Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

The Tempest is our Old School Classic Group Read for September 2022.

This is the No Spoiler Thread
The Spoiler Thread will open on the 1st.

This early posting of the No Spoiler thread is to discuss any non-plot issues pertaining to the book.

Appropriate Posts can contain:
1. Information about the author.
2. Compare editions/translations.
3. Any historical or background information
4. Are you familiar with this author’s work? Do you have any expectations going into the book?
5. What made you decide to read this book?
6. Any fan fiction that you have read or would like to read? Just link the books.
7. If you loved the book and want others to share in that experience, use this thread to motivate others, again save plot specifics for the Spoiler thread
8. If you hated the book, it would be best to keep that for the spoiler page

Way back in 2015 I first read A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest. If you are good suppositions or probabilities or interesting connections, then this book might be for you.

I have just reread Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblattfor participation in a nonfiction group. This is a good biography for a Early Modern person for whom we have few documents or facts about. It is probably most accessibly read as a famous-person-and-their-world type book.

For a biography with possibly less conjecture--many years since I've last read--Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

If this matters to you: Both may be equally accessible. Bill Bryson writes for a more popular audience while Stephen Greenblatt writes for a more academic audience. Both books could possibly be sitting by side at the local library or bookstore or e-service--for comparison's sake.

The link to The Tempest is to the edition in the later of two similarly-titled series. The older series, volumes of which are often available used, is the the The Folger Library General Readers Shakespeare, edited by Louis B. Wright and Virginia A Lamar (The Tempest, 1961). This has been printed in extra-small and regular mass-market paperback printings.

That linked is part of The Folger Library Shakespeare, more conveniently known in some printings as The New Folger Library Shakespeare, edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (The Tempest, 1994).

The formats are the same, but the facing-page annotations and art often differ significantly.

And the 1994 edition is 52 pages longer than indicated by Goodreads, which fails to count the front-matter pages with Roman numerals.

Some of the The New Folger Library Shakespeare editions have also appeared in large (trade) paperback editions. The mass-market edition of "The Tempest" has appeared in at least to series of printings, one with the abstract cover shown, and the other with rather nice cover art by Kinuko Y. Craft.

The older series seems to have been aimed at High School and undergraduate English courses, as well as adults without special training in literature. The new series maintains this approach, as refined by generations of feedback from teachers, but, in my opinion, offers more to advanced students. Or maybe it is just different enough to seem that way, since my impression of the old edition was formed in High School.

The New series edition is an excellent choice.

However, in a later post I will describe other helpful editions, such as the Norton Critical Edition, and the Annotated Signet Classic version.

There are an enormous number of "Tempest" editions out there, as for many Shakespeare plays (although some, like "Titus Andronicus" and "Henry VIII" are comparatively neglected).

Two editions with notes and abundant "source" material and critical writings are:

The Tempest (Norton Critical Editions) Second Edition, Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman (Editors)
https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Norton...

The Tempest (Annotated Signet Classic)
Note that the Kindle Edition of this lacks the annotations and supplementary material/
https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Annota...

I have earlier editions of both, and don't plan to replace them.

Also worth mentioning is a collection of critical writings:
The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy (Case Studies in Critical Controversy) 2nd Edition
by William Shakespeare (Author), James Phelan & Gerald Graff (Editors)
https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Study-...

Again, I have a first edition, and don't plan to get the second any time soon.

So far as I can tell, modern editions of the primary sources for the voyages which may have inspired "The Tempest" are out of print, and rather expensive used. And most seem too recent -- under copyright -- to show up on the Internet Archive.

The ships were supposed to go to Virginia, but went rather far astray. Excerpts are available in some editions of The Tempest, but they are not very satisfactory.

However, a rather dated compilation of material is available from from the Internet Archive, which is free. I strongly suggest downloading the PDF format, which is the most reliable, although the pages are on the dingy side..

Memorials of the discovery and early settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, 1515-1685, edited by Sir John Henry Lefroy, (1817-1890)
Volume I (with the relevant accounts), 1877
https://archive.org/details/memorials...

Volume II (with later voyages and other histories), 1879
https://archive.org/details/memorials...

ADDENDUM:
The Wikipedia article on "The Tempest," which should mostly be skipped if you don't know the play, has, near the end, a link to an original-spelling MS Word document (.doc) copy of William Strachey's "True Reportory." It downloads itself if you click on the link: not everyone will be happy with that.

