Focusing on Renaissance drama, particularly Shakespeare, John Dover Wilson was a notable scholar and professor. His academic journey included prestigious institutions like Lancing College and Cambridge, leading to his role as Regius Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is best remembered for his editorial work on the New Shakespeare series, which aimed to provide comprehensive editions of Shakespeare's plays, collaborating with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch to enhance the understanding of these classic works.
Prospero and his daughter are far away from home, alone on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. They want to return to Milan. Then, one day Prospero sees a ship near the island carrying his greatest enemies. Prospero, with the help of his magic and the island spirit makes a magic storm tempest to bring them to the island.
Dr Dover Wilson examines Falstaff's role in the two parts of Henry IV and his relationship to the Prince. Like most other Shakespearean scholars he had accepted, Bradley's portrait as shown in The Rejection of Falstaff, until (as he writes) he 'began checking it with yet another portrait - that which I found in the pages of Shakespeare himself. As the result of much recent work on the two parts of Henry IV, a new Falstaff stands before me, as fascinating as Bradley's, certainly quite as human, but different; and beside him stands a still more unexpected Prince Hal. The discovery throws all my previous ideas out of focus.' As the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement wrote, Falstaff 'is no hero, as the romantics have tried to make him out, nor is he merely a typical and traditional stage-butt. But he is Falstaff riding for a fall; and when he takes his toss he is up again in still unconquerable effrontery and humour … The Prince as we watch him through Dr Dover Wilson's eyes growing in grace, first in chivalry and then in justice, we do more than observe the making of a hero-king. We get to know a very lovable, faulty, generous, noble-minded young man; and a character in the play whose scenes are so far from being mere padding between Falstaff's that the whole is seen as a masterpiece of construction.'
The plays are presented as in the First Folio of 1623, with the addition of "Pericles" and variations which are agreed by the best Shakespearean critics. For the most part it is Delius's text that is followed.
