Life is a Dream.
Project 39 continues with The Tempest Act Four, Scene One.
Exiled on an island, the magician Propsero has generated a storm to bring together those responsible for his outcast state. But instead of revenge, he seeks forgiveness and reconciliation.
Immediately before this speech, Prospero created a wedding masque performance for his daughter. But he breaks it off and reflects on the emptiness of illusion. Many see this as Shakespeare himself growing tired of the stage, perhaps even tired of his own power in creating illusion. Certainly W. H. Auden thought that by the end of his career Shakespeare had decided that art was not enough and life the only worthwhile thing. But Prospero here is actually saying that all of life is an illusion, a dream, a performance, a stage set on which the curtain will eventually fall.
But seeing life as an illusion is no cause for despair. The final plays of Shakespeare have a unique texture. The Irish critic Edward Dowden wrote that Shakespeare seems to have attained “large, serene wisdom… some high and luminous table-land of joy.”
Prospero is played by Tim Faulkner
“Throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.”
— Aldous Huxley
Ian Rankin: ‘Why people who read books live 1,000 lives’.
In an exclusive @thecourieruk interview, the ambassador for National Year of Reading -supported by @DC_Thomson- @Beathhigh talks libraries, comics, BookTok, Rebus and the enduring power of reading.
https://t.co/hufk643avb
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