l*lEREorrH ANNE SKupa
t.3 In asseosing the "nenr' hietoricist vereion of the play, it is imporrant to realiae
FROM 'DISCOURSE AND THE
INDIVIDUAL: THE CASE OF
COLONIALISM IN THE TffI4PEST'
Meredith Anne Skura
.,:,,For many years idoalist readings at The Tempesl preoented Prospero as an
excrnplar of timeless hurnan valu*s. Thcy cmpharized the way in which his hard-
.*erned'm*gical'powcr$ enahle hirn ro re.cducare the shipwrecked lrali*ns, to
$eal their civil war-.snd, even more imporranq m ui*mph over his own yeng6.
fulncss by forgivrng his enemies; they emphasiued the way he achiever, if noi a
cholly 'br&ve,' a1 leasr a hannoniouely rccoociled new \ffodd, !0ithin rhe l**t
':
-ttw y*aro, howerrer, nurnbcre ef cridcs have offercd remarkably *imilar cridques
I *f this readin6. There is an eseay an T}a Tirapesr in cech of three reecnt anrlo-
togics of altemarive, polirical, and reproduccd Shakespearc criticism, and
rrl,another in rhe volume on esffanging Renaiesance crideism; fhc ?bmpasr waa a
r. mrs forthe 1988 s*.t sssoion on"'sdakespeare and Colonialism'and xras one of
, Sh*kespearen showing Caliban's resemblanee to the demonired wsrnen, lvlcor$,
, l6e rnasthcad in the Folger Institute's 1988 senninar oa new directione in
ptrays
';.,,Salsespeare studies.l Togerhet, the rcvls.ionisrs
c*ll for * mow to countcrser
.;srde'dccply ahistorieal readings' of Tla Terrya*rrz e ptr*y that is nolv seen to b,r
li,i@ sirflply *n allegory *bout 'rirnelcss'3 6y l]siversal experience burt rattEr a
i,$tur*l phenernenon that h*s its origin in and efftct en 'hisrorical' evenr$,
iiilb*ificafiy in Engtish eotronialism. 'Nsw hi*toricistn criticiffn in general, of
rtxht*h rnue,h recent work on ?&c T*m*p*st is a partr has itself begun to cormc
'noder scrutiny, but the numemus histosical reinrerpretations oi ihe Ta*tpest
t$*qrve clsecr afiention in rheir own righga and they will bc the subject of rhe
of this €osay,
'lil
Qrmrtarly, 4011, $pring 1989, pp. 42-69, Ertraer pp. 42,*57
thathere, evenmorcthan in othern*whictoricalcritieismo anhirtoricalemphasis
in itself is not new. Since the early niReteenth centu ry ?he Tempex hes bcen aeen
in rhe historicol contexr of the New W'oddr and Frank K**nnode, citing ;he early
eeholarso argued in the fifties that reports of a prnicul*r epiaode in British efforts
to cotonize Nomh America had precipitarcd the play's major therned.s In 1609
nine ships had lelt Englsnd to octfle thc colony in J*meetown, Vitginier and rh*
See Ymtwa, carrying all of the colonial officer*, had disappcared, But i*
psssengers reappeared in Virginia otre year later, mitacuiously saved; they had
wrcckcd off thc Berrnudas, until then believcd demonically danger*ur but now
found ts be providentially mild and fruidul. These event*, rnuch in the news in
the year just precediog Tle ?e'rapcst, have long been seen as a relevant contort for
the play by all but a very {ew critics.6 Thcse earlier historical intarpretations
generaliy pl*ced the play and its immediate *oure* in the Eontcxt of voyaging
diseourse in general, which suessed the romsnce and cxqdcism of discov*rieo in
rhe Old as well as thc Ncw \florld. Even the 'factual' reports in tlus diseourse, *s
Qharlec Frey noteso were themselves colored by the romance of rhe situation, for
better end f,or worec; and tie traditional view was that Tle Tetnpesl's etylired
allegory absracts the roma$ce core of all voy*gers' experience.T
Nor had raditional *itlcism entirely ignored eith* Prospnro'e flaws8 or thcir
relation to the dark eide ofEurope's crnfrontation with the Other. Kermode had
idendfied Calibsn as the 'core' or 'grorind' of the play, in*ofar as confrontation
with this stranf;s represeatative of 'uneivilized' rnen prompts the play'*
reexamination of'eivilired'human nature" f{arry Levin, Leslie Ficdler, Leo
Marx, and others had *uggested thar in tying to understand thc New World
representative* of'unciviliaed'human narure, Prospero, like other Europeans,
had irapo,scd Old (and New) World smraotypes of innocence and mons*osity on
ths Nativc Americans, di*toaing perecption whh hope and fcar.e Fiedler's
landmark book had indeed plaeed 7tle Tempasi ruggeetively in rhe eontext of a
series sf playu about rhe Other (or, as he called it in 1971, rhe 'Srrang*r') in
and Jews in thc sanon, 0. N,Lannoni had added that, in this prscess, Proqpero
dieplayed the p*yehology of colonials who projecmd theit disorryrred maits onto
New World natiws.lo
Why, thxr, so firany recent articlesl [n p*rt they are sirnply shifting rhe
ernphasis, Revisiovri*te elaim that the New World material is mot iust preseat but
is right at the center of the play, and that it demando far more attentiou thas
cntics have been willing to grant it" They argue th*t the eivil war in Milan that
had oueted Prospero strould be recognized as nnerely an episode in a rninor
drspute betv;een Italian dynastiee, of little innpou cornp*ed to the rian*atlande
a*ion;lr they shorr how the lovE story can be ecen ar a political rnaneuver by
Prospero to insure his retunr to power in lvlil*nnll *nd horv evcn Caliban'e
atternpted rape ofMiranda can be secn ss an expressionnotmtrelyofsexual but
atso of territorial lusrn understandable in its context.l3
76
 JNwni
^r\raL

FRoM 'DrscouRsE ANB rHE lNDtvlDUAt; rHE CASE oF CoLoNlAttsl'1 lN fHE IEMPEST' Ternytest rn at historical cor-rrexr rhar is rlot 'halnstrung by specious .specr;lations
coneerning "$hakespeare's mind"'.lr Eysn in less polernical examples the
These recent crities are not simply tepeating the older ones, horvever; they Are
'political unconsciorrsi oftcn rcplaces, rarher than supplelnent$! ilrly orher
.:ill making impo{tant distinctions. First and most explicitly, they are not calling
unconsciousl sftention to culnrre;rnd poliries is asseic.iated wirh an imXrlicit
lr*.lt
attenrion to history in general but rather to one aspect of history: to power
,tt,l quesdonirg of individuality and of subfective experience. Such a stnnce extends
relarions and to the ideology in which power relatiorls are encoded.14 The
lreyond an obf ecrion to wholesnle pr:ojections of twentieth-cenrilry assumpdrlns
rril,t, r..li$ionisrs look r:rot at the New \forld material in the play br.rt to the play's
llii); onto sixteenrh-ccnrury subjects. or to psychological inrerprerarions rhut torally
:ffecr on power relations in the Ne'*, Wortd. \ii/hat marters is not iust the
,

1;:t:,
lfl::,
rarticular Bermuda pamphlets actmlly echoed in the phy but rather the whole ignr:re the cultural conrext in whrch psyches exist. As Fredr:ic Jamesen irrBued in
,.# 'ensemble of fictional and lived practicesr known as 'Engiish colonialism,' a work that lies behind many ofthese specific studies, it derives fronr rire desire to
i rranscend personal psyclrology aitogether, lrecause Freud's psychology remains
:irf,,:
r"hich, ir is now being claimed, pxovides the 'dominnnt discursive con-texts'f
,i-
*:.. ior tlre play. (Though the term 'colonialism' may allude to tlre entire spectrr"un of 'locked into the categlory of rhe individual subject.,l3 The emphnsis now is on
il*-:,r New !ilorlcl activity, iu rhese articles it most often refers specifically to the use o{ psychology as a product ofculture, itselfa political stru(:tLrre; the very concept of
,.i1er:
po\"ver, to the Europeans'exploir:ative and self'justi{ying treatlnelrt of the New n psyclre is seen ro he a product of the culrural nexus evolved during the
ii' l
trtriir
\Yor'ld and its inhabitants*and I shall use it in that sense^) If Caliban is the Renrtissance, r'rnd indeed, psychoanalysis itself, r:ather rhan lreing a woy of
.,,1
i' i . :enter of the play, it is not becarise of his role in the play's self-contained ttnclcrstancltnq thc Ilen;tissancs psyc|e, is a n'rnrgiptl:rnd helntecj creation ofrhis
;.:,1 :l srructurei and not even because of what he reveals about mar's timeless sirnrc:rexus." Thus rhc revisiotlists, with Jar:n*son, n:ay lnok for o .politicrl
ri,i:'
rendency to dernonize 'strangers,' but because Europeans were at that tinie
.

