Name: The Tempest
Rating: 3.555466237942122 (311 reviews)

William Shakespeare

Anne Barton

Shakespeare's play about the workings of magic on a mysterious island is accompanied by commentary

The Tempest

martian1138

Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared 

Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats 

Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us, 

To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh 

To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

The solemn temples, the great globe itselt, 

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 

A storm strikes a ship carrying Alonso, Ferdinand, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Stephano, and Trinculo, who are on their way to Italy after coming from the wedding of Alonsos daughter, Claribel, to the prince of Tunis in Africa. The royal party and the other mariners, with the exception of the unflappable Boatswain, begin to fear for their lives. Lightning cracks, and the mariners cry that the ship has been hit. Everyone prepares to sink.

I liked the setting and the overall plot. Ariel’s song is simply perfection and I like the interactions between Miranda and Ferdinand, I also like the comic relief Caliban and the drunk servants provided BUT, a lot of characters seemed inconsistent. The kings and Prospero change weirdly. At the begin they all want to seek revenge and kill but at the end they just talk everything out. I expected a different, better written ending. And I couldn’t connect with it as I did with other classics…

Yalin Tsikun

Jamieson

Really liked this one. Easy to read, complex characters and an interesting play to reflect upon in the context of settler colonialism and islamophobia occurring at the time it was written

Haley Murray

I love the ideas and themes in this but I have never been able to fall in love with it.

Celeste Richardson

“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ’t!”

Sometimes, when life throws a storm at you, things aren’t really as bad as they seem. Or, even if things really are as terrible as they look, good things are being blown in by the same gale. That was exactly the case in The Tempest. A storm of Biblical proportions wrecks a king’s ship, leaving him and his men stranded on an island. However, the island is not as deserted as they thought. The wrongs of their past have caught up with the ship’s passengers, but love and forgiveness are enough to cover a multitude of sins. People do bad things. We live in a fallen world, and people are always going to give into temptation and do things they regret. But, given the chance, most people want to make recompense for those actions, and want to do good.

This play was much more hopeful than I recollected. I’m glad I decided to reread it. But reading Shakespeare is tedious, and I’m done with him for the year. If you should decide to read or reread a Shakespearean play, definitely pick up a copy that has a modern interpretation provided for every original line in the script. It was a tremendous help!

Autumn 

I feel awkward reviewing Shakespeare...it's Shakespeare!

The tempest

Elaine

I don't know what it was, but I just couldn't get into this. The story was strange and kind of pointless in my opinion. The language however, was wonderful...

The Tempest

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