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bibliophileiz 's review for:
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
I read The Tempest on a trip to visit friends, during which we planned to see a performance of the play. I'm one of those people who like to read Shakespeare's plays before I see them onstage both to more easily follow what's going on and also to see if the actors' interpretations of the characters match up with my own. Thus I read The Tempest a bit more quickly than I normally would have, since I was trying to finish it before the performance, and I found it -- less memorable than most of the Shakespeare plays I've read.
Part of the problem is that as soon as I finished it, I read one of my all-time favorite books, Station 11, for the first time and that eclipsed The Tempest. But I also found this particular play less complex or interesting than something like Macbeth, As You Like It, or Much Ado About Nothing. I didn't even have a strong dislike of it to make it stand out in my brain the way I do for The Taming of the Shrew. I simply didn't get much out of this one. Miranda was one of the least developed female characters of Shakespeare's creation, and I didn't find the other characters compelling or sympathetic, with the exception of Caliban and sometimes Prospero.
But the story was a fun adventure with a happy ending, and with the right director, crew, and actors, it can be turned into a great performance -- which is what's really important about a play.
Part of the problem is that as soon as I finished it, I read one of my all-time favorite books, Station 11, for the first time and that eclipsed The Tempest. But I also found this particular play less complex or interesting than something like Macbeth, As You Like It, or Much Ado About Nothing. I didn't even have a strong dislike of it to make it stand out in my brain the way I do for The Taming of the Shrew. I simply didn't get much out of this one. Miranda was one of the least developed female characters of Shakespeare's creation, and I didn't find the other characters compelling or sympathetic, with the exception of Caliban and sometimes Prospero.
But the story was a fun adventure with a happy ending, and with the right director, crew, and actors, it can be turned into a great performance -- which is what's really important about a play.