‘This Island’s Mine’
Appropriating The Tempest
‘The isle is full of noises…’
Kenneth Branagh as Isambard Kingdom Brunel
at the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4As0e4de-rI&t=0h16m18s
‘Stop!’
Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill at the 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3sgRG5sPY&t=0h12m51s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3sgRG5sPY&t=0h15m0s
‘Look to the light…’
Ian McKellen as Prospero and Nicola Miles-Wildin as Miranda at the
2012 Paralympics Opening Ceremony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0etI3Dg6UiY&t=2h59m10s
The Tempest in context
The Tempest alludes to the shipwreck of the Sea Venture
on Bermuda (1609), which resulted in the crew and
passengers spending nine months in Bermuda, during
which time one faction attempted mutiny:
William Strachey’s ‘True Reportory of the Wracke, and
Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates’ (1610, pub. 1625);
Sylvester Jourdain’s A Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise
Called the Ile of Devils (1610);
Richard Rich’s Newes from Virginia: The Lost Flock
Triumphant (1610).
The Tempest in context
Shakespeare was writing, of course, during the early stages of Europe’s
colonisation of the Americas and large-scale exploitation Africa.
Stephen Greenblatt quotes the Requerimiento (1513), the document
drawn up by the Spanish to be read to “newly encountered peoples in
the New World”. These peoples were to be warned that in the instance
of any refusal to recognise the king and queen of Spain as their
legitimate rulers,
“[w]e shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make
slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their
Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall
do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not
obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and
we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your
fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who
come with us.” (1990: 29)
The Tempest in context
TRINCULO. Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this
fish painted, not a holiday-fool there but would give a piece of
silver. There would this monster make a man. Any strange beast
there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame
beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. (2.2.27-33)
When Sir Martin Frobisher sailed to the New World in 1576,
he brought back with him a captive, as “a sufficient witnesse
of the captaines farre and tedious travell towards the
unknowen parts of the world, as did well appeare by this
strange infidell, whose like was never seene, read, nor heard
of before, and whose language was neither knowen nor
understood of any” (quoted in Greenblatt 1990: 18).
The Tempest in context
The Italian historian Peter Martyr d’Anghiera wrote in 1516 that:
“They say there are certeyne wyld men whiche lyue in the caues
and dennes of the montaynes, contented onely with wilde fruites.
These men neuer vsed the companye of any other: nor wyll by
any meanes becoome tame. They lyue without any certaine
dwellynge places, and with owte tyllage or culturynge of the
grounde, as wee reade of them whiche in oulde tyme lyued in the
golden age. They say also that these men are withowte any
certaine language. They are sumtymes seene. But owre men haue
yet layde handes on none of them.” (quoted in Greenblatt 1990:
22)
There is a strong sense that European accounts of colonised
peoples were reflecting the fears and desires of the colonising
nations.
The Tempest in context
French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s essay ‘Of the
Cannibals’ (c. 1578 and trans. 1603) was about the
inhabitants of the New World, especially Brazil:
“It is a nation… that hath no kinde of traffike, no knowledge
of Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate,
nor of politike superioritie; no use of service, of riches or of
povertie; no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no
occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common, no
apparell but naturall, no manuring of lands, no use of wine,
corne, or mettle. The very words that import lying, falshood,
treason, dissimulations, covetousnes, envie, detraction, and
pardon, were never heard of amongst them.”
Shakespeare quotes Montaigne directly in Gonzalo’s
description of his Utopian vision for the island…
The Tempest in context
GONZALO. Had I plantation of this isle, my
lord – […]
And were the king on’t, what would I do?
[…]
I’ th’ commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things. For no kind of traffic
Would I admit, no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches,
poverty,
And use of service, none; contract,
succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too – but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty –
SEBASTIAN. (to Antonio) Yet he would be king
on’t.
ANTONIO. The latter end of his commonwealth
forgets the beginning.
GONZALO. (to Alonso) All things in common
nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour. Treason,
felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any
engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring
forth
Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
SEBASTIAN. (to Antonio) No marrying ’mong his
subjects?
ANTONIO. None, man, all idle: whores and
knaves.
