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Myths and Masks of 'Travelling': Colonial Migration and Slavery in

Shakespeare's Othello, The Sonnets and The Tempest
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Susan Arndt 22 ! " D O W N LO A D

SUSAN ARNDT

Myths and Masks of 'Travelling': Colonial Migration and Slavery in

Shakespeare's Othello, The Sonnets and The Tempest
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European colonialism and the transatlantic deportation of enslaved Africans gave rise to a
reconceptualisation of European notions of 'travelling'. 'Travelling' came to serve as a
euphemism for both Europe's slave-trading expeditions and the colonial appropriation of
inhabited territories. Correspondingly, both Europeans who migrated to and settled in the
colonial space as well as slave traders came to be known as travellers. In fact, some of
these Europeans, like Sir Martin Frobisher and Sir Walter Raleigh, generated a travel
literature that, just as much as Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness (1608) and John
Webster's The White Devil (1612) satisfied the European lust for the exotic and
popularised fantasies of the colonial 'Other' most appropriate to legitimise their ambitions
to capture and sell Africans. During this process, deportation turned Africans into
involuntary 'travellers' and forced migrants, thus leading to the formation of a complex
network of transcultural African diasporas in both the Americas and Europe.
These new dimensions of travelling Ð of colonially motivated migration and slavery Ð
found a critical commentator in the person of William Shakespeare. In particular, The
Sonnets, Othello and The Tempest address these different types of 'travellers', of migrants
and slaves, and the corresponding emerging processes of slavery, colonialism and racism.
As this paper will demonstrate, Othello and Shakespeare's Sonnets aestheticise the
presence of Black slaves and ex-slaves in Europe, whereas The Tempest presents the
colonial encounter of two migrant families Ð one coming from Algiers and one from
1
Naples. My analysis will deal with these works in reverse chronological order, starting
with The Tempest, followed by Othello and The Sonnets.

1. Challenging the White Traveller's Gaze. Colonial Discourse and The Tempest

1
Relying on critics such as Paul Gilroy (1993) and in accordance with Black emancipation
movements, I tend to apply 'Black' as a marker for all social positions which are faced with racial
'Othering', exclusion and discrimination conducted by whites. The capitalisation of 'Black' refers to
both, its being a construct and social position on the one hand and a product of Black intellectual,
academic and political resistance movements and processes of emancipation on the other.
Analogously, I use 'People of Colour' in capital letters. To emphasise that, S correspondingly,
USAN ARNDT
whiteness/white(s) is a construct and social position, too, I use italics as a marker.

Even though the word 'travel' appears only twice in The Tempest, it is this very motif that
weaves all strands of the plot together. After all, it is the journeys of the protagonists,
undertaken by each for their own reasons, that bring them together on the island. Both
Sycorax and Prospero are banished from their respective families and find refuge with
their children on an island, which they endeavour to rule. The play is ambiguous as to
whether the island's setting is in the Mediterranean or off the American coast. This
suggests that the island should be read as a synecdoche for colonial space Ð and that The
Tempest is to be analysed as a play that stages questions of colonial rule in the so-called
'New World', which had become urgent under the reign of James I.
Another indication of the centrality of travel in the colonial context is that Prospero's
brother Alonso, who forced Prospero into exile, undertakes a journey with his retinue in
order to wed his daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis. His decision to make his daughter
the Queen of Tunis highlights the Jacobean policy of uniting through marriage the British
royal house with other European dynasties, allegorically widening its scope to the
possibility of linking European and African royal dynasties. Both Prospero and Alonso's
entourage disapprove of this course of action. Their criticism appears to be substantiated
by the plot line insofar as it is this very journey necessitated by these marriage
arrangements which drives Alonso and his retinue into the hands of Prospero, who is
thirsting for revenge and power. This white resentment to a marriage between Europeans
and Africans seems to be discursively informed by the colonialist phobia of sexual
relationships and, even more so, of procreation between whites and non-whites. This
phobia also results in the rape fantasy with which Prospero libels Caliban. In as far as
Caliban dreams of appropriating Miranda to reign over both her body and the island,
Shakespeare's Tempest seems to be affirming fantasies nourished by an on-going colonial
2
discourse and emerging 'race' theories.
At the same time, however, Shakespeare transcends the mainstream discourse of his age
in a fascinating manner. On the one hand, he scrutinises the power relations that
determine the colonial encounter. The island is inhabited by Ariel, who is subordinated by
Sycorax upon her arrival. In as far as she has migrated from Algiers, she is commonly
perceived as a Black person or a Person of Colour. However, the marker that she is a
3
"blue-ey'd hag" (1.2.269) seems to contradict this assumption. In attempting to solve this
obvious inconsistency it has emerged as a dominant tendency in literary studies to read
Sycorax's blue eyes as a marker of other attributes than whiteness. Thus the commentary
in the Penguin edition, for example, states that this blue-eyedness refers to the fact that
she had "dark rings round the eyes" or was "sunken-eyed" (Penguin Popular Classics
2001: 100). Also, the German-English Reclam edition states: "Not the eyes, but the
eyelids are blue, which is read as a marker of her pregnancy" (Stratmann 1994, 160; cf. also

