Review: The Tempest

The Tempest by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m among that minority who is not a fan of Shakespeare’s particular school of writing...Now there be some fighting words!

This is not a disparagement of his works, nor am I calling them overrated. After all, if multitudes across generations were entertained and inspired by his works, who am I to argue?

Yet the fact remains, the Shakespearean school of ‘not’ calling a Rose a rose doesn’t gel with me. I’m however intrigued by the characters that he conceived, as well as the worlds & setting he constructed. In them, where often the supernatural, surreal and authentic go hand in hand.

Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Taming of a screw, these are all works I enjoy in prose, rather than screenplay. Perhaps it might be because that was how I was first introduced to them, in school.

There is no argument of how influential these works are. The reason I decided to revisit the tempest after the last time I read it (10th Standard English literature) was due to a few lines spoken by Miranda towards the climax.

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!

These words formed the crux and call sign of another seminal work which I read just prior. The Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Shakespeare, or rather his works, are a character itself in the novel, being the sole tether to a bygone era for John the Savage.

The interconnected nature of literary allusions is something which I find fascinating. And how it props up time in and out, in the long (relative) unbroken written tradition that has shaped our world. In that world, where the Tempest and all its sister works have formed a veritable niche.

Thus is uncontested.


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