The Tempest

Shakespeare's valedictory play is also one of his most poetical and magical. The story involves the spirit Ariel, the savage Caliban, and Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, now a wizard living on a remote island who uses his magic to shipwreck a party of ex-compatriots. This extensively annotated version of The Tempest makse the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century.

Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations. Raffel provides and introductory essay, and in a concluding essay, Harold Bloom examines the characters Prospero and Caliban.

(back cover)