The start of Shakespeare's play The Tempest is different from other plays we have read this semester. The storm at the beginning of the play leaves the audience with an ominous feeling. As discussed in class when one comes upon any sort of storm in what they are reading the mood of the piece of in this case the play changes.
To have a storm at the opening of the play makes me feel that the remainder of the play is going to be either a pleasing ending or one of many problems to come. Not often do you see the storm come first but it is usual calm before a storm which leads me to believe that maybe the order had been reversed and because of this storm at the start we may come across happier endings.
What also came to mind as I read this opening act of The Tempest was our in class assignment for creating the scene from Richard III. Most people picked the scene to take place on a stormy evening which gave the scene more of an impact on it's audience which is another thing that I felt the opening act of The Tempest did.
Will this storm lead to happier endings or is it just a sign of more problems to come? This powerful and different act has brought a great deal of questions to be answered.
3 comments:
I like this connection to our exercise on _Richard III_, Liz. It emphasizes the point of how rarely Shakespeare offers us the kinds of atmospherics we get at the opening of _The Tempest_. Mainly, these details are open to the interpretation of the audience, but not here.
Great post, I totally agree with you. We haven't read any other play that started off this way so I almost enjoyed the uneasy feeling and it makes me even more curious to what is going to happen in the end. I feel that usually the way in which the reader interprets a storm is with feelings of negativity, and being frightened. Going by what you said, I don't know if we will see a happy ending or not since we started off with a different beginning than most. I feel that at this point, it can go either way. If I had to guess what was going to happen, I think I am going to go with that the ending will be happier and much brighter than the beginning was, but only time will tell! I would be surprised to see a play start off with a storm and ALSO end with something negative as well.
I've seen this play performed a few times and I also noted that in this comedy, we start out with the feeling that there might not be a happy ending. The shipwreck and the island setting was particularly dark in the performance at RSC directed by Rupert Goold. I'm glad this post reminded me of that show. Good post.
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