uncon$cior.rs'rnd nrakc use of [,'rer.rd's insights into the 'lngic of clreons':{-t[re

trr
t'jt; exploiting rhe real Calibans o{ the world, and The TeflNpest \&'as part of the
process. It is no longer enough to $ug6est that Europeans were trying to make
rtiif:l
sense o( the Indian; rarher, the emphasis is nnw on the way Europeans subdued
;iii"
ri rhe fuidian to'make sense/order/money*not of him, so much as out of him.'Id
,r,tiit; Revisionists argue thar when rhe English talked about these New World
l:i''
inhabitants, they did not iust innocently apply stereotypes or proiect their own
l.'.,:,,'
iearsr they did so to a particular effect, wherher winingly or unwittingly, The
''.':rr. various distortions were discursive stralegies thaI served the political purpose of
l:! :
t,
rnaking rhe New $(orld fit into a schema justifying colonialism.lT Bevisionists
,, rhele{ore emplrasize tire discursive srramgies rhat the play shares with all
r:olonial discourse, and the ways in which The Tempest itself not only displays
preiudice but fosters ancl even 'enacts' colonialisn: by rnystifying or jusri{ying
Prospero's power c,ver Caliban,r8 The new poinr is that Tbs ?ernpesl is a
political act.
Second, tirie shift in our attitude toward rhe obiect oI interprettrion entails a
less explicit hut ex*emeiy important move awsy fiom rhe psychologicai
interpret*tion that ha<l previously seemed appropriate for the pJay {even to its
derractors) largely because of ils central figure rvho, so like Shakespeare, rttns
the show. Wlrere earlier criticism o{ Prospero tatrked about his 'preiudice,' the
moxe recen[ revisionists talk about'power' arnd 'euphemisatron.'Thus, a critic
writing in 1980 argued tharThe Tetrpest's allegotical and Neoplatonic overlay
cor)cep[$ of displacerrient, condcnsa[ion, the nranngenrent of desire2J*bur thcy
do not rrccrpt Freud's assunrptions ;rl:onf the niind-or the sr.rbject-cr:erting
thrrt logic.x6 The rgenr wlrr displrrces or'nul.lge$ is not the indiviclurl b*t the
'collemive or irssocintive' nrind; at times ir seems ro he the text itsr:lf, seen as a
'libidinat npparntus' or 'desiring machine'?7 independent of any individunl
cf eiitlor.
The revisionist inlpulse has becn one nf the mos! sillutnry in recent years in
correcting New Criricul 'blindness'ro history and ider:logy. In par:ticular it h-us
revealecl the woys in which the plny has been'reproduced'and drafred inro rhe
service of color:rialisr politics frorn the nineteenth cenrury rhrough G. \ffilson
Knight's twe[tieth-cefltury releh{arion of Prr:spero rr$ representattve of EnB-
iarrel's 'colunizing, especially her rvill ro raise se'nge peoples frour superstition
and bklod-sircrifice, tmhocrs and witchcr:raft and the attendant fears and slaveries.
to a more enlighrened existence.'18 But here, as critics havc been suggesting
ahout new hisroricism in general, ir is now in eLanger of fosrering biincxness r:f irs
own, Grarxecl that uomething wils wrorlg witlr a cornnrenrar:y thllf fcrcused on
Tbe Tenqtest rs a self-conrainecl proj*cr E:f a self-conraincd. individu:rI and rhftr
:i,
ignr:red the poliricnl $ituerion in 16X1. Bur somethirrg seenr$ w.ong now also, rrli
',i
something rnole than tlre rheteric[l exce$ses charncteristic of an1, i11119yss1ou :!'
critiqnl mr:r,emcnr. "l he recent cliticism nor only flatte$s rhe rexr iLr.ro rhe nrolcl of rir

nrastr<s-some of the most clamaging pre.judices of Western civitriratiol'le but by colonialist discourse and elirninates what is char*cteristically 'shakespearean' in
1987 the fr:rrnulation had changed: 'The Tempest is .. . fully implicated in the order ro foreground rvhat is 'colonialist,' but it is also-paracloxically--in
process of "er"iphernisation", the effacement of power,' in 'operations fthat]
darrger of taking rhe plav firrther {rom the parricrilar historical situario, in
encorie struggle and contradiction even as they, or becawse they, strive to insist
England in 16'11 even ,rs in brings it closer to what we tneafl by,colonialism.
on the legitirnacy of colonialist rrarrative.'20
today.
Psychological criricisnr of the play is seen as distractlng at be$ti one recenl
critic, for example, opens his argument by ctraiming th*t we need to conceive Tlre
It is difficult ro exrrrtpol.;lrs hirck from G. \X/ilsor.l Knight,s cotronlalist
discour:se to severrteenrh-cenrlrry cr:lonirlist discourse wirhorrt knowing m+re
77
78
 FRopl 'DiscouRsE AND THE IND|VIDUAI-: THE CASE oF CoLoNlALtsM lN THE TEMpEsf
ebout rhe particulars of that earlier discourse. \X/hat is missing from the recenr
rlrricles is the connection tretween the new insights about cultrrral phenomena
like 'power' and '{ie1ds r-rf discourse' and the rradititrnal insights about rhe rerr,
iis immediate sources, its individual author*and his individual psychology.
There is little sense of how c{iscourse is relatcd to the individual who was
creating, even as he was participating in, that discor"rrse. The following dis-
cussion will suggest how such a relation night be conceived. Sections I and tt
'briefly
elaborate on The Temftestts versions of problems raised by new
historicist treatment of the text snd its relation to the hi$torical context; se*ions
;tt and l!, go on to suggest that rhe recognition ofthe individuality of the play, and
of Shakespeare, does not counte{ but rather enriches the undersranding of rhat
context. Perhaps by testing individual cases2 we can avoid the eircularity oI a
defisition that assumes that 'colonialism' was pre$ent in a given gtoup of rexts,
and so'discovers' it there.
I ignored. Thus Clalibqn is taken to'be'l Narive American clespite the fact that n
Horv do we know that The Tempest'enacts' colonialism rather than rnerely
alluding to rhe Nev/ $florld? Ftrow do we know that Caliban is part of the
'discourse of colonialism'? To ask such a question may seem penersely nairre,
but the play is notoriously slippery. There have been, for exar,nple, any number
of interpretations of C*liban,:"9 inclucling not only contemporary post-colonial
versions in rvhich Caliban is a Virginian Indian bur also others in which Caliban
is played as a black slar,e or as 'missing .linlt' (in a costufne 'half monkey, half
coco-nut'10), with the interpretation drawing on the issues thar were being
debared at the time-on the discursive contexrs thar were culturally operative-.
and articuiated according ro 'changing Anglo-Amcrican attitudes towiud
primitive man.'3' Most recently one teacher has suggested t.hat The l"emlrest
is a goocl play to reach in iunior colleges beciruse srndents can iclentify with
Cnliban.
