Cultural Adaptations of William Shakespeare's The Tempest: A Study of John Dryden's and William Davenant's The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island (1667), W. H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror (1942-1944), and Mary Druce's Prospero's Lie (2000)

Abstract

Dina Raafat Abdel-Hamid Mohamed. Cultural Adaptations of William Shakespeare's The Tempest: A Study of John Dryden's and William Davenant's The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island (1667), W. H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror (1942-1944), and Mary Druce's Prospero's Lie (2000). PhD Dissertation. Ain Shams University. Faculty of Al-Alsun. Department of English. 2016. This thesis aims at exploring the theory of adaptation highlighting significant terms that are used in the adaptation process, emphasizing the opinions of numerous adaptation and literary theorists, and underscoring various critical approaches and perspectives that are used in analysing adapted texts. It also proposes a review of the Shakespearean adaptations with particular emphasis on Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest (1611). John Dryden's and William Davenant's The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island (1667), W. H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror (1942-1944), and Mary Druce's Prospero's Lie (2000) are selected as three distinct recreations of the Shakespearean Tempest to prove that adapting a sourcetext across different ages, changing times, and diverse cultures leads to the emergence of multiple adapted texts; each distinctive of its era and unique in its subject matter. This study further investigates the analogies and disparities between the Renaissance Shakespearean Tempest and each of the above mentioned texts via submitting them to a systematic textual analysis that highlights the different approaches and perspectives from which each text is tackled. Applying the neoclassical approach to Dryden's and Davenant's The Enchanted Island, the modernist existentialist perspective to Auden's The Sea and the Mirror, and the feminist viewpoint to Druce's Prospero's Lie sets the readers of this thesis off on a journey through time experiencing multiple interpretations of a sourcetext that has undergone the processes of metamorphosis and transformation.