“To cause paralyzing anxiety, is the dream of power. . .”

Is this true?  To have power, do you need to make everyone feel anxious?  According to the author of this essay about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the answer is “Absolutely.”  The play is about an exiled Duke who wants to return to power, even though he has no army, … Read More

“The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to instill that energy into the mind which compels the imagination to produce the picture.”

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave a series of lectures on Shakespeare in 1811-1812. In this particular lecture, Coleridge says that he considers The Tempest to be “among the ideal” plays because it “appeals to the imagination.”  Coleridge believes that Shakespeare does this by inserting “some touch or other which … Read More