The Tempest [Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2013

This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright of the 16th and 17 centuries, now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the word's pre-eminent dramatist.William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright of the 16th and 17 centuries, now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the word's pre-eminent dramatist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 90 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; Reprint edition (January 29, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1461035937
• ISBN-13: 978-1461035930
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Kindle Ed. is not Folger Ed. December 27, 2009

By Dear Reader

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "...his complexion is perfect gallows" May 16, 2005

By Ralph White

Format: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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Does not have notes like other reviewers have stated January 7, 2010

By Kari Hutchens

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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!!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on: Be Careful About Which Edition You Order! November 18, 2012

By Ian M. Slater TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Guide for the Perplexed time (since Amazon's listing of Formats seems designed to generate confusion):

This is a review of the Mass-Market Paperback edition of "The Tempest" under the label of "Folger Shakespeare Library," published by Washington Square Press, edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. It was first issued under the present label, with the yellow-and-mottled cover depicted on the page, in 2004. With its rich set of aides to the reader, it is a good introductory text, and contains much that will be useful to the more advanced student (although not intended to rival, say, the Arden and Norton Critical editions), and at this writing it is still attractively priced. It is part of a series of similar editions covering the complete canon of the plays.

The OTHER formats (paperback, Kindle, Audio) currently listed by Amazon are of completely different editions of the same text, without the facing-page notes, period illustrations, and other features of the Folger/WSP editions; some of them without even line-numbers, to judge from previous reviews.

Calling the newest version of the series just "Folger Shakespeare Library" somewhat confuses matters, since that is also the name of the actual sponsoring institution in Washington, D.C., which houses a major collection of Shakespeare editions, and related and period works of all kinds. Earlier printings of this text and notes, etc. (1994 and following) were under the label of "The New Folger Library Shakespeare," and differed only in having a pictorial cover by Kinuko Y. Croft. This edition is listed on Amazon, too, but its reviews are lumped together with those of numerous other editions. In addition, Amazon also lists a hardcover edition as being edited by Mowat and Werstine (not seen)....

In any format, the Mowat and Werstine edition is also to be distinguished from its predecessor in "The Folger Library General Reader's Shakespeare" series, edited by Louis B. Wright and Virginia A, LaMar (1961; also from Washington Square Press, and possibly also under its Pocket imprint), with the same basic facing-page design, but different notes and illustrations, and without the concluding essay and annotated bibliography ("Further Reading.) Copies appeared in both an older, smaller, mass-market format, and in the current, slightly larger one. In this instance, the texts are not drastically different; editorial practices and standards have changed, but the text, not published before the First Folio, is relatively clear and unproblematic.

Those interested in a text edition of the play with notes restricted to the vocabulary, and without introductions on Shakespeare's stage and use of language, may want to take a look at Burton Raffel's "Annotated" edition, either in its paperback format, with the notes at the foot of the page, or its Kindle edition, with the notes hyper-linked to the text. The latter works well, but constant switching back and forth can produce a discontinuous reading of the play.

To turn to the text being edited: "The Tempest" was probably the last play written entirely by William Shakespeare, sometime in 1610-1611. It was performed at court during the celebrations for the betrothal and marriage of King James I's daughter Elizabeth to Frederick, Prince of the Rhine Palatinate, and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, an event momentous in English literature for the sheer quantity and, frequently enough, the quality of verse it inspired. Whether it was written FOR the occasion is debatable; topical references seem instead to center on then-recent colonization efforts in the New World (Jamestown, and, accidentally, Bermuda); and the locales are all Mediterranean instead of Central European.

Of course, given Shakespeare's "Sea Coast of Bohemia" (i.e., roughly, the modern Czech Republic) in another play, the argument from geography is not the firmest in the world. And, despite repeated arguments that the play is about European conquests and colonies in the New World, the repeated allusions seem to me more topical than thematic.

The compactly-told story is set on a single island, during part of a single day, and is the only Shakespeare play since "Comedy of the Errors," at the very beginning of his career, to observe so strictly the "Classical Unities" of time and space. (Although "A Midsummer Night's Dream came close.) Shakespeare could have spread the story over fifteen or so years, and three or four distant places, as in other plays, but in this case chose not to do so. This requires some exposition of the "back story," which is handled well, as one would expect from Shakespeare at the height of his creative powers.

Of course, there is a school of thought (or several) which insists sees in the tempest-raising magician Prospero an image of a tired Shakespeare on the verge of retiring from the theater. I admit that the notion is tempting, but Prospero himself, a testy old man, seems a poor image of Shakespeare, who, on the basis of the scanty evidence, seems to have been regarded as even-tempered and well-mannered (at least compared to most other theater-folk, or arrogant aristocrats).

Then too, Prospero's insistence on stage-managing the events of the play is not a new idea in Shakespeare's work - compare the behind-the-scenes efforts of the incognito Duke in "Measure for Measure," and of Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

For those not already familiar with the play, it is the only of Shakespeare plays without a recognizable source for the main plot, although there is documentation for many details in the voyage literature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, especially the earlier years of the Virginia colony. A few hints may have come from histories of Italy, but the names don't match up with any specific events. Most of the other suggested parallels to the plot are too general to tie directly to the play, although they may be helpful in understanding it.

The grumpy magician, his beautiful daughter, the handsome young hero, and the magician's attendant creatures (of varying appearances, and moral and intellectual characteristics), are commonplaces of traditional fairytales and medieval and renaissance romances. (Not to mention a lot of modern genre fantasy, and older or popularized science fiction.) So, too, are wicked brothers and scheming courtiers.

In other hands, these elements could have made a rambling crowd-pleaser like the then-popular "Mucedorus," Shakespeare, who was at home with the plots spread widely through time and space, here makes them the subject of a tightly constructed play. As has long been noted, "The Tempest" is one of the few Shakespeare plays to observe the so-called "classical unities" of (elapsed) time and a single place, in this case, a few hours on an enchanted island. In this is its unlike most other Elizabethan and Jacobean "romance" plays, very much including his own earlier ventures, such as "Twelfth Night" and "A Winter's Tale."

"The Tempest" is one of my personal favorites in the Shakespeare canon. I'm not alone. It has inspired a long series of pastiches, retellings, parodies and satires, adaptations, operatic adaptations, and just plain productions. (My personal pick -- a purely sentimental one -- is "Forbidden Planet," the 1956 movie starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen, all upstaged by Robbie the Robot, in a double role emulating both the helpful spirit Ariel and the bumbling Caliban; and with an entirely different backstory.) Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great textbook January 16, 2007

By Amy Brobst

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I bought this for one of my classes, and I like this as a text because of the notes are way down in the footnotes, but on the opposite page,