The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island
This object is a printed copy of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. It is currently located in the Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University. This hardcover book was printed in London in the year 1789. Though it was originally written by William Shakespeare, this copy was compiled by J.P. Kemble. This particular copy was made for J. Debrett, but the readers were most likely expected to be anyone at the time who desired to read the play in the manner it had been performed. There are various versions of Shakespeare’s works, but this text was modeled after the performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on the 13th of October, 1789. Debrett was the initial owner of the book, but its following possessor is unknown. The next account there is of any ownership is by the Louisiana State University Library, in February of 1958.
This copy of the play is far from any sort of book that would be printed in modern times. The outside is made with a thin, hardback cover with a tortoiseshell-like print on it in green and gold. It is a rather slim book, containing thin, fragile pages. This copy is an example of a quartto, meaning each sheet is actually an eighth of a regular sheet of paper.
This rare, antique, original copy of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, gives insight into who owned it, its purpose, and how it would have been read in that time period.
Our group's interpretation of William Shakespeare's play The tempest; or, the enchanted island is depicted with various modern day elements and scenes influenced by how we imagine the play The tempest; or, the enchanted island to be played on stage. Our interpretations included us dressing up as the characters from the play, acting out the scenes in a video and picture, and captioning the scenes with modernized slang. All our information was then compiled onto an Instagram account in the order that the scenes occur in.
On our Instagram account, we start off with the horrible shipwreck in Act 1 that started the play. The picture of the ship displays it going through various phases of destruction. Then we switch to the next scene, where the focus goes onto Caliban, the monster of the island. He is describes as this really ugly, freaky, and monstrous being throughout the play so we displayed him as a Chameleon. A reptile with a freakishly ugly face. The scene then changes to Miranda proposing to Ferdinand while Miranda's father, Prospero spies on them in the background . In this scene, we gave it a modernized feel by dressing up Miranda in a bright pink dress and giving her copious amounts of flower decorations to represent her innocence. In the background, Prospero, is shown wearing a white robe and a wizard hat. We imagined him as Gandalf, the most iconic wizard of the modern world, of the play since he identifies as a magician and performs magic throughout the play. Next, we show Alonso attempting to commit suicide because he believes his son to be dead, and we show how Prospero finds Alonso's son and his daughter right after. We incorporated comedic values into these two scenes to show the original play's comedy values. Alonso is shown by the river attempting to commit suicide, but the whole scene loses its serious factor by the added bonus of ducks in the picture. Prospero is then shown in a video, catching Ferdinand and Miranda participating in an intimate act. Finally, we end the play by showing Prospero giving an epilogue in a very dejected manner.