The Tempest, A Comedy by William Shakespeare
Published in 1901, The Tempest, a Comedy by William Shakespeare is a beautifully crafted book with a white cover and spine decorated in gold leaf. While it is evidently aged, it is still in very good condition. The pages are still firmly attached to the spine, and none of the ink is faded in the slightest. Based on the elaborate decoration of the book and the relatively good condition of it, the book was either handled with extreme care or did not circulate much. It has a thick cover and thicker, rough pages, so it was most likely made to withstand a great deal of handling. The pages are deckled, meaning that they were not finished to be all one length, in an effort to make the book look older.
Inside, the book is full of illustrations and details in the same style of art deco as the front and back cover. The first empty pages of the book have some handwritten notes; one indicating that the book was sold in 1969 and was priced at $2.50. The text itself is black, except for the “Scene” and “Act” notations, which are in red ink. This abrupt change emphasizes the change between scenes and actions within the storyline of the play. The margins are very wide and the text is decently sized, which makes it easy to read, but also indicates that saving space was not a large priority for the printer. The words, unlike the pages, are unadorned, without footnotes, endnotes, or line numbers. There are many illustrations scattered throughout the book, which vary in size, some a whole page, while others are only a quarter and are tucked in randomly between the lines. Additionally, whenever a new character is introduced, there is a full-page image depicting the character.
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Critical Paratext
Our Shakespeare artifact was 1901 copy of The Tempest with art deco illustrations throughout. For our creative analysis features, on the idea of Cosha, she made a video trailer of The Tempest that would entice people to read The Tempest. It highlights the themes of revenge, forgiveness, and love. It contained images from the text and along with other media to give the impression of a real movie trailer. It combined different trailer aspects for a shipwreck, a romance, revenge, and a magic drama. Also because it like a real trailer and to keep the audience interest in going to read it, the trailer does not encompass the entire play. The trailer purposely keeps the viewer guessing about how the different plots will resolve themselves.
In the original play, there is multiple story plots going on at the same time. We capitalize on these by dividing the trailer into three parts, defined by different musical choices as a nod at the title of our class. This also implies the modern Shakespearean themes of modern culture. After the flipping through pictures from the book, we play the song “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift to show the relationship between Prospero and Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio. Then it slows down the tempo and plays the song, “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith, while showing the romance between Miranda and Prince Ferdinand. They are the central romantic arc of the play. But because they fall in love in just one day and it’s implied that their relationship also seems as if it was orchestrated by Miranda’s father, Prospero, the music is not a simple, sanguine love song. Third, the relationship between Caliban and Prospero is tense, supernatural one of a creature trying to escape the control of his master. Prospero dominance the relationship because he his magic enables to instill fear in Caliban. For these scenes, we used the song “Dark Horse” from Katy Perry’s album, Prism. The lyrics, “coming at you” voice Caliban’s intentions and include magical elements that both Caliban and Prospero use in the play.
Within the three different parts of the trailer, each character had been assigned to a different group member, who analyzed the character and collected quotes and images that would be used to represent said character in the trailer. We wanted to combine music, pictures, gifs, quotes, and suspense building plot questions to make a multimedia teaser for anyone who has not read The Tempest or inspire those who have. We used plot, character, theme, and tone to create a, if incomplete, tantalizing look into one of Shakespeare’s problem plays.