GONZALO. (to Alonso) I would with such
perfection govern, sir,
T’excel the Golden Age. (2.1.149-74)
Language and empire
“…language is the perfect instrument of empire” (Antonio de
Nebrija, the bishop of Avila, quoted in Greenblatt 1990: 17)
Greenblatt quotes Samuel Daniel (1599): “What worlds in th’yet
unformed Occident / May come refin’d with th’accents that are
ours?”
MIRANDA. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst not learn, had that in’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with…
CALIBAN. 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! (1.2.357-67)
Language and empire
Caliban to Stefano in 3.2, on Prospero (moments before
the speech quoted at the start of this lecture):
CALIBAN. Remember
First to possess his books, for without them
He’s but a sot as I am, nor hath not
One spirit to command – they all do hate him
As rootedly as I. (3.2.92-6)
Caliban the colonised
Caliban = cannibal?
Moments before Caliban’s first appearance:
MIRANDA. ’Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.
PROSPERO. But as ’tis,
We cannot miss him. He does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices
That profit us. (1.2.311-15)
Caliban the colonised
CALIBAN. This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first,
Thou strok’st me and made much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in’t, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee,
And showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile –
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you;
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king, and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o’ th’ island. (1.2.333-46)
Caliban the colonised
CALIBAN. (to Stefano) I’ll show thee every fertile inch o’ th’
island;
And I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.
TRINCULO. By this light, a most perfidious and drunken
monster! When’s god’s asleep, he’ll rob his bottle.
CALIBAN. (to Stefano) I’ll kiss thy foot. I’ll swear myself thy
subject.
STEFANO. Come on then; down, and swear. (2.2.147-52)
Appropriating The Tempest:
The Enchanted Island (1667)
William Davenant and John Dryden’s adaptation, The Tempest,
or The Enchanted Island (1667), displaced Shakespeare’s play for
a century and a half, achieving almost annual revivals over
the first few decades of the 18th century.
Diana E. Henderson argues that it catered especially to its
largely aristocratic Restoration audience, understating the
Antonio/Sebastian political plot, and mocking “its nonaristocratic characters’ aspirations in a parody of
republicanism”:
“Trinculo and Stephano, joined by Mustacho and Ventoso,
quarrel as they attempt to challenge Prospero’s regime of
power, thus deflating the pretensions of less elevated citizens
to wield social authority.” (2003: 220)
Appropriating The Tempest:
The Enchanted Island (1667)
Michael Dobson, meanwhile, sees the adaptation as an
attempt to address the issue of power “primarily in terms of
patriarchal authority within the family”:
“The Enchanted Island sets out to prove, in a manner half way
between that of a court masque and a Royal Society
experiment, that patriarchal authority can be rationally
deduced from nature.” (1991: 99-100)
MIRANDA. …shortly we may chance to see that thing,
Which you have heard my Father call, a Man.
DORINDA. But what is that? for yet he never told me.
MIRANDA. I know no more than you: but I have heard
My Father say we Women were made for him.
[…]
Th’ effect of his great Art I long to see,
Which will perform as much as Magick can.
DORINDA. And I, methinks, more long to see a Man.
Appropriating The Tempest:
The Enchanted Island (1667)
“So thoroughgoing is The Enchanted Island in its emphasis on
gender that it virtually occludes Caliban altogether” (Dobson
1991: 101)
The Enchanted Island was itself revised into an opera by
Thomas Shadwell in 1674, and a parodic version by Thomas
Duffett called The Mock-Tempest (1674), which transferred the
action to Bridewell prison:
PROSPERO. Miranda, you must now leave this Tom-rigging, and learn
to behave yourself with a grandeur and state, befitting your
illustrious birth and quality. Thy father, Miranda, was 50 years ago a
man of great power, Duke of my Lord Mayor’s dog-kennel.
MIRANDA. O lo, why Father, Father, are not I Miranda Whiffe, sooth,
and arn’t you Prospero Whiffe, sooth, Keeper of Bridewell, my
Father?
18th century political Tempests
In the 18th century, argues Jonathan Bate, The Tempest
became a frequent point of reference for political
satirists:
“The enclosed ‘Enchanted Island,’ potentially a Utopia
but harbouring a rebellious faction consisting of a
monster and two upstart drunkards, becomes a favourite
image of England or of the realm of high politics.”
