Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Other Late Romances
- Editor: Maurice Hunt
- Pages: xii & 195 pp.
- Published: 1992
- ISBN: 9780873527088 (Paperback)
“This brief but informative book is a welcome addition to a series aimed at promoting serious and continuing discussion of the aims and methods of teaching literature. . . . The book is a valuable resource and teaching aid and may well encourage both experienced and inexperienced teachers of Shakespeare to experiment with similar methods themselves.”
—Theatre Research International
This collection of essays, the second Approaches volume devoted to Shakespeare (the first discussed King Lear), covers four of the Bard’s later plays: The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and Pericles. Developed from a survey of ninety-three faculty members who teach these romances, the volume presents both practical and imaginative approaches to presenting the works in the classroom.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” evaluates editions of the plays, recommends readings for students and teachers, and suggests aids to teaching. In the second part, “Approaches,” the first five essays treat the late romances as a group, connecting them with Shakespeare’s tragedies and with political discourse of the period, examining the father-daughter theme and viewing them as family romance, and defining the dramaturgy of the late romances. The remaining thirteen essays focus on specific plays and explain how to use performance, audiovisual aids, and various historical and critical approaches to enhance the plays’ presentation.
