William Shakespeare
The Tempest
18/03/2017
Alonso, the king of Naples, is returning from his daughter’s wedding with his son, Ferdinand, his brother, Sebastian, Antonio, the Duke of Milan, and a Milanese courtier, Gonzalo, when their ship is wrecked in a storm.
Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, are watching the shipwreck from an island. He reveals, for the first time, how they came to be on the island: years before, his brother Antonio had usurped him, but he had escaped in a small boat with his baby daughter and his library of books about magic. They had ended up on the island and Prospero had turned the only inhabitant, Caliban, into his servant. There are also spirits on the island, and one of them, Ariel, had been imprisoned in a tree trunk by Caliban’s mother, the witch, Sycorax, who had then died. Prospero used his magic abilities to rescue him and he forced him to swear loyalty.
The ship’s passengers are cast up on the island unharmed, and even their clothes are not wet or damaged. Alonso believes his son to be dead but Ferdinand has landed on another part of the island. The boy meets Miranda and they fall in love at first sight. Prospero controls Ferdinand with magic, then Ariel pesters Prospero for his freedom and Prospero promises it once he has done some things for him.
Ariel leads the party towards Prospero’s cell. During this journey Antonio and Sebastian plan to kill Alonso so that Sebastian can be king. Two other members of the party, Trinculo, the court jester, and Stephano, a boisterous butler, are also wandering around. Caliban recruits them to help him overthrow Prospero. They all get drunk then set off for Prospero’s cell, but Ariel reports the plot to Prospero.
Prospero has released Ferdinand and given his blessing to the marriage of the two youngsters. When the three "usurpers" arrive at his cell they get distracted and then are chased away by a band of spirits.
Ariel brings the party to the cell. Prospero renounces his magic and reveals himself. He forgives his brother and prepares to return to Milan to resume his dukedom. Sailors arrive and announce that the ship hasn’t been wrecked after all, and is safely anchored off the island. Ariel is set free, Caliban and the drunken servants are also forgiven and, eventually, everyone celebrates.
Romeo & Juliet
18/03/2017
​This novel deals with the story of two noble youths belonging to rival families: Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. Despite the opposition that divides their parents, during a costume party, the two fall in love and decide to get married secretly with the help of Friar Laurence, their friend.
The next day, during a fight, Mercutio, Romeo’s friend, is killed by Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin.
In revenge, Romeo kills Tybalt and, due to this crime, he’s banned from Verona.
With the assistance of Juliet’s nanny, before Romeo leaves the city, the two youths can spend their first and only night of love together.
In the meanwhile, Juliet’s father, unaware of the secret marriage, orders her to prepare immediately to marry Count Paris, his betrothed.
So Juliet, not wanting to marry Paris, asks for help from Friar Laurence, who advises her to construct a sort
of ruse: on wedding day, Juliet would have drunk a potion that would have made her apparently dead, but, in reality, she’d have been just asleep; after some days, when she wakes up, he’d have took her out of the crypt where she’d have been buried and took to Romeo, who was in Mantua.
Meanwhile, he’d have found out the plan so that the two lovers could have rejoined.
On wedding day, as established, Juliet drinks the potion given to her by the friar and, believed dead, she’s buried in the crypt. However, due to a contingency, Romeo can’t be warned of the plan engineered by his lover and he received the wrong news of Juliet’s death.
So, despite the ban, he decides to return to Verona and, just arrived to the threshold of the crypt, meets Paris. The two competitors fight each other in a duel where Paris is killed by Romeo.
Then, Romeo breaks into the crypt where Juliet has been left and, seeing his lover apparently dead, decides to put an end to his life taking a fatal poison too.
Finished the effect of the potion, Juliet wakes up and discovering Romeo’s corpse close to her, in desperation, kills herself with the dagger of his groom.
Due to the tragic event, the two families decide to make peace, forgetting ancient rivalries.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” William Shakespeare's most popular comedy, was written around 1594 or 95. Dealing with the universal theme of love and its complications: lust, disappointment, confusion, marriage, it features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta.
In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to comply with her father Egeus's wish for her to marry his chosen man, Demetrius. In response, Egeus quotes to Theseus an ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death or lifelong chastity as a nun. Hermia and her lover Lysander therefore decide to elope by going camping in the forest. Hermia informs her best friend Helena, but Helena has recently been rejected by Demetrius and decides to win back his favor by revealing the plan to him. Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia, who, in turn, pursues Lysander, from whom she becomes separated.
Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen, Titania, arrive in the same forest to attend Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian page-boy to Oberon for use as his henchman, since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience and recruits the mischievous Puck (also called Robin Goodfellow) to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called love-in-idleness, which makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing they see when they wake up. Oberon applies the juice to Titania in order to distract her and force her to give up the page-boy.
Things become more complex when Oberon encounters the Athenian lovers and tells Puck to use the magic to aid their love lives. Due to Puck's errors, Hermia's two lovers temporarily turn against her in favor of Helena. The four pursue and quarrel with one another, losing themselves in a smog of Puck's doing and in a maze of their romantic entanglements.
Meanwhile, a band of "rude mechanicals" (lower-class craftsmen) have arranged to perform a crude play about Pyramus and Thisby for Theseus's wedding, and they venture into the forest to rehearse. Nick Bottom, a stage-struck weaver, is spotted by Puck, who transforms his head into that of a donkey. Titania is awakened by Bottom's singing, and she immediately falls in love with him. She treats him as if he were a nobleman and lavishes attention upon him. While in this state of devotion, she encounters Oberon and, during a dance with Oberon, gives him the Indian boy.
Having achieved his goal, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the ass's head from Bottom. The magical enchantment is removed from Lysander but it is allowed to remain on Demetrius, so that he may reciprocate Helena's love. The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene during an early morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia, Theseus overrules Egeus's demands and permits the two couples to marry. The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man to say what dream it was."
In the ruins of Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta, and the lovers watch the craftsmen-players perform the badly-written play "Pyramus and Thisby." It is badly performed and ridiculous but gives everyone pleasure regardless, and after the mechanicals dance a Bergomask (rustic dance), everyone retires to bed. Finally, as night falls, Oberon and Titania bless the house, its occupants, and the future children of the newlyweds, and Puck delivers an epilogue to the audience asking for applause.
This work is widely performed around the world, and no wonder - it's about the world's most popular pastime, falling in love. But as Puck knows, falling in love can make fools of us all. Love is crazy, love is mad. Will love win out in the end?
King Lear
​The drama begins with Lear, the king of Britain, who decides to abdicate the throne. He decides to share his reign evenly among his three daughters. To divide his assets, he puts his daughters in a test.
They have to say how much they love him. While his older daughters, Goneril and Regan answer with gratifying words, Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favorite one, was unable to describe how much she loves her father. Lear, immediately flies into wrath, thus he disowns her.
Meanwhile, king of France, who has always courted Cordelia, still wants to marry her, even if she hasn’t her own land; So, even though she doesn’t have her father blessing, she accompanies her lover to France. Lear quickly begins to regret his choice after Goneril and Regan start to undermine the little authority that he still holds. He is unable to realize his daughters are literally betraying him and slowly goes insane. During an heavy thunderstorm, he flies his daughters’ house accompanied by his Fool and by Kent, a loyal nobleman in disguise. Meantime, even Gloucester, an eldery nobleman, experiences family problems. In fact Edmund, his illegitimate son, tricks him into believing that his legitimate one, Edgar is trying to kill him Edgar disguises himself as a crazy beggar and calls himself “Poor Tom”, trying to escape from the manhunt that his father has set for him, Like Lear, he goes mad. In spite of danger, the loyal Gloucester helps Lear after he realized his daughters have turned against their father.
Thus, Regan and Cornwell, her husband, discover him helping Lear and, accusing him for treason, they blind him and turn him out to wander the countryside. He ends up being led by his disguise son, toward the city of Dover, where Lear has also been brought.
There, Cordelia led a French army lands in an effort to save her father. Edmund is both attracted to Regan and Goneril, whose husband is moved in particularly by Lear’s belief. Goneril and Edmund conspire to kill Albany; the despairing Gloucester tries to suicide, but Edgar saves him. After English troops reach Dover, Lear and Cordelia is captured. In that culminating scene, Edgar kills Edmund after a duel; Gloucester is just dead.
Goneril, out of jealousy over Edmund, poisons Regan and, when her treachery is revealed to Albany, she decides to kill herself; Edmund’s treason of Cordelia leads to hear needless execution in prison and Lear at Cordelia’s passing dies out of grief. Kent, Albany and Edgar have to carry on the growth of the reign in a painful and emotional situation.
