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    The Tempest
    The Tempest
    The Tempest
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Tempest

    Written by William Shakespeare

    Narrated by Ian McKellen and Full Cast

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    About this audiobook

    Sir Ian McKellen, fresh from his performance as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings is Prospero, and heads a strong cast in Shakespeare’s last great play. The wronged duke raises a tempest to shipwreck his old opponents on his island so that he can ensure justice is done. With Emilia Fox as Miranda, Scott Handy in the pivotal role of the sprite Ariel and Ben Owukwe as Caliban, this new production directed by John Tydeman, balances the magic and the earthiness with music playing a key role.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateNov 1, 2004
    ISBN9789629546946
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

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    Reviews for The Tempest

    4/5

    2,453 ratings67 reviews

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    • 2/5
      The audio quality and acting are fine BUT be forewarned that ‘chapter two’ (act 1 scene 2) abruptly ends at line 363 and goes straight to ‘chapter 3’ (act 2 scene 1) skipping several pages of text. Very disappointing!!

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Well done audiobook, but this recording is incomplete! Several chapters stop midway through!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Brilliant performances, but almost every chapter cut off abruptly, so a lot of the story wasn't there, making it impossible to follow if you haven't read it before, and ruining the enjoyment of the play

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      i read this on my nook e-book and think it would have been a better experience in tree-book form. with shakespeare, i like to go back and forth and re-read passages and while i highlighted a lot of places in the text, it wasn't the same experience.
    • 3/5
      Not as good a read as it was to watch the play. Funny, but the damn footnotes got in the way.
    • 3/5
      Not one of the Bard's best.
    • 5/5
      My favorite play by Shakespeare!!!
    • 3/5
      None of the characters sucked me in, but the themes it explores are fascinating within the historical and biographical background.
    • 1/5
      The play is great but the recording is incomplete, big parts are missing and cutting off right in the play
    • 3/5
      This was rather mild for a Shakespeare play. While I can't aver that I understood every pun and allusion in the play I did enjoy it. It's amazing how a play existing almost on dialogue alone can convey such vivid images.
    • 3/5
      None of the characters sucked me in, but the themes it explores are fascinating within the historical and biographical background.
    • 5/5
      The story of a prince who is shipwrecked in a strange land on his journey home is a frequent theme of Classical literature. These strange lands are almost certainly snares, attempts to prevent the hero from fulfilling his destiny and arriving at his homeland, and the usual method of entrapment is seduction.Odysseus on Calypso's island, Aeneas in Carthage, and Jason and Medea as told in the Metamorphoses. In The Tempest, Ferdinand finds himself in just such a situation. Washed up on a strange shore, Ferdinand meets the strange and entrancing woman who bewitches him and inspires him to remain in captivity instead of heading home to rule his city. He believes that he is the king (1.2.435 "Myself am Naples"), but will remain on the island for Miranda's sake. What makes The Tempest different from the other stories is the presence of Prospero, the one who is actually orchestrating the lovers' encounter.Prospero was a philosopher-king defeated by a MachiavelProspero was a stranger ot his state, "being transported / and rapt in secret studies." Antonio is described as having set "All hearts i' the' state / to what tune pleased his ear, . . " (1.2.79-116), who realized that he had to learn Machiavellianism if he was to maintain his throne. He speaks in Machiavellian terms of Fortune bringing him the opportunity which he must not neglect (1.2.178-184). He manipulates the situation to his best possible advantage; intersetingly, he does this through Baconian methods. His whole life has been about studying ways to manipulate nature, achieving power over nature. This is what enables him in the end to achieve power over the shipwrecked men -- for the power of man over Nature really means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument.Prospero takes a fundamentally adversarial stance to Nature as portrayed by both of the original inhabitants of the island, Caliban and Ariel. He originally tried being nice to Caliban (1.2.344-348), but learned to his chagrin that this part of nature is tricksy and unyielding. He also freed Ariel from the pine tree, but only because Ariel is useful to him; he dominates Ariel, praising and scorning him by turns even as a large part of his power depends on the sprite. He cannot afford to alienate Ariel as he has alienated Caliban, but he still dominates. Prospero believes that he is manipulating everything for the greater good, but he is still manipulating it all, and this will eventually lead to what we know as the Brave New World (5.1.182-185).It is possible to argue that Prospero's endeavor is not Baconian, since he rarely directly manipulates nature but instead relies on a cooperative spirit. Lewis described the eschatology of our power over Nature in Miracles, this way: "In the walking on the Water we see the relations of spirit and Nature so altered that Nature can be made to do whatever spirit pleases. This new obedience of Nature is, of course, not to be separated even in thought from spirit's own obedience to the Father of Spirits. Apart from that proviso such obedience by Nature, if it were possible, would result in chaos: the evil dream of Magic arises from finite spirit's longing to get that power without paying that price. The evil reality of lawless applied science (which is Magic's son and heir) is actually reducing large tracts of Nature to disorder and sterility at this very moment." But when Prospero hears of Gonzalo's tears, his reason defeats his baser desires for vengeance and he realizes that all his manipulation is of the same school as Medea's.(5.1.15-20) It's not noble, it's selfish witchcraft, and he renounces it by quoting Medea's own description of her powers.
    • 3/5
      This was just OK for me. I am pretty fussy about my Shakespeare I guess (I know, what nerve). I liked the audio production and it was entertaining, but pretty standard fare. Deposed ruler living on deserted island with daughter learns magic. Uses magical skills to cause a shipwreck, bringing a suitor for his daughter and the chance to right wrongs. Happy ending. Some familiar bits of language - "stuff as dreams are made on", "brave new world" and "strange bedfellows" - to note.
    • 4/5