(1989: 6-7)
David Taylor explores some of these in his article ‘The
Disenchanted Island’ (2012)…
William Dent’s Reynard’s Hope, A Scene in the Tempest (1784)
This cartoon depicts Whig
leader Charles James Fox as
Stefano; the Prince of Wales
as Trinculo; and the recently
deposed prime minister Lord
North as Caliban.
PRINCE. Give me dear
woman – and give me good
wine –
And you may govern all things
else as thine.
FOX. Taffy – when the Island’s
ours – my brave Boy –
I – I’ll be King – and you shall
be Viceroy.
NORTH. My Jove, I’ll lick your
shoes & obey your nod,
And his, for sure he’s Bacchus,
the bloated God.
18th century political Tempests
Taylor explains:
“Dent’s casting of Fox as Stephano indexes his political
position. From their beginnings as a party in the 1670s, the
Whigs cohered around a determination to limit the power of
the crown and assert the authority of Parliament […] The
‘influence of the Crown’ was, Fox had exclaimed to the House
of Commons in 1781, the ‘one grand domestic evil, from
which all our other evils, foreign and domestic, had sprung.’
For his supporters, such rhetoric made Fox the ‘man of the
people’ […]; for his detractors, it suggested Fox’s hubristic
determination to appropriate the powers of the crown for
Parliament and himself.” (2012: 497)
In Isaac Cruikshank’s Prospero and Caliban in the Enchanted Island (1798), argues Taylor, “The Tempest
is no longer appropriated as a narrative of rebellion; rather, it offers, in the shape of Caliban, a
syntax of aberrance and powerlessness” (2012: 505-6).
Prospero on the Enchanted Island (1798)
“The need for a national
poet in times of revolution
and imperial war would
create new associations for
Shakespeare, and would lead
to new perceptions of The
Tempest. In political
engravings from the 1790s,
when Britain feared the
consequences of the French
Revolution and Napoleon’s
rise, “The Enchanted Island”
was no longer a utopian
fairyland or even a place for
comic jabs at social upstarts;
it became a label for England
itself, as John Bull looked out
at the French fleet
threatening invasion.”
(Henderson 2003: 221)
Caliban by the Yellow Sands
(1916)
Percy MacKaye’s Caliban by the Yellow
Sands was performed at Lewisohn
Stadium, New York, in 1916, for the
tercentenary anniversary of
Shakespeare’s death.
Henderson reports that it was
performed for crowds of 135,000
people over ten nights (2003: 224).
According to Brinda Charry, the
masque “tried to demonstrate how
Caliban, through education and
exposure to the gifts of Western
civilization, fights against his lust and
barbarism […] and becomes
civilized, like Prospero and Miranda”
(2013: 152).
Caliban by the Yellow Sands
(1916)
Caliban, explains Henderson, “is
‘educated’ by Prospero through the
process of watching scenes from
Western history and drama,
especially the works of Shakespeare.
However, he repeatedly backslides
into lust and violence – as when riled
by the ‘Once more unto the breach’
speech from Henry V – and must be
humbled into penitence” (2003:
225).
Caliban by the Yellow Sands was,
Henderson notes, “performed the
very spring that Woodrow Wilson
was being pushed vigorously towards
war with Germany” (2003: 225-6).
Postcolonial Tempests
Octave Mannoni’s Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of
Colonization (1950, trans. 1956) was enormously influential in
applying the play to a psychological study of the coloniser
and the colonised.
The book influenced, for example, Jonathan Miller’s 1970
production of the play for the Mermaid Theatre, in which
black actors were cast as both Ariel and Caliban (Norman
Beaton and Rudolph Walker respectively).
The production concluded with Walker’s Caliban furiously
shaking his fist at the departing colonisers, and Beaton’s flywhisk-carrying Ariel quietly repairing Prospero’s broken staff.
Une tempête (1969)
Martiniquan writer Aimé Césaire’s Une
tempête (A Tempest) was performed in
Tunisia in 1969.
