The Tempest presents some of Shakespeare's most insightful meditations on the cycle of life—ending and beginning, death and regeneration, bondage and freedom. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the First Folio (1622) and is accompanied by explanatory annotations.
"Sources and Contexts" offers a rich collection of documents on the play's central themes—magic and witchcraft, politics and religion, geography and travel. Writers include Ovid, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Gabriel Naudé, Michel de Montaigne, and William Strachey.
"Criticism" collects eighteen responses to The Tempest, from John Dryden and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Stephen Orgel and Leah Marcus.
"Rewritings and Appropriations" includes creative reactions to The Tempest, by playwrights, filmmakers, and poets, among them H.D., Peter Greenaway, and Ted Hughes.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.