ABSTRACT
The idea that The Tempest, performed at Whitehall for King James on November1, 1611 (and quite possibly earlier at the Globe Theater), is Shakespeare’s “last”play in the sense of being a self-fashioned retirement party, is by now a commonplace. The idea has met with some skepticism as well. Shakespeare evidently did continue to write after completing The Tempest: he collaborated with John Fletcher on The Two Noble Kinsmen in about 1613, and seemingly on Henry VIII, also with Fletcher, in the same year.1 Many persons do of course continue to do some work after they retire, and the work in this case was both part-time and presumably designed to ensure a smooth continuity between Shakespeare and his successor as chief dramatist for the King’s Men, so that these undertakings do not in any way detract from the idea of The Tempest as Shakespeare’s official retirement play.
