The Tempest: Travel Narratives, Cultural Encounters, and Shakespeare’s Inspirations
Release Date: 07/16/2025
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Bonus: Revisiting Henry V and The Tempest
Shakespeare Anyone?
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The Tempest: Wrap-Up
Shakespeare Anyone?
Want to support the podcast? or As an independent podcast, Shakespeare Anyone? is supported by listeners like you. In this episode, we conclude our exploration of The Tempest by examining three distinct interpretations of Shakespeare’s final solo play. We begin with Julie Taymor’s 2010 film adaptation, featuring Helen Mirren as Prospera, and reflect on the criticism of it we read about in our episode, The Tempest: Patriarchy, Gender, and Power in Shakespeare’s Play. We then turn to The Globe’s 2013 stage production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, to discuss how its traditional staging...
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Shakespeare Anyone?
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The Tempest: Grimoires, Alchemy, and the Making of Prospero’s Art
Shakespeare Anyone?
Want to support the podcast? or As an independent podcast, Shakespeare Anyone? is supported by listeners like you. In this episode, we begin by exploring how Prospero’s magic in The Tempest reflects early modern grimoire traditions—a form of ritual magic rooted in books, incantations, and precise ceremonial practice, especailly as compared to the types of magic we discussed in our Macbeth episodes. We examine how Shakespeare's depiction of Prospero's art, Prospero's relationship with Ariel, and the creation and disappearance of the masque parallel descriptions of grimoire magical...
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Mini: Shakespeare for Young Audiences with ML Roberts, Sean Patrick Nill, and Elyse Sharp of B Street Theatre’s NEVER FEAR, SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare Anyone?
Want to support the podcast? or As an independent podcast, Shakespeare Anyone? is supported by listeners like you. In this mini-episode, we sit down with actor ML Roberts and co-playwrights Sean Patrick Nill and Elyse Sharp to talk about NEVER FEAR, SHAKESPEARE—a brand new Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) play premiering at Sacramento’s B Street Theatre. B Street is well known for its Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) programming, which brings high-quality, professional productions to children, families, and schools, making theatre accessible to the next generation. We dive into B...
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The Tempest: Caliban’s Legacy of Race, Class, and Colonialism
Shakespeare Anyone?
Want to support the podcast? or As an independent podcast, Shakespeare Anyone? is supported by listeners like you. This episode explores Caliban’s role in The Tempest and the ways his character has been shaped by and interpreted through race, class, and colonialism. We begin with a close look at “the pinch” and unpack how Shakespeare’s audience would have understood its connections to resource scarcity and punishment. We then chart Caliban’s performance history from the 19th century to the early 1980s, revealing how shifting portrayals reflected cultural attitudes. We end...
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Mini: Court Masques and How They Shaped Shakespeare’s Plays
Shakespeare Anyone?
Want to support the podcast? or As an independent podcast, Shakespeare Anyone? is supported by listeners like you. In this mini-episode, we explore the world of the Court Masque, a form of entertainment that flourished in the Tudor and Stuart courts. From its roots in medieval pageantry and music to its height as a vehicle for royal celebration and political display of wealth, the masque became a defining cultural event during Shakespeare's time. While Shakespeare never wrote a Court Masque, we will explore how Ben Jonson’s Hymenaei may have influenced Shakespeare's choices for...
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The Tempest: Patriarchy, Gender, and Power in Shakespeare’s Play
Shakespeare Anyone?
Want to support the podcast? or As an independent podcast, Shakespeare Anyone? is supported by listeners like you. In this episode, we explore how The Tempest reflects—and at times challenges—patriarchal power structures in Shakespeare’s world and in its performance history. First, we examine how Prospero’s control over Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban reflects early modern ideas and debates about gender, political authority, and service. Then, we look at how changing the gender of Prospero reshapes the play’s dynamics, how productions across stage and screen have used gender...
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Did Shakespeare write The Tempest in response to a shipwreck, or was something bigger at play? In this episode, we explore the early modern travel narratives that many scholars believe inspired Shakespeare’s final solo play.
We begin with lesser-known travel accounts that focus on cultural encounters in Russia, Southwest Asia, Central America, and India—narratives that shaped how early modern England imagined the world beyond Europe. Then we turn to one of the most famous stories of the time: the 1609 Sea Venture shipwreck on the coast of Bermuda, often cited as a direct influence on The Tempest.
Along the way, we examine how these texts reflect English perceptions of unfamiliar peoples and cultures—from fascination and admiration to fear and misunderstanding—and how those attitudes echo throughout the world of The Tempest.
If you’d like to explore more about Shakespeare’s engagement with proto-colonialism and early travel writing, check out these past episodes from our archive:
Whether you're encountering The Tempest for the first time or revisiting it with a global lens, this episode offers rich context on how Shakespeare’s world was shaped by the stories of travelers, survivors, and empire-builders.
Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.
Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.
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Works referenced:
Judkins, David C. “Travel Literature of the Early Modern Period.” CEA Critic, vol. 64, no. 1, 2001, pp. 47–58. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44378330. Accessed 3 July 2025.
Vaughan, Alden T. "William Strachey's "True Reportory" and Shakespeare: A Closer Look at the Evidence." Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 59 no. 3, 2008, p. 245-273. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/shq.0.0017.