The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (W.H. Auden: Critical Editions)

I was disappointed in this book. There were some parts I enjoyed but I felt it was a bit heavy and dragging.

This book,'The Sea and the Mirror'', is billed as 'A Commentary on Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest''; a 50 page introduction (by Arthur Kirsch) and 30 pages of textual notes to support a 70 page poem in three chapters; in other words it is not for the novitiate. It is a poem but a poem written in part prose, Auden does for the Tempest what Joyce did in his work, i.

Brilliant stuff. Beautiful to read where beauty is needed, painful where pain is (Caliban's section, I'm looking at you).