2
'Race' is used in single quotation marks, whenever these terms refer to categories of 'race theories';
writing it in italics (i.e. race) marks, however, that they are used in reference to social positions
M and/or
YTHS AND asManalytical
ASKS OFcategories.
'TRAVELLING ' 3
3
If not marked otherwise, I quote from Shakespeare 1987.

Kermode 1987: 27). Why, however, should Sycorax's blue eyes not be taken more
literally? Why should we not read them as markers of her whiteness. After all, the fact
that Caliban is positioned as a "freckl'd whelp" (1.2.283) and a "bastard" (5.1.273)
suggests that he is the child of a Black person and a white person, which, in turn, strongly
supports the idea that Sycorax may be read as a white woman, who had a sexual
relationship with a Black man in Algiers Ð from where she was banished, perhaps even
because of her interracial sexual encounter and the resulting pregnancy. Taking her to be
a white woman, the power struggle between Sycorax and Prospero seems to be a gendered
one rather than a racial one Ð and an allegorical allusion to the racing duel and wars
between European nations over colonial territories. The magic used by Prospero,
metaphorically designated by the power of his books, is a metaphor for the violence he
employs to overthrow Sycorax and to rule the island. Ultimately, the power that Prospero
wields over Sycorax, her Black migrant son Caliban and Ariel, who was born on the
island, in order to appropriate their knowledge and later their habitat reveals
Shakespeare's critical view of the intimate link between colonialism and acts of despotic
4
rule. In as far as Prospero ends Sycorax's mastery over Ariel only to make him his slave,
the colonial myth of the "white man's burden" (as popularised by Rudyard Kipling, 1899)
to protect indigenous people by creating 'protectorates' is being evoked and questioned.
Caliban, in turn, embodies the migrant slave, forced to serve under white migrants who,
like Prospero, prosper in the process.
On the other hand, The Tempest examines how fantasies of 'Othering', including the
accompanying patterns of rendering exotic and demonisation, are produced to legitimise
this despotic violence. In the character of Caliban Shakespeare personifies the "spectacle
of strangeness" (Newmann 1987, 154) as a characteristic component of the adventure and
travel literature of his age in order to challenge it. Caliban is repeatedly marked by topoi
such as monstrosity, cannibalism, beastlikeness and viciousness. We may be thus tempted
to believe that Shakespeare adopts the Elizabethan and Jacobean tendencies of staging
Blacks as monstrous villains who are incapable of employing language. What is important
in this respect, however, is that the mentioned attributes are invoked in speech sequences
of white characters only, while Caliban's speech and actions serve to undermine these
white attitudes. The following examples will illustrate this point.
Immediately prior to Caliban's first appearance, he is characterised by Prospero as a
"freckl'd whelp, hag born Ð not honour'd with/ A human shape" (1.2.282-3). When in their
first encounter on stage Prospero threatens Caliban with violence, the latter replies: "I
must eat my dinner" (1.2.332). At first glance, this answer seems to be incoherent and
thus apparently proves Caliban's inability to communicate with Prospero on equal terms.
His reply can, however, also be read as a form of resistance. After all, Caliban's answer

4
For a more profound analysis of gender and race in The Tempest and Othello, cf. Arndt, Susan (in
preparation). Mythen von Wei§sein und die britische Literatur. Der "Racial Turn" in der
Literaturwissenschaft .
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