Tempestuous Thoughts

Notes on Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Imagine for a second that you are a little boy named Caliban. Your mother, Sycorax, died years
ago, leaving you an orphan alone on a tropical island. Life gets a little boring sometimes, but
overall you can’t complain. Nature cares for all of your needs and, hey, it’s hot and sunny on the
beaches all year round.

Then one day two people show up on a boat. Finally, some company! Like any decent native, you
go over and introduce yourself. The old man, Prospero, seems friendly enough at first, and his
daughter, Miranda, is exactly your age—a perfect playmate! You help them unload some books and
find a place to build shelter on the island.

Over the years, you teach them how to survive—what plants to eat, where to find fresh water, what
to avoid—you know, the basics. In return, Prospero teaches you his language and even teaches you
what’s in his books. He calls it “science.” But it must be some kind of magic, maybe even more
powerful than your mom’s. For instance, with it he can free Ariel, a sprite, from a pine tree. (Your
mother trapped him there years ago for his peskiness.) Honestly, the lessons he teaches are pretty
boring, but it does give you time to play with Miranda.

Miranda is now a fifteen-year old babe and you’re totally in love with her. One day, you make your
move. She freaks out! The next thing you know Prospero puts you in chains and takes over the
island. Game over.

Wait a minute. Is that how the story goes? Let’s rewind and look at it from another point of view.

You are Prospero, the right Duke of Milan. In truth, you prefer your library over your estate. And
this is your fatal flaw. While you’ve been gleaning arcane knowledge, your brother, Antonio, has
been studying Machiavelli and plotting ways to replace you. He conspires with your arch-enemy,
Alonso, King of Naples, to sneak Alonso’s army into the city and take it by force. Surprised, your
ministers rush you and your wee daughter, Miranda, onto a broken-down row boat. Gonzalo, a
charitable Neopolitan noble, appears just before you cast off and delivers some essential supplies,
including some of your precious books.

After drifting about for what seems like eternity, you finally reach land. It’s a strange island
somewhere hot, very hot. You are greeted by a savage child named Caliban. With his help you
establish a permanent dwelling on the island. Even though the weather’s nice and there’s a lot to
eat, the island is more like a jail cell than a paradise to you.

Over the years, you take a liking to Caliban. He’s got a keen mind, but he’s totally ignorant.
Sycorax, that witch-doctor mother of his, taught him voodoo nonsense. Instead, you instruct him in
the fine arts of your language and science. To show off your greater learning, you use it to free
Ariel from Sycorax’ pine-tree prison.

Everything is going alright until one day Caliban tries to rape Miranda. Betrayed! You imprison
the ungrateful lout and take formal control of the island with Ariel at your side.

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What you’ve just read are two conflicting accounts of the opening plot to The Tempest. They
illustrate the conflicting experiences of the colonized and the colonizer, with all of the modern
contradictions that these conflicts evoke. These include the nature of progress, the binary of
“civilization vs. savagery,” the conflict between nature and science, and the concept of race and
racial hierarchies. In many ways, therefore, The Tempest is a thoroughly modern play with meaning
and significance that still resonate in our post-colonial era.

The Tempest and Colonial Space

For Shakespeare, writing in 1611, The Tempest was his first attempt to introduce colonial space and
colonial issues as part of the dramatic elements of his dramaturgy. Despite writing several histories
of England that are explicitly set in England, Shakespeare preferred to set his plays in foreign lands,
usually Renaissance Italy (e.g. Romeo and Juliet) or Classical Rome (e.g. Julius Caesar). This type
of spatial and temporal displacement allowed him to address contemporary issues with relative
security from political backlash. With The Tempest, however, he chooses the unusual route of
setting his play in a Renaissance past (invoked by reference to Naples and Milan) that has
contemporary features—specifically the colonial elements that would only make sense after 1492.

Sources & Analogs

The play’s setting and characters are not totally contrived. It’s
believed that Shakespeare based much of it on the tale of the
Sea Venture, a ship that was carrying settlers to England’s
Jamestown colony in what is now the state of Virginia. In
1609, the Sea Venture was caught in a storm and shipwrecked
in the Bermudas. The survivors built a new ship, the
Deliverance, and sailed back home. Here’s a replica of the
ship that I photographed while on vacation in Bermuda.

Upon returning to England, Survivors published their accounts

of the perilous shipwreck and rescue, and it’s believed that
Shakespeare read them and drew inspiration for the play.
These accounts include Sylvester Jourdain’s A Discovery of
the Bermudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of Devils and William
Strachey’s A True Repertory of the Wreck and Redemption…
from the Islands of the Bermudas. It is believed that the
tropical island setting for the play is based on the Bermudas.
The tempest that Ariel creates at Prospero’s behest to strand Alonzo and his followers on the island
recalls the perilous journey of the Sea Venture, itself stranded in the Bermudas by a storm. In the
play, Ariel fetches dew from the Bermudas (1.2.230) and Caliban is at one point described as a
“dead Indian” (2.2.33). Caliban also claims to worship Setebos, a god attributed to South American
natives in the accounts of Magellan’s journeys.

In addition to these historical sources, one possible analog for the play is Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia, in which an invented explorer named Raphael Hythloday recounts his discovery of an
island utopia. At one point, Gonzalo falls into a utopian mode when he imagines a commonwealth
that would rival Ovid’s mythic Golden Age, a society that is classless, laborless, and happy because
nature yields all necessities (2.1.150-70).