lnterpretation is made even more problematic here hecanse, despite the claims
MEREDITH ANNE SKURA
of course also applied to the Ne\,v World nrtives. hr othel wrlrds. fhese two
seventeenfh-century re$ponses rend to invoke rhe universal and not the par-
ticular implicarions of Caliban's conclition. A recent study ot the play's history
suggesrs that 'i( Shakespeare, however obliquely, meant Caliban to personify
America's natives, his intention apparently miscarried almost completely.':r"t
Despite this lack of contemporary testimony, tlre obvioris reason for our
feeling that the play'is'cokrnialist*more so rharrTha Winter'sTale or Ilenry
11lll, for exarnple, which were written at roughly the sanre time-is, of conrse, the
literal resenrblance betweeil its plot and cert*in events and attitudcs in English
colonial history: Europeans arrive in the New World and assunle they can
appropriate what properly belongs to the New World Other, who is then
'erased.' The similaritjes are clear *ncl compeltrir:g*more so than in many cases
of new historical readings; the problem, however, is that while [here are also
many literal differences benveen The Tempest and colonialisr licrions and
practice, the sirnilarides are taken to be so compelling that the differences are
multitucle of cletarils dilferentiate Cnlihan from the Indian as lr.e appe;rred in thc
travclers' rcports from rhc Ncw World.J6 Yet ir does seem significant that,
despitc his closencss to nafrr:c, his nniv*0, his devil worship, iris suscepribiliry tr:
Europcan liquor, rnd, above all, his 'treachery'-characeristics associatecl in
writings of the rime with th* Indians - he nonerhelcss lacks almost all of the
defining externrrl traits in the many reports frr:m the New \filorld-no super-
lruman physique, no n*kccincss or anim*l skin (incleed, an English'gaberdine'
instead), uo decorative fearhers,rT no arrows, no pipe, no tobaccct, no body
paint, and-as Shakespenre takes pains to ernphasize*no love of triukets anci
trash. No one could mistrrke hinr {or the stereotyped 'Indian with a great tool,'
mentirrned in passing in f{enry vtlt. Ctlihnn in fact is nro::e like the devils
Strachey expecfed to find on the Bemuda island (but didn't) rhan like the
lndirrns rvhorn adventurers did find in Virginia, rhough be is not wholly a
rrensrer from the explorers' wild rales either.i8
In, other ways, too, it is assumed rhat the similarities marter but the diftrerences

about tlre play's intervention in English colouiatrism,32 we have no external
evidence thar seventeerrth-century audiences thor"rght the play reiened to the
New-World. In an age when real voyages were read allegorically, rhe status of
allegorical voyages like Prospero's can be doubly ambiguous, especially in
a
Iike ?ie Terupest, which provides ail encyclopedic contexr for Prospero's
experience, presenting it in terms of an exfraordinary ranp;e of classical, biblical,
and romantic exiles, discoveries, nnd conlrontations.33 Euioience for the play's
origrnal reception is of course extraordinarily difficult to {ind. but in the two
nearly contemporary responses to Caliban that we do know about, the evidence
for a cononialisr response is at best arnbiguous. 'ln frartkolon"rew Jtair (1614)
Jonson refers scorir{ully to a 'servant-mon$ter,' and the Folio identifies Caliban
as a 'salvage ancl delormed slave'3{ in the cast lisr. Both'monsmr' and 'salvage'
are firmly rooted in the discourse of Old lforld wild rnen, thor"rgh the latrer was
do not: thus Prospero's magic occupies'the space really inbabited h aolonial
histortt by gunpowder're (ernphasis mine); or, when Prospero has Calilran
pinched by rhe spirits, he shows a 'sirnilar saetrism' to that o{ the Haitian masters
play
who 'roastecl slaves or buried them alive';ao or, when Prospero rnd Ariel hunt
Caliban with spirit dogs, they irre equated to the Spaniards who hrrnred Native
Americans rvith clogs.al Sc, long as there is a core of resemblance, the dif{erences
ale irrelevant. The clifferences, in fact, are themselves fakeu to be evidence r:f the
colonialist ideology at u,ork, rarionalizing ancl euphemizing power*or else
inadvertent slips. Thus rhe case Ior colonirlisnr becomes stronger insofar as
Prospero is good and insofar as Caliban rs in some ways bad-he did rry to rape
Ivliranda-or is hims*lf aow caught trying to falsify the past by occluding the
rape and presendng lrinrself as an innocent victim of Prospero's tyranny.
Prospero's goodness and Caliban's brdness are called rationolization$, justifi-
80
79
 FROM 'DISCOURSE AND THE INDIVIDUAL: THE CASE OF COLONIALISM IN FHE TEMPEST
cations for Prospero's tyranny. Nor does it matter tl'rai the play seems amli
colonialist to tlre degree that it qualifies Prospero's scorn hy showing Caliban's
virtnes, or that Prospero seelns to achieve some kind of transcenrlence over his
own colonialism rvhen at the end of the play he says, 'This thing of darkness I
acknowlecige mine.'42 Prospero's ncknowledgement of Caliban is considerecl a
rnisrake, a moment of inadvertent sympofhy or trutli, too brief to counter
Prospero's underlying colonialism: in spite oftl're deceptively resonanr poetry of
his acknowledgement, Prospero actually clnes nothirg to live up to the nreaning
u,hich that poetxy suggesrs;ar it has even been ar:gued that Prospero, in colling
Caliban 'mine,' is simply clainring posscssion of himr 'lt is as though, after a
pul'rlic disturbance, a sl*veowner said, "'I'hose two nlen are you(si this darkie's
mlne"
Nonetlreless. in addition to thc$e cli{fererrces thar have been seen as rationa-
lizations, therc are many other dilferences as well that collectively raise
questions about what counts as 'colonialist discourse' and about wh*t, if
anything, might count as a relevant 'difference.' Tlrus, for example, -lny attempt
to cast Prospero and Caliban as actors in the typical colonial narrative (in which
a European exploits a previously free-indeecl a reigning-native of an
unspoiled u,orldi is complicated by two other characters, Sycorax and Ariel.
Sycor*x, Calihan's nrother, through whom he claims possession of the island,
was not only a witch and a criminnl, but she came from the 01d World herself, or
at lea$t from eastem-hemisphere Argier.a5 She is a reminder that Caliban is c.rnly
half-narive, thar his claim to the island is lcss like the cl;rinr of the Native
American tharr the clrrim of the seconcl generaxicln Spaniar:d in rhe New World.a"
Moreover, Caliban was not atrone when Prospero arrivccl" Aricl eitlrcr cen)e to
the island r,r,ith Sycorax r:r was already iiving on the islrrnci * its true reigning
lord{7*when Sycorax arrived and promptly cnshvcd hirn, thtrs herself becom-
ing the first colonialisr, the one who establisherd the habirs of donrinrlnce and
erasure before Prospeto ever set foor on thc islirnd. Nearlv rrll revisiortists nore
some o{ these differences before disregarding them, though tlrey are not Rgreed
on their significanc€-on whether they arc 'symptoms' of idcologicaI conflict in
tl're discourse, for example. or whether Shnkespenre's 'insighrs exceeded his
sympathies."{B Br.rt however fhey n1s e-xplainecl, the differences are discarded.
Fs:r the critic interested only ir: counterscting earlier blindness to potenri&lly
racist and idenlogical elements in the plav, strch ignoring of di{ferences is
undersrandable; for his or her purposes, it rs enough to poillt o{xt thar Tl2€
Tetttpest has a 'political unconsciorrs' and is connectecl in sor*re lvBy to
colonialist cliscourse n'ithout specifving f urther.
But if the object is, rather, to understand coloni*lisrn, instead of sinrply
icientifying it or condemning it, it is irnpr:rtant to speci{y, to notice how the
coionial elen:ents are rationalizecl or integrated itto the play's vision of the
rvorld. Othenvise, extracdng the play's politicaI unconscious leads tcr the same
probiems Freucl faced at the beginning of his career when he treateil the personai
unconscious as an independent entity that shou.ld be almost surgical[)r extr&cted
8l
MEREDrH ANNE SKURA
frorn conscious discourse by hypnotizing away the'defenses" But, as is well
known, Freud {ound that che conscious 'defenses' were as essentiat-:lnd
problematic-as the supposedly prior unconscious 'wish,' and that they served
pruposes other than containment.4e Indeed, in rnost psychonnalyric practice
since Freud, the unconscious-or, raiherl uncnnsciotts mentafion-is assumed
ro exist in texts rather than existing as a reilied 'id,' and intetpretation must
always return to the text,
As in the case of the personal unconscious, the politicai unconscious exists
only in textsn whose'defenses'or rationalizirtions must be taken inro account.
Otherwise interpretation not only destroys the text-here llhe Ttmpest-as a
unique work of art and flanens it into one rnore example of the master plot-or
master ploy*in colonialist discoutse; it also destroy$ rhe evidence of the play as
a unique cultural arti{act, a unique voice in that discourse. Coloniatist discourse
was varied enough to escape any simple formul*tion, even in a group of texrs
with apparent thematic links. It ranged lrom the lived Spanish colonialist
practice of hunting New World natir.es with dogs to Bartholomew Las Casas's
ifnqrual' accounr iamenting and exposing the viciousness of that hunt,so to
Shakespeare's possible allusion t<t ir in The Tem'pest, whe n Prospero and Ariel
set spirit dogs on Caliban, to a still earlier Shakespearean allusion-or possible
allusion-irr rlre otherrvise non-colonialist A Midsummer Nigbt's I)rearn,+vhen
Puck (who l'ras comc Irom India himself) chases Greek rude mechanicals with
illusory animals in a ucene evoking fln entirely English cr:nflict. The same
*colonialist' hunt infour-rs radically different fictions and practices, some of
which enact colonialisrn, some of which subvert it, and sonrtl of which require
other categories entirely tn characterize its effect,
It is rrot easy to c*tegorize the several links between The Tempest ^id
colonialist discourse. Take the deceptively simple exanlple of Calilran's nanre.
R"evisionists rightly emphasize the implications of the cannibnl srcreotype as
auromatic mark of Clther in Western ethnocenffic colonialist discourse,sl and,
since Shakespeare's tratne for 'Calit,an' is widely acceptecl as an anlgranr of
'cannibal,' nrany read the play *s i{ he ruere a cannibalr with al} rhat the tern:
implies. But an anagram is nor a cannibal, and Shakespeare's use o{ fhe
srereotype is hardly automaric,s: Catihan is no cannibal-he barely touches
meat, confining hirnself more delicatelv rr: roots, berries, and nn occasional fishl
indeect, his symhiotic harmony with the island's natural {ood resources is one of
his most ;lttrnctive uaits. His name seems nrore like a mockerl' of stereorypes
than a mark of monstrositl.o and in our haste to confirrn the link between
'cannibal' and 'Indian' outside the text, we lose rrack of the way in which
Caliban severs rhe link r.ui r&i z the rcxt.'r3 While no one would deny some relation
between Caliban and the New \Xrorld natii es to whom such ternrs as 'cannibal'
were applied, rvhat that relation is rentains unclear.
