The Tempest

14 Nov, 2013 820 English and Old English literatures

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Written in around 1610, it is thought to be one of the playwright’s final works and contains some of the most poetic and memorable passages in all his output. It was influenced by accounts of distant lands written by contemporary explorers, and by the complex international politics of the early Jacobean age. The Tempest is set entirely on an unnamed island inhabited by the magician Prospero, his daughter Miranda and the monstrous Caliban, one of the most intriguing characters in Shakespeare’s output. Its themes include magic and the nature of theatre itself - and some modern critics have seen it as an early meditation on the ethics of colonialism.

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Guests

  • Jonathan Bate 16 episodes
    Provost of Worcester College, Oxford
  • Erin Sullivan 2 episodes
    Lecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
  • Katherine Duncan-Jones 4 episodes
    Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford

Reading list

  • The Tempest
    Christine Dymkowski (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
  • A Year of Shakespeare: Re-living the World Shakespeare Festival
    Paul Edmondson, Paul Prescott and Erin Sullivan (eds.) (Arden Shakespeare, 2013) Google Books →
  • Tempest in the Caribbean
    Jonathan Goldberg (University of Minnesota Press, 2003) Google Books →
  • The Tempest and Its Travels
    Peter Hulme and William Sherman (Reaktion Books, 2006) Google Books →
  • The Tempest
    William Shakespeare, (David Lindley ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Google Books →
  • Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural History
    Alden Vaughan and Virginia Vaughan (Cambridge University Press, 1993) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b03h6px5

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03h6px5

Auto-category: 822.33 (English drama — William Shakespeare)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, as I came through the front doors of Broadcasting House this morning, I walked under a famous statue by Eric Gill.