The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place, using illusion and skilful manipulation. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure to the island his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit Alonso, King of Naples. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's low nature, the redemption of Alonso, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.
The first recorded performance of The Tempest occurred on 1 November 1611, when the King's Men acted the play before James I and the English royal court at Whitehall Palace on Hallowmas night. It was also one of the eight Shakespearean plays acted at court during the winter of 1612–13 as part of the festivities surrounding the marriage of Princess Elizabeth with Frederick V, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. There is no further public performance recorded prior to the Restoration; but in his preface to the 1667 Dryden/Davenant version, Sir William Davenant states that The Tempest had been performed at the Blackfriars Theatre. Careful consideration of stage directions within the play supports this, strongly suggesting that the play was written with Blackfriars Theatre rather than the Globe Theatre in mind.
These beautiful illustrations by Edmund Dulac come from the 1915 edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest now in the public domain.
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