      I have attempted many times to read this play and tried to watch a couple different versions of the movie and have always quit in the middle or just not understood it. So with the new movie (2010)out with some of the best actors in key roles I wanted to attempt one more time to understand this play so that I didn't have to sit through the movie trying to understand but failing once again to do so.This side-by-side version helped me to do just that. With the original play on one side and the plain english on the facing page I finally got it. I love this idea where you are still engaged with the original text but can follow along (if you need to) line for line and really understand the meaning. I did find that I didn't always need the translation but it was there when I did. It's different from just reading a synopsis.
    • 5/5
      I love The Tempest. I find the summary itself captivating: a powerful sorcerer named Prospero is living in exile on a deserted island with his teenaged daughter, Miranda. The sorcerer has two supernatural servants: a grotesque monster named Caliban, and an enchanting air sprite named Ariel. When the men responsible for his exile pass near the island, Prospero conjures a terrible storm that wrecks their ship and strands them. The plot proceeds quickly and simply, with Prospero orchestrating the romance between his daughter and the handsome Prince Ferdinand, meanwhile sending spirits to torment his traitorous brother. There is also a third (comedic) subplot involving the monster Caliban. Caliban mistakes a pair of drunken idiots for gods from the moon, and tries to get them to slay Prospero. The sorcerer is manipulating and controlling everything, like a writer or a god, he guides each of the characters through their respective moral/mythical evolutions and concludes the story by forgiving those who wronged him. ("The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.") And there's a magical/illusory party involving some Greek goddesses. And then they all live happily ever after, the end. The whole thing is so bizarre that it's hard not to enjoy it, and it's very simple to understand since it has such a basic, straightforward fairy tale/moral fable quality to it. The Tempest lacks the detailed complex characters of such plays as Hamlet or King Lear, but The Tempest is not a story about characters. The Tempest is about morals and philosophy, and the characters are simplistic because they are merely symbols used for illustrating these ideas.The theme throughout the play revolves around nature and the natural order, although the concepts are outdated by modern standards. For example, one of the biggest morals expounded on in The Tempest is that it is wrong to question the natural (i.e.: royal) rulers of a country. It was wrong (unnatural) for Antonio to steal the dukedom from Prospero, even if Prospero did spend all his time in the library brushing up on the occult. It was equally wrong (unnatural) for Caliban to try and overthrow Prospero, even if the island they're stuck on did originally belong to the little monster, because Prospero is a natural (royal) ruler. Also, the philosophy of man returning to nature to regain his purity is to be found in the character of Miranda. Prospero's teenaged daughter is described as being pure and perfect because she's been raised in nature and has the incredibly naive innocence of someone who has grown up in the Garden of Eden, as opposed to the real world. She's never even seen any people, apart from her father, so when she meets Ferdinand she is overcome with his beauty. When she meets the rest of the nobles at the end of the play she is equally astounded. "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't!"These moral concepts are considerably outmoded now, but at the same time, the story Shakespeare uses to illustrate his principals - full of sorcery, spirits, monsters, illusions, drunkards and schemers, is so mind boggling fantastical and bizarre that I find myself genuinely enjoying it, even if I don't believe kings should be blindly obeyed or girls should be raised in a vacuum of brainwashed obedience and "purity." The Tempest is just fun. Let's face it: a story that features a half-man half-fish monster mistaking a lost drunk guy for a god from the moon is not a story to be missed.A note on the Signet Classics edition: these editions are very nice. They start off with a brief overview of Shakespeare's life and a description of the Globe theatre, and how the plays would have been acted originally. The prefatory remarks and introduction are excellent for explaining the meaning and context of the play. There are helpful footnotes throughout, explaining difficult words and phrases, but not so much that they look cluttered or interrupt the flow of reading. And at the end, there is information on the actual tempest and shipwreck that took place off the Bermudas in 1609 that was probably inspiration for the play. This is followed by a few different essays on The Tempest, and a suggested reading list.
    • 3/5
      If it were not for the recording issues, I would give the audiobook a 5 star rating. There are several places where, mid-sentence/mid-scene, the recording would skip to the next scene or act. If following along in the physical book, it’s not too troublesome, but be aware there are discrepancies.
    • 5/5
      Jesus Christ that was really quite astonishing. Mckellen is a marvel.
    • 3/5
      I’m not even a little scholarly so this was read and reviewed from purely an entertainment standpoint.While I like a bit of magic, the way it’s done here is the sort I struggle with, I like rules, I like parameters on magic/powers rather than feeling like the author or in this case the playwright can use it at any time to take the easy way out of any corner they’ve written the story into, I guess to me it makes the narrative feel somewhat manipulated rather than fully earned. Plus I mean if there are no limits to what Prospero can do with the magic and spirits or whatever else at his disposal then how did he even end up shipwrecked and why didn’t he leave the island eons ago and reclaim his position of power? I wish there had been more to the insta-romance as given the animosity between the families there was more to explore in the dynamics of this relationship. Where this worked best for me was in the scheming and conniving, those moments held my interest even if ultimately all of it seemed to resolve just a little too easily.
    • 4/5
      The first time through I felt as if nothing much happened in this play, but on a re-read, I like it better. I think I need to watch a performance or two for the full effect.
    • 4/5
      A moderately amusing play, with what were probably musical interludes, and some dancing. Magician finally executes a small revenge, and marries off his daughter. I saw a stage production with a one-armed actor playing Prospero quite effectively.
    • 4/5
      Back on solid footing after the last two or three plays. I quite enjoyed this one despite all the songs (Arkangel is terrible with these), and the massive info-dumpy beginning.

