The Tempest

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2013

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Written in around 1610, it is thought to be one of the playwright's final works and contains some of the most poetic and memorable passages in all his output. It was influenced by accounts of distant lands written by contemporary explorers, and by the complex international politics of the early Jacobean age.

The Tempest is set entirely on an unnamed island inhabited by the magician Prospero, his daughter Miranda and the monstrous Caliban, one of the most intriguing characters in Shakespeare's output. Its themes include magic and the nature of theatre itself - and some modern critics have seen it as an early meditation on the ethics of colonialism.

With:

Jonathan Bate Provost of Worcester College, Oxford

Erin Sullivan Lecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham

Katherine Duncan-Jones Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:42.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:45.0	Hello as I came through the front doors of Broadcasting House this morning I walked under a famous
0:49.7	statue by Eric Gill. The BBC's founders wanted an image that symbolised the act of broadcasting,
0:56.5	and so they commissioned a statue of two figures from Shakespeare, the bearded magician
1:00.3	Prospero sending the Spirit Ariel out into the world. Prospero and
1:04.8	aerial are two of the central characters of the Tempest, generally believed to be
1:08.4	Shakespeare's last play. It begins with a spectacular shipwreck and is set on a remote island which Prospero and his daughter Miranda share with a mysterious creature called Caliban.
1:18.0	Written in an age of expiration, it was heavily influenced by contemporary politics and contained some of Shakespeare's most celebrated verse.
1:25.0	It's been seen by some as a commentary on colonialism and by others as a meditation on the nature of theatre itself.
1:32.0	With me to discuss the temper star Jonathan Bates,
	...

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