Unit Links
Harpies Scene: Jason and the Argonauts
Secrets of the Dead: Magellan's Crossing (Check 25 minutes in.)
Background Notes for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (1610-1611)
By most accounts, this is Shakespeare’s final play, although he collaborated on Two Noble Kinsman with John Fletcher, which was published later. Although Shakespeare never made such designations, it is categorized as a Romance play.
Perhaps unusual for Shakespeare, it is a play that is tied historically to the era in which it is written. Like all Shakespeare’s plays it also transcends that era. Thematically, it questions ideals of revenge and forgiveness, power and conquest in a time where Europe came face to face with other civilizations unlike their own.
The play reflects some historical events of Shakespeare’s time: In 1610, an eye-witness account of a shipwreck was published by someone who survived it. William Strachey’s, A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, was an account of the wreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the island of Bermuda. The boat was sailing towards the new colony of Jamestown and likely went down in a hurricane. Many critics have made connections between this account and Shakespeare’s play due to some similarities in the way the boat sank and what happened to those who survived.Shakespeare also may have come upon a diary kept by Antonio Pigafetta, a sailor with Magellan’s fleet in the first voyage to circumnavigate the world. (Magellan himself did not make it back. Why name a GPS after him?) During the voyage, Magellan landed at the southern tip of South America and encountered people the Portuguese sailors called “Patagonians”. (“Big Foot”) Magellan took two of the men from this land on the boat with them so they could make money by displaying them in Europe, but they died in the voyage. Pigafetta had keener interest in their culture and language, and wrote down what he learned about them in his conversations with the men. One of them may have been
Shakespeare’s source for the character of Caliban in The Tempest. Setebos, whom Pigafetta reported was one of their gods, appears in The Tempest as the god of Caliban’s mother, Sycorax, who is portrayed negatively as someone who practices witchcraft. But then again, in the play, Prospero also practices witchcraft. Pigafetta later published a memoir called Relations of the First Round-the-World Trip (1536). This was translated into English and republished in 1555, in a text called Decades of the New World, and Shakespeare could have had access to it, or heard of it.
He would also have known of Fray Bartolome de las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published in English in 1583, which gave an eye witness account of the brutal violence against indigenous people in the West Indies by early Spanish colonists. This book was a widely-known source for propaganda used by other colonial countries against Spain, portraying the Spanish as excessively depraved and inhumane. (Who exactly is the savage?)
Shakespeare likely would have had exposure to a recent translation by John Florio (1603) of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, one of which is titled “Of the Cannibals”. Montaigne was a noted philosopher who had incredibly prescient insights into human society. You may have read some of his essays on education last year in AP Language and Composition? This essay states:
Now to returne to my purpose I finde (as farre as I have beene informed) there is nothing in that nation that is either barbarous or savage, unless men call that barbarisme which is not common to them. As indeed, we have no other ayme of truth and reason, than the example and Idea of the opinions and customes of the countrie we live in. There is ever perfect religion, perfect policie, perfect and compleat use of all things. They are even savage, as we call those fruits wilde which nature of her selfe and of her ordinarie progresse hath produced: whereas indeed, they are those which our selves have altered by our artificiall devices, and diverted from their common order, we should rather terme savage. In those are the true and most profitable vertues, and naturall properties most lively and vigorous, which in these we have bastardized, apphing them to the pleasure of our corrupted taste. And if notwithstanding, in divers fruits of those countries that were never tilled, we shall finde that in respect of ours they are most excellent, and as delicate unto our taste; there is no reason, art should gaine the point of honour of our great and puissant mother Nature. We have so much by our inventions surcharged the beauties and riches of her workes, that we have altogether overchoaked her: yet where ever her puritie shineth, she makes our vaine and frivolous enterprises wonderfully ashamed.
The play expresses universal human themes of coping with loss, forgiveness and redemption, but also touches on more historically timely ones of enslavement and colonization of other lands and other cultures. The European world opened up in 1492 when Columbus found his way to the West Indies. It wasn’t the first time Europeans were in the New World, nor were these the first European steps into the larger world. It was, however, the beginning of European exploitation of the New World, and the enslavement of Africans to accomplish it. These voyages weren’t meant to improve trade routes and commerce, but for conquest. And, watch this interesting PBS film regarding Columbus and cannibals!
The enslavement of African began in the 1500’s after Europeans realized that they would need a formidable force of human labor to farm the crops that would reap great profits in the Old World including tobacco and sugar cane, which was used primarily to make rum. Europeans were susceptible to tropical diseases and in times of economic prosperity, unwilling to leave family and home for brutal conditions in the New World. Columbus originally proposed the enslavement of Native Americans, but this population was particularly susceptible to European diseases to which they had little immunity. Frequently entire villages would succumb to ravages of these diseases. Moreover, Native Americans were on their own soil, and could run off into the wilderness they knew, within which they had skills to survive.
The play expresses universal human themes of coping with loss, forgiveness and redemption, but also touches on more historically timely ones of enslavement and colonization of other lands and other cultures. The European world opened up in 1492 when Columbus found his way to the West Indies. It wasn’t the first time Europeans were in the New World, nor were these the first European steps into the larger world. It was, however, the beginning of European exploitation of the New World, and the enslavement of Africans to accomplish it. These voyages weren’t meant to improve trade routes and commerce, but for conquest. And, watch this interesting PBS film regarding Columbus and cannibals!