This is an account of a voyage which may have partly inspired the opening and some details of "The Tempest." As it is in the original spelling, it is not very user friendly, and you may have to turn off the spelling alerts if you open it in MS Word (and possibly other apps). Shakespeare would not have used the printed text: he would have known either in manuscript or by word of mouth, as the authorities were not interested in publicizing a near-disaster.

This will sound rather mysterious.

I am debating with myself whether to list a couple of books which provide background material, but will give away an element of the story to those completely unfamiliar with the play. They might help those who know at least the basic plot, and even those who know the play well, and find themselves a little confused over how Shakespeare treats certain topics.

I could use spoiler tags here, if no one objects to that, and assume that no one will click on them accidentally. Both are rather long books, so a lead time would probably be helpful to those interested. I'll hold off posting them pending feedback.

Well, there have been no objections, so here is the spoiler-laden post I prepared.

(view spoiler)[There is a whole lot of magic in this play, and a lot has been written about magic in the Renaissance.

A considerable proportion of those writings concerns witchcraft beliefs, which are not quite the same thing as Ritual Magic, Spiritual Magic, and Natural Magic, although they might be treated as equally culpable in Church and secular law, on the assumption that they all involve implicit or implicit pacts with, or worship of, Satan. (Although that was a stretch for Natural Magic, which involved mysterious things like the rising of bread, the workings of a magnetic compass, and a bunch of beliefs about supposed phenomena culled from ancient sources such as Pliny the Elder's "Natural History.")

A comprehensive study of the various traditions can be found in
Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment, by Brian P. Copenhaver
This is an intellectual history. It is rather expensive, even in Kindle, although it is proportionately long: and it can be rented. Chapter Twelve, Part Two, is the most relevant to The Tempest, although it assumes some knowledge acquired in earlier chapters. See
https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Western-...

The book discussed in that section, which is explicitly compared to Prospero's magic book by many scholars, is available in a fairly good, but unfortunately expensive hardcover edition ($45 marked down from $65), so it is not for the casually curious. (There is a superior edition, but it is annotated in German.)
Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Llewellyn's Sourcebook), by Henry C. [Heinrich Cornelius] Agrippa. Completely Annotated and with Modern Commentary, by Donald Tyson. Paperback edition, 1993: second printing, hardcover, 2019. This is based, with corrections, on a seventeenth-century English translation of the Latin edition of the early sixteenth century. See
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Occult-P...
Less expensive used copies of both the paperback and hardcover editions are sometimes available.

There are a whole bunch of cheap Kindle editions, none of which are worth your time, being taken from poor editions to begin with, and sometimes not even containing the complete text: not to mention the problem posed by the many illustrations and diagrams when put into Kindle format on the cheap.

There are excerpts from Agrippa in a companion volume to “Magic in Western Culture,” also edited and translated by Copenhaver,
The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment, Illustrated Edition
The Kindle edition is more reasonably priced, again taking into account the length of the book
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Magic-Ant...

I can suggest a lot of other titles, if requested, but most of them are academic press books, very expensive, and not easily found in most libraries. (hide spoiler)]

Thank you for using the spoiler tags.

Unfortunately I just discovered that spoiler tags do not seem to work if I am reading posts on my new Amazon Fire tablet. I don't know whether this is a glitch or a feature, but Amazon should be supporting their own subsidiary's coding. My apologies to anyone unfamiliar with the play who inadvertently read the supposedly concealed material.

Spoiler tags never hide anything for me in the app. However, I don't view your post as much of a spoiler.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a great many editions of "The Tempest" out there. Some have attractive features in edition to the text.

For example, illustrations by Robert Anning Bell and the great Walter Crane (best known for his books for children). There is an inexpensive Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Crane&...

The reviews there seem to belong entirely to other editions; a constant problem with Amazon.

Long-time fans of The Fantastic Four will probably think that Caliban looks rather like a Skrull (the long-time all-purpose extraterrestrial menaces in the Marvel universe).

