The Tempest
1919
On a remote island dotted with strange fruits and inhabited by spirits, a deposed duke plots his revenge. Prospero once ruled Milan, until his brother Antonio conspired with the King of Naples to strip him of his title and cast him to sea with his infant daughter. Twelve years later, Prospero commands the island's forces of nature through his magical books, and when a ship carrying his enemies passes nearby, he summons a tempest to shipwreck them on his shores. What follows is a delicate game of manipulation, as Prospero engineers encounters between his enemies, his servant the spirit Ariel, and the monstrous Caliban who once owned this land. But the island has a way of subverting intentions, and forgiveness proves harder to conjure than storms. Written as Shakespeare neared retirement, The Tempest holds a strange mirror to colonial ambition, the price of power, and the question of what it means to master both nature and other men. It is a meditation on revenge that asks whether any vengeance is worth the cost, and whether true power lies in domination or in letting go.
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“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.””
— William Shakespeare
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.””
— William Shakespeare
“What's past is prologue.””
— William Shakespeare
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.””
— William Shakespeare
“Me, poor man, my libraryWas dukedom large enough.””
— William Shakespeare
“O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in't!””
— William Shakespeare
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,That, if I then had waked after long sleep,Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,The clouds methought would open, and show richesReady to drop upon me; that, when I waked,I cried to dream again.””
— William Shakespeare
“Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I hear them,”
— William Shakespeare
“This thing of darkness IAcknowledge mine.””
— William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-tempest-986608b2-9add-4068-94f1-d021c367d22f.Shakespeare, W. (1919). The Tempest. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-tempest-986608b2-9add-4068-94f1-d021c367d22fShakespeare, William. The Tempest. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-tempest-986608b2-9add-4068-94f1-d021c367d22f.
