Connections - The Tempest

Stoppard and Norman made many references and some interesting connections in Shakespeare In Love. Twelfth Night did deal with a ship wreck and a rescue of the heroine, Viola, but Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest, was based on an actual shipwreck of English ships off the coast of Bermuda. One is tempted to picture that last shot of Viola walking across the pristine sands of a far away beach in Shakespeare In Love not only as the opening of Twelfth Night, but, many years later, of The Tempest as well, though the walker would have been Ferdinand, the young survivor of the shipwreck.

Ariel's Lines:

"Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eye;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Act iv. Sc. 1.

Prospero -- The Tempest