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.

Teachers, How Do You Feel About Your Hermiones?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

No, that’s not a Winter’s Tale reference. That’s a Harry Potter reference.  Psych.  🙂

So once again my oldest has an actual Shakespeare class, and once again it’s not really living up to what we’d hoped.

They’ve started The Tempest.  Here’s my daughter’s (roughly paraphrased) summary of the first day:

We did Act One, Scene one.  It’s frustrating, because she asked us no questions. Zero. I’m sitting there, waiting for this, I know the answers. I’m dying to say Sycorax, I love that name. But she didn’t interact with us, she just told us what happens.

That makes me sad. I once wrote an entire blog post about that scene, and how awesome the boatswain is. So let’s talk about the situation this teacher finds herself in.

I’m sure that teacher has to assume that there’s zero amount of Shakespeare knowledge in that class. It would be a waste of time for her in most classes to ask a question like, “Is anybody familiar with The Tempest?” because 9 times out of 10 she’s going to get blank stares and silence. So why bother?

Because in this instance she would have gotten an answer.  My daughter’s  hand would go up.  As it would with every question (hence the Hermione reference). She could assistant teach that class.

She’s not trying to be a teacher’s pet. On the contrary, she’s generally an introvert who will avoid answering questions because she feels that for her to answer it is to not give others a chance.  But to not even have the question asked?  That seems like an opportunity missed. It would not be a lie to say that she’s been waiting years for opportunities like that.

Maybe the teacher knows that. She’s well aware of my daughter’s experience with Shakespeare already. I know because I’ve also had that conversation with her. So I figure one of two things must be going through her head:

a) she’s completely forgotten, or just generally disregarded, the knowledge that she’s actually got someone in class this time that knows the material. She’s got a plan, it does not assume a Hermione in the class, why change the plan?

b) she’s deliberately not singling her out to keep balance in the classroom, and not elevate my daughter into some sort of favorite.  Maybe she’s even doing that for what she believes will be my daughter’s benefit, so that the others don’t see it as a negative (i.e. teacher’s pet syndrome)

My problem is that I see it as the opposite. Let’s pretend for a moment that there’s more than one kid in that class that already knows the material. Or at least would be willing to hazard a guess at some questions. And all of them are afraid to be the first one to raise their hand.  Doesn’t it make sense that if you know you’ve got a student who isn’t afraid to raise her hand, and knows the answer, that you should do that?  That maybe it would help bring the other kids out of their shells?  Maybe there’s kids in that class that would hear my daughter rave about how awesome Shakespeare is, how she’s known about it since she was little, and maybe they switch from “I’ve always heard that this stuff is boring and irrelevant” to “One of my peers is telling me that it’s interesting and not that hard, maybe I should listen to her.”

Teachers, help me out here. I’m trying to read somebody’s mind, and maybe I’m way off.  It doesn’t matter the particular material.  Say that you’re in the out of the ordinary situation where you know you’ve got at least one student in the class that knows the material ahead of the rest.  How do you handle that? Take advantage and try to use that kid to draw out the others? Or treat everybody the same? Why?

(In fairness I should acknowledge that there’s an option (c), namely, that this class is about monsters in British literature and thus they are studying Caliban specifically, not the play as a whole. So, since scene one really has nothing to do with Caliban, she glossed over it.  I mean personally I still disagree, because I think that kicking off the story in an exciting way rather than a blah blah blah way is important if you want to keep the kids’ attention, but what can ya do. There are calendar time restrictions, and material to get through.)

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It’s Going To Be A Good Year

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers of the blog will know that we’ve been waiting literally for years for my kids to start learning Shakespeare in school. Middle school was a big bust, with one teacher in the eighth grade who dragged his feet during Romeo and Juliet to the point where my oldest never even finished it, and when her younger sister later had the same teacher, he didn’t even try, he just showed the movie.

My oldest is in high school now and taking a class called Monsters in British Literature, where they’ll be reading The Tempest.  My favorite. The one I used to tell them as a bedtime story.  Plus, bonus? The same teacher does the second semester Shakespeare in Modern Film class, also known as the one where I get Bardfilm to do my kid’s homework.

Well tonight was open house where we got to meet the teachers.  Look what greeted me in Monsters and British Lit?

Oh, yeah.  We’re gonna have a good time with this class.

The class will cover Beowulf and Frankenstein as well as Caliban. The teacher made it a point to mention that she’d recently seen The Tempest at the Globe, and how she just loves being “the Shakespeare teacher.”

I introduced myself briefly – “My daughter’s been raised on Shakespeare. I read The Tempest to them as a bed time story. I think we’re gonna love this class.” I knew I could have talked her ear off.  I had pictures of my kids in the Folger vault loaded up and ready to go on my phone. I showed great discipline, I want everybody to know!

I hope to have very many exciting stories in the upcoming year.  It’s been a long time coming! A fine fine day indeed.

 

 

Shakespeare Beer Continued : The Tempest

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I told you about the joys of the Shakespeare beer known as ShakesBeer and how I came to discover it. I’ve already discussed their New England IPA known as “Act One”.

Today let’s talk about their “Imperial IPA”, The Tempest. It would have been awesome if they’d kept the “Act” thing going but there’s an obvious hard limit there so I can see why they couldn’t do that.

