WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Tempest / The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] cover

The Tempest / The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.]

Chapter 51: Sources
By William Shakespeare
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

British LiteratureClassics of LiteraturePlays/Films/Dramas

About This Book

A displaced ruler who commands magic engineers a storm that strands his enemies on the isolated island where he lives with his daughter. He employs the airy spirit Ariel and contends with the earthy native Caliban while the young woman encounters a shipwrecked prince, and comic and treacherous subplots unfold among the mariners and nobles. The narrative stages elaborate illusions and tests that expose ambition, guilt, and loyalty, forcing confrontations between usurpation and authority. It closes as the magician confronts the moral consequences of his power, moves toward forgiveness, and relinquishes his supernatural art to rejoin ordinary human life.

Sources

The editors’ Preface (e-text 23041) discusses the 17th- and 18th-century editions in detail; the newer (19th-century) editions are simply listed by name. The following editions may appear in the Notes. All inset text is quoted from the Preface.

Folios:
F1 1623; F2 (no date given); F3 1663; F4 1685.

“The five plays contained in this volume occur in the first Folio in the same order, and ... were there printed for the first time.”

Early editions:
Rowe 1709
Pope 1715

“Pope was the first to indicate the place of each new scene; as, for instance, Tempest, I. 1. ‘On a ship at sea.’ He also subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making a fresh scene whenever a new character entered—an arrangement followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of reference to these editions, we have always recorded the commencement of Pope’s scenes.”

Theobald 1733
Hanmer (“Oxford edition”) 1744
Warburton 1747
Johnson 1765
Capell 1768; also Capell’s annotated copy of F2
Steevens 1773
Malone 1790
Reed 1803

Later editions:
Singer, Knight, Cornwall, Collier, Phelps, Halliwell, Dyce, Staunton

Dryden:

“The Tempest was altered by Dryden and D’Avenant, and published as The Tempest; or the Enchanted Island, in 1669. We mark the emendations derived from it: ‘Dryden’s version.’”