The Tempest

by William Shakespeare (Author), William Shakespeare (Author), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Editor), Alden T. Vaughan (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.44

  The Tempest has long dazzled readers and audiences with its intricate blend of magic, music, humour, intrigue and tenderness, its vibrant but ambiguous central characters. As Virginia and Alden Vaughan show, in their wide-ranging new edition of this established favourite, such antithetical extremes exemplify the play's endlessly arguable nature, its appeal to diverse eras and cultures.The Vaughans situate The Tempest at the centre of changing cultural attitudes towards colonialism, power politics and patriarchal hierarchies, and demonstrate how the play both shaped and reflected those changing attitudes. Informed by the concerns of a post-colonial international community, their edition emphasizes the play's world-wide cultural appropriation, and includes an extensive discussion of the play's after-life as well as an appendix of selected appropriations. The interdisciplinary editorial approach contributes a distinctively blended cultural and historical focus.'The Vaughans have provided a valuable new edition of the play, one whose expanded contextualisation, especially, will contribute to The Tempest's lively and varied afterlife both within and beyond the classroom.' Barbara Fuchs, University of Washington, Seattle, Shakespeare Quarterly

• Used

  Paperback
  1975

  $3.28

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $10.03

• New

  Paperback
  1994

  $6.78

  Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. The Tempest is the most lyrical, profound and fascinating of Shakespeare's late comedies. Prospero, long exiled from Italy with his daughter Miranda, seeks to use his magical powers to defeat his former enemies. Eventually, having proved merciful, he divests himself of that magic, his 'art', and prepares to return to the mainland. The Tempest has often been regarded as Shakespeare's 'farewell to the stage' before his retirement. In the past, critics emphasised the romantically beautiful features of The Tempest, seeing it as an imaginative fantasia. In recent decades, however, The Tempest has also been treated as a potently political drama which offers controversial insights into colonialism and racism. Frequently staged and diversely filmed, the play has influenced numerous poets and novelists.