The enslavement of African began in the 1500’s after Europeans realized that they would need a formidable force of human labor to farm the crops that would reap great profits in the Old World including tobacco and sugar cane, which was used primarily to make rum. Europeans were susceptible to tropical diseases and in times of economic prosperity, unwilling to leave family and home for brutal conditions in the New World. Columbus originally proposed the enslavement of Native Americans, but this population was particularly susceptible to European diseases to which they had little immunity. Frequently entire villages would succumb to ravages of these diseases. Moreover, Native Americans were on their own soil, and could run off into the wilderness they knew, within which they had skills to survive.
The proximity of Africa to Europe allowed transference of pathogens to ensure some immunity of European diseases to African natives. Africans were also more tolerant of tropical weather and diseases such as malaria. Taken from their homelands, from familiar fauna and flora, Africans were also unlikely to run off to an unknown wilderness where they could not survive.
Enslavement was quite irrationally justified by some Europeans, well into the 19th century, as an improvement for Africans, for Europeans saw their world as one of refined civilization; they saw their Christian faith as the only true way towards eternal life. In effect, however, it was neither concern for the lives of Africans, nor Christian teachings that motivated the slave trade: it was simple avarice. Human chattel would provide a main conduit for the vast increase in wealth and prosperity that fueled the Enlightenment and drove the Industrial Revolution that allowed Europe to become the center of the civilized world and the center of world power for centuries to come.
In reality, the mindset of the Christian ethic that governed Europe allowed Muslims and Jews to be viewed as heretical—people who followed the teachings of the one God of Abraham, but from the Christian perspective, flawed in the denial of Christ as redeemer. Indian and Asian societies, although not Christian, were governed by old and powerful civilizations, and provided goods such as teas, silks and spices that Europeans themselves had not the skill to produce but coveted, and could trade and profit from. In contrast, the indigenous populations of Africa and the New World were seen as little more than animals inhabiting the wilderness that was the devil’s domain in the philosophical perspective of Christian Europe. Thus, while Africa and its people were brutally forced into the story of the European conquest of the New World, it should not be forgotten that the economic power that this conquest engendered in Europe was fueled by the muscles and sinews of African slaves.
Enslavement was quite irrationally justified by some Europeans, well into the 19th century, as an improvement for Africans, for Europeans saw their world as one of refined civilization; they saw their Christian faith as the only true way towards eternal life. In effect, however, it was neither concern for the lives of Africans, nor Christian teachings that motivated the slave trade: it was simple avarice. Human chattel would provide a main conduit for the vast increase in wealth and prosperity that fueled the Enlightenment and drove the Industrial Revolution that allowed Europe to become the center of the civilized world and the center of world power for centuries to come.
In reality, the mindset of the Christian ethic that governed Europe allowed Muslims and Jews to be viewed as heretical—people who followed the teachings of the one God of Abraham, but from the Christian perspective, flawed in the denial of Christ as redeemer. Indian and Asian societies, although not Christian, were governed by old and powerful civilizations, and provided goods such as teas, silks and spices that Europeans themselves had not the skill to produce but coveted, and could trade and profit from. In contrast, the indigenous populations of Africa and the New World were seen as little more than animals inhabiting the wilderness that was the devil’s domain in the philosophical perspective of Christian Europe. Thus, while Africa and its people were brutally forced into the story of the European conquest of the New World, it should not be forgotten that the economic power that this conquest engendered in Europe was fueled by the muscles and sinews of African slaves.
Portugal and Spain, the superpowers of 17th century Europe, began the African slave trade in earnest, including to a Spanish colony in Florida in 1526 that would see a slave uprising and would fail. England imported slaves to Jamestown in 1619, with the understanding that they would be freed after seven years, as were other indentured white servants, who were mostly poverty stricken or societal outcasts such as orphans or petty criminals. Although these first kidnapped Africans were classed as indentured servants and freed after seven years, chattel slavery entered Virginia law in 1656. Irish immigrants brought slaves to Montserrat in 1651, and in 1655, slaves arrived in Belize.In Shakespeare’s play, both Caliban and Ariel are slaves to Prospero, but cast in different roles. Ariel is also someone who was previously imprisoned by Caliban’s mother, until Prospero frees him. As depicted in this play, his time of slavery is limited as an indentured servant. As you read the play, notice how the character of Caliban is portrayed: Does he seem to view himself as an equal to Prospero? How does Prospero treat him compared to how he treats Ariel? Analyze Prospero’s character: What is his hamartia? Note also motifs of conquest, usurpation and deposition that parallel Prospero’s own history and misuse of power -- magical, spiritual, intellectual or political. What does Prospero realize he must do to reconcile the conflict he faces in attempting to reconcile with his brother, the civilized world he comes from, the ungovernable forces of nature, and the wilderness world he has attempted to overcome?
The play raises moral questions about civilization and the conquest of the wilderness and the people who inhabit it that resonate for us even centuries later. Where lies the savage? Is the darkness of humanity something that the light of civilization cannot conquer? As with many of Shakespeare’s plays, a metaphor is drawn between art and life, in particular, the play and the act of living. Here, as Shakespeare’s final drama is set down, critics have drawn parallels between Prospero the magician and Shakespeare the impresario, both laying down their magic and understanding that “our little lives are rounded with a sleep”.
