the tempest imprisonment essay

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Hsc module a: 20/20 essay notes for the tempest and hagseed.

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• margaret atwood
• textual conversations
• the tempest
• william shakespeare

What is a textual conversation?

To truly understand what we are supposed to be looking out for in our critical evaluation of Hag-Seed and The Tempest , we refer to the rubric for Module A: Textual Conversations.

The rubric dictates that students are to explore how the “comparative study of texts can reveal resonances and dissonances between and within texts” and consider how the reimagining or reframing of certain facets of a text “ mirror[s], align[s] or collide[s] ” with the other text. Put simply, students are to consider the similarities and differences between the representation of “ values, assumptions or perspectives ” in the two texts to then impute a reasoning to why these aspects of the texts may mirror, align or collide with one another based on context, authorial perspective, audience and more.

The textual conversations between Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest , and Margaret Atwood’s modern appropriation of the tragicomedy , Hag-Seed , is a complex one. To really comprehend this conversation  we must consider how each text is influenced by the other, but is also a product of the composer’s context, values and perspective, ultimately shaping overall meaning.

How does context influence this textual conversation?

Context informs composers’ perspectives and so, shapes their purpose and meaning. As such, it is important to keep these social influences in the back of your mind as you navigate the textual conversations.

Some of Shakespeare’s contextual influences include:

• Renaissance Humanism vs Christian Providentialism

The growing prevalence of Renaissance Humanist ideals during Shakespeare’s composition of The Tempest espoused the outlook that individuals were capable of acting autonomously and were not following a predetermined path dictated by religious providence. This further fostered a climate of individuals seeking power, knowledge and new adventures. Shakespeare’s presents the nuances within these humanist ideologies through his portrayal of Prospero whose quest for knowledge and agency in creating his own destiny leads to his ethical and moral turpitude as explored further below.

• The Age of Discovery

The Tempest was written during a period when many great expeditions were undertaken by Europeans to colonise new lands. In that same period, Montaigne’s Of the Caniballes gained wide recognition following John Florio’s translation of it into English in 1603. The essay introduced the idea of cultural relativism: the concept that human behaviour is a product of culture and as such cannot be judged by those without this cultural context.

These endeavours to colonise the non-European world included the institution of European governance systems in conquered territories and often resulted in the unjust subjugation of native peoples to allow for the exploitation of their land. This is manifested in Shakespeare’s portrayal of how Prospero deems himself of greater civility and intelligence than the island native Caliban. He then enslaves and exploits the spirit as a means to his own selfish ends, serving as an allegorical parable for the intricacies in the implications of European Colonisation at the time.

• The Great Chain of Being and the Divine Rights of Kings

The Great Chain of Beings was the Elizabethan belief that there was distinct hierarchy from everything within the universe as dictates by God, and that monarchs were in power by divine mandate itself, and thus had the divine right to only be answerable to God. In alignment with this ideology, Shakespeare’s entire work is a quest to restore this hierarchical structure that was displaced by Antonio’s greed for power and Prospero’s own neglect for his duties as a ruler due to his preoccupation with his studies. As Prospero questions the failure of the Great Chain, he realises that to truly restore order they must all engage in introspection, repentance and forgiveness, in a true display of compassion.

Some of Atwood’s contextual influences include:

• High Incarceration Rates

At the time Atwood was composing her work, incarceration in the United States was the highest it had ever been since the early twentieth century. Furthermore, there was a stark disparity in the demographics of these incarcerated peoples where ethnic people of colour were disproportionately represented. Influenced by both the overwhelming incarceration in America, and Canada’s adoption of the Nova Scotia Restorative Justice System that challenged traditional adversarial justice, Atwood explores intricacies the inmates’ experiences as an alienated and marginalised collective.

• Shifting Social Paradigms

Atwood reflects the growing empowerment of females in modern society through her distinctly different representation of women in Hag-Seed . While in The Tempest , Miranda was characterised to be of innocent purity and passivity, Felix’s daughter is more empowered in her role as the catalyst of his ethical transformation. 

Concepts and Themes in the Textual Conversation

Pursuit of Revenge

Both texts ultimately expose the futility of revenge to provide emotional fulfilment and its incapacity to serve as a solution to resolve suffering and loss. Felix and Prospero are both motivated by revenge and as a result, neglect their moral obligations. Prospero is blinded by his desire to restore his position as prescribed by God’s Great Chain of Beings, but in exacting his revenge he is deceitful and cunning, in neglect of the Christian ideals of compassion and mercy. Similarly, Felix too falls prey to the corruption caused by his desire for vengeance against Sal and Tony.

