This website is part of The New York Public Library's Online Exhibition Archive. For current classes, programs, and exhibitions, please visit nypl.org.
Storms and shipwrecks were a real threat in late Elizabethan England.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries used them to represent disorder
in the openings of many plays. He could not rely on stage effects,
so he let a magical character describe the tempest and its destruction
of the ship. Prompt books and original designs document this moment
in Tempest productions from 1815 Philadelphia to Maurice
Evans' live television production in 1959. The 1959 television
production of The Tempest had an all-star cast, which included
Lee Remick as Miranda, with Roddy MacDowall and Richard Burton
as the spirits Ariel and Caliban.
Engraving by Caroline Watson illustrating Ariel's
speech, Act I sc. 1, after a painting by Francis Wheatley
Published by John and Josiah Boydell, London: The Shakespeare
Gallery, December 1795
Billy Rose Theatre Collection
Design drawings by Rouben Ter-Arutunian for Roddy
McDowall as Ariel in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television production
(NBC, 1959)
Rouben Ter-Arutunian Collection, Jerome Robbins Dance Division
