The Tempest - Critics (AO5)

Norrie Epstein (1994)

"The Tempest is more than magic and trickery"

Cedric Watts (1994)

"The play is structurally tidy"

Cedric Watts (1994)

Caliban is "one of the most paradoxical characterisations in Shakespeare's works."

Cedric Watts (1994)

"Caliban seems wiser than Antonio and Sebastian"

Brian Vickers (1994)

"The Tempest is now unfortunately reduced to an allegory of colonialism."

Lorrie Leininger (1980)

"Prospero needs Miranda as sexual bait"

Marjory Garber (1974)

"Prospero's enchanted island... is ultimately a country of the mind."

Anne Barton (1968)

"[The Tempest] will lend itself to almost any interpretation."

Paul MacDonnell (1840)

Caliban is a "resister of tyranny".

Thomas Campbell (1838)

Argues that Prospero may represent Shakespeare.

William Hazlitt (1818)

"The Tempest is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare's productions"

William Hazlitt (1818)

"The courtship [of] Miranda and Ferdinand is one of the chief beauties of the play"

William Hazlitt (1818)

Caliban is the rightful ruler of the isle and Prospero and Miranda are usurpers.

William Hazlitt (1818)

Caliban's 'be not afear'd speech' presents him as having "the simplicity of a child".

William Hazlitt (1818)

Caliban speaks in "eloquent poetry"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1810)

Ariel has a "childlike simplicity"

Anita Loomba (2000)

"Miranda is passive and controlled, told to 'sleep, awake, obey..."

Ann Thompson (2000)

"a male-authored canonical text"

Stephen Greenblatt (2007)

•"Caliban is anything but a Noble Savage"

Brittney Blystone (2012)

"Sycorax's abscence is an extreme example of women lacking agency and representation"

David Lindley (2013)

• "Caliban has...moved from a subhuman animal to an unmistakeably human figure"

David Lindley (2013)

• "[In the betrothal masque] marriage is subtly glorified as the foundation of society"

David Lindley (2013)

● "To identify the actor's race with that of the character...makes problematic the presentation of a black Caliban as 'really' monstrous".

David Lindley (2013)

● arguably about "patriarchal ideology"

David Lindley (2013)

"as experimental a play as he ever wrote"

David Lindley (2013)

"an aborted revenge tragedy"