Greetings everyone! I am pleased to announce (with some slight apprehension) that the featured book for June will be William Shakespeare's The Tempest. My apprehension comes from the grade-school fear of anything relating to Shakespeare and his twisted turns of phrase and part way into the book I have discovered that my fears are not entirely unfounded. Yes, indeed, it is truly a challenging read. It took me a while to adapt to the prose but I like a challenge. If you have difficulty with the prose, as the editor of this edition remarks, you should not feel alone; Shakespeare was not well understood in his own time. Not only was he known for inventing words, many of which are still in use like "assassin" (and many which aren't like "congree" (to agree with one's self)) but he also stretched the meaning of common words to their limits. For this reason, I highly recommend picking up the Barnes and Noble edition of The Tempest. Barnes and Noble has issued very nice editions of each of Shakespeare's plays in paperback which are heavily annotated for both meaning and context for any word or phrase that may have an exotic or archaic definition. Sometimes it will translate an entire paragraph, if necessary, and I have found it to be indispensable. It also includes multiple forewords and afterwords from scholars on history and context. Here is the information:
The Tempest by William Shakespeare; Editor: Gordon McMullan, ISBN 978-1-4114-0076-4 $7.95 USA
As always, I like to give a brief introduction about the author and novel (in this case a play) but it feels strange introducing an author that is so iconic to the western world. In fact, his plays are performed more often than any other playwright in existence. We learn about Shakespeare in middle school and even if few can remember what his plays were about, we certainly know who he is. This, in a way, is very interesting because even scholars know very little about his life outside his works. You could say that nobody knows him. We know that he was born sometime around 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon to reasonably well off parents. We know that at the age of 18 he married the 26 year old Anne Hathaway who bore him three children. Sometime in his twenties he became part owner of a playing company which was very successful and would eventually be known as The King's Men. During this time he produced the majority of his known work which amounts to 38 plays, over 150 sonnets, and many poems. After a long career on and off the stage he died in April of 1616. Unfortunately, very little is recorded of his life outside the stage and much of what we do know is second hand information. In any case, in his lifetime he profoundly affected the course of today's entertainment and the English Language itself.
The Tempest was written in the final days of Shakespeare's writing career and is considered a tragicomedy, or more simply, a romance. In the case of older literature the word comedy often references the presence of a happy ending more so than any real humor (although humor can certainly be found in his plays). The Tempest tells the tale of a Magus (Prosepero) and his daughter sent to their deaths at sea by his power hungry brother. Prospero and his daughter survive on an island and, 12 years later, are afforded the opportunity to settle the score and put things right again. Please enjoy the tale as The Tempest is considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works!
Thanks! Joe
No comments:
Post a Comment