The Tempest

Prospero’s island, but make it academic.

The Tempest (1971), edited by Frank Kermode is what happens when Shakespeare’s shipwreck play washes ashore in the hands of one of the twentieth century’s sharpest literary critics. This is the classic Arden Shakespeare-style edition: the full text of The Tempest surrounded by an ocean of notes, glosses, and an introduction long enough to make you slightly suspicious that Prospero might actually be a metaphor. (He is. Several, in fact.) (Amazon)

Kermode patiently walks you through storms, spirits and sulky island-dwellers, explaining exactly what’s going on when everyone starts yelling “thou” and “thee” at each other. Caliban gets his moment, Ariel gets analysed, and Prospero’s little “give up my magic” speech is treated like the emotional retirement party of the entire Shakespearean canon. Expect discussion of illusion, power, forgiveness, colonialism-before-we-called-it-colonialism, and the small matter of what it means to bring down the curtain on a career and call it mercy. (Internet Archive)

This Chaucer Press / ISBN 0416101909 printing delivers all that scholarly goodness in an unapologetically old-school package: line-by-line notes skulking at the bottom of the page, proper references, and that faint sense that you should probably be reading this at a wooden desk in a draughty college library while someone in tweed marks essays nearby. It’s the edition that quietly judges you if you call it “just a play about a storm.”

As for Condition: Good, this is Crappy Old Books “Good,” which translates roughly as:

• Fully intact, no pages missing, Prospero still in control of the island.

• Some honest shelf-wear, the odd scuff, maybe a sun-faded spine that whispers: “I survived three undergraduates and a seminar on postcolonial theory.”

• Possible light pencilled notes from a previous owner who once wrote “???” next to a speech and then went on to get a 2:1.

Nothing nasty, nothing fatal—just the sort of cosmetic wear that proves the book has actually been read, not just posed with.

Inside, you get:

• The complete text of The Tempest, that compact little drama of storms, usurpers, rebellious servants and overqualified wizards with control issues.

• Kermode’s introduction, which gracefully explains how the play manages to be about magic, theatre, politics, and the end of things all at once, without ever breaking into a sweat. (Internet Archive)

• Annotations that translate Elizabethan side-eye, unpack obscure references, and occasionally remind you that Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing.

Ideal for:

• Students who want to look dangerously prepared in tutorials.

• Amateur Shakespeare fans who enjoy the play but secretly want someone clever in the margins saying, “This bit is important; don’t blink.”

• Readers who suspect that between the storm, the speeches and the sulking island resident, something quite profound is going on—but would like it footnoted, just in case.

So here it is: The Tempest (1971), Condition: Good, as sold by Crappy Old Books—a slightly worn but thoroughly seaworthy vessel of scholarship, ready to strand you on Prospero’s island until you, too, start seeing metaphors everywhere.

The storm has weathered the cover a little.
The text remains calm, clear—and just a bit enchanted.

Has a significant number of annotations, underlinings etc, but nothing significant.

Keep browsing: See more Literary Classics books Other books by Frank Kermode