I'm not

a lot of Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore.

Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world.

I'm Amanda.

And I'm Julia.

And this is an episode all about a play that Julia, we didn't do or study in high school, for me, at least, into late college.

But one I really love and one that's perhaps the most mythological, may I say, of all of Shakespeare's work.

I would certainly say the most magical.

We talked about the Midsummer Night's Dream episode, and that I think is probably his most mythological in the

sense that he's literally drawing from mythology for a lot of those characters. But the

Tempest is so incredible in terms of the imagery and the use of magic as a way of driving the plot forward, that when I was

thinking about, hey, what Shakespeare can we do that talks about magic? The Tempest was pretty

much the first one that came to my mind. But I was more familiar with Midsummer, so we decided to

start with Midsummer. Yes, I am so stoked. Also, I mean, as a tall and a small best friend duo,

I mean, we're required to talk about Helen and Hermia, you know what I mean? Of course,

naturally. Like, that is just who we are as people. We are Helena and Hermia core.

Exactly. Oh, God, that's good. But yeah, we have to now turn our attention to a play that is all about the ocean, that's all about magic, it's all about language, things that we love, and themes that I'm so excited to see your take on.

Yeah, now, Amanda, you've studied this play. I was not a Shakespearean scholar or took any Shakespearean classes in college.

So I'm going to rely on you to kind of

give me some themes that I might be missing or some interesting facts, because it's been a really

long time since I've seen this play performed live. So I am relying on you to be my inside source,

my Shakespearean expertise. Always. I mean, the fact is I studied abroad in London and took three classes that involved seeing live theater. So I simply overdosed on theater for several months, which I highly recommend to all students. But yeah, I'm delighted to talk about this. I was able to see it live a couple of times and read it and have watched some film adaptations.

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