A Tempest

English Renaissance
The beginning of Tudor dynasty
Lancastrian Henry Tudor’s defeat of the Yorkist king Richard III
put and end to the political rivalry between the rival branches
of the royal House of Plantagenet, in the so-called War of the
Roses (1455-1487) for the possession on the English crown.
Humanism
Due to political upheavals, the Renaissance arrived late in
England, under the reign of the Tudor Henry VII. Rather than
the flowering of visual arts and architecture that had occurred
in Italy, the Renaissance emerged in Britain through an
intellectual orientation to humanism: the reinterpretation of
Christian thought through the rediscovery of Classical culture
and the Bible, following the precepts of the Protestant
Reformation.
Tudor dynasty
The Elizabethan World Picture
The Tudors inherited a medieval system of beliefs
based on a general conception of ORDER. The
concern with order is so prevalent that it can be seen
as the shaping spirit of Elizabethan thought. They were
obsessed with order and disorder. The feudal system
had broken and the increase of social mobility pushed
the Tudors to halt change by pointing insistently to the
dangers of disorder.
That’s why the War of the Roses (the disorder before
the Tudors’ elevation to the throne) is so significant
throughout the Tudors’ period and Shakespeare made
use of them in the history plays.
The Tudor’s belief is that the King governs by
DIVINE WILL
according to…
THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING
§ Angels
§ Man
§ The animal class
§ The vegetative class
§ The inanimate class (the elements, liquids, metals)
… in a cosmic dance
(the created universe is in a state of music)
Within hierarchies there were
"correspondences”
The angels
God
The universe
Sun
Society
King
The family
Husband
The human body
The head
Animals
Lion
Plants
Oak
Minerals
Gold
The politics of correspondences
The fear of "disorder" was not merely philosophical -it had significant political ramifications. The proscription
against trying to rise beyond one's place was of course
useful to political rulers, for it helped to reinforce their
authority.
The implication was that civil rebellion caused the chain
to be broken, and according to the doctrine of
correspondences, this would have awful consequences
in other realms. It was a sin against God.
In Shakespeare, it was suggested that the sin was of
cosmic proportions: civil disorders were often
accompanied by disturbances in the heavens.
The politics of correspondences
The major political accomplishment of the Renaissance,
perhaps, was the establishment of effective central
government.
Northern Europe saw the rise of national monarchies
headed by kings, especially in England and France. While
Italy saw the rise of the territorial city-state often
headed by wealthy oligarchic families.
It is no wonder then that much Renaissance literature is
concerned with the ideals of kingship, with the behavior
of rulers and ruled, as in Machiavelli's Prince or
Shakespeare's Henry V and The Tempest.
William Shakespeare
Adaptation from Encyclopaedia Britannica etc.
William Shakespeare
English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the English
national poet and considered by many to be the greatest
dramatist of all time.
Shakespeare occupies a position unique in world literature.
Other poets, such as Homer and Dante, and novelists, such
as Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, have transcended
national barriers; but no writer's reputation can compare
to that of Shakespeare.
The prophecy of his great contemporary, the poet and
dramatist Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare “was not of an age,
but for all time,” has been fulfilled.
Macbeth
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth (Act 5, scene 5, 19–28)
Macbeth
Domani, e domani, e domani, scivola a piccoli passi, giorno
per giorno, fino all’ultima sillaba del tempo prescritto,
e tutti i nostri ieri han rischiarato, folli, la via alla morte
polverosa.
Spengiti, spengiti, breve candela!
La vita non è che un’ombra che cammina, un povero attore
che si pavoneggia sulla scena, per un’ora, e poi non si
ascolta più:
una favola raccontata, da un’idiota, piena di rumore e di
furia, che non significa nulla.
Macbeth (Act 5, scene 5, 19–28)
Shakespeare and his time
Shakespeare lived at a time when ideas and social structures
established in the Middle Ages still informed human thought
and behaviour. Queen Elizabeth I was God's deputy on earth,
and lords and commoners had their due places in society under
her. The order of things did not go unquestioned.
Nevertheless, an interplay of new and old ideas was typical of
the time: official speeches exhorted the people to obedience,
but the Italian political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli was
expounding a new, practical code of politics that caused
Englishmen to fear the Italian “Machiavillain” and yet prompted
them to ask what men do [essere], rather than what they
should do [dover essere].
In Hamlet, disquisitions—on man, belief, a “rotten” state, and
times “out of joint”—clearly reflect a growing disquiet and
skepticism.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest 1
The Tempest is perhaps the most original of all his plays in
form, theme, language, and setting.