The Noble Savage and the New Eden

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Gonzalo’s utopian commonwealth is essentially the Romantic view of the New World posited by
philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century. In this view, the New World is a
paradise populated by “noble savages” akin to Adam and Eve before the fall. If these “noble
savages” lacked science and technology, it’s because a benevolent nature provided all their needs.
And if they lacked sophistication, it’s because they equally lacked the vices of European society.
The New World represented the earthly remains of Eden, a land free of the hard labor, corruption
and vice associated with the Old World. Caliban plays the noble savage when he professes his ideal
love for the island and its natural riches (3.2.137-45). Gonzalo describes the island as a sort of
paradise when he notes that “here is everything advantageous to life” (2.1.52). And Miranda
describes the island as a “brave new world” (5.1.185). [Aldous Huxley will later take this phrase as
the title of his mid-twentieth-century dystopian novel.]

By contrast, Shakespeare illustrates the extent of European depravity in the play’s action, which
elaborates several intrigues and power plays. The noble Prospero is stranded on the island because
his brother, Antonio, betrays him. At Antonio’s goading, Sebastian is about to do the same to his
brother, Alonso, King of Naples. Using a clever inversion, even Trinculo and Stephano, two
drunken working-class figures, participate in the scheming by planning to use Caliban to usurp
Prospero’s authority. Shakespeare pokes fun at the aristocratic belief in the nobility of birth by
showing how everyone—noble and commoner alike—acts equally vicious. He also deconstructs
the colonial attitude that natives are improved by European culture and learning when he has
Caliban retort that his European education amounts to nothing more than the ability to curse
(1.2.366-8).

Civilization vs. Savagery

Nonetheless, Shakespeare also deploys elements of the dominant European paradigm—that the
New World is a vast and dangerous wilderness populated by backwards savages. These attitudes
are reflected in the names of the two major protagonists. Caliban is an anagram derived from the
letters in “Cannibal” (minus an ‘n’) and Prospero is a derivative of “prosper.” Prospero’s books are
associated with European learning, specifically science and technology. Proof of European
superiority is evident in Prospero’s use of science to dominate nature. We see this when Prospero
commands Ariel (a surrogate for nature) to do his bidding. Prospero uses Ariel to control the
weather, creating the tempest that initiates the play and, at the end of the play, uses Ariel to control
the trade winds so that the ships can return to Milan. On the other hand, Caliban is described in
racist terms as being less than human (read “white European”). Prospero disparagingly refers to
Caliban as being “a freckled whelp, hag-born—not honored with a human shape” (1.2285-6), a
“demidevil” (5.1.275), and “this thing of darkness” (5.1.278). Trinculo describes Caliban as a
hybrid being that is half fish, half monster (3.2.28-9). These epithets are saturated with early
notions about race. Many Christians at the time believed in the “Curse of Ham” theory, which
stated that Africans and people of darker skin were descendants of Ham, a son of Noah whom Noah
cursed for seeing him naked. Hence, contemporaries of Shakespeare might have associated
Caliban’s physical non-whiteness with wickedness. Additionally, the insinuation of Caliban’s
hybrid origins suggests both an aristocratic prejudice towards “mixed blood” and a racist prejudice
towards miscegenation.

In the dominant European paradigm, natives are also depicted as child-like in intellect, in need of
European learning and civilization. Similarly, Prosperos adoption and tutelage of Caliban is an
allegory for Europe’s grand civilizing mission, a screen for European colonialism. The
effectiveness of this ideology is proven in the play when Caliban believes that the only way he can

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be free is by seizing and mastering Prospero’s books, which is a symbolic act of appropriating
European ways.

The Resolution of Property Ownership

Caliban’s struggle to retake the island displays a central motif of the play—the rightful ownership of
property. Property is at the center of the various power plays (Prosper/Caliban, Antonio/Prospero,
Sebastian/Alonso, Trinculo & Stephano/Prospero). Arguably, the wrongful ownership of property is
what creates the social tempest that drives the plot towards a righteous resolution. Shakespeare
achieves this in a rather conventional way—with a marriage plot! In the aristocratic tradition,
marriages were used to consolidate dynastic kingdoms. Indeed, Alonso is en route to his daughter’s
wedding in Tunisia when his ship looses its course. The wedding will expand his sphere of
influence. The play ends, however, with Alonso marrying off his son, Ferdinand, to Prospero’s
daughter, Miranda. With this marriage, Prospero and Alonso become allies, resolving their former
enmities. They uncover the treachery of their brothers and servants. And with Prospero’s departure
back to his rightful dukedom in Milan, Ariel and Caliban are free to dispose of the island as they
will.

Resolution by Forgiveness
Another way to view the play’s resolution is by foregrounding the role of forgiveness. Forgiveness,
of course, is a major Christian trope dating back to the crucifixion of Christ. Recall that Christ
forgives his captors for killing him (Luke 23:34). Likewise, the pairs of conflicts in the play are
resolved not through violence, but through forgiveness. Prospero forgives Antonio, Alonso forgives
Sebastian, and Prospero pardons the conspirators—Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo—for plotting to
kill him.

Ultimately, The Tempest is a complex play whose ideological value cannot be easily resolved. Does
the play reinforce modern notions of race, civilization, and science? Or does it problematize easy
binaries like black/white, civilized/savage, nature/science? I leave this for you to decide.