Revisiting The Tempest pp 33-42 | Cite as
The Tempest as Theatrical Magic
Abstract
We all suffer from delusions of control, even over storms and shipwrecks. We use that delusion whenever we edit or criticise Shakespeare, and as editor for the last 29 years of the New Variorum (NV) edition of our play, I share it more thoroughly than most. New Variorum editing is the ultimate postmodern activity, since it deals not with the play itself but with all subsequent editions and criticisms about it. Over the years as a NV editor I have read and collated over seventy editions and thousands of critiques about The Tempest. But whether we edit or criticise, on page or on stage, the play becomes a less rich phenomenon than it should be, even when viewed, bare as it is, on the pages of the First Folio. What I am offering here is an example of my own paranoid delusion of control, by means of a rapid overview, with just a few items from the available horde of possible examples, offering just one aspect of the multiple criticisms of the play through the last two and a bit centuries, the play as theatrical magic.
Keywords
Paranoid Delusion Magical Thinking Subsequent Edition Supernatural Agency Late PlayPreview
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