|
If you want the Folger Edition that these reviews are talking about, click on the link above their review. This edition is NOT the Folger Edition that has notes and definitions like the other reviewers have stated. Waste of money. I now have to buy a different edition for the notes. It is just the text. I bought this for a class based on the reviews and was very disappointed.
You will LOVE Ariel. The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's greats. Thank goodness for the helpful notes Folger provides. I am not one for translations (it feels like cheating) and this edition created a very enjoyable read for me.
There was no reason at all for me to pay $4.95 for something I already have available on my Kindle.Buyer beware. It's not. These can be found in many places. Each right hand page of text is accompanied with a left hand page of annotations, including illustrations contemporary with Shakespeare.
First, let me say I'm a great fan of Shakespeare, and there's no reason to offer a review of The Tempest here. The Product Description for this edition of The Tempest DOES NOT apply to the Kindle edition. It does not include the Folger's introductions to Shakespeare, or to this play in particular, nor does it include the essays that accompany the Folger editions of the plays.I have already loaded my Kindle with the Complete Works, for which I paid, I believe, $0.99--a remarkable price for the greatest literature in the English language. If you want to know what The Tempest is about, there's plenty of places to find that out.
The spelling has been updated but the language has not been changed.This Kindle edition includes the memorial verses to Shakespeare found in the First Folio. Too bad. This is a review of the Kindle edition of this edition of The Tempest.I bought this edition, paying $4.95 for the Kindle version, because I thought that it would be the Folger Shakespeare Library version of The Tempest. The Folger editions of Shakespeare's plays are handy study aids.
The definitions on the left side help you define words and phrases you do not understand. Good for in-class essays and exams.
Not a chance. RSC actors who played Prospero, from John Gielgud to Derek Jacobi and Alec McCowen have adapted the role to their own understanding of it. He has been represented as half man/half beast, misshapen, uncouth, barbaric - the missing link. O brave new world that has such people in it." All this when meeting a bunch of scoundrels who have survived the shipwreck. There are dazzling special effects, there is humor, bawdiness, entertainment appealing to a broad audience.The castaway Prospero has been likened to a theatrical Robinson Crusoe or seen as a Faustian figure who sells his soul in exchange for magical powers; as the playwright himself who bids farewell to show business (THE TEMPEST was Shakespeare's last play); as the colonial usurper who seizes control of a paradisical island and subjugates the natives.Ah - and then there is Caliban. At the pinnacle of this evolution is the "noble savage", a proud and disdainful figure, well-spoken and highly sensitive to music and aesthetic values while being forced to do the most menial and degrading work.And what about Ariel. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" and Prospero's final, haunting plea:"But release me from my bands/ With the help of your good hands" and "As you from crimes would pardoned be/Let your indulgence set me free".So - is it all a Tempest of the Mind. I have read THE TEMPEST again and again - usually after a break of several years - and it never fails to surprise and confound me.
Does he play Mephistopheles to Prospero's Faust. What pernicious irony. He had envisioned Ariel as a rebellious teenager escaping from a controlling father).And then there is the beautiful poetry. The director "rather liked it". Is he the real Master. I can't think of many works of fiction that have undergone so many changes in interpretation and staging. (I will refrain from giving a synopsis, assuming that it's readily available here and elsewhere, and instead focus on interpretation).What is the play about. But perhaps you will come up with a new and entirely different interpretation.
It is impossible to read the play today and not have these images in the back of one's mind. Miranda is Prospero's creature in every way (we never hear a word about her mother): a fantasy, an invention.The new (2008) Modern Library edition backed by the Royal Shakespeare Company has interesting pictures of various stagings and interviews with well-known directors. And, I'm told, she got her biggest laugh from the Shakespearean audience when she uttered the famous lines: "How many goodly creatures are there here. Set him free.
It will undoubtedly trouble you, as it did me. We simply can't do without him. A sort of catharsis for the audience.I urge you to read the play again. It's about power struggles, shipwrecks, murder or intended murder, revenge, forgiveness, restitutuion, servitude and rebellion, the enlightening and corrupting influence of booklearning, sorcery, innocent young love, resignation.Are there any large themes that have been left out.
You may cringe, you may object or be disgusted (in one RSC production, people in the audience shouted "Rubbish." when Ariel spat in Prospero's face after being released by him. How beauteous mankind is. Or as the oppressed native, naively trusting the white conqueror, accepting tyranny and exploitation while nurturing hatred in his breast. His days as a pleasant, airy sprite with an unlimited repertoire of magic tricks seem to be over.Feminists object to the treatment of Miranda: she does her father's bidding without question; she falls in love with the first young man she sees.
|