To enumerare differences between The TefitPest and'colonialist discourse'is
not to redllce ,liscussion of the plav to a counring contest, pitting sirnilarities
againsr differences. Rather, it is to suggest that inherent in any analysis of the
c-)
 FRoH.DIscoURsE AND.iHE INDIVIDUAT: THE CA5E oT CoIoNIALISM IN THE ISVIPESI'
MEREDITH ANNE SKURA

play as colonialist discr:urse is a particular assumptior about the relation

Ir is not casy ro characterize rhe situarion in 1ti1 1. On the one hand, Spuin hacl
between text and discourse - between one man's fiction and a collective fiction -
long been engaged in the sort of'colonialisr discourse' that rcvisionists find ir:
or, perhaps, between nne man's {icrir:u nnd what we take for 'reality.' This
The Tempesti and even in England at thc tirne rhe re w'ere examples of colonialist
relation matters not only to New Critics uying to isolatc texts lrom contexts but
discourse (in the rhetoric, if neit yet olten in the lived practices) produced hy
to new hisroricist* (or just plain historicists) trying to put thcm back together.
those directiy invoived in thc colonialist project and expecting to profit from ir.
The relation is also vital to lived practices lilde censorship and inquisiriotis - nfld
The official aclvcrtisements in the first rush ofenthusiasm about Virginia, as well
xhere axe differences of opinion abour whar counts in these cases. Such
as the stream of defenses when lhe Virginia proiect began to fail, often hove a
difierences need to be acknowledged and examined, and the rnethod for re*ding
euphenrisric ring and ofte:r do suggesr a fundamerrtnl greed and implicit racism
them needs to be made mnre explicit before the implications of Tre Tempest as
bene*rh claims to be secr.rring the e{rthly and spirinral well-being of the Virginia
colonialist discourse can be fullv undcrstood.
natives"ss ('[\ile] doe buy of them the pearles of earth, and sell to rhenr the
pearles ofheauen.'tp1 These documents effaee nor only power hut most practical
II problems as well, and they were supplementecl by $ernlons romanrrcizing
Similar problems lreset the definition of the 'disssurse' itself, rhe means of harctrships as divine tribnlation.6o Scnttered throughout this discorrrse are
identif,r.ing the fictional-and the'lived'-practice$ consriruting'English colo- riglrreous defenses of taking larrd from rhe Irrdians. much in the spirit*and
nialism' in 161 1. Given the impact of English colonialism over the last 350 years, tone-of Rabhi Zeal-of-the-Land llusy delendrng his need tr: eat pig. (This was
it nray again seem perr,ersely naive to ask what colonialist discourse was like in also the tone familiar from the anti-theatrical critics*and. indeed" occnsionnl
161 1, as opposed to colonialism jn 191 1 or even in 1625, the year when Samuel cr:lolria.list sernrr:ns included snipes at the 'Plaiers,' along with the Devil and the
Purchas asked, alluding to the 'treachery' of the Virginian Indians, 'Can a prrpists, as particular eflemies of the Virginia venture.6I )
Leopard change his spotsl Can a Savage remaynirrg a Savage be civill?' Purchas On the orher hand, even in these documents nor only is the emphasis
elsewhere but often [here are important contradictory movements. For example ,
added this comment when he published the 1610 document that Shakespeare
'A Tiue Declaration,'the official record ofthe Bermuda wreck, refers once to the
had used as his sourse far The Ternpest, and Purchas has been cited as an
Indians as 'humane beasts' and devotes one pirragraph of its twenty-four pages
exampie of 'colonialist discor,rse.'14 Purchas does indeed display dre particular
to the 'greedy Vulture' Powhsttan and his ambush, It notes elservhere, however,
combination oI exploitative morives and self-justifying rlretoric*the 'efface-
nrent of power'sj*that revisionists identify as colonialist anct whiclr they f.ind in
rhat some of the English semlers themselves irad 'created the y'xr**ms our
implacable enemies by some vioience they trad offetecl,' and ir ac!u*lly spends far
Tbe Tempest. But, one might reasonably osk, was the discursivc context in 1 6 I 1 1
more tinre attacking the lazy 'scunr of men' among the settlers, rvho had
when Shakespeare wits writing, the same as it would be fourteen years lareri
56 undermined the colony frorra wirhin, than demonizing the less relcvant
when Purchas added his rnarginal comrnent?
lndlins.''-
There seems, rather, to have been irr 11611 a variery r:f what we nright call 'New
A;rd on the rvhole, the exploitative *nd self-jurdfying rhetoric is only one
\ilorld discourses' ruith multiple points of vicw, morives, and effecls, among
eleilent in a complex hJerv World discourse. For much nl ilre tin:e, in i-act, t)re
which slrch commenfs as Purchas's are fior as comrnon as tlre rer,.isionist emphasis
main coilflict in tlre New lforld r.vas not between r.vhites and Native Americans
inrplies, These are 'cotroni*list' only in thc most Benq'ral sense in which ali
brrt benveen Spain and Bngtrand. Voyages like Drake's (1577-80) were
ethnocentric cultures are nlwal's 'colonitrlist': narcissistically pursuing their own
morivate.t by this internntional conflict, rls well rs by the romance of discovery
ends, ohlivious to the desires, needs, and even the existe*ce of the Other. That is.
and the lure of rreasure*but not by colonizing.63 E,"'en when Raleigh reeeived
if this New World discourse is colonialist, ir is so prirnarily in rhat it lgrrores
the first patent to sertle and trade with rhe New \(Iorld {1584), $ecessir&tir"rg
Indians, betraying its Eurocentric nssumptions ahout the ir.relevance of *n1,
nrore exlencled contacr with Native Americansr rhe temporary seftlements he
people otl'rer than white, male, npper-class Europeans, preferably {rorn England"
stdrted iq the 1580s were lnrgely tokens in his play for fame ar:d wealth rather
It rhus erpresses not an lT istorically specific but a timeless *nd universal *ttirude
than afienpts to loke or,er sizoble portions ofland frorn the natives.6+
toward rhe 'stranger,' which Fiedler desctibed in so many of Shakespeare's plays.
'We Onl,v when the wrrr *rith Spsin was over (1604) alrd ships were fre e again did
nrigirt see this di$course as a preconditionsT {or colonialisnr proper, which
colonizarion really begin; and then 'America and Virginra were on er,eryone's
rvas to follow with tl:e literal rarher than the figtuative colonizirig of New World
lips,'6r But this Nerv \World discoul'se still reflects iirtle interest in its inhabitants.
r-lirtives, But to assurne thirt colonialism was already encoded iu the anomalons
Other issues are mr;ch rnore widely discussed. For exanrplen what q,or,rld the
situ:rtion in 1511 is to undermirrc the revisir:rrisl efforr to unders[afld the New World Soyerrment be like? \ilonld James tly ro e"ttend his authoritarian-
lristorical specificity oI the nromenr when Shakespeare wrote TllB Tempest"
isn: to America? Could he? This was rhe issuei [or example, most energizing

83 84
 .DIsCoUnsE
FRoH AND THE INDIVIDUAL: THE CASE oF COIONIALISI1 IN THE TE,44PE5T'
Henry Wriothesley, Shakesp*are's Southampton, who led the 'Portiot' faction
on the London Virginia Council, pushing for more American irrdepend*nce,66
i.As for Jamss's owr 'coleiniai discourse,' it seems to have been cievoted to
worries ahor.rt how it would al} affect his rclations with Spain,67 and to requests
for flying squirrels and othe r New \i'orld'toyes.'681 Of nrore immediare interest,
perhaps, to the rnass of real or armchair aclvennrrers were the reports of New
\Xlorld wealrh rlrat ar firsr made Virginia known as a haven for bankrupts and
spendthrifts, as well as for wild dreamers*fr:ilowed by the acceunts of
starvation, rebellion, and hardship brought back by those who liad escaped
from the reality of colonial exisrence, Now the issue hecanre 'Is it worth iti' T'he
official propaganda, optimistic about future profits, was soon countered by a
backlash fiom less optinrisric scof{ers clrallenging the value of the entire project,
oile which sent money, rnen, ar:id ships to frequent destruction and brought back
alnost ao protit.do
Even tl:re settlers acnraliy living with the natives irr the New World irself were
for enrirely nr:n-altruistic reasons-not yet fuily engaged in 'colonialist'
discourse as defined hy revisionists. In 161 1 they had not managed ro establish
enough pou,er tn euphemizei they had little to be defensive about. They were too
busy fighting mrrtiny, disease, and the stupidities of the London Counqil to have
much energy left over fr:r indians. lt is true thnt no writer ever treated Native
Americans as equals-any more thAn he treat*d Moors, .|ews, Catholics,
peasants, lvonlen, Irishnren, or even Frenchmen as equals; travellers compla-
cently recorded kidnapping natives ttr exhilrit in Ungland, as if the natives had no
righrs ar all.'o And ir is true that some of rheir descriptions are distorted hy Old
World stereotl,pes of rvild men or cannihals-though rhcse clescriptions are
often. confined to earlier pro-colonial explorers' .eports.tl Or, far ntorc
insidior.rsly, the descriptions were disrr:rted by stereotypes of urrfallen innocent
nr:ble savages-stereotypes ttrat incvirably led ro disillusiorrmerr rvhen the
setrlcrs had to realize rhat the Inclians, like the land itsel[, were not going ti: {Lrlfill
rheir dreams of a golden world made expressly tc) r'nrrture linglishmen. The
'noble savage' stereotype rhus fueled the recurring accusation of Indian
rreachery, a response to berrayal of settlers'fantasies as well irs to an;- real
Indian betraynl,rr and one to which I will rerurn in discussing TheTenrltest.
