Final Point 4: Critical Conversations and Secondary Scholarship

The Tempest, as with any literary piece, can be read through many different lenses and from many different perspectives.  There is no “right way” of interpreting the play, though there are probably some stronger interpretations than others that can be made.  One of our goals for our edition for high school students is to introduce them to various ways of looking at literature.  After researching scholarly input on the text, we Spear Shakers have consolidated our research into five common critical topics: magic and the fantastic, colonialism, power and politics, gender and sexuality, and the play as autobiography. We have assigned one of these topics to each of the five acts in the play, with our plan being to have the students focus on a different area of criticism for each act.  In this way, they are exposed to different ways of analyzing literature in an integrated and non-overwhelming way.  We purposefully assigned the critical topics to the acts we did in consideration of the plot of each act, and what could facilitate good classroom discussion.

In addition, we have materials for an introduction and afternotes.  The introduction, based off of an article by Robert B. Pierce, introduces the idea of how many different interpretations of the play can all be valid and build understanding, and that there is no right way of reading or not reading the play.  We felt that a short excerpt from his essay (which involves a marvelous polka-analogy) would be a good way to set the tone for our edition.  The materials we have listed in the afternotes section we felt were interesting and valid interpretations, but were not as major or easy to discuss with beginning Shakespeare scholars as the selections we did include.

The essays themselves within each act would be mainly for a teacher to consult in preparation to help guide the discussion in the classroom, but we may include short quotes from some of them for the students themselves to consider.  Since the large majority of our audience are beginning Shakespeareans, we do not want to overwhelm them with pages and pages of critical essays, so we plan not to go into too much detail for each area of criticism.  The main point is to help students be aware of the many kinds of discussions being had about literature.     

Introduction

Pierce, Robert B. “Understanding The Tempest.” New Literary History 30.2 (1999): 373-388. Project Muse. Web. 25 February 2014.  

Act I: Magic and the Fantastic

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “From Samuel Taylor Coleridge: poet philosopher, and critic.” Oxford School 
Shakespeare: The Tempest. Ed. Roma Gill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 99-100. Print.

Coursen, H. R. The Tempest: A Guide to the Play. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000. Print.

Bate, Jonathan. “Introduction.” William Shakespeare: The Tempest. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen.  New York: The Modern Library, 2008. vii-xx. Print. [specifically ix-xi.]

Johnson, Samuel. “From Dr Samuel Johnson: editor, critic, poet, and scholar.” Oxford School Shakespeare: The Tempest. Ed. Roma Gill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 98-99. Print.

Act 2: Colonialism

Maughan, Virginia Mason. Shakespeare in Performance: The Tempest. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. 98-126. Print.

Taylor, David Francis.  “The Disenchanted Island: A Political History of The Tempest, 1760-1830.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63.4 (2012): 487-517.  Project Muse.  Web. 24 February 2014.  

Act 3: Gender and Sexuality

Hauger, Richard Lynn. "Shakespeare's "Full Realization" in "the Tempest": Maternal Absence and the Mystical Transcendence of Fratricidal Self-Fashioning through the 'Caritas' of Daughters." Order No. 1334092 The American University, 1988. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

Pask, Kevin.  “Caliban’s Masque.” English Literary History 70.3 (2003): 739-756. Project Muse. Web. 24 2014.

Act 4: Politics and Power

Brower, Reuban A.  “The Mirror of Analogy.” The Tempest. Ed. Robert Langbaum. New York: Signet, 1964. 182-205. Print.

Elliot, N. J. (2004). “Prospero's return: An interpretation of The Tempest." ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Web. 24 February 2014.

Gish, Dustin A. “Taming the Tempest: Prospero's Love of Wisdom and the Turn from Tyranny." Souls with Longing: Representations of Honor and Love in Shakespeare. Ed. Bernard J. Dobski and Dustin A. Gish. Maryland: Lexington Books (2011). 231-260.  Web. 24 February 2014.

Zlatescu, Andrei Paul. "The Tempest as a Pretext: Shakespeare's Last Major Play and the New Allegories of Order." Order No. NR46459 University of Alberta (Canada), 2008. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

Act 5: Autobiographical Evidences

Coursen, H.R. "Critical Approache." Trans. Array The Tempest: A Guide to the Play. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. 79-85. Print.

Davies, Anthony. “The Tempest.” The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 470-474. Print.