I once reviewed two editions together (again because of Amazon's habit of lumping reviews together: the Folger edition linked in the first post, and am Arden Shakespeare edition edited by the eminent critic Frank Kermode (1954, revised 1958). About 270 pages long, it has almost a hundred pages of excellent introduction, and a set of source readings. It has long been one of my favorite editons: for my fuller description, see https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

It still has an Amazon page, but the only copies usually available through it are used, and could be other editions posted by a careless dealer, or linked by Amazon -- I've had that problem more than once. The page also indicates three new, much more expensive, copies: again, buyer beware.

However, it has been replaced by a 400-page Arden Shakespeare Edition (Third Series, 1999, revised 2011), edited by Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Vaughan, which I have on order: the editors' expertise in the subject is well-known. See https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Arden-...

There is a linked Kindle book, which is to an entirely different edition,m which once again is normal for Amazon if books have many editions or translations.

Has anyone else seen live productions of the play?

I have seen two, both in Los Angeles. The first, part of the Olympic Arts Festival attached to the Games in 1984, was in Italian (which makes sense, given how many characters in it are supposed to be Italians from one city or another). I knew the play well, and could almost follow the dialogue. It had limited but effective stage effects, especially for the tempest itself.

The other, the date of which I no longer remember, had Anthony Hopkins as the star. It was also quite effective, although I noticed that in some places they had "improved" Shakespeare's English by substituting modern words or concepts for those which might puzzle a late-twentieth-century audience.

This compromise, which makes sense on stage, is the kind of thing that makes an edition of Shakespeare with footnoted glosses so attractive to anyone who doesn't want to just guess at what is being said. Fortunately, the only period text of "The Tempest," from the First Folio, is considered unusually good, which reduces editorial guesswork. But there is at least one line in "The Tempest" which is either totally obscure -- the key word has never been found elsewhere -- or corrupt beyond emendation.

I have seen a movie production with Helen Mirren as Prospera. A good gender bend at a time when the concept was gaining in popularity.

I have watched scenes of The Forbidden Planet a mid-century movie supposedly a sci-fi version of The Tempest.

Full-movie version:
https://archive.org/details/Forbidden...

Forbidden Planet (1956) was clearly influenced by Shakespeare, which shows up in the opening premise and is evident in specific scenes. This can add to the viewer’s pleasure, but not knowing it doesn’t detract from story..

It was, and is, an impressive movie, with some good casting, nice props, and some special effects they held up well the last time I saw it, which must be twenty years ago. It had the first all-electronic score,

It has frequently been compared to Star Trek, and Roddenberry acknowledged its influence. In fact the first pilot, “The Cage,” had some striking similarities. (It was finally broadcast, spliced with new material, as the two-episode “The Menagerie.”) One reason for making a second pilot was the network execs feeling that the first was “too good for television.”

Hm, I don't remember all the plot points of the ST pilot and "Forbidden Planet", but atmospherically and conceptually: yeah, I can see a similarity!

I'm still mourning Majel Barrett's demotion, btw.

The version with Helen Mirren sounds interesting. I've not yet seen any production: only read the play out of my giant RSC Shakespeare, which has pretty good footnotes.

I will be reading from my old trusty The Complete Works of Shakespeare 37 plays, 6 poems edited by David Bevington. I appreciate the introductory notes and footnotes.

Also I will be using for extra commentary Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber. Professor Garber uses 20th-century close-reading style to consider Shakespeare's work. She has posted some of her Shakespeare lectures on YouTube as well.

My eyes are getting a bit old for the print in my collected Shakespeare editions; and even for the annotations in some stand-alone editions of single plays.

When possible, I try to use a Kindle edition, where I can adjust the font, but some of the best work is not in Kindle, and, given the complicated layouts to be transferred, they may not seem economical to some publishers.

For anyone wishing to get past the critical tradition, and read Shakespeare "raw" and even unglossed (so you have to guess at meanings), there is a handy Kindle edition of The Tempest: Published According to the True Originall Copy from Penguin Classics. This is strictly the First Folio text (the only one with authority), in its original spelling, complete with 'u' for 'v,' and typographic quirks. The cover identifies the author as "Mr. William Shakespeare."

The price is a little high for just 80 pages of text. I may use it to avoid straining to read those small-print notes I mentioned, to find out exactly what the original reading was before editors took charge.

I have been to physical therapy to fix these old eyes some, enough to read more again. For a while, it was audio books almost always and completely. Maybe that will help--an audio book?

