What I find without a doubt the most interesting thing behind William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, is that it’s much darker than the writers’ pinnacle, Romeo & Juliette; but to everyone’s surprise winds up being the one with a happy ending. Shakespeare doesn’t do that to us often, in fact all of his stories are based in either bloodshed or deceit. The Tempest is no exception to that rule, it’s chock-full of despair and attempted murder right from the start. Known to the world today as the last installment in a series of hopeless tales, this specific piece of writing cements Shakespeare as a concept artist. It only makes sense that he would choose this farewell to tell a story of people actually changing, with a message that’s actually optimistic. In the Shakespearian world, everything’s connected. The Tempest follows suit of its predecessors in terms of manipulation and power struggle, then ultimately leaves the audience with their first un-ironic anecdote; all it takes is compromise to make seemingly Earth shattering problems go away. It feels like he’s saying no more death, no more darkness.
Both the play and it’s film starring Russell Brand are like Shakespeare on LSD. So much goes unexplained but at the end of the day that’s what makes it great, because it’s not the details that matter. The details stay more or less the same throughout every play, what he’s writing about is human nature. It’s an adaptation of essentially all his surfaced work. With the spin this time being that it relates to the world we live in, not Fair Verona Where We Lay Our Scene. He essentially foreshadowed what was one day to be America, with the slavery and rape in this play especially. Leave it to William to start the conversation early, his romantism of death and betrayal was unlike anything else from that time period. Shakespeare’s trailblazing writing is still having it’s ripple affect on pop culture. Maybe not so much with this piece, but you can’t say The Tempest didn’t serve it’s purpose in giving it’s readers and viewers a sense of closure they’ve not yet gotten with his work. The island is planet Earth, and each character trapped on the island together represents an architype of Shakespeare’s past characters. From your classic Romeo and Juliet forbidden fruit storyline right down to the shrew, in this case the wishes. For an old piece of art, The Tempest isn’t only impressive or the perfect end to a legacy; it’s beyond relevant to this day.
