The Tempest contains sublime poetry and catchy songs, magic and low comedy, while it tackles important contemporary concerns: education, power politics, the effects of colonization, and technology. In this guide, Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan open up new ways into one of Shakespeare's most popular, malleable and controversial plays.

The Tempest: Critical Essays traces the history of Shakespeare's controversial late romance from its early reception (and adaptation) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the present. The volume reprints influential criticism, and it also offers eight originalessays which study The Tempest from a variety of contemporary perspectives, including cultural materialism, feminism, deconstruction, performance theory, and postcolonial studies. Unlike recent anthologies about The Tempest which reprint contemporary articles along with a few new essays, this volume contains a mixture of old and new materials pertaining to the play's use in the theater and in literary history.

To Make Shakespeare Comprehensible To The Eager Student Is A Challenging Task And This Is What The Present Work Sets Out To Do. It Provides The Reader With The Life And Short Notes On The Works Of Shakespeare As Well As His Socio-Political And Literary Background. A Scene-Wise Critical Summary Of The Tempest Is Given So As To Make The Reader Familiar With The Play. Numerous Quotations Have Been Given From The Text That Enable The Reader To Have An Acquaintance With Shakespeare S Poetry. There Are Analyses Of The Different Dramatic Elements Accompanied With The Views Of Renowned Critics, And This Makes The Book Valuable To The Teacher As Well As The Student Of English Literature. Along With Recent Critical Views, The Classical Theories Also Have Been Explained, Together With A Lucid Exposition Of Elizabethan Dramatic Conventions. A Select Bibliography And Index Completes The Book.

The Tempest: Critical Tradition increases our knowledge of how Shakespeare's plays were received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume offers, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The volume features criticism from key literary figures, such as Ben Jonson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Dryden, John Ruskin and Edward Malone. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, whereas the introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. Thus the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.

Presents William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and includes excerpts from its sources, eighteen works of criticism by writers ranging from John Dryden to Barbara Fuchs, and seventeen works based on the play by such authors as Percy Shelley and Ted Hughes.