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Friday, June 22, 2012

The Tempest

Shakespeare is good at confusing plays. I just felt like I was floundering a little in this one. It's easily summarized as: the former Duke of Milan is mad that his brother has taken his dukedom and he and his daughter have been stranded on an island, so he comes up with a plot to gain back his dukedom by shipwrecking his brother and the King of Naples on the island. Yeah. Now stretch that to five acts.

It wasn't a horrible play. I was able to read it well enough, but it just has these confusing elements, particularly the spirits that Prospero calls to do his dirty work. And let's be honest, they do all of his dirty work. He just sits back and calls upon one in particular (Ariel) to go and either wrangle or confuse the characters that have been shipwrecked.

It was all very confusing.

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