Thanks. My vision problems relate to physical changes that limit how much correction will help. Unfortunately, I have trouble using audiobooks for anything complicated, especially since going back and forth to notes, and re-reading specific lines isn’t intuitive.And, like some characters in some of the fiction I have been reading lately, information from a text always seems more convincing to me, and with some exceptions lasts longer in my memory than a block of spoken words. I would be well-advised to change this habit if I could.

LiLi wrote: "I'm still mourning Majel Barrett's demotion, btw...."

Digression from "The Tempest" --

For those not familiar with early Star Trek, Majel Barrett was cast in the series as Nurse Christine Chapel, who assists Dr. McCoy: but, under the name of M. Leigh Hudec, she originally had played the cold and extra-rational "Number One," the executive officer of the Enterprise. She took charge when Captain Christopher Pike mysteriously disappeared, and was very decisive about it. A much stronger character than the captain, in the opinion of some (myself included). Of course, at the beginning of that story Pike is seen talking to the ship's doctor about suffering from depression and self-doubts after an earlier mission went sour, so that may have been deliberate. (The doctor prescribes a stiff drink.)

There is a perhaps apocryphal story that when "The Cage" was screened for network executives and their wives, one of the latter was very indignant about a show having a woman bossing around a crew of men, and DEMANDED that her husband do something about it.....

In any case, Majel Barrett was retained, even if in a less prominent role, in the second pilot. But when that was cast, Jeffrey Hunter was no longer available to play the captain, and was replaced by William Shatner as James T. Kirk. They also recast other main parts, most notably the doctor.

Leonard Nimoy was retained as Spock, but he was promoted, and his famously unemotional and "logical" style was an adaptation of Majel Barrett's characterization of "Number One." He can be seen grinning about a newly-discovered plant in the re-used footage in "The Menagerie" version, which scene is now rather disconcerting. (Also, Spock was not then a Vulcan, the species only being invented later, replacing the unused suggestion that he might be a Martian.)

Ian and Cynda: Bookshare.org is a website providing ebooks for people with print difficulties, whether that is visual problems or an inability to hold a physical book for any length of time. Application for the service only requires a signed provided form by a medical professional, such as an occupational or physical therapist or a physician. Bookshare is free for students but there is a nominal annual fee for other users. The selection of available ebooks is quite large and wide and often offers multiple editions of the same book. There is never a waiting period to obtain the books nor a return due date. Books can be read downloaded or online and work very well on an Amazon Fire tablet.

Thanks. I’m mostly talking about academic press and other specialised works, but I will find out if they are covered.

Pat that is good information. My physical therapy for my eyes is working slowly and correctly. I am reading and writing better than I have in years. . . .Others may be reading this information and putting it to use, so good you shared.

Cynda, I've rejoiced over the improved health reports you've given this year. I knew this info might not be for you but posted because others may benefit.

Ian: I think you will find some of the academic works you are interested in, but not all (as good as Bookshare is).

Thanks again.

A number of academic press works are actually free in Kindle, apparently as a result of "public access" requirements in subsidy grants. I have a sneaking suspicion these will be the same titles.

Their availability has considerably broadened my interests, since I would never have taken a chance on paying for them (expensive!) on a speculative basis, no matter how good the reviews.

I see that I failed to mention a major resource for editions of The Tempest: archive.org, The Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/texts?que...

Many of these can only be "borrowed," but a quite substantial number of older editions, including the still-useful 1892 New Variorum Shakespeare for the play, can be downloaded free (if you scroll down the page for each edition: a note for those unfamiliar with this remarkable resource). I strongly suggest the pdf format, as much more reliable than transfers, although it is harder to work with.

For copies of the New Variorum Tempest (some of which are rather dingy), see:
https://archive.org/details/tempestne...

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet....

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet....

https://archive.org/details/dli.grant...

https://archive.org/details/tempest00...

I may select a couple of other interesting editions for future postings, but right now I am still working through the downloads I did several years ago.

In reference to Posts #2 and #6

One of the contemporary reports that may have influenced/suggested events in The Tempest, see:
A plaine description of the Barmudas, now called Sommer Ilands : with all manner of their discouerie anno 1609 by the shipwrack and admirable deliuerance of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Sommers : wherein are truly set forth the commodities and a profit of that rich, pleasant, and healthful countrie : with an addition or more ample relation of diuers other remarkeable matters concerning those ilands since then experienced, lately sent from thence by one of the colonie now there resident. by Silvester Jourdain.
https://archive.org/details/texts?que...

