The Tempest: Collins Classics

The world that William Shakespeare creates in The Tempest has many features that make it recognizably like our own. There are bad, self-seeking people; brothers fall out with brothers; people who have power are reluctant to give it up; people fall in love; children love their fathers but want to break free. But there is also a fairy-spirit, music in the very air of the island, and a powerful magician who can command the elements and even, he tells us, bring the dead back to life. Combining reality and magic, Shakespeare creates an uncanny but morally coherent world.
This edition features interleaved materials that expand upon allusions in the play and explore elements of its stagecraft. Appendices offer excerpts from Shakespeare’s key sources and inspirations, along with historical materials on exploration and colonialism.

“I heartily welcome this new edition of The Tempest. In their introduction, the editors offer a deftly balanced, deeply nuanced interpretation of the play. While fully explicating its historical context, sources, and afterlife, the editors engage deeply with the play’s ethical ambiguities. They reveal The Tempest as a canonical play that speaks powerfully to today’s social concerns about justice, memory, revenge, service, freedom, and power. As the editors put it beautifully, ‘it is a quality of great works of art that they—unlike the people who make them—grow younger, stronger, more various, and more influential as they grow older.’ Long may it be so.” — Gail Kern Paster, Director Emerita, Folger Shakespeare Library
“This stellar edition of The Tempest does an excellent job of situating the play in its historical contexts. A splendid introduction and a well-chosen set of secondary materials will give students and teachers alike a clear entry point into the play’s noted interests in political and ethical questions posed by colonial conquest and other forms of usurpation. The vivid illustrations and longer notes interspersed throughout the playtext itself offer the reader an experience unique to this edition, beautifully illuminating the importance of visual art and staged image to The Tempest, Shakespeare’s most spectacular play.” — Adam Zucker, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Despite there being many fine editions of this play, past and present, this one is a good choice for both the classroom and the study, and one that scholars should consult when considering editing, interpreting, or teaching The Tempest, a play that has been a favourite of many… Bernard and Yachnin have produced a balanced, measured, thoughtful, scholarly, clear, and well-considered edition, and they and their publisher are to be commended.” — Jonathan Locke Hart, Renaissance and Reformation

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Shakespeare’s Life
Shakespeare’s Theater
William Shakespeare and The Tempest: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Tempest
Appendix A
From Aristotle, Politics (fourth century BCE)
Appendix B
From Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 CE)
Appendix C
From Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, The Second Democrate; or, The Just Causes of the War against the Indians (1547)
Appendix D
From Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)
Appendix E
From Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Cannibals” (1578–80)
Appendix F
From William Strachey, A True Reportory of the Wracke (1610)
Appendix G
From John Dryden and William Davenant, The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island (1670)
Works Cited and Select Bibliography

This is the first edition of The Tempest to be developed by and for the RSC, the world's leading Shakespeare theatre company and it includes unique material to help the reader understand and enjoy Shakespeare on the stage as well as on the page
Illustrated with photographs of classic and unusual performances
Outstanding on-page notes which explain words and phrases unfamiliar to a modern audience, including the slang, political references and bawdy humour often ignored or censored in competing editions
Includes scene-by-scene summary, offering an easily understandable way into the play
Completely new introduction by Jonathan Bate, exploring the text and critical debates around it
Summary of the play's performance history at the RSC and elsewhere
Interviews with important Shakespearean directors Peter Brook, Sam Mendes and Rupert Goold discussing key productions at the RSC