Artistic Interpretations of The Tempest

This week, in preparation for our exhibit, I’ve been thinking more about versions. More specifically, different versions of the same thing. So today, I’ll be talking about four different versions of The Tempest. I found some pretty cool stuff in the Honnold special collections, as well as in the collection at Denison Library (Scripps College). Not only did I see beautifully illustrated editions with the unaltered text, but I even found two operas.

The first piece I’m going to highlight today is from 1756 and pairs down the play to three shorter acts. Most of the prose is the same, but the main difference is that the writer converted Shakespeare’s dialogue into airs to be sung.

So, as you can see here, Ariel opens the performance with a song, instead of the play opening to a ship in a storm. To me, this is just another example of Shakespeare’s transcendence across genre.

The Tempest seems to lend itself to opera (or at least theatricality), since in the 1850s, another edition, another version, emerges. A publisher in Paris printed an edition of The Tempest in Italian, another opera in three acts.

This book, however, contained the music and was put together more like sheet music instead of a play,as the previous one presents itself.

As you can see, the book contains the music as well as the corresponding lyrics. It even differentiates the parts, making it possible to easily see who is supposed to be singing. More than the previous English opera, this version moves one step further from the original through translation. Arguably, you could argue that there are two forms of translation, the first from English to French (since it’s a French publisher), and then from French to Italian. Yet, despite these changes, for translation will never be exact, we may still recognize this product as The Tempest. Yet it is not just Shakespeare’s anymore. Each translator and each composer left an artistic mark on the piece. Though the final product may be far from the original, it does mirror the mode of collaborative creation during Shakespeare’s time.

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In the vein of co-creative influence
and difference, I want to quickly talk about two illustrated editions and the
illustrator’s choices (which impact a reader’s interpretation). The first book
contains watercolor illustrations, creating a softer overall image. The second
takes a more whimsical, almost sinister or mischievous approach.

In this first edition, Ariel is more
human than magic. He could be a fairy or an ordinary man based on his
appearance.

In contrast, the second edition
portrays his as more spritely, with more pointed features, as well as more
magical characteristics.

We see Ariel as a formless force,
clearly a magical being, but also with the suggestion that he himself is
elemental, is the wind.

These two different sets of
illustrations further point to the versatility of interpretation in The Tempest (as well as many of
Shakespeare’s other works). In each one, we see an artistic twist, but in each
we can see the core of the source, Shakespeare’s magical tale of an abandoned
island where music is in the wind and creatures lurk just out of sight.