Book Description
The Tempest presents some of Shakespeare's most insightful meditations on the cycle of life—ending and beginning, death and regeneration, bondage and freedom. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the First Folio text and is accompanied by explanatory annotations. "Sources and Contexts" offers a rich collection of documents on the play's central themes—magic and witchcraft, politics and religion, geography and travel. Writers include Ovid, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Gabriel Naudé, Michel de Montaigne, and William Strachey. "Criticism" collects eighteen responses to The Tempest, from John Dryden and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Stephen Orgel and Leah Marcus. "Rewritings and Appropriations" includes creative reactions to The Tempest, by playwrights, filmmakers, and poets, among them H.D., Peter Greenaway, and Ted Hughes. A Selected Bibliography is also included. About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

About the Author
Peter Hulme is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex. He is the author of Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 and Remnants of Conquest: The Caribs and Their Visitors, 1877-1998. He is co-editor, with William B. Sherman, of The Tempest and Its Travels and, with Tim Young, ofThe Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. William H. Sherman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance. He is Associate Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly and co-editor, with Peter Hulme, of The Tempest and Its Travels.

ANNOTATION

An abridged version of Shakespeare's play, in which a party of nobles is washed ashore on a mystical island, summoned by a former noble turned magician.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Shakespeare's last play seems unusually elastic, capable of radically different interpretations, which reflect the social, political, scientific or moral concerns of their period. This edition of The Tempest is the first dedicated to its long and rich stage history. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, it examines four centuries of mainstream, regional and fringe productions in Britain (including Dryden and Davenant's Restoration adaptation), nineteenth- and twentieth-century American stagings, and recent Australian, Canadian, French, Italian and Japanese productions.

In a substantial, illustrated introduction Dymkowski analyses the cultural significance of changes in the play's theatrical representation: for example, when and why Caliban began to be represented by a black actor, and Ariel became a man's role rather than a woman's. The commentary annotates each line of the play with details about acting, setting, textual alteration and cuts, and contemporary reception.

With extensive quotation from contemporary commentators and detail from unpublished promptbooks, the edition offers both an accessible account of the play's changing meanings and a valuable resource.

SYNOPSIS

This critical edition of William Shakespeare's The Tempest contains the text of the First Folio (1623), accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. Next, a collection of works by Ovid, William Strachey, and others provides context for its major themes. Eighteen interpretive essays address such topics as the character of Caliban and the symbolism of shipwreck. Finally, 17 re-scriptings of the play—from Percy Shelley's "With a Guitar, to Jane" to Ted Hughes's "Setebos"—are presented. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Prospero-like in their artistry, Spirin's dazzling watercolors dominate this retelling of Shakespeare's final play. Shaped like altar panels fit for a Renaissance church or palace, the illustrations are romantic, regal and magical, richly interpreting the play's themes of betrayal, revenge and all-conquering love. A wispy ethereal air pervades island scenes, beautifully suggesting the atmosphere of enchantment, while Antonio and the King of Naples are pictured in brocade and velvet, the stench of power upon them. The other characters, too, are both otherworldly and very much flesh and blood. Especially well rendered is the monster Caliban, shown here as part man, part beast, part mythical creature, a sense of evil glee lighting his features. While this prose adaptation does not, of course, retain the full magic of the Bard's work, Beneduce nonetheless provides an intelligent, gripping story. Several passages from Shakespeare introduced at key points give a taste of the original. Symbols and small pictures integrated into the text further enhance the lavish presentation. All ages. (Mar.)

Children's Literature - Susie Wilde

Shakespeare comes to picture books beautifully when Ann Beneduce retells the complex story of The Tempest in a way that's understandable to children. She's helped by the very classic looking illustrations of Gennady Spirin, who captures the magic of spirits and beasts.

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

The Tempest becomes accessible to children through the retelling skill of Bruce Coville and the glowing illustrations of Sanderson. This fairy tale of magic and love, demons and spirits, has much to attract today's children and to introduce them to the works of the master.

Children's Literature - Uma Krishnaswami

With clever interplay of original dialogue and adapted text, the bard's immortal work is here transformed into a charming "once-upon-a-time" tale. Purists might bemoan the deletion of lines, verses, even whole scenes, but no one can complain that the spirit of the play has not been faithfully transmitted. It has been transmitted with grace and elegance, moreover, and with an acute perception of a young reader's capabilities. Spirin's illustrations are exquisite.

Children's Literature - Rebecca Joseph