Lee, Michelle . "The Tempest." Shakespearean Criticism. 124. (2009): 256-350. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

Phillips, James E. "The Tempest and the Renaissance Idea of Man." Shakespeare Quarterly. 15.2 (1964): 147-158. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

Afternotes: More Ways of Reading the Play

Stage Production: 

Bate, Jonathan and Eric Rasmussen . The Tempest. New York: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2008. Print.

Dymkowski, Christine ed. The Tempest.  Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.

Lindley, David ed. The Tempest. London: Thomson, 2003. Print.

Taymor, Julie. “Rough Magic.” Living With Shakespeare: Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors. Ed. Susannah Carson. New York: Vintage Books, 2013. 466-482. Print.

Ecocriticism:

Brayton, Dan.  “Sounding the Deep: Shakespeare and the Sea Revisited.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.2 (2010): 189-206. Web. 25 February 2014.

Visual Sources:

Garfield, Leon. The Tempest. New York: Shakespeare Animated Films Limited, 1992. Print.

*A general note from the Spear Shakers at large...we tried to MLA format this as best we could, but Blogger hates indentations, so we made do with what we could. Also, if some of the sections are randomly a different shade of grey, we have absolutely no idea why.

Final Point 3: Our Play and Audience

After careful consideration and thought, we Spear Shakers are happy to announce that we will be annotating The Tempest for a high school audience.  This audience includes both the students and their heroic high school English teachers.

Why The Tempest and why high school?  Let us explain...

The Tempest:

• First and foremost, we chose The Tempest because it is not Romeo and Juliet.  Romeo and Juliet is typically the first Shakespeare play people interact with, and that interaction usually comes in the form of their freshman high school English class.  Our group's feeling is that R&J has become too cliche, too overdone, and is not the best example that beginning students could have of what a Shakespeare play is like.  We want to offer up The Tempest as a replacement for Romeo and Juliet, in the hopes that doing so will help more students appreciate and like Shakespeare in more meaningful ways.   
• The Tempest stands out even among the other Shakespeare plays.  It's one of the few plays of Shakespeare that has an original, non-recycled plot, and it doesn't quite neatly fit into the standard divisions of "tragedy, comedy, or history."  There is an intriguing level of different-ness in The Tempest  that makes it appealing.
• There are a lot of characters in the play.  There's the complex and powerful Prospero, the good-girl Miranda and the handsome-prince Ferdinand, Stephano and Trinculo the class-clowns, the plotting Sebastian and Antonio, the mysterious Ariel, and the outcast Caliban.  These are types of people and characters that high school students already understand to some extent from experiences with principals, jocks, school pranksters, "in-crowds," "out-crowds," and the likes.  There's good potential for students to be able to connect and understand the play in a meaningful way.    
• The Tempest invites the students to consider different social and political influences of Shakespeare's time and culture.

High Schoolers:

• High school students are immersed in pop culture and have experienced a lot of Shakespearean influences without realizing it. We hope to facilitate this by making students aware of and understand the influence Shakespeare has had not only in literature but in culture in general. 
• This gives us the opportunity to help mold and shift students views of Shakespeare as "old" and "boring" and see him relevant and as contributing to their world. 
• We hope to develop critical thinking and analytic skills by having students answer critical thinking questions and make predictions for character development based off of the initial introduction they are given.
• The students can build and follow different character developments and find connections and real life examples that follow similar patterns.
• They can explore how their views of the characters shift, what makes the villain "evil", what makes the protagonist "good," and questions about what being "good" or "evil" actually mean.  For example, "Is Prospero a good father, or an evil sorcerer?  Why?"  
• We hope to develop literary skills such by having students identify and practice literary devices such as blank verse, iambic pentameter, and other rhyme patterns. 
• High school students are fun.  They're strange, and sassy, and not afraid to tell you what they think, and we find that interesting.  There are a lot of different opinions that can be made and had about The Tempest, and we feel like there will be something in the play for a wide range of students and opinions.  

Final Point 2: Annotations

One of the things that sets various editions of apart from one another is the type of annotations each uses.  In considering the various editions of Shakespeare texts we are using in class, here are some of the thoughts we Spear Shakers had on the advantages and disadvantages of the different kinds of annotations, and how we might approach annotating our own edition.

