The Tempest (Dryden)
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The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island is a comedy adapted by John Dryden and William D'Avenant from Shakespeare's great comedy The Tempest. The text was set by John Weldon, though spuriously attributed to Henry Purcell. It was first performed at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, on 7 November 1667, and published in 1670. It is written partly in blank verse and partly in a sort of "rhythmic prose". The play was revised and revived a number of times, adapted as an opera in April 1674, and was in fact the version of "The Tempest" most familiar to audiences up until William Macready's enormously successful production of Shakespeare's original on 13 October 1838.
Dryden and D'Avenant keep a great deal of Shakespeare's sublime verse, but generally tone the play down, simplifying grammar and language occasionally, removing much of the "mythic resonance" of the original, and adding a fair amount of their own invention. The added elements include most notably two new characters — Hippolito, a man who has never seen a woman, and Dorinda, a second daughter of Prospero. Hippolito and Dorinda, predictably, fall in love; their love parallels that between Miranda, Shakespeare's maiden who has never seen a man, and Ferdinand, son to the Duke of Mantua (or to the King of Naples in Shakespeare's version).
