The Tempest (Shakespeare: the Animated Tales)

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Prospero and Miranda survived, landed on a remote island and have lived there alone ever since; apart from the spirit Ariel and the beast Caliban, who are Prospero’s servants.

He gives up his magic powers and makes plans to set sail for home; to take up his rightful position. Prospero has magic powers and uses these to raise a storm and trap his enemies on the island with him. No they haven’t! Whattayaknow! It was a magical storm, raised by the wizard Prospero, who used to be the Duke of Milan, until his brother Antonio, helped by Alonso, exiled him. And here he is, with his daughter Miranda, his magical spirit Ariel, and his nasty slave Caliban, who used to live on this island alone – until Prospero was marooned here. They used to get along, but – yeeeaah – Osborne, Laurie E. (2003). "Mixing Media and Animating Shakespeare". In Burt, Richard; Boose, Lynda E. (eds.). Shakespeare, The Movie II: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, Video, and DVD. London: Routledge. p.141. ISBN 978-0415282994. Meanwhile Miranda proposes marriage to Ferdinand! Prospero’s all “Aw, cute”. But not for long. It’s wizard revenge time! He lures Antonio and Alonso to a magical banquet and Ariel changes herself into a big nasty bird lady.Meanwhile, Miranda and Ferdinand get married and Prospero invites the Greek Gods along! Clever, just think of the presents! Meanwhile… what is this!?! Meanwhile Island? The series was constructed by recording the scripts before any animation had been done. Actors were hired to recite abbreviated versions of the plays written by Leon Garfield, who had written a series of prose adaptations of Shakespeare's plays for children in 1985, Shakespeare Stories. According to Garfield, editing the plays down to thirty minutes whilst maintaining original Shakespearean dialogue was not easy; "lines that are selected have to carry the weight of narrative, and that's not always easy. It frequently meant using half a line, and then skipping perhaps twenty lines, and then finding something that would sustain the rhythm but at the same time carry on the story. The most difficult by far were the comedies. In the tragedies, you have a very strong story going straight through, sustained by the protagonist. In the comedies, the structure is much more complex." [3] Garfield compared the task of trying to rewrite the plays as half-hour pieces as akin to "painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on a postage stamp." [5] To maintain narrative integrity, Garfield added non-Shakespearean voice-over narration to each episode, which would usually introduce the episode and then fill in any plot points skipped over by the dialogue. [6] The use of a narrator was also employed by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb in their own prose versions of Shakespeare's plays for children, Tales from Shakespeare, published in 1807, to which Garfield's work is often compared. [7] However, fidelity to the original texts was paramount in the minds of the creators as the episodes sought "to educate their audience into an appreciation and love of Shakespeare, out of a conviction of Shakespeare as a cultural artifact available to all, not restricted to a narrowly defined form of performance. Screened in dozens of countries, The Animated Tales is Shakespeare as cultural educational television available to all." [8] Professor Stanley Wells was the series' literary adviser. Osborne, Laurie E. (1997). "Poetry in Motion: Animating Shakespeare". In Boose, Lynda E.; Burt, Richard (eds.). Shakespeare, The Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV and Video. London: Routledge. p. 109. ISBN 978-0415165853.

An animated version of William Shakespeare’s 'The Tempest' in a retelling of the classic play set to modern music. In the United States, the series aired on HBO and featured live-action introductions by Robin Williams. [2] Development [ edit ] Creation [ edit ] Quoted in Osborne, Laurie E. (2003). "Mixing Media and Animating Shakespeare". In Burt, Richard; Boose, Lynda E. (eds.). Shakespeare, The Movie II: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, Video, and DVD. London: Routledge. p.144. ISBN 978-0415282994. The show was both a commercial and a critical success. The first series episode "Hamlet" won two awards for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation" (one for the animators and one for the designers and director) at the 1993 Emmys, and a Gold Award at the 1993 New York Festival. The second-season episode "The Winter's Tale" also won the "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation" at the 1996 Emmys. The episodes continue to be used in schools as teaching aids, especially when introducing children to Shakespeare for the first time. However, the series has been critiqued for the large number of scenes cut to make the episodes shorter in length. [1] Pennacchia, Maddalena (2013). "Shakespeare for Beginners: The Animated Tales from Shakespeare and the Case Study of "Julius Caesar" ". In Müller, Anja (ed.). Adapting Canonical Texts in Children's Literature. London: Bloomsbury. p.60. ISBN 978-1472578884.

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Meanwhile Caliban’s crazies are all off to kill Prospero, so Ariel distracts them with magical clothes and then chases them away with spirit dogs. And at last Prospero reveals himself and gives his bro Antonio and King Alonso a big telling off, then forgives them. Waite, Teresa (9 November 1992). " Tempest and others the size of a teapot". The New York Times. p.C16. Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (also known as The Animated Shakespeare) is a series of twelve half-hour animated television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, originally broadcast on BBC2 and S4C between 1992 and 1994. Osborne, Laurie E. (1997). "Poetry in Motion: Animating Shakespeare". In Boose, Lynda E.; Burt, Richard (eds.). Shakespeare, The Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV and Video. London: Routledge. pp. 108–109. ISBN 978-0415165853. Meanwhile, the Duke Antonio and King Alonso are wandering about with their servants, Sebastian and Gonzalo. There’s a bit of a mid-snooze assassination attempt, but Ariel wakes them up.