Oxford Reference Online

The Tempest

- Printed as the first play in the Folio, The Tempest has always enjoyed a special prominence in the Shakespeare canon. Its first recorded performance took place at James I's court on 1 November 1611, and it cannot have been much more than a year old then. The Tempest is indebted to three texts unavailable before the autumn of 1610, namely William Strachey's True Reportary of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates (completed in Virginia in July 1610, and circulated in manuscript before its eventual publication in 1625), Sylvester Jourdan's Discovery of the Bermudas (printed in 1610, with a dedication dated 13 October ), and the Council of Virginia's True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia (entered in the Stationers' Register in November 1610 and printed before the end of the year). An apparently irresistible urge to identify Prospero with Shakespeare (visible since the 1660s) has led many commentators to think of The Tempest as the playwright's personal farewell to the stage, and while this view seems both sentimental and slightly inaccurate (since Shakespeare was yet to co-write Cardenio, All Is True (Henry VIII), and The Two Noble Kinsmen with Fletcher), this probably was his last unassisted work for the theatre, completed in 1611. Its position in the Folio may reflect his colleagues' recognition of this fact.



Oxford Reference Online has some interesting things to say about Shakespeare's the Tempest.



Michael Dobson , Anthony Davies  "Tempest, The"  The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Northern Ireland Public Libraries.  22 February 2011  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t117.e2823>