It is set between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, on a
remote island where Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan,
plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful
place, using illusion and skilful manipulation, powers
acquired by his books.
He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to trap
his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit King
Alonso of Naples to the island. There, his conspiracies
bring about the revelation of Antonio's deprived nature,
the redemption of the King Alonso, and the marriage of
Miranda to Ferdinand, Alonso's son.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest 2
The magician PROSPERO, rightful Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, have
been banished for twelve years on an island after Prospero's deprived brother
ANTONIO (helped by Alonso, the King of Naples) deposed him and set him at
sea with the then-3-year-old Miranda. GONZALO, the King's counsellor, had
secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the mostprized books from Prospero's library. Possessing magic powers due to his great
learning, Prospero is served by a spirit, ARIEL, whom Prospero had rescued from
a tree in which he had been trapped by the witch SYCORAX /’sɪkəræks/.
Prospero maintains Ariel's loyalty by promising to release the "airy spirit" from
servitude. Sycorax had been banished to the island and had died before
Prospero's arrival. Her son, CALIBAN, a deformed savage and the only nonspiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised
by him. Caliban, in return, taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while
Prospero and MIRANDA taught Caliban their own language and religion.
Because of Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by
Prospero to serve as the magician's slave. The play ends with the marriage of
Miranda to Alonso's son and Prospero’s return to his legitimate dukedom.
The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother Antonio is on a ship
passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run
ashore, on Prospero’s island.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Act I
On the island near the storm, Prospero and his daughter Miranda are
introduced. We learn that Prospero has created the storm battling Alonso
and company's ship. We also learn that Prospero was once the Duke of Milan
but was banished to this island with Miranda by Antonio, his brother who
took over Prospero's dukedom of Milan. We are introduced to Ariel,
Prospero's magic fairy and to Caliban, his misformed slave. Ariel leads
Ferdinand to Miranda and the two immediately fall in love.
Act II
Antonio, who replaced his brother Prospero as Duke of Milan, manipulates
Sebastian, King Alonso's brother into doing the same thing by replacing King
Alonso.
Stephano gives Caliban alcohol, causing Caliban to think Stephano is more
powerful than Prospero. Together with Tribculo, they decide to kill Prospero...
Act III
Prospero who is now invisible to Ferdinand and Miranda, witnesses
Ferdinand and Miranda expressing their deep love for one another. Alonso,
Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, and others witness a banquet on the island but it
is an illusion.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Act IV
Prospero tells Ferdinand that he no longer will punish him, but instead will
freely give his daughter's hand in marriage to him. Prospero conjures up a
beautiful, mythical, illusory party to celebrate. Caliban failing to keep his
friends focused on killing Prospero, who promises Ariel that he will soon be
free.
Act V
Making his presence known, Prospero forgives King Alonso, and tells
Sebastian and Antonio he will keep secret their plan to kill Alonso, forgiving
both. Prospero forgives Stephano and Trinculo. Caliban is embarrassed that
he followed a fool (Trinculo). Prospero announces that in the morning they
will all set sail for Naples. Ariel is at last set free.
Epilogue
Prospero asks the audience to free him to travel back to Naples reclaiming
his life as Duke of Milan.
Montaigne’s noble savage
During the time that Shakespeare was writing The Tempest, the
world around him was evolving and becoming much larger,
thanks to European exploration of other places outside of
Europe.
The Tempest is significant in relation to Montaigne's Essays, one
of Shakespeare's main inspirations for the work. In “On
Cannibals”, Montaigne disputes fundamental European
assumptions about civilization:
“I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this
nation […], excepting, that every one gives the title of
barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own
country”.
In his essay, Montaigne asserts that what is natural is
synonymous with what is good. He presents a characterization
of the natives of the New World as “noble savages”.
Shakespeare’s ignoble savage
In "On Cannibals" and in The Tempest, both Montaigne
and Shakespeare explore, if in a different way, the
relationship between human nature and modern
civilization.
Montaigne’s idealization of the cannibals contrasts with
Shakespeare’s unsympathetic portrayal of the brutish
Caliban. Shakespeare’s native would seem designed to
reveal Montaigne’s vision as hopelessly naive.
Yet…
The ambiguity of The Tempest
Yet the complexity of The Tempest lies in its essential
ambiguity. One ambiguity stems from the juxtaposition of the
two different servants:
- the brutish and pathetic character of Caliban;
- the lively and sympathetic character of Ariel.