Sample Topic Sentence:   In The Tempest , Shakespeare exposes how the sophisticated nexus between hubris and the inherent human desire for power and revenge leads to ethical turpitude and ultimately impedes individuals from achieving personal fulfilment.

Imprisonment

As Felix famously sums up that The Tempest is “ a play about prisons ”, the recurring motif of prisons is evident throughout both texts to the extent that Hag-Seed is quite literally set in a penitentiary centre.

The most salient interpretation of these prisons is both protagonists’ confinement within their obsessive pursuit for revenge. It is only when he forgives his enemies that Prospero is truly set free. We also see that individuals such as Caliban in The Tempest and the prisoners in Hag-Seed are imprisoned within society’s perception of them.

Ultimately, both composers advocate for empathy, compassion and forgiveness for individuals to break free of these internal shackles as further discussed below.

Compassion and Forgiveness for Reconciliation

Shakespeare presents the perils of an obsessive thirst for vengeance only to provide a solution for it through compassion and forgiveness. The Jacobean-Christian principle of unconditional forgiveness and divine absolution of sin underpin Shakespeare’s portrayal of how Prospero’s forgiveness and  renunciation of magic and his past grievances in “ this rough magic, I here abjure ”, are the key to his reconciliation. Through returning to the Christian ideals of compassion and forgiveness, Prospero manages to restore order.

While Atwood’s appropriation still asserts the enduring relevance of self-reflection and compassion for personal development, her postmodern secular context challenges Shakespeare’s representation of unconditional Christian clemency through the relative lack of reconciliation between Felix and his adversaries. Despite this distinction, Atwood does, in agreeance with The Tempest , propose the futility of seeking revenge through Felix’s confession after he exact his revenge through the hypophora “ Why does it feel like a letdown? ”.

Both texts didactically warn against the pursuit of vengeance yet explore reconciliation in distinct ways, reflective of their contextual influences.

Good vs Evil and the Alienation of the ‘Other’

Shakespeare represents the conflict between Renaissance Humanism and the predeterminism of Christian Providence through his portrayal of Prospero’s moral ambiguity. Prospero’s kindness towards Miranda and his altruistic reconciliation at the end of the play starkly contrast his cruel subjugation of Caliban and Ariel, and his shipwrecking of his enemies.

Alternatively, Shakespeare also explores the Christian Providence through his relatively one-sided judgement of Caliban to be the ‘evil spirit’ and Ariel as the ‘good spirit’. He presents how Prospero deems that Caliban, as Sycorax’s offspring, must be evil without hope for redemption. Ultimately Caliban is the alienated ‘other’ and his anger at his mistreatment drives his behaviour which ultimately, fulfils Prospero’s judgement of Caliban’s evil tendencies.

In contemporary society, this overly reductionist judgement of good and evil characters leads to incarcerated individuals struggling to reintegrate into society and being marginalised both within the system and after they complete their sentences. Reflective of this, Atwood presents the ethical depravity of individuals in power, such as Sal, and presents a more human side of the prisoners to challenge audiences’ assumptions about the personal characters of incarcerated individuals.

So, both composers blur the distinction between wholly altruistic or wholly corrupt motivations to challenge audiences’ assumptions about the prevalent perceptions of good and evil in their respective contexts.

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Exploring the themes of Imprisonment, Freedom and Authority in the Tempest.

Exploring the themes of Imprisonment, Freedom and Authority in the Tempest

In the Tempest you see a variety of themes set in many different contexts which develop further as the play progresses, many of the themes are based on what would have been current issues around the time the play was written.  However the strongest of these themes have to be Freedom, imprisonment and the Authority, which Shakespeare has decided specifically to highlight.  This is probably due to the fact that the Tempest was written in the early 17 th  Century, which is a period in time well known for the very powerful monarchy.  It is also during this era that Magicians were very high profile, and people in these times actually believed the magic they witnessed on stage and therefore in this play the audience would have believed the unrealistic elements and spellbinding scenes that take place. Such as Prospero having the ability to create the illusion of a storm to the sailors and having a spiritual slave.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of Imprisonment is “put into prison, confine”.  An overview of the play would be that only Ariel was imprisoned in the tree and Ferdinand in a prison, however an in depth look at the play shows that there are many other examples of confinement, be it physically or emotionally.  The definition of Freedom is “the condition of being free or unrestricted”, which we see only at the end of the play when Ariel is set free and Caliban is left alone.  Other examples of freedom are of being free of the island and in the Kings case, free of feeling guilty for exiling Prospero, an innocent man.  The definition of Authority is “the power or right to enforce obedience”, which is exactly what Prospero does throughout the play, he “enforces” people under his control.