      Overall, I think it was the magic in general, and Ariel in particular that sold this one for me.
    • 5/5
      This is part of a project to update some of Shakespeare's plays to make them more accessible to modern audiences while keeping the essential nature and structures of the original work. Cavander does an outstanding job at this. While reading a play is not the same as seeing it performed - and thus any review limited in that aspect - I believe he gained clarity without losing anything from the original. Now I would like to see it performed.
    • 4/5
      RSC @Barbican - First time watching and came in with virtually zero knowledge... although didn't expect a romance (of sorts). The big sell for me was Simon Russell Beale as Prospero (excellent, the final meta-soliloquy left me in tears - the guy can act) and the Intel assisted CGI (less spectacular than I anticipated, but think my seat was maybe too good(!) to appreciate it.)

      Not quite what I expected, but intrigued to rewatch/read - certainly some interesting elements regarding colonialism and feminism.
    • 4/5
      his complexion is perfect gallows.

      Disappointed today. First with Goodreads and the elimination of the Most Read Author function. Second with my coworkers. Alas my bootless cries were soon lost in the squall of my imagination as I swept through this play. It is impossible to not think of race and perhaps immigration when reading about shipwrecked royals and marriage masques rife with spirits and harpies. There is much of the Other. There is also considerable drinking and an all-too-pat love story.

      The Bard again balances the nobles and the proles in a tale of endless voyage both maritime and celestial, all larded with stuff of dreams.
    • 4/5
      It's Shakespeare. Really, what else can I say?
    • 5/5
      A great play. Never forget Sir Patrick Stewart in the title role. This version includes: Forward, Intro, essay on The Tempest in performance (through 1984), description of the Globe, essay on Shakespeare's sources (with excerpts), annotated bibliography, memorable lines.
    • 3/5
       Dramatized audio recordings of are difficult for to listen to because there are so many minor characters. This one was a bit more manageable.
    • 3/5
      Even a genius is allowed to be average once in a while. Reportedly the last play Shakespeare wrote on his own, I can't help but wonder if he mailed it in on this. Maybe he needed the money? Maybe he was fulfilling a contract for one more play, much like Hitchcock did with the abhorrent movie Jamacia Inn, his last British production before moving to Hollywood. Whatever the case, The Tempest was neither romantic enough to make me fall in love, tragic enough to make me sad or funny enough to make me laugh. But, it is Shakespheare so even his meh efforts are better than most, but still. Not up to his standards.

      I read along with the text while I listened to the audio version, a practice I highly recommend. I wish I could have done that in high school. I'll definitely suggest immersion reading to my children as they enter high school and discover Shakespeare.

    • 5/5
      Being Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest is a masterful piece in which he uses Prospero as a stand-in for himself within a play full of the magic of stagecraft and his position as playwright.Using all the mystical techniques at his disposal (theatre), Prospero the magician (playwright) writes his tale of revenge as a ship containing his treasonous brother sails near enough to the island for him to set the stage at long last.The Tempest also stands as a magnificent tale even without the allegory. The rightful Duke of Milan (Prospero) is set adrift along with his daughter by his treacherous brother, but manages to survive on an island for twelve years with the help of his magic and the spirits of the island he has impressed into his service. Now, the King of Naples sails home along with Prospero's brother and he can finally seek his revenge, making sure to set his daughter into a happy role as well before things are done.I just love the way this play uses the stage to show Prospero's magic and Ariel's abilities. It truly is a great work by one of the masters.This particular volume I picked up from a local library sale and intend to add it to my Little Free Library for someone else to discover.
    • 5/5
      Amazingg.. It has the ability to enchant every reader through its imagination. The part that I liked less is how (most probably unwittingly I suppose) did Shakespeare show how did Colonisation worked and the attitude of the colonised towards the coloniser. Overall, it gave me a feel of an old tale finishing up. All the negative characters were simply puppets in the hands of Prospers and it was in the understanding of the endurance that we were able to enjoy the present conquests of Prospero. Overall, a wonderful read.