A Visual Source for Shakespeare's 'Tempest' | Hacker News Reader

A Visual Source for Shakespeare's 'Tempest'

profadamroberts.substack.com

30 pointsseegodanddie8 comments

It's intriguing, but two things. Prospero is conspicuously not a knight. He is a pure scholar; his inability to look outside his books is the reason he got into this mess.

Also, Shakespeare had two more native inhabitants of that island, Ariel and Sycorax (Caliban's mother, defeated by Prospero).

So even if Shakespeare had noted this image, it doesn't sound like a core inspiration for the play. It's worth continuing to look at and see if we can learn anything about the text, but I suspect that this short article is both the beginning and end of that line of inquiry.

I run a D&D campaign, and am frequently inspired by the things I see around me - but almost none of them make it into the game on a purely 1:1 basis. I take bits and pieces, shuffle and rearrange them.

Shakespeare seeing some images, and taking bits and pieces that fit the story best seems so plausible to me.

(But also, what I know about Shakespeare can probably be written down on a post-it with a sharpie, so take my opinions with whatever amount of salt required.)

Shakespeare tended to re-use existing stories or plays. As the article mentions, there are only two of his plays (out of almost 40) where we don’t know of a pre-existing source. Of course it is possible he made the story up himself after getting inspired by a drawing, buy I find it a lot more plausible he based it on another story or play which just happens to be lost (which is the case for many plays of the age).

Yeah, that's a very fair point, and the biggest strike against this theory.

It is kind of incredible that the man considered to be the best playwright and author in the English language basically just copied existing stories. On the other hand, the firsts were often groundbreaking and influential, but their actual works aren't that good compared to what came after.

He didn’t just copy the stories. He retold them with his own language and poetry and characterization, which is what he is celebrated for. Often his changes completely reframes the original story - but the basic storyline and the names of the characters remain the same.

Orlando Furioso is one of the "standard" texts posited to have inspired The Tempest, so this isn't a stretch. I'd not seen reproductions of the illustrations in the contemporary edition, however, so that's nice.

Beethovens 17th piano sonata is based on the tempest. I recommend Richter if you’re curious!

https://youtu.be/qeL3tAb7yV4

For another work inspired by The Tempest, Forbidden Planet! Caliban == Monster From the Id, if you squint hard enough

Reply on news.ycombinator.com