It is in the very first scene where the sailors are being put through the storm where the theme of authority arises for the first time.  A complete role reversal occurs and the authority of the king and his men is almost completely taken away by the Boatswain.

“Good Boatswain, have care.  Where’s the master?  Play the men.”

“I pray now keep below.”

“Where’s the master boatswain?”

“Do you not hear him?  You mar our labour – keep your cabins.  You do assist the storm.”

Shakespeare has tried to emphasise that fact that although the king is regarded as the absolute power, when put in this situation he has no real power.  Which could also be seen as a criticism of society then, how they just do as they are told, without questioning the king.  Similarly in Act 5, Scene 1, where Prospero addresses the king a complete role reversal occurs again. Here the king asks Prospero for forgiveness which a King in these times, or even today would never have done because of the high power they had and because people in those times believed in the Divine Right of Kings.  This means that people thought the Monarch was chosen by God to take up his position on earth as the head of England.

“Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat thou pardon me my wrongs.”

Although both Prospero and the King remain powerful, there is one huge difference in their authority.  Whereas Prospero gains his power by scaring people through his magic, the king’s status is enough to make him as powerful as he is.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The theme of imprisonment is one that is highlighted throughout the play and from the very beginning, is the strongest theme.  It can be expressed in a variety of ways, such as Prospero and Miranda trapped on the island, or even the actual imprisonment of Ariel in a tree under Sycorax’s control.  The sailors being put through the storm can be seen as them being imprisoned on their boat, they are unable to go anywhere and are trapped on the boat.  However sleep is not a punishment it is seen as a relief, however the sleep the sailors are being put through could be seen as a punishment to them for forcefully being made to do something. This carries on for the duration of the play, when Ariel says to Propsero, “The mariners all under hatches stowed, whom, with charm joined to their suffered labour, I’ve left asleep.”, It proves the situation the sailors have been left in.  You can almost describe the sailors as being confined from the rest of the island by their own sleep.

Another element of this imprisonment is the fact that Prospero and Miranda are trapped on the island, they are unable to go anywhere else safely.  They were as good as given the death penalty when they were put on “a rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, nor tackle, sail, nor mast.”  But their arrival on the island cannot be seen as them being given their freedom, as they are restricted to the island, unable to go anywhere, like being given a prison sentence to life on the island.  Miranda does not, however see herself as being imprisoned, because that is how she had been brought up and would not have known any difference although in reality she is confined and deprived.  The further implications of this confinement to the island are clearly seen later on in Miranda’s remarks upon seeing Ferdinand for the first time.

“It carries a brave form.  But t’is a spirit…A thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.”, this is not because Ferdinand is so incredibly handsome, but because he is the first man, bar her father than Miranda can ever remember seeing, which means that any other human is going to be beautiful to her.  Similarly the implications of this entrapment on the island is visible in Prospero by his ever-growing sense of wanting power.  Following his banishment from his Dukedom he is reluctant to let go of Miranda to another man an in turn uses Ferdinand as his slave, showing he is unwilling to have another human being on the island without them under his authority.  Or this can be seen as the caring father scared for his confused teenage daughter to get hurt, as he probably well knows what it feels like to be betrayed or cheated by someone close to you, in Prospero’s case, Antonio.  

It is the love at first sight of Miranda and Ferdinand that demonstrates the themes of Authority and later, imprisonment.  The higher power of Prospero becomes clear again when he sets down the ground rules for Ferdinand and Miranda’s relationship to which Ferdinand begs,

“Might I but through my prison once a day behold this maid”.  This action of Prospero ‘s demonstrates his powerfulness and dominance over all other existence on the island. Unfortunately this also means the taking away of Ferdinand’s freedom, or in other words, his imprisonment.  Considering that Miranda should know all too well what her father is capable of it is surprising what she still does, and it shows a reverse in authority when she sneaks out to be with Ferdinand.  Although she may think she has the upper hand Prospero is all too aware of his daughter’s escapades behind his back, which shows his power on the island of knowing absolutely everything that is happening and where.  This is all thanks to his spiritual slave Ariel, whom Prospero uses as his spy.