But, given rhe universality of racinl prejudice tolvatc1s New $forld natives
urlongrvith all 'Others,' in this early period tbe nrovement w*s to lor.rsen. not to
.Wor}d.
er:nsolidate, the preiudices bronght {rom the Old The descriptions oI
rhese extended face-to-face en.oufiters with Narive Americans were perhaps
even more varied than contempor'lry responses to Moors and Jews, who were
usually er:countered on the wtrite mar:'s own territory, r.vhere exposure coutrd be
limited and controlled, Tlre ver:- terms imported from the Old \ttorld to name
the natives-'savage$' o[ 'naturals'-begrn to lose their original connorations *s
rhe differing descriprions r:ruitiplied and even eontrarlicted themselves. The
reporrs ran6ie from Harrior's wiclerly republished attenrpr at scientific, otrjective
reporring (1588), wlrich vierved natives lr,ith Breat respect, to Smith's less
85
ME&EDIIH AI.INE SKURA
reliahle adventure srories (1608-3 )! disputed even in his own time by Purchas,
1
And although these do not by any means live up to our standards for non-
colonialist discourse, their typical attitude is a rvary, often patronizing, brrt live-
and-let-live curir:sity, rather than rhe exploimtive erasure rvhich would later
become che mark oI colonialist discourse, So long as the con{liets remained
minimal, Native Anrericans were seen as heings like the writers;73 Iurther, tribes
were distinguished from one flnother, and recognition was granted ro their
diflerent forms of gclvernmenr, class suucture, dress codes, religion, and
language.Ta And when conflict dicl trigger the recurrintrl accusariou of'treach-
ery,' the writers never presented the lndians as laughable (iilibans, but rather as
capable, indeed fornridablc, eneruies whose skill and inrelligence challengrd that
of the settlers.
Horrors had alrerrdy been perpetratecl by the Spanish in the name of
- colonialism; not learning from these-or perhaps lear:ning rll too weil-the
English would soon begin perpetrating their own" Bur that lay in the friture.
Vrhen I&e Tenapest wns written, whar the New V(lorld scems to have meanr for
the majority of Englishmen was a sense of possibilitv nnci a set of conflicting
fantasies about the wonders to he found there; thcsc were perhaps the
prectrndirions for colonialism*as Ior rnuch else*but not yer the thing itself.'5
'Io place colcinialisr cliscourse as preciselv as possible within a grvcn momrnt
(like stressing ihe differences betrveenTheTempesf and colonialist discourse) is
not to redlrce the discrrssion to a numbers game" What is at stake here is not a
qtribble about chronology but an assumption ahout what we rnean by the
'reler.ant cliscursive context,' ahout how we agree to elerermine it, and about how
rve decicle to lin:ir it. Here too there are clif{erences oI opinion aboli,twtar counts,
and rhese dilferences leed to be acknowledged, examined, and accounted {or"
Noru
1 ^ Trvo trf the earlicst of these cntiques were acrualll' rvritten, nlthough not published,
by 1960r George Lanrming,'A monstet. a child, a slave' (1960) in'l'he Pletswes of
ljxile (London; Allison and Busbli, 1984); James Smith, 'T'he Tempest' (19.54) in
Slukespelridtx and ather Essays, ed. E. iv{. rifilson {Camhridger Cambridge Univ.
Press. 1974), pp. n.i9*251. Tu,o more articies, less poilricrzed, fol|:rved ir.r the
sixties: Phiiip Brockbank, "tr'lte Tempest; Conventions of Art ancl Empire' rn Later
Shakaspeate, eds, J. R, Erowrr and B. Harris (Lonclonr Edwnrd Arnold, 1966I,
pp. 183-201; and D, G. Jafies, 'The Nerv World' it The Dream o{ Praspero
(Oxfordr Clarelreion Press, X9671, pp. 72-1?1.
The recent group) retffning to the politrcal perspective ol rhe first two, inch"rcles:
Stephen Cireenl:l*tt, 'Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguisric Colonialism in the
Sixreenth Cenlury' in l-rr'st furages o{ Anteriru. ed, Fredr Chiiappelli, 2 r,r:ls. (l-c's
Angeles: Lir:ir,. of Celifornio Press,1976), Vol.2,561-80t Bruce Erlieh,
'Shakespeare's Colonial l*{eraphor: On the Socjal Function oi Thenrre ir.r Tbe
Terilpest,' Scienca an.cl Societ1,, 41 (1977), 43*ti5; Lorie Leinir:,ger,'Crackiug the
Cocle of The Tempest,' Bucknell Reuiew,, 2.5 (1t80), llX-Jtl Petet Hulme,
'Hurricanes in the Carihhees: The Constitution of the Di$course of English
Colonialism' in 16,12: Literattre and Poxt* in tbe Seuttlteeilth Cenrnry, Iroeeed-
ings of the Essex conleretce on the Soeiology of Literatur:e, eds. .Francis Barker et al,
86
 .DIScoURsE
FRoH AND THE INDIVIDUAL: THE CASE oT COLoNIAL{5M IN ?.I]E TE,IPESI
(Colchesterr Univ, of Esscx, 1981), pp, 5"5-8.3; Paul N. Siegel, 'Historical lronies in
Tbe Te*rpest', Shahespearc Jahrbucfi, '1 t 9 (Weimar; 198.1), 104*1 1; Francis Barker
and Peier Hulme, 'Nymphs and rcapers heavily vanishr the discursir,e con-texts of
The Tetrpest' in Alternatiue Shakxpeares, ed" John Dmkakis (Lorrdcrn und New
York: Methuen, 1985), pp. 191*205; Terence Hnwkes,'Swisscr-Swatter making a
man of English letters' in rllrernatiue Shakespearcs, pp^ 2646; l'aul Brown, ""Ihis
I
thing of darkness acknowledge mine"'; ?be \brnpest and the discr:urse of
colonialism' in Political Shgkespeare: Naru essdys it cuhutal ntaterialism \ltb*ca,
NY., and London: Cornell Univ" Press, 1985), pp.48*71; Peter Hulme, Colonlal
Encowiers: Eutctpe and tbe rmtiue Caribbean, 1492-1,797 \Lond,r:n and New York:
I,lethuen, 1986), pp. 89-1 34; Thomas Carreili, 'Prospero in A{rica: The Totnpest at
colonialist text and prete-xt' in Shakespeare Reprodwced: \"be teut br bktory a*d
ideology, eds. Jean l{oq,ard and Marion O'Conner (New York: tr{ethuen, 1987),
pp, 99-11-5; I rvould include tu.o essays b,v Stephen Orgel somewhat differeirt in
their focus but nonetheless related: 'Prospero's Vife' in Rewritfug the Ret*issanca,
eds^ Ivlargarer Ferguson et al, lChicago; Univ, of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 50-54,
and '$hakespeare and the Cannibals' in Cannih*ls, V/itches, ontl DiL,orce:
Fstnnging lbe Renaissance, ed. Marjorie Carher (Baltimore and l,ondon; Johns
Hopkins Liniv. Press, 1987), pp. 40-56.
2, Ilulme, aolonial Encaunters, p, 94.
3. See, Irrr example, Paul Brown,'This thing of dnrkrressn'p^ 48,
4, ln fact Edwarcl Pechter, in one of the earlicst of such scrutinies, cifed sever{l of the
{ccent ?}ilrpest 0rticles as especially p!ohlematic. See'The New Historicism arrd Its
DiscontentEr Politiciaing Renaissance l)rama,' l,A{u, lAZ (1987) 292-303. See also
Howard F'elperin, "trdaking it "neo": The new historicism and Renaissance
Iileratnre,' Textutil Ptattice, l 11987),262-77 ;Jean Howard,'The New Flistoricism
in Renaissance Studies,' ExglisA |-itercry Renaissance, 76 (1986), 13-43; and
Anrhony B, Dawson, 'l,Tessure for Measura, Nerv Historicisrn, and Theatrical
Power,' S&akespe er e Quarterly, 39 { 1988), 32B+1.
