The Tempest Read Online Free PDF Page A

own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.
    Line Numbers are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.
    Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruxes, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
    Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “F2” indicating that it derives from the Second Folio of 1632 and “Ed” that it derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 4 Scene 1 line 57: “ 4.1.57 abstemious = F2. F = abstenious.” This means that the Folio compositor erroneously printed the word “abstenious” and the Second Folio corrected it to “abstemious.”

KEY FACTS
    MAJOR PARTS: (
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage
) Prospero (30%/115/5), Ariel (9%/45/6), Caliban (8%/50/5), Stephano (7%/60/4), Gonzalo (7%/52/4), Sebastian (5%/67/4), Antonio (6%/57/4), Miranda (6%/49/4), Ferdinand (6%/31/4), Alonso (5%/40/4), Trinculo (4%/39/4).
    LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 80% verse, 20% prose.
    DATE: 1611. Performed at court, 1 November 1611; uses source material not available before autumn 1610.
    SOURCES: No known source for main plot, but some details of the tempest and the island seem to derive from William Strachey,
A True Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight
(written 1610, published in
Purchas his Pilgrims
, 1625) and perhaps Sylvester Jourdain,
A Discovery of the Bermudas
(1610) and the Virginia Company’s pamphlet
A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia
(1610); several allusions to Virgil’s
Aeneid
and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
(most notably the imitation in Act 5 Scene 1 of Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation of Medea’s incantation in Ovid’s 7th book); Gonzalo’s “golden age” oration in Act 2 Scene 1 based closely on Michel de Montaigne’s essay “Of the Cannibals,” translated by John Florio (1603).
    TEXT: First Folio of 1623 is the only early printed text. Based on a transcript by Ralph Crane, professional scribe working for the King’s Men. Generally good quality of printing.

THE TEMPEST

LIST OF PARTS
    PROSPERO , the right Duke of Milan
    MIRANDA , his daughter
    ALONSO , King of Naples
    SEBASTIAN , his brother
    ANTONIO , Prospero’s brother, the usurping Duke of Milan
    FERDINAND , son to the King of Naples
    GONZALO , an honest old councillor
    ADRIAN and FRANCISCO , lords
    TRINCULO , a jester
    STEPHANO , a drunken butler
    MASTER , of a ship
    BOATSWAIN MARINERS
    CALIBAN , a savage and deformed slave
    ARIEL , an airy spirit
    Spirits commanded by Prospero playing roles of
    IRIS
    CERES
    JUNO
    NYMPHS
    REAPERS
    The Scene: an uninhabited island

TEXTUAL NOTES
    F = First Folio text of 1623, the only authority for the play
    F2 = a correction introduced in the Second Folio text of 1632
    Ed = a correction introduced by a later editor
    SD = stage direction
    SH = speech heading (i.e. speaker’s name)
    List of parts
based on
“
Names of the Actors
” (
reordered) at end of F text
    1.1.8 SD Ferdinand = Ed. F =
Ferdinando
59 wi’th’ = Ed. F = with’
    1.2.129 wi’th’ = Ed. F = with 202 princes = Ed. F = Princesse
(old spelling of
“
princes
”) 330 she = Ed. F = he
    2.2.173 trencher = Ed. F =
trenchering
    3.1.2 sets = Ed. F = set 15 least = F2. F = lest
    3.2.117 scout = Ed. F =
cout
( 118 F =
skowt
)
    3.3.2 ache = F2. F = akes 34 islanders = F2. F = Islands
    4.1.12 gainst = Ed. F = Against (
beginning new