Enchanting the Isle and the Lake: Set Design and Restoration Shakespeare Adaptations

Abstract

This article argues that set designs for Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream were influenced by contemporary ideals of cultivation and gardening and that the revised dialogue emphasized the new values of perfecting the natural world. It expands on the work of Michael Dobson and Jean I. Marsden by explicitly examining the role of the discourse of cultivation as a cultural force that helped canonize Shakespeare’s works. Restoration Shakespeare adaptations are examined with a new, ecocritical angle that assesses how environmental philosophies and ideals of the era affected the adaptation process. Adapters could apply their horticultural cultivation metaphors of Shakespeare directly to his gardens and landscapes, thereby refining “the poet of nature’s” natural settings.