5. The Ternpest, fhe Arden Shakespeare, ed. Frank Kennode (Lonclon: Methuen,
1954), p. xxv. For an a.count of the work of ea:lier scholars exploriag the
connection hetween the play and these documenfs, see Kermode, pp. xxv-xxxiv,
and Charles Frey,'The Tenrpest and thc New lWorld,' sA, l0 (X979), 29-41,
5, E. E. Stoll and Northrop Frye are the einly exceptions I have seen cited,
7. Recently there has been a reneweLl emphasis on the rom&nce eleurenrs. See Gnry
*The Tewpest ard Prirnaleow A Ncw Sornrce,' ,10.
SchmidgalJ, 37 (19ti6), 423-39,
esp, p. 436; and Roberr !ililtenherg,'The " Aeneitl" itu "The Teffipest,"' Shakespeare
Suruey, 39 (1987), 1"59.-68.
8. See, for exarnpJle, Harry Berger's importrrnt essay, 'lvliraculous tr-Iorpr A Rradirrg of
Shakespeare's Teftq)esL' Sbakespenre,Sltudles, .i (l 969), 2,53*{13,
9. Flarry l-e.rin, Tbe ),iyth af the Goldeu Age in the Reflqissltnce (Bloomingtonr
Indiana Univ, Press, 1969); Leslie A, Fiedler, Tle Sttanger iu,. ShoAespeare (New
Yeirk; Stein and Day, 1972); Leo Marx,'Shakespearc's Armericrn lrable,'Tbe
l$achine in the Garden (London and New Yorkr Oxford Uniy. Press, 1264),
pp. 34-71.
10. O, Mannoni, Itrosl>ert> *nd Cdib*n: The ?sycbology of Coloniwtlon, trans, Pametra
Poweslancl (1950; rpt, New Yorkr Praeger, 1954).
11. Huln:e, Colonial Encounters, p. 133,
11. Hulme, {)o[onia.l Encoilwers, p, I15; Barker ard Hulme, p. 201; Orgel, 'Prr:spero's
\Yiie,'pp. 62-63.
X3. Orgel,'Shakespeare and the Cannil:als,'p. 55.
14. As Paul We rstine rvrote in the brochure aonouncing lhe N[tl Humanities Institute on
'New Directions in Shakespeare Criticism' {The Folger Shakespeare Lihrary, 1988),
'To.rpprecrare The TetnBe$t... today,.. rve must undersrand diseourses of
colonirl ism, p(,lverr ]egi rimanon.'
87
MEREDITH ANNE SKURA
15. Barker and Flulme, p. 198.
16. Hawkes,'Srvisser.Swatter,' p, 28.
17" Thussrereotypes,Iorexample,servedasFartofa'discursivesrrategy...tolocateor
"fix" a colonial other in r position c,{ inferiority.,.'(Paul Brorvn, modifuing
Edward Said on orientalism, p. 58).
t8, Actually,thispointtooisamatterof emph*sis^R.R.Cawley('Shakspere'sUseol
tlre Voyagers in'fbe Tentpost,' PMr,{, 41 119261, 688-726} and Kermode, among
orhers, had nored in passing some similarities brtween the ptay's vierv of Caliban
and the elistortions of colonialist selt:serving rhetorical purposest but revisiortists
take this to be the important Foirlt, not to be passed over.
19. Leininger, 'Cracking the Code o{ Tbe Tempest,' p. 1}-2,
20. Paul Browur pp, 64, 66. Brown also contends th*t The Tertpesr 'exemplifies . . , a
moment of hisrorlc*i crisis. This erisis is the srruggle to produce a coherent discourse
aclequate to dle complex requirenrents of British colonialism in its initiol phase'
(p' a8).
21, Hulrne, Coloni*l Entotntter:, p. 93. Lnter he does grant rr little grouncl to tlre
psychological critics in allowing that their 'totnlly spurious' identificati,rn of
Frospero with Shrrkespear:e yet 'half grasps the crucial point th:it Prospero ,. . is a
dramatist and creatr:r of tlreirtrical cffects' (p. 115).
22, 'From the point of view of s Folitical hermeneutic, mea$ured againsr the
requirernents of a 'political unconscious,' we must conclude that the conceptiorr
of wish-ful{illmcnt remains locked in a problematic of the individual subi*ct ...
which is only irrdircctly useful to us,'Tlre objection to wish-fulfillnrent is that it is
'always r:utside of time, outside of narrutive' and history; 'what is more darnaging,
from the prcsent perspective, is that desire . .. rernnins locked into the category of
the individunl subiecq even if tlre form taken hy the individual in it is no longer the
sgo or the self, but the individunl body ,,. tbe need to *anscend indiuidualistic
categories fifltl madus af iiltegrentian is i4 rxtny ways the fxndamental issua ior
any doctrins of the palitical wrconscious' (The Political UneonsciaustNarr'ltiud ds d
Socislly symboli.c Aet [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell l.]niv. Press^ i981], pp.66,68, italies
added).
23, Stephen Greenblatt, 'Psycho*nalysis and ller:r.aissanc* Cultur*,' Litorarry 'Tbeary/
Rendiss*nce Texts, eds^ Patricia Parker and David Qr,rint (Baltimore; Johns H,rpkins
Univ. Press, 1986), 210-24.
24.
Jarnesr:n, p^ 12. So, too, Freud's'hermeneutic manual'can be o{ use to the lroliticol
citic (p. 6.5)"
35. 'Norman Hol.iand's suggestive rerm,'Jameson, p, 49,
?6. Janreson, p. 67. Cf^ Fnul Brown, 'lV[y use of Freudian tenns does not rnetn rhal 1
endorsE its arhistrirical, Europrrcentric and sexist models ,:f psychical development,
Ftrowever. o materiolist criricism deprived of such cnncepts as displacemenr and
conclensation would be seriously impoverished ...' {p, 7i, n. 35),
17. Janr,eson discussing Althusser (p. 30) and Greiraas (p, 48).
28, Tbe Crow* of Life {,1947: rpt" New York; Barnes & }.lohle, 1966), p. 255.
29, See Trer,or R. GrifIiths, "'This Island's mine "r Calil,an and Colonialism,' .denrbae,k
c>f English Sradies, 13 (1983),159-80.
30. Griffiths, p. 166.
il, Virginin Mason Voughan, "'Something Rich and Sratge": Calihani Thearicrrl
Met,rmorphoses,'SlO, 36 (1985), 390..405, e$p^ p, 390,
32. Erlich, 'Shakespenre's Colonial Artretrrphr:r,'p.49; Paul Brown" p.,{8,
33. Even St. Paul in his travels (echoed in rhe play) met narives who - Iike Caliban *
thought hin: a god.
34. Hu me produees as evidence aliainst Shakespeare these four lvords fi orn the cast list,
whiclr Shakespeare may $r r:ray nrx hal"e wricen ('Hrirricanes in the Caribhees,'
p. / L).
3i. AXdenT.Vauglron,'Shakespeare'sltdran:1'heAmericonizationo{Caliban,'sc;,39
8&
 FRot4 'DlscouRsE AND THE INDIVIDUAL: THE CAst oF CoLoNtALlsl'l lN IHE fEiMPEsr'
(198 S l, 13 7-.53. He argucs ihat the intention miscartied not only at the trme brit also
ior rhe three centuries-following;, Hc adds, 'Rarther, fr<im rhe Restoratiou until the
iate 1 890s, Caiibarr appeared on stage atd in critical litetature os almost everything
but an Indian'(p. 138).
36. Hulme, white noting Calihan's 'anomalous naturel' sees the anonaly as yet another
colonialist strategy,-'lrr ideological terms IC]rliban is] a comprornise {ortnation and
one achieved, liki all such fonnations, only el rhe expense of distortion elsewhere'
('Hurricanes in rhe Caribhces,' pp. 71. 72)' This begs lhe qtlestion: Caliban can only
ire a 'discortion' if he is intended to represent someone. But that is preciseiy the
quesdon - is he lneant ro represent a Native American? sidney Lee noted that
Cnlihan's nrcthod of building dams for fish reproduccs the indirns'; though he is
often cited by later writers as an autlroriry on the re$enrblunce, tl]e rcst.of.his
evidence i,s not convincing ('The Call of tlle West: America and Elizabethan
England,'E/lr,rbethatr atd()ther Essal,s,ed. h-rederick S. Boas [Oxford: Clarendon
Pre"ss, 19291, pp. 26-1-101 ). G"
lffilson Knight has an impressionistic essay about the
relationship Calihan and Incliaus ('Caliban as Red Man' [1977] in
ir.t*e.u
Philip F,dw'rrds, Inga-Stina }iwhank, and G' K. Hunter
Shahestrtelt:e's StryIes, ecls.
[London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980])- HuLne,lists Crliban's resemhlances to
batibs ('H,rticaneiin the Cariblrees'), and Kerruode cites details taken from natives
visited during both the OId rnd the New World loyages'
.:17. The Irrdians riho would appe.rr irr Chepm.rn's 1613 masque wuuld be fully equrpped
with fearhers. See R" R. Cawley, TDe Voyagers and P)livbethan Draarrr (Roston: D'
C. Heath; Londr:n; Oxlord Univ, Fress, 1938), p, 359, and Orgel, 'Shakespeare and
tire Lannihals,' PP. 4a,47.
