Tempest: The New Oxford Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, Lauren Working, Rory Loughnane

Book cover for Tempest: The New Oxford Shakespeare
Book cover for Tempest: The New Oxford Shakespeare

Tempest: The New Oxford Shakespeare

Tempest: The New Oxford Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, Lauren Working, Rory Loughnane

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Description

'How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!'

Performed variously as escapist fantasy, celebratory fiction, and political allegory, The Tempest is one of the plays in which Shakespeare's genius as a poetic dramatist found its fullest expression. Significantly, it was placed first when published in the First Folio of 1623, and is now generally seen as the playwright's most penetrating statement about his art.

The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About the Author

William Shakespeare

Lauren Working is a lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the University of York. Her research explores how English colonialism influenced taste and politics in seventeenth-century London. Her first book, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (2020), jointly won the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize in 2021. She has also published on topics including travel and transculturality, female interests in empire, and the colonial gaze in cavalier verse. Her work with museums has led to collaborative projects on shipwrecked porcelain and contemporary poetry, still life painting, and global networks at Oxford and the Inns of Court. She is a consultant for the London National Portrait Gallery and a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker.

Rory Loughnane is Reader in Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent. He is the author or editor of ten books and has published widely on Shakespeare. For the New Oxford Shakespeare, he has edited more than ten of Shakespeare's plays. He is a Series Editor of Studies in Early Modern Authorship (Routledge) and Shakespeare and Text (Cambridge UP), and a General Editor of The Revels Plays series (Manchester UP) and the forthcoming Oxford Marlowe edition.

Critical Reviews

"This edition of The Tempest excellently leverages footnotes to provide greater context to the phrases used during this era. For instance, Shakespeare uses the phrase "dead Indian" (II.ii.30), which the footnote to the line clarifies as "a possible allusion to actual exhibitions of Indigenous Americans in London" during the period (p. 99n). Initially, this phrase may seem obscure, even offensive; the note provides valuable context, shedding light on the colonial mindset of the era in which the play was written. These thoughtful footnotes, along with a comprehensive introduction and preface, greatly enhance the accessibility of this edition of the text for modern readers-particularly those who might otherwise be hesitant to read Shakespearean drama." -- Rowan Ghosh, SEL's Marginalia

Publishing Information

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Pub date: 2024-07-11
Length: 176 pages

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