Advantages: A good book and is written by shakespeare
Disadvantages: Old english and hard to understand

...This is a peice of year 10 coursework whick i got a b+ for. I was realy proud of this so i have decided to type it out and review it after. If any one is reading this and wants a copy of the essay you are more then welcome :-p. Imagine that you are going to direct a version of The Tempest. Explain how you would present the character of prospero to an Audience in act 1 scene 2 and The Epilogue. From the very start of William Shakespeare’s play `` The Tempest `` We can see that the character Prospero has a range of personalities. They can change rapidly from heartless and cruel to soft and loving. He is always trying to be in control, this may be because he needs to control people. Prospero tries to twist people’s minds and wrap people round his little... Read review

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Advantages: some
Disadvantages: too straight forward

...I'm so sorry.... I know The Bard is some kind of a VIP, I know everything he wrote was wonderful. Still, I don't like The Tempest. To me, it's one of his worst plays. I must say that some of his plays are really boring... For instance, The Winter Tale, it is very cute, but it looks like Mickey Mouse in Wonderland, mum comes back, we are glad, we cry a bit, but finally we smile. Completely excentric. Titus Andronicus... How could Shakespeare write such a tragedy ? It is so tragic that I laughed for hours. Lavinia is raped, her hands and her tongue are cut off, and Titus says something very clever, he says she will be here for him. He adds she will read books for him. My questions are : - how is it possible for her to say a word ? - how is it possible for her to hold a book ? He must finally be aware of that, because he kills... Read review

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Advantages: quite provocative and with some interesting subtext
Disadvantages: getting into the language

...The Tempest is a fascinating play, bleniding large scale politics with the personal, drawing on strong natural imagery and dabbling with magic - lots of the best Shakespeare ingredients. Obvious comparions can be made with "A MIdsummer Night's dream" but this is by far the more focused text, and has a far smaller cast. The Plot: Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, but due to some politicking, he's an exile, trapped on a small island with his daughter. Fate, chance or magic brings a boat to flounder on the island's shore - on that boat is Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples, and the Duke who userped Prospero, amongst others. On the island, there is confusion, romance and resolution. Being a comedy, it ends with reconiliation and marriage, in a quite touching scene. Prospero is the character who interests me most - not only... Read review

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Advantages: Fast paced, new slant on old genre
Disadvantages: Lacks a little depth in story and characters

...If you’ve read the other reviews on the previous instalments of Stan Nicholls’s Orc trilogy you’ll know that he has subverted the traditional view of Orcs as instruments of evil as popularised by Tolkien and other fantasy authors. The Orcs in this trilogy are brave warriors whose once proud traditions have been destroyed by the coming of Humans to their ancestral lands. The Orcs series is made up of three novels ‘Bodyguard of Lightning’, ‘Legion Of Thunder’ and ‘Warriors Of The Tempest’. The books are not ‘stand alone’ novels and I would advise to read them in the right order. In this review I will be looking at the third and last book ‘Warriors Of The Tempest’. THE STORY Nicholls takes us to the mythical world of Maras-Dantia. The world is populated by the ‘elder’ races familiar to fans of Tolkien and mythical traditional... Read review

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Advantages: Many contraversial topics are explored.
Disadvantages: Sometimes reading plays can become tedious.

...Well who knew that this play was full of so many issues? It explores the themes of slavery, disloyalty, nature vs. nurture, punishment and redemption. This play is an amazing piece of literature in which Shakespeare says goodbye to his audience. This was the last of his plays, and Shakespeare knew that his life was coming to an end, he was an old man and conveyed the message that man cannot control nature. The opening scene is when the Tempest is occuring and there are men on a ship, they are the Royal party who are trying to get back home to Milan. On this ship are men that have sinned, including a character called Antonio who usurped his brother Prospero for his Dukedom. Prospero was sent out to an island with his daughter and wants to bring those to the island that have wronged him. He can perform illusions like a magician, but he... Read review

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Advantages: Caliban
Disadvantages: Prospero

...The Tempest is one of the more underrated of old Bill Shakeshaft's work and has a lot of connections for me. I remember seeing it as a play put on by the sixth form when I was at school and I particularly remember a damn fine performance as Caliban by one of our prefects who was a pretty wild character, although it was the drunken and shipwrecked sailors who took most of the plaudits. (Moggy Matthews, whew, what a guy!) I also had this as one of my set books for English A-Level and remember quite getting into it and lastly, it wa sthe story on which the 50's sci fi movie The Forbidden Planet featuring a very young looking and serious Leslie Nielsen. Okay, personal background over. In reality, The Tempest is quite an interesting play, telling the tale of a ship that runs aground during a storm and landing the passengers and crew... Read review

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Advantages: Good storyline, interesting characters, humour/feel-good factor, hidden meanings open to interpretation
Disadvantages: Some of the make-believe a bit over the top

...I first saw a production of the Tempest when I was far too young to understand the language or appreciate the plot. I recall that I was frightened by the opening scene that (if acted well) portrays very vividly the terror of shipwreck. I was then bemused by the attempts of the adults with me to explain the whole idea of spirits that could be conjured up by magicians to control the winds. These same adults were the ones responsible for my rational upbringing through which, by the age of seven, I already knew to disregard fairies and the like as childish things. I had no understanding of drunkenness so the humour of the later scenes involving drunken sailors was completely lost on me. I think I would have been horrified by the treatment meted out to the slave, having no sense of historical perspective in which to place this. I... Read review

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Advantages: A fine departure from pop's creatively stagnant norm!
Disadvantages: Maybe too bizarre for some tastes

..." is an urgent appeal to another time zone. There is an unexpected source of help in the form of a mysterious old lady - herself in the far future. Whips, fiddles and Uillean Pipes whip up into a crazed menacing dance. If she dies this night, the old lady and her family will never be. The powerful Irish arrangement is infused with overtones of fear and hope - the dance of a shadowy figure who may never come to be. The music rises now to a tempest with "Hello Earth". At first stripped down to piano and vocals, it rises in drama and power, until it is overtaken by a darker-than-dark male choir. The Richard Hickox Singers add grandly to the theme of utter despair, symbolising final loss and misery. "Hello Earth" fades to nothing with a terrifying whimper of agony and hopelessness, to be amazingly replaced by a light of hope - "The Morning Fog... Read review

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Advantages: witty, intelligent, easy reading classic
Disadvantages: a bit jumpy and erratic at times

...I loved the Tempest. It was a really good read and the few times that I have seen the play, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The characters are fabulous. You could not get so many completely different characters in the same play, so successfully, if you tried. The characters are loveable and you really feel for them and sympathise with them especially Caliban who you just want to mother like a pet, and Ariel who you can pity in one instance and then get really angry with in the next. Shakespeare has written the play so accurately and really established the characters so well. His scene with a few of the characters being very drunk was wonderful and made me laugh o