Scotland – this blog has even provided a handy map. Some places, such as England and Italy, were, of course, frequently visited by his imagination. Others, such as Austria (Measure for Measure) and Cyprus (Othello) he only visited once.

Shakespeare shaped these foreign lands to suit his stories. Greece (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timon of Athens, The Two Noble Kinsmen, etc.), Wales (Cymbeline, Richard II, Henry IV P1) and Turkey (The Comedy of Errors, Troilus & Cressida, etc.) were made the settings for comedy, tragedy, romance, and history. The world truly was his stage to dress – in fact, most of his plays are set abroad, the Globe Theatre, therefore, becoming an actual microcosm of our globe.

Some locations are famously linked with his plays. Who, after all, would not know that Hamlet is set in Denmark? Other links are, perhaps, a little more obscure. Lebanon featuring in Pericles, for example, or the former Yugoslavia (specifically, the area known as Illyria) in Twelfth Night.

Dubrovnik, once the centre of the Republic of Ragusa in the ancient region of Illyria

Are visitors to Spain’s Basque Country aware that they’re following in the footsteps of the characters in Love’s Labour’s Lost? The location of the French court in All’s Well That Ends Well is a little unclear, but it isn’t hard to imagine Helena and Bertram amidst the grand buildings of Carcassonne. I’m also a fan of the vague Mediterranean setting of The Tempest, which allows me to imagine Prospero roaming Malta, or Menorca, or perhaps Sardinia.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, famous even in Shakespeare’s day

How did Shakespeare know about these far-flung places? As the No Sweat Shakespeare blog once mentioned, even travel between Stratford-Upon-Avon and London was no mean feat. Shakespeare, therefore, didn’t have direct experience of these locations – it was 40 years after Shakespeare’s death when The Grand Tour made foreign travel popular amongst the English elite. Instead he took inspiration from historical texts and other stories (including Italian novellas) – Egypt, for example, has always been well-known to the western world and descriptions of its ancient sites would not have been hard to come by.

“The world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open” – the world isn’t currently our oyster to open, but with Shakespeare’s stages on shores near and distant, perhaps we can, for now, take a little peek and plan for the day when we follow the footsteps of his far-flung characters.

Olly loves to travel and has visited over 80 countries and all 7 continents. He also likes to explore the world through the medium of literature and enjoys matching famous locations with the places he’s been to. Olly runs travel planning blog APlanToGo.com, on which you can download free, highly detailed itineraries for destinations across the globe.

I Knew I Wasn’t Crazy!

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

This is not a loon, and neither am I.

Back in November, I had a bit of a reality distortion moment as I found evidence that a story I’d always told as having happened in 2008 actually happened in 2004. Specifically, we’re talking about a production of The Tempest that I took my kids to see. Their first one, in fact.  The one I use as the foundation when I tell people about my kids’ relationship with Shakespeare. Only, if it happened in 2004, I only had one kid.

But I was right after all!  Looking through old pictures this weekend I found more from that production, with my other two kids clearly included.  I knew I wasn’t losing my mind.  These pictures were, in fact, dated 2008.  That gave me an idea I should have thought of in the first place.  I used my own darned search function…

And look what I found. August 2008. I actually posted about it several times both before and after the show, it was quite a milestone event for me.

Oh I feel so much better now. 🙂

 

 

My World Turned Upside Down

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

For years, whenever I brag about my kids’ connection to Shakespeare, I’ve said that my son saw his first production of The Tempest while he was still in his stroller.

This weekend my daughter was going through a box of pictures and held one up, asking, “Who is this?”  I recognized the picture immediately as she had it tucked into her dressing table mirror for years.

Sorry for the quality, it’s literally a picture of a picture.  The guy in the nylon mask in the background isn’t about to rob us all, he was one of the spirits roaming the set and making noises.  This outdoor production was literally in the middle of a strip mall and people occasionally just walked right through the set.  Who cares, I loved it.  Practically guerilla Shakespeare.

“That’s…”

“…Caliban,” I hear my wife’s voice behind me.

I was momentarily speechless.  “…Caliban.  Yes.  Really?  You remember that?”

