The Tempest

When the King Alonso of Naples and his entourage sail home for Italy after attending the princess Claribel's wedding in Tunis, Africa, they encounter a violent tempest. After jumping overboard, everyone washes ashore on a strange island inhabited by the magician Prospero, who deliberately conjured the storm. Who is this Prospero and why does he produce the tempest? What is the power that he has over the spirits inhabiting the island, especially concerning the half human, half savage Caliban?

A delightful romantic drama with undertones of betrayal and retribution, domination and subjugation, The Tempest remains to this day one of the more popular plays written by Shakespeare. The themes of freedom, friendship, repentance and forgiveness are beautifully interwoven, and by the end of the play, the tempest--both real and figurative--has calmed the most vengeful of avengers and washed away the sins of the most evil of wrongdoers.

About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire and was baptised on 26 April 1564. Thought to have been educated at the local grammar school, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he went on to have three children, at the age of eighteen, before moving to London to work in the theatre. Two erotic Poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were published in 1593 and 1594 and records of his plays begin to appear in 1594 for Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI. Shakespeare's tragic period lasted from around 1600 to 1608, during which period he wrote plays including Hamlet and Othello. The first editions of the Sonnets were published in 1609 but evidence suggests that Shakespeare had been writing them for years for a private readership.

Shakespeare spent the last five years of his life in Stratford, by now a wealthy man. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The first collected edition of his works was published in 1623.