The Tempest/Hag-seed Symposium

Sport for Jove will unpick the play with students through live performance and analysis, and direct contrast and comparison with Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed in this unmissable symposium.

One of Shakespeare’s few original stories and possibly his most personal play, The Tempest is a symphonic vision of vengeance, forgiveness and self-discovery. Famous for its poetry, island setting, enchanting, magical characters and breathtaking theatricality, the play is a reflection of the world’s most famous playwright at the height of his powers and at the end of his remarkable career.

The tempest of the title is the conjured storm that incites the narrative but is also the internal turmoil in Prospero, whose soul is riven by contradictions and ambiguities. We witness him struggling to reconcile the clash of his desires and the world around him. Battles rage between freedom and slavery, civilisation and barbarism, lust and chastity, youth and age, revenge and reconciliation and they threaten to tear him and all around him apart.

This prison island is them contrasted with the jail of Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed and students get to explore the connections and the contrasts of these two rich works.