“Césaire is especially inspired by
Negritude, a political movement whose
aim was to create a global black identity
based on origins in the African
continent and pride in black heritage.
[…] the central conflict is between
Prospero and a black Caliban, who is
definitely the heroic centre of the piece
and cast as the oppressed but defiant
slave and colonial subject.” (Charry
2013: 156)
Une tempête (1969)
Caliban’s entrance:
PROSPERO. (Calling) Caliban! Caliban! (He
sighs.)
Enter CALIBAN.
CALIBAN. Uhuru!
PROSPERO. What did you say?
CALIBAN. I said, Uhuru!
PROSPERO. Mumbling your native
language again! I’ve already told you, I
don’t like it.
[Note: ‘Uhuru’ means ‘freedom’ in
Swahili]
Une tempête (1969)
Césaire himself says of the play:
“I was trying to ‘de-mythify’ the tale. To me Prospero is the
complete totalitarian. I am always surprised when others
consider him the wise man who ‘forgives’. What is most
obvious, even in Shakespeare’s version, is the man’s absolute
will to power. Prospero is the man of cold reason, the man of
methodical conquest – in other words, a portrait of the
‘enlightened’ European. […] Caliban is the man who is still
close to his beginnings, whose link with the natural world has
not yet been broken. Caliban can still participate in a world of
marvels, whereas his master can merely ‘create’ them through
his acquired knowledge.” (quoted in Nixon 1987: 571)
Une tempête (1969)
As Rob Nixon notes, Césaire’s Caliban “christens
himself ‘X’ in a Black Muslim gesture that
commemorates his lost name, buried beneath layers of
colonial culture”:
“The play supposes, in sum, that Caribbean colonial
subjects can best fortify their revolt by reviving, wherever
possible, cultural forms dating back to before that
wracking sea-change which was the Middle Passage.”
(1987: 572)
Une tempête (1969)
“…from Caliban’s perspective Ariel is a colonial
collaborator, a political and cultural sellout who, aspiring
both to rid himself nonviolently of Prospero and to
emulate his values, is reduced to negotiating for liberty
from a position of powerlessness.” (Nixon 1987: 573)
ARIEL. I don’t believe in violence.
CALIBAN. What do you believe in, then? In cowardice? In giving
up? In kneeling and groveling? That’s it, someone strikes you on
the right cheek and you offer the left.
Une tempête (1969)
In semi-darkness Prospero appears, aged and weary. His gestures are stiff and
automatic, his speech weak and listless.
PROSPERO. Funny, for some time now, we’ve been invaded by opossums.
They’re everywhere … Peccaries, wild boar, all those unclean beasts!
But, above all, opossums. Oh, those eyes! And that hideous leer! You’d
swear the jungle wanted to invade the cave… But I’ll defend myself... I
will not let my work perish... (Roaring) I will defend civilization! (He fires
in all directions.) They’ve got what was coming to them … Now, this way,
I’ll have some peace for a blessed while … But it’s cold … Funny, the
climate’s changed … Cold on this island … Have to think about
making a fire … Ah well, my old Caliban, we’re the only two left on
this island, just you and me. You and me! You-me! Me-you! But what
the hell’s he up to? (Roaring) Caliban!
In the distance, above the sound of the surf and the mewing of birds, snatches of
Caliban’s song can be heard.
LIBERTY, OH-AY! LIBERTY!
The Tempest and gender
H. D.’s (Hilda Doolittle’s) poem ‘The Tempest’ in By Avon River
(1949):
I came home driven by The Tempest;
That was after the wedding-feast;
‘Twas a sweet marriage, we are told;
And she a paragon … who is now queen,
And the rarest that e’er came there;
We know little of the king’s fair daughter
Claribel; her father was Alonso,
King of Naples, her brother Ferdinand,
And we read later, in a voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis:
Claribel was outside all of this,
The Tempest came after they left her;
Read for yourself, Dramatis Personae.
[…]
Read through again, Dramatis Personae;
She is not there at all, but Claribel,
Claribel, the birds shrill, Claribel,
Claribel echoes from the rainbow-shell
I stooped just now to gather from the
sand.
