The Tempest (Bantam Classics) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553213075 ISBN 13: 9780553213072

Publisher: Bantam Classics, 1988

Synopsis

This joyous play, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up his stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill. Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, living on an enchanted island, has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore—as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda, with an eminently suitable young prince, and, more important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.

About this title

Book Description:

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most suggestive, yet most elusive plays. It is a magical romance, yet deeply embedded in seventeenth-century debates about authority and power. This edition attends 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.

From the Back Cover:

The general editors of the new series of forty-two volumes -- renowned Shakespeareans Stephen Orgel of Stanford University and A. R. Braunmuller of UCLA -- have assembled a team of six eminent scholars who have, along with the general editors themselves, prepared new introductions and notes to all of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Redesigned in an easy-to-read format that preserves the favorite features of the original - -and including an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare, an introduction to the individual play, and a note on the text used -- the new Pelican Shakespeare will be an excellent resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals well into the twenty-first century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Classics
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0553213075
• ISBN 13: 9780553213072
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 240