Women take the island: nation, profession, place Women take the island: nation, profession, place

• Main Author: Ruth Morse
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2008-04-01
• Series: Ilha do Desterro
• Online Access: http://www.periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/view/7318

The Tempest has been one of Shakespeare’s most adapted plays. Its stage history is concomitantly a history of the British theatre, from regularized comedy to semi-opera to pantomime to opera. It has had other lives, too, from its position in romantic ideas of Shakespeare’s biography and his so-called farewell to the stage, to a supporting role as witness for the nineteenth-century Darwinians’ idea of the missing
 link, to a veritable efflorescence of walk-on parts, cameos, and star vehicles in twentieth-century psychoanalytic and social arguments about European expansion.2 The play has given us individual poems and paintings, not to speak of screen-plays for several film adaptations. The Tempest has been one of Shakespeare’s most adapted plays. Its stage history is concomitantly a history of the British theatre, from regularized comedy to semi-opera to pantomime to opera. It has had other lives, too, from its position in romantic ideas of Shakespeare’s biography and his so-called farewell to the stage, to a supporting role as witness for the nineteenth-century Darwinians’ idea of the missing
 link, to a veritable efflorescence of walk-on parts, cameos, and star vehicles in twentieth-century psychoanalytic and social arguments about European expansion.2 The play has given us individual poems and paintings, not to speak of screen-plays for several film adaptations.