Look closely at Prospero's speech beginning "Our revels now ended", many directors move the speech to the end of the play making this a sort of epilogue. If you were directing this ply would you make this change? Explain. .
To edit or not to edit .
If I were to direct William Shakespeare's The Tempest I would not change the location of Prospero's speech to the end. The speech is directed towards Ferinando, which I think serves a purpose of foreshadowing the final scene. The position of the speech serves as an anti-climax because although it is an exciting part, the reader is left to wonder what will happen next. If Prospero's speech is shifted towards the end of the play then we already know the outcome. At the end of the play we discover that Prospero hangs up all his magic and throws his magic book into the sea. During the speech I was thinking there could be some magic especially when he states the following "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve". Reading this I thought all hell would break loose and Prospero would let loose some of his magic but in the final scene he decides to forgive all his enemies. The speech gives an idea of closure and hints that all of Prospero's power is coming to an end. .
If I ever decided to direct this play I would really try to keep it, as Shakespeare would want the play to be. Prospero was my favorite character and the final scene shows that he is forgiving and never uses magic and power to directly harm anyone even though there are plenty of people that want his power.
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Although some scholars have speculated that Shakespeare wrote portions of The Tempest at an earlier stage in his career, most literary historians assign the entire play a composition date of 1610 or 1611. And while Shakespeare may have had a hand in The Two Noble Kinsman (written a decade or so after The Tempest and assigned to dual authorship), The Tempest is customarily identified as the Bard's last stage piece.