On the Date, Sources and Design of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

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This book challenges a longstanding and deeply ingrained belief in Shakespearean studies that The Tempest - long supposed to be Shakespeare’s last play - was not written until 1611. In the course of investigating this proposition, which has rarely been questioned and has received the critical inquiry it deserves, a number of subsidiary and closely related interpretative puzzles have come sharply into focus. These include the play’s sources of New World imagery; its festival symbolism and structure; its relationship to William Strachey’s True Reportory account of the 1609 Bermuda wreck of the Sea Venture (not published until 1625) - and the tangled history of how and why scholars have for so long misunderstood these matters.

When some preliminary elements of the case were published in leading Shakespearean journals (starting in 2007), the sometimes intemperate responses they received became part of the critical history, and some scholars supposed that we had been answered. Our reply to these criticisms is here given in full.