The Tempest

Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, was sent off to a desert island with his daughter by his evil brother, who stole his title, and the almost-as-evil King of Naples.  Now the bad guys are shipwrecked along with the king's, brother and son and a senile old servant on that same desert island, and all hell breaks loose-no, not literally, but close.  To make a long, convoluted story short, the son and daughter end up getting married, Prospero gets his dukedom back, and they all live happily ever after-maybe.

This was one of Shakespeare's last plays and the last one he wrote without a collaborator, and so is sometimes seen as being his farewell to his theater.  Reading Prospero's epilogue, I can believe it.  In a way, I feel sorry for Prospero.  All he really wanted was to run his dukedom and read, which I can identify, and here he gets abandoned for years.  By the time he gives up his magic powers, he doesn't even really want to be duke anymore, it's just the principle.  All he wants is to lay down and die now that he has gotten his daughter raised and settled and gotten his revenge.  As for Antonio, well, he's just a bastard.  I wonder just what might happen with Gonzalo if he's as fervent an anarchist as he claims to be, although he seems to already be pretty old and seems comfortable taking orders.  Maybe he was just talking to entertain Sebastian and Antonio like he said.  Whatever his motives, this is an extremely pleasant play.  No, it's not the best in my opinion, but it's up there.

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