The character Ariel plays a very important role in terms of the orders being carried out and causes nearly all of the illusions that baffle the sailors and the king’s party, he doesn’t however in the overall scheme of things have any real power.  His discontent in still being Prospero’s slave is also visible when Prospero asks, “What is’t thou cans’t demand?” to which Ariel replies “My Liberty”.  He is under the direct control of the all-mighty Prospero, to whom he must be eternally thankful for releasing him from his incarceration in the tree trunk, which leads to me Sycorax.  Sycorax was clearly was a very powerful figure on the island, whose evil and amoral leadership can only be compared to a wicked dictator. Her authority over everyone was however much more than that of Prospero, which is apparent in Ariel’s, words whenever the “foul, blue-eyed hag ” Sycorax is brought up.

“And for thou was a spirit too delicate to act her earthy and abhorred commands”.  A good description of the detestable tasks and inhumane expectations she had of Ariel.

This power clearly has had a lasting effect on Ariel, as he is very careful whenever he is addressed by Propsero or talking himself, this is evident in his very apologetic nature for daring to ask to be released.

“Pardon sir.  I will correspond to command and do my spiriting gently.”

Prospero generally greets Caliban and Ariel with the words 'slave' and 'servant'. Prospero calls Ariel the servant and rarely uses Ariel's name. Prospero also calls Ariel 'spirit'. It is quite apparent that Prospero feels that he owns Ariel, always calling Ariel 'My brave spirit' and 'Why that's my spirit' using 'my' in these sentences when he speaks to Ariel, showing possession. This is reflected in what Ariel calls Prospero - 'master'.

Another discontented character on the island is Caliban, the “freckled whelp, hag-born – not honoured with a human shape”, in Prospero’s own words.  He is clearly a very troubled character with much hatred for Prospero.  One of his grudges is that Prospero taught him how to speak.

“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”.

He feels he was better off not knowing how to speak as he feels it is no use to him because when he does talk, all he does is curse.  

His claim to the island is justified as it his mother who first arrived on the island, but it was taken away from him following his own actions.  He clearly has much affection for Miranda as he does not utter a single word against her, but perhaps he took his affection for her by trying to “violate” her.  

“Thou strok’dst me, and made much of me, would’st give me with berries with water in it, and here you sty me in this hard rock, whiles you keep from me the rest o’th’island.”, a true comment but well deserved, as Prospero explains,

“I have used thee, filth as thou art, with humane care, and lodged thee in mine own cell, til thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child.”

It is through very sharp, quick answering such as this that Prospero retains his dignity and holds Caliban at bay.

Prospero is obviously fonder of Ariel than he is of Caliban.  Prospero often slips in a kind or complementary word when speaking to Ariel, such as 'Spirit, fine spirit', Prospero however, only ever speaks to Caliban in a harsh and cruel way, the first greeting in the play to Caliban is 'Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself upon thy wicked dam, come forth'.

So it is not even like Prospero just commands Caliban, he has to go into the cruel detail of how much he dislikes him. 'You poisonous slave' not only is he a slave, but he is so disgusting that he is poisonous too. 'Got by the Devil himself upon the wicked dam' in this sentence, not only is Prospero saying that Caliban's father is the Devil himself, but he is also saying that his mother (the dam) is wicked and bad and the cruellest she could be. The cruelty that Prospero shows to Caliban may be because Prospero is revolted by Caliban, but it may also be because Prospero knows that he cannot treat Ariel in the same way as he treats Caliban as Ariel is the main source of Propspero’s power and he therefore wants to keep Ariel on his side. Prospero also congratulates Ariel when he has done something for Prospero. Prospero gives out compliments such as 'Spirit, fine spirit' and 'Delicate Ariel' whilst Caliban's efforts are often overlooked by Prospero.  This shows how both Ariel and Caliban are Imprisoned, and how Prospero has a great deal of authority over them.  This also shows however, that Propspero’s power is not complete without Ariel to do his magic and Caliban to do the menial tasks.

An example of how Prospero uses his power ruthlessly is when he summons the bird for the sake of frightening people and how he scares Caliban.  He uses his authority and power to create fear, and also protection, in the case of making the sailors sleep.

