The Tempest

A Broadview Internet Shakespeare Edition

William Shakespeare, J.F. Bernard, Paul Yachnin

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781554814954
• eBook ISBN: 9781770487932
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Shakespeare Drama
• Index: Literature

The world that William Shakespeare creates in The Tempest has many features that make it recognizably like our own. There are bad, self-seeking people; brothers fall out with brothers; people who have power are reluctant to give it up; people fall in love; children love their fathers but want to break free. But there is also a fairy-spirit, music in the very air of the island, and a powerful magician who can command the elements and even, he tells us, bring the dead back to life. Combining reality and magic, Shakespeare creates an uncanny but morally coherent world.

This edition features interleaved materials that expand upon allusions in the play and explore elements of its stagecraft. Appendices offer excerpts from Shakespeare's key sources and inspirations, along with historical materials on exploration and colonialism.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Shakespeare's Life
• Shakespeare's Theater
• William Shakespeare and The Tempest: A Brief Chronology
• A Note on the Text
• The Tempest
• Appendix A: From Aristotle, Politics (fourth century BCE)
• Appendix B: From Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 CE)
• Appendix C: From Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, The Second Democrate; or, The Just Causes of the War against the Indians (1547)
• Appendix D: From Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)
• Appendix E: From Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Cannibals” (1578–80)
• Appendix F: From William Strachey, A True Reportory of the Wracke (1610)
• Appendix G: From John Dryden and William Davenant, The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island (1670)
• Works Cited and Select Bibliography