David Clej SN701460 Annotated Bibliography for the provisional essay title: Magic and management: The dichotomy

of natural and political power in The Tempest and Jacobean England Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, ed. Virginia Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (London : Arden Shakespeare, 2000) Unlike Hamlet or King Lear, the textual history of The Tempest is simple it was first printed, at the beginning of the volume, in the First Folio of 1623. The choice of edition is therefore not so critical in terms of which text is being studied; it has followed the same rules of spelling modernisation and punctuation adaptation as the Oxford edition and the David Bevington reprinted in the Macmillan edition. The Arden edition of the play provides the most comprehensive textual notes, although they can border on the obviouswaits upon is glossed as attendsor can strip the eloquence from a passage for no obvious benefit, such as weigh our sorrow with our comfort going to consider not only the shipwreck but also our remarkable survival. The preface gives an excellent overview of the play, subdivided into close-reading, context, afterlife, miscellanea and appendices detailing some of the sources or inspiration for the play, including Montaignes essay on cannibals. Once the slightly patronising notes are waded through, the Arden is a perfectly usable and encyclopaedic edition to use as a main text in an essay. Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) A slimmer volume with fewer illustrations than the Arden, the Oxford provides a very similar text with generally fewer notes, tending less towards obviousness but also lacking some of the in-depth explanation of the Arden. It follows a similar structure of introduction, summarising the plays themes, with several useful sections on the nature of authority. It provides fewer notes on the plays afterlife but does include a curious little analysis of the seamanship of the plays opening, which is best summarised as difficult, complex and indicative of some personal research on Shakespeares part. Shakespeare, William, The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy, ed. Gerald Graff and James Phelan (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) This edition, which reprints David Bevingtons updated 1997 text of the play, does not have extensive Arden-style textual notes. However, it does provide a wealth of critical commentary in the second half of the book. Its imagined discussion between TRADITIONALIST PROFESSOR and POSTCOLONIALIST PROFESSOR is useful as a teaching tool to very roughly model the two opposing sides (as the editors see it) of The Tempests critical heritage but since they are fictional, it is perhaps more useful to first-year undergraduates than a serious essay writer. Contributions by Stephen Greenblatt, Paul Brown, et al are significantly more useful, especially

Ronald Takakis overwhelming and painful descriptions of the savagery visited on Native Americans during the European colonisation of North America. Perry, Curtis, The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the renegotiation of Elizabethan literary practice (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997) Perry covers not only political issues surrounding James I but also of the transition to him from Elizabeths reign. Generally the book concerns itself with writers other than Shakespeare let alone the Tempest but it is useful for contextualising contemporaneous political thinking. It also discusses how James I was a poetking, in the sense of his patronage of libraries and the arts, and provides numerous examples of his writing and public speaking. James is at pains to explicitly lay out his theory of government, vital to understanding the wrangling of political power in The Tempest. Loomba, Ania, Gender, race and Renaissance Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989) Loombas tome talks about the postcolonial reception of the Tempest and how its a battleground for later critics and theatrical adaptations, suffering from the usual maladies of this debate. On one side, there are the traditionalist critics who venerate the texts aesthetic purity, unconcerned with ideological issues, though they never hesitate to proclaim Shakespeares belief in such-and-such humanist positions. On the other hand, critics like Loomba track the texts advocation of privileged groups white men, for example. She posits a unification between racist imperialism and sexism and shows evidence for both, though I remain somewhat unconvinced of how exactly they lock together in The Tempest, whose racist and imperialist content is surely significantly greater than its sexism, much of which is standard early modern fare of owning/giving away daughters and therefore not quite incisive enough for this unusual play. Wood, Nigel The Tempest (Buckingham ; Philadelphia : Open University, 1995) This is a superb collection of critical opinions. While Blooms Modern Critical Interpretations and New Casebooks are similarly useful in providing a variety of voices in a single volume, Nigel Wood goes one further and posts his correspondence with each author, constituting an invigorating Socratic dialogue. Nigel Wood himself points out the importance of stark contrasts such as power/subservience. Howard Felpern provides an overview of the critical controversy much like Ania Loomba, although he characterises it perhaps more accurately as idealism versus materialism or historicism, and arguably sits on the latter side himself, pointing out how Prospero traps Caliban within systems of restriction. Charles Frey bucks the general trend of Tempest criticism by planting his flag in the idealist camp, and providing a close-reading of the sensuous aspects of the play. Finally, John Turner generally turns away from the debate but still retains a historical, as opposed to an explicitly historicist, take on the play, analysing Renaissance power relationships and their role in The Tempest.

