The Tempest

The edition I got is from the Cambridge School Shakespare, edited by Rex Gibson. Along the main text, it contains lots of commentary explaining and summarizing it, but also discussing about related topics, and propositing activities if one were to act this play.

Plot

The tempest is a story about Propsero, who was the Duke of Milan. He got betrayed by his brother Antonio and exiled to some island with his daughter Miranda. The story beings with a ship with the king of Naples, Alonso, and several crew including Antonio is returning from Tunis after Alonso's daughter Claribel married the king.

There he freed some spirit, Ariel, which has been imprisoned by the witch Sycorax, who died leaving a wretched son, Caliban, behind. Prospero enslaves both Ariel and Caliban. He uses magic to wreck the ship where his enemies are, and separates the son of Alonso, Ferdinand, from the rest of the crew. He and Miranda fall in love. Prospero imprisons Ferdinand to test his love for Miranda.

The rest of the crew lands in another part of the island. Antonio plots with Sebastian on murdering king Alonso. Meanwhile two other members, Trinculo and Stephano, find Caliban. Stephano offers wine to Caliban, who takes Stephano as a god, and decides to be his slave. Caliban asks Stephano to kill Prospero and take Miranda as his wife.

Ferdinand passes Propsero's tests and he blesses the union between him and Miranda. In the end, the plan of Caliban and Stephano is foiled, Alonso repents, resigns all claims to Milan. Ariel is freed and Prospero becomes duke of Milan once more.

Thoughts

Overall I wasn’t able to appreciate the plot or the characters. I found did find some bits interesting:

New World

Caliban worships the god Setebos, also the name of a deity of the Tehuelche people of eastern Patagonia. Shakespare wrote the play around 1611, during which Europe started exploring the Americas, so he knew about the cultures being contacted by Europeans.

The whole setup of a remote tropical island with Caliban as a native is likely inspired by the discoveries of the New World. In fact, it’s possible it’s based on a real event in which a ship sailing to Virginia got stranded in Bermuda.

At some point Miranda exclaims: “O Brave New World”, which was then used as the name of the book by Huxley.

Utopia, Noble Savage

At some point one of the crew, Gonzalo, makes a suggestion of starting an utopian society where everything in shared. The book suggests this was inspired by Montaigne’s Cannibal, where he discusses the noble savage.

Colonialism

There’s allusion to colonialism in the roles of Prospero as the colonizer and Caliban (and Ariel) as the colonized.

The complex relationship between them, with Caliban (and Ariel to a lesser extent) resenting Prospero but also depending on them, was used as an analogy by Frances FitzGerald in Fire in the Lake. In fact the main reason I was interested in this book was to get a better cultural reference.