This is part of the pamphlet literature surrounding the Jamestown settlement, an episode which bulks large in the traditional teaching of American History. It is extremely short, and frustrating for the historian of the English colonization of the New World, but I think it hits the main points which seem to have been in Shakespeare's mind. William Strachey's "True Reportorty" of the same events (see #6) is more detailed, and therefore there are more resemblances to the play.

This was turning into a long post on useful secondary literature, so I broke it up by author.

For those relatively unfamiliar with Shakespeare, and Tudor (Henry VII through Elizabeth I) and early Stuart (James I) English literature in general, there is a rather old short guide to the background of basic assumptions about the world: E.M.W. Tillyard's The Elizabethan World Picture

The current edition, available in Kindle, but rather expensive, is at https://www.amazon.com/Elizabethan-Wo...

The edition shown in the link is now out-of-print, and later editions are reported to be in larger type. I reviewed it a good while back: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is one of my earliest Amazon reviews, and is quite short. Back when Amazon had comments on reviews, this one was well-received.

PDFs of the original edition (available as plain, or OCR'd for text searching) can be found at
https://archive.org/details/tillyard-...

Continuation:

An alternative to Tillyard, which covers a lot more ground, much of which was still relevant to Shakespeare, is by C.S. Lewis: The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature The Kindle edition is currently marked down to $5.99 (from $18.99) https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+discar...

I reviewed it at https://www.amazon.com/review/R1FF231...
and, more recently, and at greater length, at https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

This posthumous book is both informative and well-written, with effective brief quotations from the primary literature. It covers material as late as Milton, who turns out more medieval in detail than usually thought.

Lewis argued for that cultural continuity in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in his earlier English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama, which I reviewed at https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amz...

There is forthcoming Kindle edition of this massive work. It works well for contextualizing Shakespeare. It is probably too long and, from one point of view, too diffuse, to be read to illuminate a single play. https://www.amazon.com/English-Litera...

It does not include the plays -- another author had that assignment in the multi-volume "Oxford History of English Literature" (sometimes mentioned by Lewis as OHEL, to be pronounced as a phrase). But I consider it pretty much "required reading" for those who are seriously interested not only in Shakespeare, but in the lyric poetry of John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. And a whole bunch of lesser lights he makes sound interesting: or at least his discussions are entertaining, even when dealing with minor and not-very-good authors.

Critical reception of the book has ranged from the contemporary "unsound" to the more recent dismissal of it as "stating the obvious." The latter seems to reflect how much Lewis' revision of how we look at the English Renaissance has become "common knowledge," its source forgotten.

I just read A Tempest which is a retelling of The Tempest. (Highly recommend it) So I cant wait to jump into this group read! Love our Shakespearean group reads!

The following short books are available free on Kindle Unlimited, and look promising (I have not had time to more than skim the contents).

The Tempest Study Guide: With a Complete Annotated Text of the Shakespeare Play, by Michael Cummings
https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Study-...
This may be a real bargain, worth considering purchasing a permanent copy, given that it includes the play itself, if you don't have another edition already. However, the introduction and commentary are in some places rather simplistic

Study Guide: The Tempest: analysis, notes and exemplar essays, by E.N. Cartwright
https://www.amazon.com/Study-Guide-an...
(I am including this with reservations, as I am not happy about the idea of providing "exemplar essays" to inspire students, given the temptation to slightly rewrite them as their own work. There are now on-line plagiarism checkers to control such things, but still... In fact, the main thrust of the book is how to write an exam essay on the play and get a good grade.)

Ariel & Prospero: The Tempest's Estranged Couple, by Justin Tate
https://www.amazon.com/Ariel-Prospero...
This includes interesting short discussions of performance practices over the centuries, including gender issues with Ariel.

It is explicitly based on the late Frank Kermode's "Arden Shakespeare" edition of the play, which I, too, greatly admire. I can't call it up on Goodreads. It is nice to know the base text, but it is has been replaced in the Arden series, and now is out of print. Fairly inexpensive used copies of the paperback revised edition are available: see https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Arden-...
Note that the other formats offered are actually different editions.

