The Tempest

Why it’s on the list: A deposed duke, twelve years on an island with his daughter, a spirit he freed and a native he enslaved, raises a storm to bring his enemies ashore — then, with every power he needs for revenge, takes none of it, breaks his staff and drowns his book. Read as Shakespeare’s farewell, and, because of Caliban, his most argued-over play.

Where I heard about it

• Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas — on its eleventh-grade reading list, posted by the Classic Learning Test in September 2026 as an example of what a classical curriculum assigns. It is the fifth Shakespeare in the sequence, placed deliberately in the American year: the play about a European arriving on an inhabited island, read in the middle of Twain, Hawthorne and Melville. The full eight-year sequence is on Founders Classical Academy Reading List.

About this edition

First performed in 1611 and first printed in the 1623 First Folio.

Connections

• Founders Classical Academy Reading List — the curriculum this came from; 56 unique titles across 5th through 12th grade.
• Classical Education — the movement whose canon this list is.
• William Shakespeare
• Literature