I love the branding on this one.  It’s no secret that The Tempest is my favorite play, and I’m happy to see its image on the shelf.  If I could get my hands on the cans themselves (without the contents) I’d add them to my collection of Shakespeare stuff.  I suppose I could just wash out an empty but I’d feel like I’m back in college building a tower of empties if I did that.

This one is noticeably darker than the Act One, but I suppose maybe not so noticeably because my wife claimed she could not see the difference until I put the two side by side.

A juicy New England Style IPA featuring six different hop varieties and a more robust 7.7% ABV.

I could definitely see and taste a big difference. The flavor is much stronger and richer here, and that 7.7% ABV is nothing to slouch at.  Let’s put it this way, I had the Act One at a leisurely pace on a Sunday afternoon while I watched football. I had The Tempest after dinner on a weekday when I had to go pick up my kid from dance in an hour.  Totally felt it, could not have had two.

I think both of these are going to make nice fall selections. As I’ve gotten older I still enjoy a beer, but I’m not the type to just keep pounding them back. So flavor is a big deal, but so is not getting buzzed – I’m getting too old for that nonsense, the kids need homework help.  For both of these I’m happy to have one, maybe two, depending, and that’s just right for me.

It looks like they have a third option, A Midsummer Night’s Ale, but since it’s listed as a summer brew I’m going to assume that I missed the seasonal window and will have to wait until next year.

Hey ShakesBeer people, are you out there?  I think we’d all like to see “A Winter’s Ale” as your next offering!

 

 

 

So, Anybody Want To Pre-Read My Book?

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

A funny thing happened the other day while discussing with my daughter.   I discovered a book I’d written on the subject and completely forgotten about.

For years I’ve daydreamed about writing my own “intro to Shakespeare,” a fantasy that has evolved over time.  My hard drives are littered with half-hearted starts that never went anywhere because I always talked myself out of it. Either I didn’t have the audience, the audience I wanted was already saturated, or I just plain wasn’t qualified.  Finding excuses not to do something is easy.

But at some point, I sat at the keyboard long enough and wrote a complete-ish guide to The Tempest. It only goes about 17 PDF pages and is maybe 5000 words. But it has an introduction, a conclusion, and some actual structure in the middle.  It’s even got pictures 🙂

Now I’m trying to decide what to do with it.  I don’t expect that, by itself, I can just say “Here world, enjoy!” But I also know that I don’t need 50,000 words to throw something out on Amazon that people might find worth reading.

That’s where you come in. I’d like to send it to a few people who’d be willing to give some constructive criticism about what I might do with it – content to add, mistakes to correct, fine-tuning to …tune.  I do not need an academic redlining, believe me. I’ve already got 99 reasons to forget the whole idea.  I’m looking for supportive folks who’ll help me actually do something with this instead of giving me more reasons to forget the whole idea.

My real motivation for doing this is because both my girls want to be writers, and both of them suffer from terrible anxiety about letting the world see their work. I’m using this as an opportunity to throw something out there and show them that not only does the world not come to an end when other people read your stuff, but they might actually get some value out of it.

If you’re interested, please drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll send you the PDF. I’d like to get into an email correspondence with anybody that’s got feedback to offer, I’m not looking for just comments here on the blog post.

Thanks so much to everybody in advance!

 

The Tempest Is A Bad Play

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Got your attention?  Because it certainly got mine when I read it.

I didn’t write it — this guy did.

A friend cc’d me on a shared post, knowing that a clickbait headline like that was guaranteed to make me a little nuts.  It did.

His argument appears to be that Prospero is too powerful, and his enemies don’t stand a chance against him, therefore it’s boring to watch what we know will be his ultimate triumph over them.  I think this guy maybe thought he was going to see Infinity War or something. He’s describing Shakespeare like a superhero movie and he’s disappointed that there weren’t enough explosions.

He also seems bewildered at this idea that we know how the play is going to end, therefore it stinks:

We must root for him, and we know at every moment that he — yawn — will triumph.

…but you know in an instant how that’s going to end up; there’s no more suspense in it than in the Harlem Globetrotters taking on the Washington Generals.

I wonder how he feels about Romeo and Juliet?

At the end, though, he seems to actually get it:

There is a scene toward the end of the play in which Ariel expresses sympathy for Prospero’s enemies, laid low as they are from Prospero’s magic. Prospero marvels at the fact that the inhuman Ariel can experience empathy, where he, though human, cannot. And at that moment Prospero has his singular insight, which turns his life around: although he himself is at present incapable of empathy, he must act as though he has empathy for others, and, over time, learn to acquire it. And to do so, he must give up his god-like powers, and take his share in the human heart.

Like the kids say, and excuse my language, No Shit, Sherlock. That’s the story that’s in front of you the whole time.  Did you think that the director and actors put it there? I don’t follow how you get off calling the play terrible for half your word count, and then saying “But, this production was amazing.”  Were you scarred by a bad high school production when you were a child?

This guy’s bio suggests he’s actually seen Shakespeare more than once, so the only possible explanation I can find for this nonsense is that he’s trolling us.  He also takes a random slap at Coriolanus, which is apparently also terrible.  I’m surprised he didn’t say Hamlet is overrated and Falstaff’s not that difficult a role to play.