Macbeth:

• Annotations:  
• A few footnotes along the bottom clarifying words or phrases
• Advantages:  
• Helps a general audience understand unfamiliar or archaic words
• Clarifies meaning so readers can follow the general flow of the plot   
• Disadvantages: 
• Annotations are very light, only providing very basic clarification
• Footnotes do not provide any sort of scholarly input or insight, are strictly for definitions  

The Tempest:

• Annotations: 
• Still relatively light, add clarification to words and some editorial commentary on scenes
• Advantages:
• Helps the audience understand the context of unfamiliar or archaic words
• Notes where editions differ in line assignment or cues.
•  Points out areas that are puns or have double meanings
• Disadvantages:
• A good edition for students, but possibly more information than a general user would be interested in.
• Scholarly, but not overly scholarly.  Good for an undergraduate, but not a Shakespeare scholar.  Does not add anything new to the conversation, only clarifies what is already known.
• Formatted in one large block...a little hard to read  

Richard III:

• Annotations:  
• Mostly consists of definitions for more archaic words and contexts, light annotations
• Advantages:
• Gives the audience context for unfamiliar or archaic words 
• Very cleanly presented and easy to find, follow, and read
• Disadvantages:
• Does not note puns or word plays, innuendos, or double-meanings
• Does not provide any additional commentary or context besides definitions

Measure for Measure:

• Annotations:
• Very similar in format and content as The Tempest
• Advantages:
• Helps the audience understand the context of unfamiliar or archaic words
• Notes where editions differ in line assignment or cues.
•  Points out areas that are puns or have double meanings
• Disadvantages
• Scholarly, but not overly scholarly.  Good for an undergraduate, but not a Shakespeare scholar.  Does not add anything new to the conversation, only clarifies what is already known.
• Formatted in one large block...a little hard to read  

As You Like It:

• Annotations:
• Extremely extensive--there are sometimes more annotations than text on the page
• Advantages:
• The annotations are extremely thorough, providing context, current research, differing opinions, historiography, definitions, and sources
• Everything in every annotation is cross-referenced and sourced so a reader knows exactly where every bit of information came from.
• If the reader has a question about anything in the text, chances are there will be an annotation for it.
• Disadvantages:
• Opening the edition to a random page and reading can be overwhelming for a reader new to annotations...where on earth do you begin?
• There is shorthand and abbreviations within the annotations a reader has to be aware of to be able to effectively "work the system" and effectively use the annotations
• Visually, the pages look very cluttered and text-dense

Because our audience will be high school teachers teaching high school students, we want to make it interesting for the students by providing the teachers with very interactive ideas to help their students engage with the text.  Here are some of the ideas we came up with for accompanying material from Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5.

• Give the Assignments/thinking questions to help students get more involved with the text. For example:
• Make a meme referring something happening in this scene.
• What sort of person does Lady Macbeth strike you as? Draw her and include characterization details and explain why those details were added (specific lines, your imagination, etc.)
• Write a 2-page essay on the importance of first impressions and how they affect the way you portray someone. Include how you see Lady Macbeth's character unfolding and predict things that will happen in regards to her and the role she plays in the plot of the play.
• Buddy up with someone else in the class and without discussing beforehand, write some of your first impressions you had of them. Then share those impressions with each other and talk about how they go with or against how you know that person now (or have the students pick someone they know who at first didn't seem all that great but who then surprised them later on in their interactions/friendship/relationship).
• Based on what we have read so far, can you think of any modern version of Lady Macbeth? Characters from other books or movies? Perhaps T.V shows you have seen?

• Include a poetry terms glossary somewhere in the book which will explain terms such as 'prose' and 'iambic pentameter.'
• Have an activity for them to write their own poem in iambic pentameter or their own prose using a related topic such as: what Lady Macbeth is like, what their friends are like, what they would do for power, how they would respond in Lady Macbeth's position of receiving word that her husband inherited more land, etc.
• Using the text provided, write a modern version of the text. Follow the structure and outline given by Shakespeare while adding modern twists on language and word play.

• Add vocabulary footnotes to define difficult words.
• Not too many though, because that can be distracting to students. 
• Include an activity of them writing their own poem or short story using a certain number of the vocabulary--easily incorporated into defining prose and iambic pentameter.

• Add poetry footnotes to point out poetic shifts, e.g. prose (our link includes one such footnote) and departure from the iambic norm.
• Have discussion questions in response to the differences in iambic pentameter, giving students the opportunity to interpret those differences and the meanings behind it.

• If we have an online or "app" version of the text as we've toyed with, add the ability for students to comment on the scene. Here's some inspiration for that idea.
• There could be a possible link for the teacher to send out by making their own blog/commentary area for that specific class so they can all contribute to the conversation (memes would be posted here attached to certain lines they responded to, videos they make with peers, etc.)
• Include a few peer reviewed essays the invite the students to think of the bigger picture. 
• Be careful to select essays that do not engage in a conversation that is too deep for the students but encourage them to think of different things Shakespeare may have been trying to say. (i.e gender)