Final Point 7: The New and Improved Tempest Edition

Hello again, from the Spear Shakers!  It's been a few weeks, but we've been hard at work making revisions and improvements to our edition, which you can see by clicking on this link.

Here are some things that are new:

• The Annotated Table of Contents (which includes hypothetical entries for the other acts that we will not actually be annotating for this project)
• Editor's Note
• The Final Note
• The Character List

Here are some things we've revised:

• We changed the format of our edition to better reflect how it would appear as a book in print.
• We further condensed, added a little bit of context in italics to, and created headings within the essay by Robert Pierce that we are using as our introduction.
• We changed the color coding of the annotations from coloring the words to using colored symbols.
• We reworked some of the activity questions at the end of Act III, Scene 1.

Here are some things that are still in the works:

• Finishing the annotations, line numbers, and text of Act III, Scene 2
• Make end of the scene activity questions for Act III, Scene 2
• Annotations, questions and such for Act III, Scene 3 
• Adding page numbers to the overall "book" and having corresponding page numbers in the Table of Contents.

And here are some things we're still thinking about:

• Adding a brief bio on Shakespeare and the time period he wrote in.
• Saying something about iambic pentameter and the way Shakespeare wrote.

Thanks from all of us for your input and review.  Happy reading!  

Final Point 5: The First Annotation

After a lot of work and a few laughs, the Spear Shakers are proud to present our first annotation of The Tempest.  We've made our annotation of  Act III, Scene 1.  Following this link will lead to a PDF format made available for your viewing pleasure.  We recognize that our particular scene is not a full 250 lines, but the entirety of Act III is well over that number.  When we selected Act III, we did it on the basis of what we thought would make a good sample of our edition would be and what high school students would be able to best connect to.     

What We've Done:

Our edition is for high school students who are experiencing their first exposure to Shakespeare.  Ideally, we would love to see The Tempest, specifically our edition, become the new Romeo and Juliet.  We felt as a group that there were a lot of situations and character aspects in The Tempest that high school students could relate to and engage with.

With that in mind, we have tried to include lot of critical thinking questions and supplementary activities that students and their teachers could use to build a deeper engagement with the text.  We want to help students think about what they're reading, and build relationships between themselves, the text, and the real world.

In addition, we want to use our addition to help introduce students to the idea of the critical conversation and literary discussion.  We want to introduce students to the many, many different ways that scholars can analyze a text.  For this reason, we included an abridged version of the essay "Understanding The Tempest" by Robert B. Pierce as an overall introduction to our edition.  We thought Pierce did an excellent job of talking about how scholars talk and think about literature, and we wanted our students to see what that discussion looks like as told by someone who participates in it firsthand.  To further help students explore the many ways of reading a piece of literature, we have assigned a different critical lens to each of the five acts of The Tempest.  In consideration of the plot points and dialogue that occur in Act III, we felt that having students consider themes of gender and sexuality would help facilitate meaningful discussion of the play.  As a means of introducing this critical lens to students, we introduce the act with a synthesis of gender and sexuality essays from scholars.  Presumably in the rest of our edition, each act would be introduced in a similar way with essays that relate to each of the different lenses we selected for the acts.

As we prepared the actual text, we tried to stay as true as possible to the Folio version.  We want students to be challenged a little in order for them to build new vocabulary and higher reading skills.  We recognize though, that Shakespeare can be tricky for a first time reader to understand, so we chose to include a brief scene summary before each scene to help students follow the general plot and action of the scene. In our margins, we gave definitions for more archaic or higher-level vocabulary words, and added clarifying translations and explanatory notes in our annotations as well in places we felt students might need additional help understanding the language or figures of speech that were more unusual.  We also included a few critical thinking questions in the margins in places where we wanted the students to stop and think more deeply about what they are reading.   

What We're Planning on Doing:

• Add an brief biography on Shakespeare either as an introductory note or as additional information at the end of the play
• Annotate the other two scenes of Act III in a similar manner to the work we've done on Scene 1, including post-scene activity questions for each and marginal critical thinking questions.
• Fine-tune definitions, questions, and essays throughout as needed
• Formalize the bibliography for the sources quoted and referenced  
• Integrate peer-reviews and feedback

What We're Thinking About Doing: 

• Add a further introduction to the critical conversation besides Robert Pierce's abridged essay
• Define a few words in the introduction, and maybe add an explanatory heading. E.g. In this edition of The Tempest, we talk a lot about “critical commentary,” or different, thoughtful ways of seeing the play. In this reading, Robert B. Pierce explains why it’s important to look at the play’s contents from different points of view. We hope getting the answer to that questions of “What’s the point to all this extra stuff?” will help you enjoy the play more and get more out of the “extra stuff.”
• Play with our formatting in regards to font and type-set
• Add some kind of post-play materials or list of resources, maybe even include the full versions of the essays we adapted and abridged for our edition.

Running List of Sources Cited or Referenced

*All definitions given were consulted with the Oxford English Dictionary

Graff, Gerald and James Phelan, ed. The Tempest. 2nd ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print.

Lee, Michelle, ed. "The Tempest." Shakespearean Criticism. 124. (2009): 256-350. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. Loomba, Ania. “From Gender, race, Renaissance Drama.” The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy. 2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff and James Phelan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 389-401. Print.

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

Slights, Jessica “Rape and the Romanticization of Shakespeare's Miranda.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 41.2 (2001): 357-379. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

Thompson, Ann. “‘Miranda, Where’s Your Sister?”: Reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest”. The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy. 2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff and James Phelan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 402-412. Print.