
Reading the original text of “The Tempest” is like using hyphens. You know at some point in life, you will unwillingly have to utilize them. Shakespeare is embedded in our culture. Although, the modern version is like using semi-colons; you comprehend them better than hyphens, but you still get bewildered occasionally. The modern version was simple to read but still hard to comprehend.

Reading the story version of “The Tempest” is like the fishing trip you have to take with your dad, where the movie/play version is like the trip you were going to have with your friends. You know you will get some entertainment out of fishing, even though your dad guilt tripped you into ditching your friends. However, you secretly don’t want to tell him that the trip with your friends would be better because it involved fun games, movies, and hilarious jokes!

Reading the original version of “The Tempest” is like being stuck in the back of the car behind your eleven-year-old brother and your twenty-one-year-old brother. It sucks! You have to sit the whole two-hour ride cramped between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They sing, yell, fart, and squeeze. However, watching the play is like the glorious end of the trip. It infuses you with so much joy and happiness. Even though you know you only drove this far to go to Wal-Mart, you kiss the nasty cement ground that just so happens to have a chewed piece of gum on it. The worst part is, just like an undesirable recurrence of Shakespearean text, you have to get back in the car to go home the same way you got there.

Reading the modern text of “The Tempest” is like waking up in complete bliss. You are so happy and energized to go about your oh-so-busy day without a care in the world. Reading the original, however, is like waking up in that third stage of your sleep cycle. You wake up confused and angry, asking yourself, “Why me?” Then you get up very dramatically, kick the bed, put your clothes on, and just right before you get your daily cup of coffee, you stub your toe.

Watching the play version of “The Tempest” is like P.E. class in junior high. The class is fun and full of games such as dodge ball and steal the animal. You feel like you are throwing the dodge ball. Reading the original version is like P.E. in high school; it’s rigorous, challenging, and makes you sweat.

Reading the original version of “The Tempest” is like coffee from Starbucks; the coffee is sweet because of the allusions within it, strong because of the archaic language, and expensive because of its cultural effect. On the other hand, watching the play is like drinking a cup of coffee at home; it’s still sweet and keeps you awake but, it’s only a cheap makeshift model of the original.
Drawings and Similes by Dominic Stover