(The replacement in the Arden series, edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, again not readily found on Goodreads, is very long, and fairly expensive, but I have found it invaluable. For the trade paperback, see https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Arden-...
Note that, again, the alternative formats are actually different editions.)

In continuation of post #32.

I was distracted by other activities, and when I got back to this topic I had to do a bit of rather random searching for the author and date of the O.H.E.L. (Oxford History of English Literature) volume on sixteenth-century drama.

A major topic which was by editorial fiat excluded from C.S. Lewis' book on the prose and other poetry of the period, which allowed Lewis to actually complete his contribution in a single volume in a reasonable time-phrase.

The search was turned out to be more complicated than I expected, because I had forgotten that I was looking for two volumes, not one, covering the later fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries, and published about thirty years apart.

These are:

The English Drama, 1485-1575, by F. P. Wilson and G. K. Hunter, 1969

English Drama 1586-1642: The Age of Shakespeare, by G. K. Hunter, 1997

The first volume is, of course, largely irrelevant to Shakespeare. However, I have seen it reasonably priced ($25.00).

The second, which at long last completed the O.H.E.L., is being offered at prices between $250.00 and $300.00 (rounded figures), plus tax, and in most cases shipping. It is massive (about 650 pages), but the price is ridiculous if you only want to contextualize "The Tempest." It might be available through a library, if you have one that makes physical loans: unlike the case with Lewis, there is no handy Kindle edition.

If I can borrow a copy, I may report on what is relevant to "The Tempest," if it looks helpful, and is not, e.g., bogged down in historical and bibliographical details, which I appreciate, but isn't likely to be welcomed here.

G. Wilson Knight (1897–1985) was once a prominent Shakespeare critic, notable for his focus on thematic imagery rather than plot and characterization. His books mostly had intriguing titles, considered overblown by some. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Wils...)

He has passed out of favor in recent decades, but apparently still has defenders. I found him very helpful when I was in graduate school, although I didn't feel free to cite him as an authority.

(He was a prominent Spiritualist, which may have contributed to the decline of his reputation, although I can't see that his unorthodox religious ideas actually influenced his literary criticism.)

His writings on Shakespeare were eventually collected, in revised editions, in eight volumes -- and I think that reprint series may have left out something, such as his little book on Shakespeare productions -- he was also a director, producer, and sometimes an actor..

He has observations on The Tempest scattered through his works, but there are major essays in The Shakespearean Tempest and The Crown of Life

These, with others are available with some searching in the Internet Archive (archive.org). There are two posting for The Crown of Life, one of which is defective (blank pages). See instead https://archive.org/details/in.ernet....

The next to last chapter is "The Shakespearean Superman: A Study of The Tempest, in which the reference is to Nietzsche, not Clark Kent.

For The Shakespearan Tempest" see https://archive.org/details/shakespea...

I am still reviewing the contents of the other six books: I may add others that prove to be relevant, i.e., do more than mention the play as an example of something.

hello everyone, do you know a good translation in French?

Auriane wrote: "hello everyone, do you know a good translation in French?"

Unfortunately, the vestiges of my French wouldn't be up to evaluating one, even if I knew of it.

There is an alternative, which you may already know, the usefulness of which will depend on your modern English: The Tempest (Webster's French Thesaurus Edition). (If you do, and it doesn't meet your needs, you can skip the following.)

If you aren't familiar with it, see https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Webste...

The Amazon description there claims that it translates at the bottom of each page all "difficult" words (italicized in the English text). Unfortunately, the "Look Inside" feature takes you to a parallel version glossed in Korean..... (Thank you, Amazon.....)

I would hope that means it includes everything that isn't a part of current standard English, or which had a different meaning back in 1610 or thereabouts. And that the spelling in the Shakespeare text itself has been modernized, as sixteenth/seventeenth-century English spelling is an obstacle, even for native speakers of the language.

ADDENDUM: I managed to borrow a copy, and can't really recommend it. It seems to have been compiled with a skimpy bilingual dictionary, and routinely gives several meanings of a given English word, only of which, at best, fits the Shakespeare text.

Consultation of the glosses in a good student edition would have improved things, but the publisher probably would have had to pay for the copyrighted editorial material.

Additional to #32:

C.S. Lewis' English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) is for now still available at pre-release prices: $22.99 for the hardcover, and $19.99 for the Kindle edition. This is a HarperOne commercial press version, and is a real bargain.
https://www.amazon.com/English-Litera...

