Prospero's Books

Prospero's Books is a complex tale based upon William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, an exiled magician, falls in love with Ferdinand, the son of his enemy; while the sorcerer's sprite, Ariel, convinces him to abandon revenge against the traitors from his earlier life. In the film, Prospero stands in for Shakespeare himself, and is seen writing and speaking the story's action as it unfolds.

Ariel is played by four actors: three acrobats — a boy, an adolescent, and a youth — and a boy singer. Each represents a classical elemental.

The books of Prospero number 24 according to the production design which outlines each volume's content. The list is reminiscent of the lost books of Epicurus.[3]

1. A Book of Water
2. A Book of Mirrors
3. A Book of Mythologies
4. A Primer of the Small Stars
5. An Atlas Belonging to Orpheus
6. A Harsh Book of Geometry
7. The Book of Colours
8. The Vesalius Anatomy of Birth
9. An Alphabetical Inventory of the Dead
10. A Book of Travellers' Tales
11. The Book of the Earth
12. A Book of Architecture and Other Music
13. The Ninety-Two Conceits of the Minotaur
14. The Book of Languages
15. End-plants
16. A Book of Love
17. A Bestiary of Past, Present and Future Animals
18. The Book of Utopias
19. The Book of Universal Cosmography
20. Lore of Ruins
21. The Autobiographies of Pasiphae and Semiramis
22. A Book of Motion
23. The Book of Games
24. Thirty-Six Plays

• John Gielgud as Prospero
• Michael Clark as Caliban
• Michel Blanc as Alonso
• Erland Josephson as Gonzalo
• Isabelle Pasco as Miranda
• Tom Bell as Antonio
• Kenneth Cranham as Sebastian
• Mark Rylance as Ferdinand
• Gerard Thoolen as Adrian
• Pierre Bokma as Francisco
• Jim van der Woude as Trinculo
• Michiel Romeyn as Stephano
• Paul Russell as Ariel
• James Thiérrée as Ariel

Gielgud is quoted as saying that a film of The Tempest (with him as Prospero) was his life's ambition, as he had been in four stage productions in 1931, 1940, 1957, and 1974. He had approached Alain Resnais, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, and Orson Welles about directing him in it, with Benjamin Britten to compose its score, and Albert Finney as Caliban, before Greenaway agreed. The closest earlier attempts came to being made was in 1967, with Welles both directing and playing Caliban. But after the commercial failure of their film collaboration, Chimes at Midnight, financing for a cinematic Tempest collapsed.[4]

The film was screened out of competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.[5]

The film made £579,487 at the UK box office.[1]

This was the last of the collaborations between director Peter Greenaway and composer Michael Nyman. Most of the film's music cues, (excepting Ariel's songs and the Masque) are from an earlier concert, La Traversée de Paris and the score from A Zed & Two Noughts. The soundtrack album is Nyman's sixteenth release.

Michael Nyman Band

Alexander Balanescu, violin Jonathan Carney, violin, viola Elisabeth Perry, violin Clare Connors, violin Kate Musker, viola Tony Hinnigan, cello Justin Pearson, cello

Paul Morgan, double bass Tim Amhurst, double bass Lynda Houghton, double bass Martin Elliott, bass guitar David Rix, clarinet, bass clarinet John Harle, soprano & alto saxophone David Roach, soprano & alto saxophone

Jamie Talbot, soprano & alto saxophone Andrew Findon, tenor & baritone saxophone, piccolo, flute Graham Ashton, trumpet Richard Clews, horn Marjorie Dunn, horn Nigel Barr, bass trombone Steve Saunders, bass trombone Michael Nyman, piano & musical direction

Prospero's Books
Photos by Marc Guillaumont Design: Creative Partnership
Soundtrack album by Michael Nyman
Released	12 November 1991 (1991-11-12)
Recorded	PRT Studios and Abbey Road Studios, London
Genre	Soundtrack, Contemporary classical, art song, Minimalist music
Length	54:58
Language	English
Label	London Argo
Producer	David Cunningham
Michael Nyman chronology
String Quartets 1-3 (1991) Prospero's Books (1991) The Michael Nyman Songbook (1992)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	link

Aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports 67% approval of Prospero's Books, with an average rating of 5.9/10 and a critical consensus of, "There is no middle ground for viewers of Peter Greenaway's work, but for his fans, Prospero's Books is reliably daring."[6] Roger Ebert gave the work three stars out of four and argued, "Most of the reviews of this film have missed the point; this is not a narrative, it need not make sense, and it is not 'too difficult' because it could not have been any less so. It is simply a work of original art, which Greenaway asks us to accept or reject on his own terms."[7]

• Prospero's Books at IMDb
• Prospero's Books at AllMovie