My wife seems to think it’s no big deal.  “The Tempest.  We went down the Cape.”  For my part, whenever a beautiful woman gets one of my Shakespeare references my first reaction is almost always, “Oh, I’ve got to marry you.”  Lucky for me this time! 🙂

“Sorry,” I say to my daughter, regaining my composure.  “Just falling in love with your mother all over again.  That was the first production that we were invited to.  One of my social media followers invited me to come and we hung out with the cast afterward.  Your brother kept freaking out about Caliban, pointing and yelling, “Monster!””  I flip the picture over.  It is dated 2004 — two years before my son was born  “Whoa.  Your brother wasn’t even born when we went?  I’ve been telling that story wrong all these years?  I guess it was you in the stroller.”

My daughter considers the picture.  She notes the month.  “My birthday’s in August.  I wasn’t born yet for this picture either.”

I was completely flabbergasted.  All these years my memory was of taking three children to this production, and I only had one child at the time?  Unbelievable.

I had to share that story with everybody.  Ben Berry, now the artistic director of Peregrine Theatre Ensemble in Provincetown, MA originally extended the invitation (but that is not him in the picture).  I wonder if he’s still reading and if he remembers us?  Hi Ben!

 

Ariel Stays On The Island, And I Just Can’t Even

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

I’ve admitted on plenty of occasions that I still have a lot to learn about Shakespeare. In fact, it is when I learn something new that I am again thrown back into my love for the subject as I run to the text and visit with my old friends again.

I have always, always read the end of The Tempest as:

  1. Ariel, now freed, disappears. Where does he go? Don’t know. Not sure we can even fathom the possibility. Ariel being an “aerie spirit,” could be pan-dimensional for all I know. Prospero says go, and he’s gone. I loved Mr. Teller’s interpretation where Ariel does a vanishing act, literally disappearing before our eyes.
  2. Caliban is left alone to be king of his island, a civilization of one, as he always wanted.

So it came as quite a shock last week when I was shown a line I’d never really noticed before.  As he prepares for his upcoming freedom, Ariel says:

Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

And my world changed. After all their time together, Prospero frees Ariel and Ariel basically just heads off to the other side of the island?  I imagine him sitting in a hammock sipping a drink out of a coconut like something from Gilligan’s Island. He might as well have said, “I miss my cloven pine, it was a little snug but really quite comfortable once you got used to it.”

I hate that so much. That means that, for starters, Caliban is not left alone on the island as he wanted. Worse, he doesn’t even have a kingdom, because Ariel’s not about to listen to him. Ariel and Caliban hate each other. So now I envision the ending of my favorite play with Caliban trying to be left alone and Ariel, now bored silly, forever tormenting him because there’s nothing else to do.

Somebody tell me I read that wrong, and the play isn’t completely ruined for me. I really hate that ending.  My way, everybody – even Caliban – gets a happy ending.  As it should be. This way doesn’t even make any sense. Wouldn’t Ariel want to escape the island as soon as he is able? He’s been a slave here for all those years, so he’ll celebrate his freedom by hanging around? I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

 

 

 

That’s Just, Like, Your Point of View, Man

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a simple game. Pick a play.  Now pretend you’re doing a production where the gimmick is that it’s told from a different character’s point of view than normal. Which play do you pick, which character and how does the play change?

In most cases, this is going to create a much shorter play, because the character you pick will often have less stage time than the stars.

Maybe we do The Tempest told from the perspective of King Alonso?  Coming home from a wedding he’s caught in a storm, shipwrecked on an island, his son drowned. Suddenly he’s standing face to face with Prospero, who he’s thought dead for the past fifteen years.

Or how about King Lear from Fool’s point of view? That could be interesting.  Lot of different ways to interpret just how much Fool knows.

Twelfth Night from Malvolio’s POV?

Romeo and Juliet as seen by Lord Capulet? That could be interesting. There’s an almost fight scene, there’s him getting fined by the Prince, there’s a wedding to plan, a big dance party, an argument with his daughter, the death of Tybalt, the death of Juliet…

Winter’s Tale from Hermione’s point of view would make a funny comic short. Gets accused of adultery by her husband, goes to live with her friend who promises to fix everything. Cut to twelve years later when she says, “ok, he’s coming. Pretend you’re a statue.”

Who else?