The Tempest Context

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Recommended: Literary criticism of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's The Tempest presents ideas that have been deemed ahead of their time and at a first glance, there appears to be little more to this story than an exiled ruler and a shipwrecked crew. However, the many ways of interpreting this text vary greatly, and may rely on the context of the author to be related, where the text is found to be filled with intricacies and complex comments on society and reflections of the human experience. The first way this text may be interpreted is in a colonialist way, directly reflecting the new age of explorers, traversing into the New World, at the expense of the 'natives'. Shakespeare has used the characters of Caliban and Prospero to represent the colonised and coloniser , as well as all …show more content…

The Tempest also explores the fears and opportunities colonization creates - first shown by the blatant racism in Sebastian criticizing Alonso in allowing his daughter to marry an African. He claims that she was "lost to an African" (A2, S1, L118-122), documenting the intolerance and racism exposure to a new people brings. Gonzalo's speech is also important to note - reflecting a famous essay of the time, calling the natives in the Americas "noble savages", suggesting they are more civilised than the Europeans. Gonzalo is representing the ideas of those who saw colonisation as the creation of new societies to be experimented with, and his ideal civilisation is very similar to how the island looked before Prospero and his imprisonment arrived. The relationship between coloniser and colonised is expanded on, with Caliban being referred to as a "strange fish" (2.2.25), that could be brought back and be sold as a curiosity, reflecting the instinct by the Europeans to exploit the exotic plants and animals inhabiting the lands explored by European settlers. This is done again, with Stephano using alcohol to "tame" the beast that is Caliban, and by Caliban's belief that Stephano is some kind of god - a mistake commonly made by the natives on their European oppressors. From the moment these people set foot on the island, they were in hopes of exploiting the people, plants and wildlife and claiming it as their own under the guise of racial superiority, allowing this text to be read in a colonialist way when analysing the relationships between colonist and

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