A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's The Tempest

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Shakespeare for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Shakespeare for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781535839976

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The Tempest

William Shakespeare

1611

Introduction

The first record of its performance, in the court Revels Account, indicates that The Tempest was presented before James I and his court on November 1, 1611, Hallomas night, at Whitehall, by Shakespeare's own acting company, the King's Men. The Tempest was performed for the court again around February 1613, along with a dozen other plays of a festive and celebratory nature, to celebrate the wedding of James I's daughter, Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, who would later briefly reign as the king of Bohemia. The performance date of November 1611 is especially useful in dating the composition of The Tempest because the play is not listed in the notebook of a London doctor named Simon Foreman, who jotted down the plays he saw. Foreman noted that he saw Cymbeline (1610) and The Winter's Tale (1611) but does not list The Tempest. Foreman died in September of 1611.

Its first printing appeared in 1623 when The Tempest was given pride of place in the commemorative Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, issued and introduced by two of his fellow players in the King's Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It is a particularly good text among Shakespeare's plays, where bad editions and poor printing can cause editors much distress. Its source is thought to be a clean copy made for publication directly from Shakespeare's own papers by his acting company's own scrivener, Ralph Crane. (The company's scrivener was the man who copied out the plays and performed other secretarial functions, an essential person in an age before any mechanical reproduction existed other than printing done with moveable type set by hand.)

Uncharacteristically, with the exception of Love's Labors Lost, the plot of The Tempest has not been taken from any previous story. It is Shakespeare's own invention, but it is compounded from folk stories and several significant contemporary elements and events. In June 1609, a fleet of nine ships with some 500 colonists set out from Plymouth, England, for Jamestown, Virginia, intending to settle in the New World. Around Bermuda, the lead ship, Sea Venture, was separated from the rest of the fleet in a storm. All the other ships safely reached the port of Jamestown. The Sea Venture's crew and passengers, including the admiral and the governor-to-be of the colony, were given up for dead. However, on May 23, 1610, nearly a year later, the passengers from the wrecked ship arrived in Jamestown in two ships they themselves had made. Two accounts of their shipwreck, of the island in the Caribbean they happened upon, and of their subsequent experiences, were published in London in 1610. One was A Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called Ile of Divels by Sylvester Jourdain. The other, which appeared about a month later, was The True Declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia. It was a report of the Virginia Company, which was financing the venture. Shakespeare was a friend of two of the leaders of the Virginia Company, the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke; he is likely not only