Mebane, John S. Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age (University of Nebraska Press, 1989) Whereas most academics focus on the political or aesthetic implications, Mebane talks about the metaphor of magic in The Tempest as an expression of humankinds moral, intellectual and spiritual potential. This text is often profoundly abstract so it is best to balance it with either close-reading or more detailed historical analysis, but Mebanes sweeping statements are thoughtprovoking in providing models for the overall nature of The Tempest. Most interestingly, he points out the plays sense of balance, realised in human beings by our relationship with each other, so perhaps he ranks as the most idealist and optimistic critic in the pack. Kinney, Arthur F. Elizabethan and Jacobean England: Sources and Documents of the English Renaissance, (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) This tome provides a choice selection of original documents, with modernised spelling and regretfully limited notes on word meanings, from the mid-1550s to the mid-1620s neatly covering Shakespeares life. Subdivided into Government, Religion, Society, Economy, Learning and Art, kings and queens are quoted alongside minor nobles and functionaries, giving a relatively broad cross-section of letters, proclamations and statements concerning Renaissance England. It is particularly useful in identifying publicly proclaimed ideas from Elizabeth and James, constituting a primary-sourced insight into the politics of the time. James has a surprisingly explicit division in his mind between his private, modest religious feelings and those of the realm. King James VI and I Political Writings, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ed Johann P. Sommerville) This volume, while retaining the original spelling in many cases (such as i-j, v-u etc) and lacking useful notes or clarification, serves as a primary-source compilation of political thought of James I. It reproduces many of his works in full. His style is often simple but extremely syntactically extended, often using several different analogies to justify his vision of kingship, so it is difficult to hew him into usable material. Nevertheless, the lengths to which he strove somewhat justify his reputation as a poet-king. Montaigne, Michel de, The essays, trans. John Florio (Menston: Scolar P, 1969) One of the few documents considered a source for The Tempest, Shakespeare virtually cribs some of Montaignes Florio-translated utopianism and puts it in Gonzalos mouth. It is worth considering this as an example of educated intellectual culture; increasing European awareness of the New World provided fertile ground not only for artistic imagination but also for testing European abstract intellectual ideas, as opposed to the sensible political pragmatism of King James, grounded very much in his daily concerns of kingship. Indeed, the fantasy and thus impossibility of Gonzalos visionthey are, after all, on a deserted island

is perhaps Shakespeares implicit criticism of utopianism, though not without a hint of sympathy. Palmer, DJ, Casebook Series: The Tempest (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1991) This Casebook contains a useful collection of criticism from the 17th century to the present day, unlike other compendia which tend to include only twentieth century writings. With some nineteen individual articles in a relatively slim book, they are necessarily bite-size, but nevertheless provides worthy additions to any collection of names. Of particular interest is G. Wilson Knight in his essay The Shakespearian Superman, analysing among Prospero as a composite of many Shakespearian heroes, supporting an essay concerning authority and status, and Kermodes famous 1954 preface, in which he posits an interesting distinction in Prosperos art between magic and symbolism. McDonald, Russ, Reading the Tempest Shakespeare Survey Volume 43: The Tempest and After. Ed. Stanley Wells. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) (accessed online via the Cambridge Collections on 15/10/2011) Russ McDonald performs a useful close reading of The Tempest, focussing particularly on verbal minutiae and how they support larger networks of reiteration. His commentary on the sounds, rhythms and ambiguity of the Tempest grounds any understanding of the play; as historicist-political as its structures may be, they are built with the timber of words. On the flipside, though McDonald can see the forest for the trees, he takes the trees on faith his analysis builds up from the words to big themes like the operation of power, but fails to devote enough time to discussing exactly what power is. To his credit, he does end the essay decrying the baldness of a single-mindedly ideological interpretation against the plays epistemological sophistication, a trap which snares many but which must be confronted to build any grander reading of the Tempest than simply a reading. Pierce, Robert B., Very Like a Whale: Scepticism and Seeing In The Tempest, Shakespeare Survey Volume 38: Shakespeare and History. ED. Stanley Wells, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) Accessed online via the Cambridge Collections on 15/10/2011. Robert B. Pierce takes a more abstract-philosophical tack than Russ McDonald in focussing more explicitly on the epistemological questions of The Tempest, vital in a play where knowledge is power and where different characters have conflicting opinions on the same issue, and which is acknowledged as a self-referencing play; it revels in its own theatricality and autobiographical readings are possible. Pierce expounds on contrasts mentioned previously about Prosperos perceived wisdom and Mirandas innocence. Kastan, David Scott, A Companion to Shakespeare, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) This extraordinarily comprehensive tome is the starting point for historically contextualising Shakespeare. Articles from various different authors cover different aspects of Elizabethan and Jacobean society; most relevant to this essay

are: Norman Joness Shakespeares England, which claims Shakespeares generation was born into a dying culture; Martin Dzelzaniuss Shakespeare and Political Thought, which usefully points out his likely training as a rhetorician and therefore arguing in utramque partem; and David Harris Sackss Political Culture, which clarifies the definition of state as thought of in Shakespeares time. Bevington, David Shakespeares Ideas, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) Pithily subtitled More Things In Heaven and Earth, Bevingtons volume summarises Shakespeares philosophical ideas across a wide spectrum, including the political sphere. Perhaps more useful as an outlier is the section on Sex and Gender; Bevington posits a division between two views of sexuality one belonging to the natural world of the island, the other the conventional view of Western civilization and the Christian church. The former is natural and therefore inherent to nature, the latter is depends on legal, political and religious structures and is therefore a human addition to nature, which helps to understand the difficulty of Prosperos imposition of civilised paradigms on a savage islandand why he takes the shortcut of manipulating nature directly.