25 Facts About The Tempest

1.

The Tempest has been put to varied interpretations, from those that see it as a fable of art and creation, with Prospero representing Shakespeare, and Prospero's renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, to interpretations that consider it an allegory of Europeans colonizing foreign lands.

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2.

The Tempest begins with the spectacle of a storm-tossed ship at sea, and later there is a second spectacle—the masque.

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3.

Masque in The Tempest is not an actual masque, it is an analogous scene intended to mimic and evoke a masque, while serving the narrative of the drama that contains it.

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4.

The plays, including The Tempest, were gathered and edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell.

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5.

Handwritten manuscript of The Tempest was prepared by Ralph Crane, a scrivener employed by the King's Men.

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6.

The Tempest was fond of joining words with hyphens, and using elisions with apostrophes, for example by changing "with the king" to read: "w'th' King".

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7.

The Tempest was an experienced journeyman in Jaggard's printshop, who occasionally could be careless.

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8.

The Tempest was fond of dashes and colons, where modern editions use commas.

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9.

The Tempest is explicitly concerned with its own nature as a play, frequently drawing links between Prospero's art and theatrical illusion; the shipwreck was a spectacle that Ariel performed, while Antonio and Sebastian are cast in a troupe to act.

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10.

Thomas Campbell in 1838 was the first to consider that Prospero was meant to partially represent Shakespeare, but then abandoned that idea when he came to believe that The Tempest was an early play.

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11.

The Tempest's plan is to do all he can to reverse what was done twelve years ago when he was usurped: First he will use a tempest to cause certain persons to fear his great powers, then when all survived unscathed, he will separate those who lived through the tempest into different groups.

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12.

Comedy: The Tempest was initially presented as a form of tragic comedy in the First Folio by John Fletcher of Shakespeare's plays.

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13.

Feminist interpretations of The Tempest consider the play in terms of gender roles and relationships among the characters on stage, and consider how concepts of gender are constructed and presented by the text, and explore the supporting consciousnesses and ideologies, all with an awareness of imbalances and injustices.

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14.

Two early feminist interpretations of The Tempest are included in Anna Jameson's Shakespeare's Heroines and Mary Clarke's The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines (1851).

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15.

The Tempest is a play created in a male dominated culture and society, a gender imbalance the play explores metaphorically by having only one major female role, Miranda.

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16.

The Tempest was one of the staples of the repertoire of Romantic Era theatres.

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17.

The performance was particularly admired for George Bennett's performance as Caliban; it was described by Patrick MacDonnell—in his An Essay on the Play of The Tempest published in 1840—as "maintaining in his mind, a strong resistance to that tyranny, which held him in the thraldom of slavery".

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18.

In Charles Kean's 1857 production of The Tempest, Ariel was several times seen to descend in a ball of fire.

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19.

The Tempest played the role in three more stage productions, lastly at the Royal National Theatre in 1974.

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20.

The Tempest suddenly acquired a new political dimension unforeseen by Shakespeare.

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21.

The Tempest has more music than any other Shakespeare play, and has proved more popular as a subject for composers than most of Shakespeare's plays.

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22.

In 1908 Percy Stow directed The Tempest running a little over ten minutes, which is a part of the British Film Institute's compilation Silent Shakespeare.

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23.

In 1979, Derek Jarman produced the homoerotic film The Tempest that used Shakespeare's language, but was most notable for its deviations from Shakespeare.

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24.

Prospero is reimagined as the author of The Tempest, speaking the lines of the other characters, as well as his own.

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25.

Director Julie Taymor's 2010 adaptation The Tempest starred Helen Mirren as a female version of Prospero.

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