Ariel’s language is that of a slave who binds himself to his
master without question:
“All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure”
The ambiguity of The Tempest
Caliban, on the contrary, is a "savage deformed slave", i.e., an
ignoble savage: accused of ignorance, ingratitude, and sexual
lust. In this way, Shakespeare would summarize the popular
European otherising view of the natives.
There is, though, an opposite way to read Caliban's role in
The Tempest. Caliban, who takes center stage, does not act as
merely a subservient monstrous other. Instead, he displays a
remarkable eloquence and a deep love for his island home.
He speaks out: "This island's mine by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou tak'st from me” (l.ii. vv. 331-32).
(The obvious parallel between dispossessed Caliban and dispossessed
Indians has led numerous readers to see Caliban as a mistreated native).
The ambiguity of The Tempest
Once subjugated, Caliban rejects everything that he has
inherited from Prospero, including language:
“You taught me language; and my profit on’t
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!” (I, ii, 363-65)
By depicting Caliban in this complex way (a monster who
has deep feelings and fine language), Shakespeare was
hinting at the fact that while the Europeans may have
thought that, due to cultural superiority, they are entitled
to claim the other’s land, the people they enslave and
oppress are just as complex and human as them.
Shakespeare and colonialism
As Waiter Cohen summarises, “The Tempest uncovers,
perhaps despite itself, the racist and imperialist bases of
English nationalism’’.
To Philip Edwards, “The Tempest is in a great many
respects a New World play, but it is not a colonial play.
It portrays no interest whatsoever in the abiding
passion of so many disciples of Hakluyt and Raleigh the expansion of the empire to the New World and the
maintenance of rule there”.
As a matter of facts...
The Tempest and historical colonisation
British colonization of America started in 1607, when
the Virginia Company set up a colony in the town of
Jamestown,Virginia.
Thus, when Shakespeare wrote The Tempest in 1611,
colonization was fairly recent and in the public
consciousness.
As a result, the parallels that are drawn between The
Tempest and the Colonial Discourse are more likely
to be prophetic rather than descriptive, since
colonization was not old enough yet for all its
complexities and moral issues to be revealed.
Acculturation
The term “acculturation” - to be distinguished
from the term “enculturation”, which is a firstculture learning - refers to the process in which
members of one cultural group adopt the
cultural patterns of another group (secondculture learning).
More specifically, it is a form of absorption of
mainstream culture norms by a minority group
Deculturation
Serge Latouche refers to “deculturation” as the condition
where two cultures come into contact asymmetrically and
the receiving culture is threatened in its very being by the
massive flow of the giving culture.
Historically speaking the West has decultured the Rest in the
name of universal values such as reason, progress, the social
betterment, which in fact were Western values.
(The Westernization of the World: Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive
Towards Global Uniformity, Polity Press, Cambridge 1996).
Transculturation
M.L. Pratt argues that “transculturation” was the product of
“contact zones as social spaces where disparate cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with [struggle] each other, often in
highly asymmetrical relations of domination and
subordination”.
So, “transculturation” is the term through which
ethnographers, “describe processes whereby members of
subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from
materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan
culture”
(Imperial Eyes:Travel Writing and Transculturation, Routledge,
London 1992, p. 6).
Transculturation
A Tempest: Adaptation for a Negro Theatre (1969)
The creative engagement with Shakespeare by
the Caribbean writer creates a process of
selection and reinvention of the cultural
material (the play) that hegemonic groups
(England) have transmitted to subaltern or
marginal ones (colonies) while coming into
contact with them.
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire (born
June 26, 1913, BassePointe, Martinique —
died April 17, 2008,
Fort-de-France),
Martinican poet,
playwright, and
politician, who was
cofounder with
Léopold Senghor of
“Negritude”, an
influential movement
to restore the
cultural identity of
black Africans.
From Shakespeare’s The Tempest
to Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest
Prospero is the subject of a colonialist discourse that has been
dissociated from any legitimating narrative of the journey as
discovery or civilising mission;
Prospero is seen through the gaze of the other – Césaire, a black
actor, Caliban – turned into a stereotyped characterisation so as to
show “HOW COLONIZATION WORKS TO DECIVILIZE THE
COLONIZER, TO BRUTALIZE HIM IN THE TRUE SENSE OF THE
WORD” (Discourse on Colonialism).
A Tempest’s most critical deviation from Shakespeare is probably the
ending of the play. In the final scene Prospero is unable to abandon
the island and return to his dukedom with Miranda and the other
Italian nobles. He is challenged by Caliban who tells him:
“I am sure you won’t leave! / You make me laugh with your
‘mission’ / your ‘vocation’! / Your vocation is to give me shit!” (p.
89).