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Introduction

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Revisiting The Tempest

Part of the book series: Palgrave Shakespeare Studies ((PASHST))

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Abstract

In a recent study devoted to the rewritings of The Tempest, Virginia Mason Vaughan cited W.H. Auden in order to point out that the long history of adaptations and integrations to the story dramatised by Shakespeare, and somehow left unfinished, originates in the play’s own mythopoeic quality (Mason Vaughan 55).1 Gaps regarding the past of the characters in a ‘revenge’ play totally focused on the redemption of that past — mostly presented through the biased point of view of Prospero — invite to be filled in through narratives that “supplement biographical details omitted from the dramatist’s original script” (ibid. 56); contradictory views on that past continuously invade the stage and solicit new material to complement or provide a counterpoint to the story shown and told by Shakespeare. David Lindley has rightly argued that the play’s “adaptations and supplementations respond precisely to the points of theatrical strain in Shakespeare’s play” (Lindley 2003: 4), among which is the strident interweaving of the spectacular and the narrative which has often been unravelled through a foregrounding of the visual potential of the play and a massive excision of the narrative parts. After all, The Tempest is a machine-play, or at least it has been regarded as such for centuries, precisely as it has come to be considered a complex reflection of political and colonialist practices.

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Authors
  1. Silvia Bigliazzi
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  2. Lisanna Calvi
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Verona, Italy

    Silvia Bigliazzi (Professor of English Literature) & Lisanna Calvi (Lecturer of English Literature) (Professor of English Literature) &  (Lecturer of English Literature)

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© 2014 Silvia Bigliazzi and Lisanna Calvi

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Bigliazzi, S., Calvi, L. (2014). Introduction. In: Bigliazzi, S., Calvi, L. (eds) Revisiting The Tempest. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333148_1

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