The tempest

The Tempest has long dazzled readers and audiences with its intricate blend of magic, music, humour, intrigue and tenderness, its vibrant but ambiguous central characters. As Virginia and Alden Vaughan show, in their wide-ranging new edition of this established favourite, such antithetical extremes exemplify the play’s endlessly arguable nature, its appeal to diverse eras and cultures. The Vaughans situate The Tempest at the centre of changing cultural attitudes towards colonialism, power politics and patriarchal hierarchies, and demonstrate how the play both shaped and reflected those changing attitudes. Informed by the concerns of a post-colonial international community, their edition emphasizes the play's world-wide cultural appropriation, and includes an extensive discussion of the play's after-life as well as an appendix of selected appropriations. The interdisciplinary editorial approach contributes a distinctively blended cultural and historical focus. ‘The Vaughans have provided a valuable new edition of the play, one whose expanded contextualisation, especially, will contribute to The Tempest’s lively and varied afterlife both within and beyond the classroom.’ Barbara Fuchs, University of Washington, Seattle, Shakespeare Quarterly