The Tempest and gender
James R. Andreas cites Gloria Naylor’s novel Mama Day (1988) as one
of “the most thoroughgoing interrogations of Shakespeare’s highly
patriarchal text”:
“Mama Day systematically turns The Tempest upside down, putting women
on top and immigrant Natives fully in charge of the island. It displaces
Prospero with the character of Miranda, a Black ‘witch’ who converts
patriarchy to matriarchy … The novel both feminizes and ‘negrifies’ the
patriarchal story line of the play, replacing European characters with an
entirely African American cast and restoring the power over reproduction
usurped by Prospero to its proper source, women.” (Andreas 1999: 106)
Andreas’s essay describes the intertextual approach exemplified by
Naylor’s work as “signifying”:
“To signify in African and African American cultures is to improvise on a
given topos, narrative, or joke the way a jazz musician improvises on a
progression of chords, melodic structure, or spontaneous riff in the
previous musician’s solo… The function of signifying, like jazz
improvisation, is never to replicate or even simulate, but to complicate,
explicate, and recreate.” (Andreas 1999: 107)
Appropriating The Tempest
Terence Hawkes concludes his book That Shakespeherian Rag with
the suggestion that the Shakespearean text, like jazz music,
provides a site for “conflicting and often contradictory potential
interpretations, no one or group of which can claim ‘intrinsic’
primacy or ‘inherent’ authority” (1986: 117):
“For the jazz musician, the ‘text’ of a melody is a means, not an
end. Interpretation in that context is not parasitic but symbiotic in
its relationship with its object. Its role is not limited to the service,
or the revelation, or the celebration of the author’s/composer’s
art. Quite the reverse: interpretation constitutes the art of the jazz
musician.” (1986: 117–8)
It is an analogy which has been picked up in Shakespearean
scholarship more recently by Andrew James Hartley: “authentic”
Shakespeare is impossible, he argues, because “theatre, like jazz,
authorizes itself ” (2005: 61).
Which Shakespeare? Which Tempest?
Which Shakespeare? Which Tempest?
Gary Taylor concludes his study Reinventing Shakespeare by
comparing Shakespeare with a black hole:
“…Shakespeare himself no longer transmits visible light; his
stellar energies have been trapped within the gravity well of his
own reputation. We find in Shakespeare only what we bring to
him or what others have left behind; he gives us back our own
values. And it is no use pretending that some uniquely clever,
honest, and disciplined critic can find a technique, an angle,
that will enable us to lead a mass escape from this trap.” (1990:
411)
As Terence Hawkes put it rather more succinctly:
“Shakespeare doesn’t mean: we mean by Shakespeare.” (1992: 3)
References
Andreas, James R. (1999) ‘Signifin’ on The Tempest in Gloria Naylor’s Mama
Day’, in Christy Desmet & Robert Sawyer [eds] Shakespeare and Appropriation,
London & New York: Routledge, 103-118.
Bate, Jonathan (1989) Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism, 1730–
1830, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Charry, Brinda (2013) The Tempest: Language and Writing, London: Bloomsbury /
Arden Shakespeare.
Dobson, Michael (1991) ‘‘Remember/First to Possess his Books’: The
Appropriation of The Tempest, 1700-1800’, Shakespeare Survey 43, pp. 99-108
Greenblatt, Stephen (1990) Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture, New
York & London: Routledge.
Hartley, Andrew James (2005) The Shakespearean Dramaturg: A Theoretical and
Practical Guide, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
References
Hawkes, Terence (1986) That Shakespeherian Rag, London & New York:
Methuen.
Hawkes, Terence (1992) Meaning by Shakespeare, London & New York:
Routledge.
Henderson, Diana E. (2003) ‘The Tempest in Performance’, in Richard Dutton &
Jean E. Howard [eds] A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, Volume IV: The Poems,
Problem Comedies, Late Plays, Oxford: Blackwell, 216-39.
Nixon, Rob (1987) ‘Caribbean and African Appropriations of The Tempest’,
Critical Inquiry, 13: 3, 557-578.
Taylor, David Francis (2012) ‘The Disenchanted Island: A Political History of
The Tempest, 1760-1830’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 63: 4, 487-517.
Taylor, Gary (1990) Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration
to the Present, London: Hogarth.