The price contrasts markedly with that asked for a re-titled edition, from the original publisher, Oxford University Press:Poetry and Prose in the Sixteenth Century. (Oxford History of English Literature, Volume IV), by C. S. Lewis.

The price for new copies of this edition is $153.66 (used copies start at $56).

https://www.amazon.com/Sixteenth-Cent...

This is a gem for anyone seriously interested in English literature: and can provide a good foundation for anyone taking a course in Elizabethan literature in particular, although sorting out Lewis' personal opinions from those approved by the teacher may be necessary. It concludes with a detailed chronology of the literature, and an obsolete but still useful bibliography, broken down into categories, so one does not have to search for a particular topic in a long alphabetical listing.

Oxford University Press suggests their re-titled edition is for 'A Level' students: this is probably opaque to most American readers, so see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Level for the British (and Commonwealth) examination system.

Back in #12 I mentioned the new Arden Shakespeare edition of the Tempest, by Vaughan & Vaughan. I had it on order at the time. Now I have been reading it, and it is excellent.

I also discovered that, although not really available in Kindle (there is a link to another edition on the same page), it is available in Apple's "Books" app. If you are able to run that on your platform, you might take a look: although I consider the $10.99 for it a bit stiff, it is a substantial book, so you will get a lot for your money.

Thank you for your answer Ian Slater !

Auriane wrote: "Thank you for your answer Ian Slater !"

I'm sorry I was unable to come up with something better.

The remnants of my flirtation with French wouldn't allow me to judge between actual translations, even if I had access to them through, say, a University Research Library, where I once compared Italian translations (See #13 above for the reason).

hello everyone ! For the french readers, i can advice the edition folio théâtre. i think it's interesting because there is the original text and the translation in french. It allows us to enjoy the beautiful language of Shakespeare and understand everything !

Ian wrote: "Unfortunately I just discovered that spoiler tags do not seem to work if I am reading posts on my new Amazon Fire tablet. I don't know whether this is a glitch or a feature, but Amazon should be su..."

They don't work when I'm using my cell phone.

Also, thank you so much for always providing direct links to the books that you mention. I'm going to go with the Norton Critical Edition for this read. I have been VERY impressed with their annotations on Faulkner.

Cheryl, I have a deep appreciation of Norton. I was introduced to English Literature by a Norton Anthology of English Literature (2 volume set). Later I bought some Norton Critical Editions of a variety of works where I felt I needed some extra help. I continue to do so when I can fjnd a used copy. More recently, maybe 2015ish, I resd The Norton Critical Editions when I read the romances. Romances and Poems. Stephen Greenblatt is an excellent editor. . . . This my long-wknded way of saying that I am glad others also have an appreciation of any/all things Oxford editions.

Although I can't call it up on Goodreads, the Kindle edition of The Tempest for the Arden Shakespeare: Third Series, is available for just $1.61.
https://www.amazon.com/Tempest-Third-...

This has an excellent introduction and good annotations. The only drawback with the Kindle edition, compared to the paperback edition, is that it omits, for copyright reasons, illustrations from, mainly, modern productions of the play. The price is hard to beat.

I will probably be using the Third Arden, the Second Arden, the Norton Critical Edition, and the Folger Library edition, as points of reference.

Ian wrote: "For anyone wishing to get past the critical tradition, and read Shakespeare "raw" and even unglossed (so you have to guess at meanings), there is a handy Kindle edition of The Tempest: Published According to the True Originall Copy from Penguin Classics...."

I will absolutely *not* be doing that. This is my first read of The Tempest, and first revisit to Shakespeare in over 20 years!

I took advantage of Hoopla, and started listening to the audio version on my drive home. I'm an hour into the play and understand pretty much nothing so far, but my ears are getting acquainted to the antiquated dialogue, and *that* was my goal. After the audio, I will switch over to the written text... with a better ability to understand what I am reading!

I threw this in First Folio text as an alternative to the lists of annotated and glossed editions. (I listed those I found most valuable).

There are people, some of whom I have encountered on Goodreads, who prefer avoiding several centuries of criticism, and the linguistic and cultural secondary literature that has been building up since the middle (or so) of the nineteenth century.

I consider this the equivalent of trying to survey and cut a new route parallel to a super-highway, but there is no accounting for tastes.