- Paperback: 88 pages
- Publisher: Digireads.com (January 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1420926217
- ISBN-13: 978-1420926217
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 12.7 x 0.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 91 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
One of Shakespeare's most famous but also enigmatic plays, for many years the story of Prospero's exile from his native Milan, and life with his daughter Miranda on an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, was seen as an autobiographical dramatisation of Shakespeare's departure from the London stage. The Epilogue, spoken by Prospero, claims that "now my charms are all o'erthrown", appeared to reflect Shakespeare's own renunciation of his magical dramatic powers as he retired to Stratford. But The Tempest is far more than this, as recent commentators have pointed out. The dramatic action observes the classical unities of time, place and action, as Prospero uses his "rough magic" to lure his wicked usurping brother, Antonio, and King Alonso of Naples to his island retreat to torment them before engineering his return to Milan.
However, the play is full of extraordinary anomalies and fantastic interludes, including Gonzalo's fantasy of a utopian commonwealth, Prospero's magical servant Ariel, and the "poisonous slave" Caliban. The creation of Caliban has particularly fascinated critics, who have noticed in his creation a colonial dimension to the play. In this respect Caliban can be seen as an American Indian or African slave, who articulates a particularly powerful strain of anti-colonial sentiment, telling Prospero that "this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,/ Which thou tak'st from me". This has led to an intense reassessment of the play from a post-colonial perspective, as critics and historians have debated the extent to which the play endorses or criticises early English colonial expansion. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
It is entirely probable that the date of "The Tempest" is 1611, and that this was the last play completed by Shakespeare before he retired from active connection with the theater to spend the remainder of his life in leisure in his native town of Stratford-on-Avon. The main thread of the plot of the drama seems to have been some folk-tale of a magician and his daughter, which, in the precise form in which Shakespeare knew it, has not been recovered. The storm and the island were, it is believed, suggested by the wreck on the Bermudas in 1609 of one of the English expeditions to Virginia. Traces are found, too, of the author¿s reading in contemporary books of travel. But the plot itself is of less importance than usual. Supernatural elements are introduced with great freedom, and the dramatist¿s interest was clearly not in the reproduction of lifelike events. The presentation of character and the attractive picturing of the beauty of magnanimity and forgiveness are the things which, along with its delightful poetry, make the charm of this play. It is not to be wondered at that readers have frequently been led to find in the figure of the great magician, laying aside his robes and wonder-working rod in a spirit of love and peace toward all men, a symbol of the dramatist himself at the close of his great career; and it is surely legitimate to play with this idea without assuming that Shakespeare consciously embodied it. One can hardly conceive a more fitting epilogue to the volume which is the crown of the world¿s dramatic literature than the romance of "The Tempest."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.1 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Kindle Ed. is not Folger Ed., Dec 27 2009
By Dear Reader "Dear Reader" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
First, let me say I'm a great fan of Shakespeare, and there's no reason to offer a review of The Tempest here. If you want to know what The Tempest is about, there's plenty of places to find that out. This is a review of the Kindle edition of this edition of The Tempest.I bought this edition, paying $4.95 for the Kindle version, because I thought that it would be the Folger Shakespeare Library version of The Tempest. It's not. The Folger editions of Shakespeare's plays are handy study aids. Each right hand page of text is accompanied with a left hand page of annotations, including illustrations contemporary with Shakespeare. The spelling has been updated but the language has not been changed.
This Kindle edition includes the memorial verses to Shakespeare found in the First Folio. These can be found in many places. It does not include the Folger's introductions to Shakespeare, or to this play in particular, nor does it include the essays that accompany the Folger editions of the plays.
I have already loaded my Kindle with the Complete Works, for which I paid, I believe, $0.99--a remarkable price for the greatest literature in the English language. There was no reason at all for me to pay $4.95 for something I already have available on my Kindle.
Buyer beware! The Product Description for this edition of The Tempest DOES NOT apply to the Kindle edition. Too bad.
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"...his complexion is perfect gallows", May 16 2005
By Ralph White - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Tempest (Mass Market Paperback)
The Folger Shakespeare Library presents the optimal format for reading Shakespeare's single plays. Each book provides the background and context of the play, a brief description of the theater as Shakespeare would have known it, and a brief bio of the writer himself. But the most useful feature is the notation on the page facing the text, explaining Shakespeare's usage of words and phrases. There is a wealth of scholarship embedded in these brief notes. An experienced reader of Shakespeare may skip them, to maintain the momentum of the play, but even we may tarry to ascertain his ken.The Tempest is the birthplace of "there's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple," "he receives comfort like cold porridge," "what's past is prologue," "misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows," "Oh, brave new world*," and "his complexion is perfect gallows." It is Shakespeare's farewell to London, and it is imaginative and enlightening. It is also timeless, often giving rise to contemporary settings in its production.
Prospero's supernatural powers, permeating the action of the play, will take an additional effort at the "willing suspension of disbelief" which we always take to the theater. Yet we are not at all reluctant when, in his epilogue, he boldly asks us to applaud his players.
* This phrase, "...brave new world..." was penned in 1611, and should not seem so "new" to our modern ears as it does.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Does not have notes like other reviewers have stated, Jan 7 2010
By Kari Hutchens "Kahutche" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Tempest (Paperback)
This edition is NOT the Folger Edition that has notes and definitions like the other reviewers have stated! It is just the text. I bought this for a class based on the reviews and was very disappointed. If you want the Folger Edition that these reviews are talking about, click on the link above their review. I now have to buy a different edition for the notes!!! Waste of money!!!
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