Summary

The Tempest: Critical Essays traces the history of Shakespeare's controversial late romance from its early reception (and adaptation) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the present. The volume reprints influential criticism, and it also offers eight original essays which study The Tempest from a variety of contemporary perspectives, including cultural materialism, feminism, deconstruction, performance theory, and postcolonial studies. Unlike recent anthologies about The Tempest which reprint contemporary articles along with a few new essays, this volume contains a mixture of old and new materials pertaining to the play's use in the theater and in literary history.