38. Shakespeare hacl apparcntly read up otl his monstets (R^ R. (lawlcl', 'Shakspere's
Use ofihe Voyageii'p^ 723, and Frey, passirn), lrut he picked up thc stcreotypet
only to play rvrth them ostentstiously (in Stephano's ancl Trinculo's ntany
discreditei guesses about Caliban's idcntiry) or to leAve thetn hilnging (in [rospero's
identification of Calihan os'dsvil'),
39" Hulme, 'Hurricanes in the Caribbees,' p. 74^
40. Lemmrng (n. I, ahore), pp.98-99.
41. Lamming, p. 971 Erlich, p. 49.
42. The olarl'also s"e-s a,ii-cotronialist b*cause it includes the comic section$ with
Stephano and Trjnculo, which show colonialism to be ^nakedly avaricious,
proirteering, perhaps even pointless'; but rhis too can be seen as a rationalizalion:
iThi, lo* itrsion of colonialis,r sstves to displace possiblv danaging charges ' ' '
agaitst ptoperly-corlsti$red civil authoriry on to tlre alrearly excremental products
oi cirrility, fhe r:rasterless' (Paul Brown, p. 65).
43.Creenblatt,'Le+rningtoCurse,'pp.570*71iLeininger(*.1,ahove).pp,126-17.
44. I-einincer. n. 127,
+-5. ,{s Fi€Alei's book rntplics (n. 9, above), she.is tress like an'thing.American than like
the Frenchrvon':.*n Joan of Arc, who also ried to save herself from the larv by
clairning s}le *oo lo"grant nith * bastard; Joan sinrply rvasfl'I as suceessful lsee
pp.
-See 4-1-8L, esp"
p. 77),
45. Brockhant, i. 1::. Evea these details can be discou,ted as rationaliEations, of
c,:urse. Paul Brown, fcrr exrmple, explaitrs Sycorax's preseilce as a r&tiolaliz$tion:
bv degracling her black magic, he argues, Shakespeare makes,Prospero seem better
than fe is (pp, 50-611, Hulme n,rtes that Sycorax may be Prospero's invention,
'f,ttc,tuitets, itro, ** never see
pointiug,ur any direcl evicience th*t she rr'as present (Co/o4i,?l
p. 1 1-5 ), Orgel links Caliban's claims r:f legitinracy by birth to Jarnes I's
cltims ('Prospero's Wife,' pp.'58*59).
47, See Fiedler, p. 205,
48. Erlich, 'shakespeare's Colonial Metaphor,'p. 63,
49, The trend, moriover, ls to nrnve away irom anthropomorphic terms like 'repression'
or 'censorship,' themselves inherited from the politicrrl ternrinology on rvhich Freru{
B9
MEBEDITH ANNE SKURA
drew for his own. Like the vocahulary of'scientific' hydraulica on which Freud also
drew for his notions of libido flowing and damming ilp, lhe older rerms are being
replaced by ecutemporary tetminologies more approptiate to describing a conflict
among meilniflgs or interpretationr, rather than between anthropornorphized f<rrces
engaged in a sirnple struggle'for' anel'egainst.'
50. Spaniards, he writeg, 'taught their Hounds, fierce Dogs, to teare [the Indians] in
peeces' (A briefe Natation of the destrttction ctf the Indias by the Spaniard,s 11"542
(?)1, Sanruel Pr.rrchas, Putcbas l{is Pilgriwe,s,20 r'ols, [Glasgowr Maclehose and
Sons, 1905-1 907j, Vol. xvlt,, 91 i. This was apparently ar conrmon topos, found also
in Eden's translation of Peter Martyr's l)ecades of the Nerue llb.rlde (1555),
included iri Fldeu's Historie of Trauaile 17577), which Shakespeare read fr:r flre
Tewpesl. It was also used by Greene and Deloney (Cawley, Voyngers nnd
Eliza bet.han Drarna, pp. 3 8 3-84),
51. Hulme,'Lluricanes in the Caribbees,' pp, 63-56; see also Orgel on this'New \Sorld
topos' in 'Shakespeare arrd the Cnnnihals,'pp. 4t*44.
52. Neither was ]t,lontaigne*s in the essay that has been taken as a sriurce for the play.
Scholars are still debating about N,Iontaigne'E attitude towarc'l cannibals, though:rll
agree that his critical atritude toward E*rropeitns rsas clerrr in the essay,
.53. This blend of Old and New World characteristics, earlier seen as characteristic oI
New Vorld discourse, is acknowledged .in many of rhe revisionist studies trut is seen
as one of the rhetorrcal srrilttsgies used ro control Indians.
54. Williarr Strach[e]y, 'A true reportorie ...,' Purchas, Vol. -ttfi, p, 62. For the citatior,
of Purchas as colonialist, see Hulme, 'Hurricanes in the Caribbees,' p, 78, n, 21.
55, Paul Brown, p, 64.
56. This is an entireLy separ*te question from another that one might ask: How
comparahle were Purchas's renrarks, taken from the collecrir:n of travelcrs'tales
wh,ich he etlited, censored, and useci to sr.rpporI his colonialisr idealn on the one lrand,
and a play, on rhe otlrcr? ln Purcbas, Richrrrcl lr4ariensrras argrres,'rhe mulriplicity
of interpretationri modullrres mrcl reinforces n single ideological system, The sanre
can certainly not be said o{l,, The Tempest' \Netu perspcctittes oil the
Shrrhespenretrn uorld, nans. Janet Lloyd lCarnbrid.ge: Carnbridge lJniv. Press,
1985j, p. 169), Thil entire book. which devotes a chapter ro Tht Tetrpest, is an
excellent study of'certain aspectr of Elizabethan ideology and .. , the way these are
r.rsed in S[rakespeare' (p. 1)"
57. SeePechter(n.4,above).Thiskindof'condition,'heargues,isreallyaprecoudition
in the sense that it is as$umed to be logically (if not chronologic*lly) prior, It is
essurned io have the kind of explanator.y Fower rhat'the Illizabethan world view'
wrs once accorded \p.?97]r.
58. See, for exrrmple, the follorving conternporary racts reprinted inTtncts lnd Ather
Papers Relating Principilly to the A":,gi,i, Settlernent, and Preryress of .., North
America, ed. Peter Force,4 vols. (1835*47; rpl. Nery York: Petet Smith, 1947)r R.
l.,oNaud Britanir: 0FFiRING r,rosT Excellent frnites by Plianring lN VIRGINH. Exciting
all such as be well affected to further the same' (1509), Vol, 1, No. 6; 'Virginia
richly valued' (1609), Vol. 4, No. 1l 'A TRvr DECr.AriATloN of tho esrare of rhe
Coionie in Virgirria, With a confutation ofsuch scandalotrs reports a$ haue rended
to the disgrace of so rvorthy an entcrprise' (1610), Vol, 3, No. 1i Sil. Jourdan, ',r,
ITLAINH DESCRTPTTON 0r TFlli IIARr\4'{DA5, NQW CAI"I.ED 5o1!,1\{ER Il,ANl.}st (1613), \Io1, 3,
No. 3.
In Tlre Geruesr'.r of tbe Uniteel S/ares, ed, Alexander Brown" 2 vols. (Nerv York;
Russeltr &r Russell, 1964), see nlso: Robert GrAy,'AGoOD SPErp to Virginia' (1609),
Vol. 1, 293-302; 'A Ttue and Sirrcere declaration r:f the purpose and ends of the
Pldnttt.tion begun in Virginia ol the degrees whiqh it hath received; and me.rlnes by
uthich it bath beene advs.nced: and tl:e , .. cotrcb*sion r:f FIs Malesries Cowtcel ot
tlrat Clolory .. . until by the mercies of coo it shall rctribute a ffiitfii baruest to the
Kingdome of heaueq and this Coffitnort-Weilth'(1609], Vol^ 1,337-5i;'A
90

FRoN 'DrscouRsE AND THE INDtvIDUAL: THE CASE oF CoLoNlALlsM lN IHE IE44PEsl"
Publication bv the Counsell oI Virginea, touching rhe Planration there' { 1609), Vol.
1, 354-56; R. Rich, 'NE$,rsl.Roi\.I vlRclNlA. rHElosrrLtlcKETRIUMPI-I{Nf . ".' (15i0},
vol. 1,420-25.
59. 'A Trve Deciaration,'p. 6.
