The Tempest is one of the most suggestive, yet most elusive of all Shakespeare's plays, and has provoked a wide range of critical interpretation. It is a magical romance, yet deeply and problematically embedded in seventeenth-century debates about authority and power. David Lindley's Introduction and commentary focus upon contemporary texts, attending to the implications of Prospero's magic, his political and paternal ambitions, and the controversial issue of his 'colonialist' control of Caliban. The Tempest was also Shakespeare's response to the new opportunities offered by the Blackfriars theatre, and careful attention is given to the play's dramatic form, stage-craft, and use of music and spectacle, to demonstrate its uniquely experimental nature.

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations and conventions; Introduction; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Textual analysis; Appendix 1: The songs; Appendix 2: Parallel passages in Virgil and Ovid; Appendix 3: 'And other': the casting of The Tempest; Select reading list.

About the Author

David Lindley is Professor of Renaissance Literature at the School of English, University of Leeds. His published work includes The Trials of Frances Howard and a book on on the poet-composer Thomas Campion, as well as essays on court masques and articles on the relationships between music and literature. He also contributed to the Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson (2000).

Reviews

'If you are looking for a model edition - by which I mean one that is concerned to honour the text and to explain the processes involved in editing - this is it. If I were ever again to undertake the editing of a Shakespeare play, I would keep Lindley's edition of The Tempest open beside me.' Peter Thompson 'David Lindley's Tempest is the best edition on the market and the paperback is a snip.' Studies in Theatre and Performance 'Lindley aims both to represent and to explain the range of readings given the play in its theatrical and critical afterlives. His edition meets the high standards of the series in an exemplary manner, offering an especially fine introduction that focuses on the elusiveness of The Tempest, a feature that has made it central to late-twentieth-century criticism.' Barbara Hodgdon, Studies in English Literature