60. Alexander Browr, in The Genesis of the lJnited Slc/es, reprints extracts from the
following perrinenr documents, Villiam Symonds, 'vlliGlNlAr A SER:\,IoN IREACHEn ?\T
$HrrE cHAppEL . . .' (1609), Vol, !, 2&2*9lt Daniel Pric',e, 'SAVLIS I',ROHtBITION STAIDE
. . . And to the Inditemelt of trll rhrt persecute Christ with a reproofe of those that
traduce the Honourable flantation of Virginia' (1609), Vol. 1, 312-16; and, most
inlportant, Iflilliam ():asharu's srerrnon trtled 'A New-yeeres Gifr to Virginea,' and
preached, es the title page annouuced, before 'l"ord Lt ITirme Lord Gr:vernour and
Captaine Generall of Virginin, and others of [the] Counsell ,. " At the stid Lord
Cenerall his . ,, depnrture for Virgincrr . .. \Yherein both the lawtulnesses oJ that
action is maintained and the necessity tlrereof is also demr.rnstrated, not so much out
of rhe grorrnds o{ Police, as of Flumanity, Equity and Christianity' (1610), Vol, I,
360-75.
61. In Alexander Brown, see'rViili'am Crasharv tor two of these re(erences (in'A Nerv-
yeeres Gift ti: Virginea'[1610j, and'Epistle Dedicrtory'to Alexandcr \(lhitaker"s
'Good Nerues irom Yirginia' 116131" Vol, 2, 611-20); and see Ralphc Hanror in A
'krrc l)iseaurse of tbe Ptesent Esttte ttf Virginen \16151. Virgiuia Sttte Librar,r
Putrlications, No. 3 (Richmoncil Virginia State Library, 1957),
62. Pa- 16. 17.
51. ffr the gener.rl history of the period, see David Beers Quinn. b:,ngland. ant! the
Discoueiy af Anerica, 1481-1620 (Ncw York: Alfrcd A' Knopf, 1974); Alexander
Browu"s Geness identifies similnr shi{ting rnotives in the }ristory of colonization'
Such voyages were rnade famous by often-repri,nted ilccorillts' especially in
coliections by Riclrard Eden and Richard Hakluyt, both of whose anthoiogies
Shakespearr would consult for The Tempest. In the introductorl' material in tirese
collecrions, as in the voyages themseh'es, the self'interest is obrious hut so mixed
rvith excitement and utopian hopes, and so focused on cotrrpetition rvith 5pain, that
the issue of reiation to indians rvas dwarfed by cornparison.
64. If he clidn't succeed in establishing ir settlement, he wrruld lose liis patent. His
interest in the patent rather than the colotty rvas shown by his apparenr negligence in
serrching fqr his lost colony (Quinn, n. 53, above, p. 300). He cr:ulel hold onto hrs
prtcnt only sn long as there was hope that the colonists rtere srill aiive; clea::ly the
hope u,.rs worth more to Rrleigh than the colon;-.
6i. trlitthew P. Andreu,s, The Soul o/a.iYationr The Fottnding of Yitgiila ttnd *se
Proiectionof Nerl,Englrrlr/ (Nerv York: Scribner's, 1943), p, 125' r\n entire popular
literature developed, so ilucir so that the Archbishop of York cornplnined that 'of
Virgirria rhere be so many tncrnres. divine, hrimnn, hisrorical, political, or calL thm
as 1-ou plense, as no further intelligence I dare desire' (quoted in Anrlrews, p 125).
66" lt is rhis issue rather than colonitiisrn that stimulatecl an eRrlier period of political
cosrmentirrl on the Nes, Worlcl marerinl it Tlee Tempesl: Charles ltt[, Cayley,
Shl'kespearc antl the Fowtders o|Liher4, hr Arteriu (Nerv York; lr'Incrnillan, 1917);
A. A. Ward, 'shakespeare and the makers oI Virginia,' Prorcediugs o{ the tsritish
Academy,g (1919); see also E. P, Kuhl.'Shakespeare ancl the founders ofAmericar
Th e Tem p est; P h il o I o gi cLtl Qnarrer ly, 41 (1?62), 123*ri6'
57. Contributing to rhe welter of contrtdictori' discourses was the Spani$h ilmbassa-
clor's flow oI letters to Spain insisting, nol irrationally, that the whole purpose ol
m&intaini$g a proiitless colont like Jamestorvn was to estrrblish a base for pirirte
raids again*t Spanish colonies.
68. Lettertir:rrrSouthamptontolheEarlolSnlishury,l5Decernberl609,inAlexarlder
Brown, Vo!. 1,356-57.
69. "I he qLiantity and qnality of the objections, lvhich have rlor on the whrile survir:ed,
has been iudged by the nfiture o{ the nrrrny cle{enses thought necessilry tQ answer
9l
MEREDITH ANNE SKURA
them. See notes 58, 60,51.
70. A practice that Shakespeare did n<lt adrnire iI Steph.ano and Trincnlo are any
indication.
71, As are the lwo monsters cited as possible prototypes for Caliban by Geof{rey
Brrllough Narrutiue dnd Drnmalic Sowces of ,\bokespeare, I vols. [New York;
Coluurbia Univ. Press, 195B1, Vol. 8, 240). There were exceptior:s, of course, as in
Gerrrge Fercy's Abserua.tions . . . of the Plantation of . . , Virgiria (16061, rn Pnrchas,
Vol. xviri, 403-i9.
72. See Karen Ordahl Kupperm an, Settling Vlith tbe Indians: Tbe Meeting of Enstisb
and Indian Cwltnres in Arnerica, 15 8A-1540 (Totowa, N"Jr F.ownran ;rnd Littlefield,
I980), pp. 127-29.Tbe origins nf this neady universal belief in Indian treachery are
of course mulriple, ranging from the reatliness of the English to project their fears
onto any available victim, rvhether Inclians or rnariners (rvho were arlso regularly
accused o{ treachery in these narrarives), to the prevailing stereotype$ of the Other,
to specific English acts of provocation, to the general tensions inherent in the
situarion. Without arguing for any one of these, I merely rvish to suggesr that the
notion of 'colonialist discourse' siruplifies a cornplex situ.rtion,
73. flven as prc,to-whrte meil) their skin as tanned rather than naturally black, etc. See
Kupperman, and Orgel, 'Shakespeare and the Cannibals-'
74. Greenblatt, in his study of the ways in which white men verbally 'colonialized'
Indians, discusses fhe dsgree to which rvhites nssumed that rhe hrdians had zo
languag;e, Altliough he notes that there were exceptions, he rnakes it sourid as if
tliese exceptions were rare and lvere largely cr:nfirred to the 'rough, iiliterate sea clog,
lrarerilg for gold trir]kets or a f:rraway bcach,' rather than to the 'capti]in$ or
lieutfnants whose accounts we reaci' ('Learning to Curse,' pp. 564*6.5). On the
contra.ry, even the earliest travelers hord often included glossaries of hrdian terms in
their reports (e.g,, the Glossary in the introductory material oI Ederr's translation i:f
Martyr's Duades 11555], as rvell irs in various later English reports reprinted in
Purcbas His Pilygtimes [162.i]); and in reading thrnugh Purchas's helter-skelter
collection, one is sfruck b), the number of writers who gralrt auto:natic respect to the
Indians'language, A possibiy figurative rather than liter:rl Iorce for comments on
the iridians' 'rvant o[ language' is suggested by Gabriel Archer's account of a X602
voyage, Here it is the English. not the Intlians, who are deficient in this rfspecf: thsy
'spake divers Christian words, and seerned to understand much nzore then *,e, for
\Yant of Languttge, could cornprehend' ('Relation of Captain Gosnold's voyage,'
Purchas, Vol. rlil,304, italics n:iue).
?5. See R. R. Cawley, \ialtagers and Elimltathnn l)mma, passim, and Linpathed Wters
Studils itl the befluence oI the Yayngers on Elir,ilbethan l-iteratare (Prinqeson, N..].:
Princeton Unir,. Press, 1940), pp^ 234-41. Neither of R. I{. Cawley's two books
irbout the vo;,agers' inlluence on contempornry E"nglish literature cites any pre-15I 1
passage of more than a ferv lines. It is true that ln the 1.5 8 0s Marlorve's plays took oi{
irr:rn the general s.-nse ol vtrsrnes:i and possibility openec-l up by vo.yage$ to the Neu,
as rvell ss ro the OId Vorld. In aeldition Drayton ]vrote rn 'Ode to the Virginia
Voyage,'perhaps expressly for the sertlers lsaving forJamestou'n in 1606; and one
line in Samuel Daniel's 'Musophilis'has a colonirilist rir:gr he speaks od \,entIing] the
treasure of our tongue . ,. 1" inrich unknowing Nations rvith our stores.' True, too,
that in rr quite different spir.it lonsorr, N,lrrston, ancl Ch;rpmirn collsborated jrr
Ettshuard Hr: (1605) to make lrrn clf galinnrs llocking to Virginia u,itir expectli.ir:ns
as great as th{rse bringing ioQlish victjms to Foce snd Subtle"s alchenic+l chimer0s.
But rvhile Marlorue Farticipates in the spirit of romantiq adr,enture associated tith
\royagillg and treasure-hunting, tnd Easnanrd.FIo siltiflzes it. neither deals at all
ivith the Nerv Workl or rvitlr tire New \X,'orld natir,es.
92