Caliban cannot be seen as a trustworthy character either.  His immense shallowness becomes apparent when he is easily bought over by Trinculo and Stephano to be their slave just by offering him alcohol.  This is meant to be a general criticism on mankind who, under the influence of alcohol, will do almost anything as long as they keep drinking, which is what Trinculo and Stephano do to Caliban

“That’s a brave God and, bears celestial liquor. I will kneel to him”, whereby he imprisons himself by offering to kneel to Stephano and treat him as his God and hands all of his authority over to Stephano.  This can be portrayed as another criticism by Shakespeare of the human race as a whole.  He is trying to say that although mankind will pledge their loyalty to one man or race, they can very easily be corrupted by other characters, in this case it is the alcohol that entices Caliban.  The corrupt and devious Caliban does not put a halt to his mischief there, he quickly sprints back to Prospero when he realises Prospero is aware of what has been going on, in an attempt to escape punishment.  He fails.  

Throughout the play there are numerous devious schemes and plotting which occurs.  The most scandalous of these plots is Antonio and Sebastian’s plan to murder the king.  This was all in the name of gaining all the authority and freedom from the king who Antonio suspected had no longer an heir to the throne.

“Draw together: and when I rear my hand, do you the like to fall it on Gonzalo”

Which again shows how corrupt the human race can be, as here Antonio, the King’s loyal friend and second in command and Prospero’s brother is plotting to kill his leader.  Just as Antonio plotted against Prospero to have him exiled out of Milan.

The theme of freedom only makes an appearance near the end of the play when Prospero allows Ferdinand and Miranda to be together.  However the bigger development is Prospero’s decision to let go of his magical powers and Ariel.

Finally Ariel gets his “liberty” which he had been working for since the day he started working for Prospero, the interesting thing is that Ariel had been through being enslavement by Sycorax, and to some extent Prospero and finally gained his Freedom and Authority over himself upon being released.

Prospero also felt he was being imprisoned by his magical powers and his ability to exert such a large amount of power over others, the snapping of his staff at the close of the play and removal of garments symbolises his freedom again.  The irony of it all is that the only thing Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano wanted was to be free, Prospero left his mark on them and his continual authority over them by making his phantom hounds haunt the three on the desolate isle forever.

In conclusion I would like to say that although Shakespeare discusses a variety of themes, devious plotting and dangerous scheming in the play, he ends it all on a happy note where everything is back in its rightful place. Ferdinand and Miranda as the King and Queen of Naples, Propsero back as the Duke of Milan, Ariel finally free, and Caliban Stephano and Trinculo left alone on the island serving their punishment.  This would have been to please his boss James 1 who would not have liked the audience to question having the monarchy from seeing what happens in the Tempest.

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Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University

PhD Candidate, McGill University

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Last winter, at the Studio Theatre at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto, Canadian actor Antoine Yared played Caliban in The Tempest . He stood, centre stage, looking out over the audience as he reassured his companions that the magic music of the island should not frighten them. He said:

“The isle is full of noises … that give delight and hurt not.”

But his face told the audience a different story — the story of a man heartbroken for what had been taken from him.

We chose Shakespeare’s The Tempest as the centrepiece for our “Playing for Free” workshop because the play has been entangled with the history of slavery and freedom in the west for over 400 years.

The Tempest tells the story of the Duke of Milan, Prospero, who many years before had come to the island with his infant daughter. Upon arriving, Prospero enslaved two of its inhabitants, Caliban and the spirit Ariel. The play follows three interconnecting plotlines: Prospero’s revenge plan against his enemies; how his daughter, Miranda, falls in love with the son of his chief enemy; and how Caliban plans to destroy Prospero and take back the island.

Many consider the play an allegory of European colonization , and throughout the centuries, Caliban’s character has featured prominently in arguments that defend or resist against colonialist tyranny.

The Tempest has also been interpreted as an allegory of liberation. The 20th-century writer Roberto Fernández Retamar declared that the insurgent Caliban spoke for the colonized peoples of the Americas. In 1993, a production by Robert Lepage in Montréal portrayed Caliban as a working-class punk-rocker in open rebellion against the elite Prospero.

The Tempest and religious conversion

In our workshop, we wanted to blend theatre and scholarship to understand how The Tempest could have been used by both European colonialists and also by advocates of resistance. We also wanted to understand how the play might still be relevant.

The workshop brought together four Stratford Festival actors, three student actors from the Ryerson Performance Program and Renaissance scholars from an international initiative dedicated to understanding how Shakespeare’s work helped create the world we live in now.

The artists and scholars worked for a day and a half toward the performance. We talked about the history of slavery and freedom, primarily by thinking about how Christian conversion had served colonization. Indeed conversion has been an instrument of domination in the Americas from 1492 and onwards into recent times .

Forced conversion haunts the play. But there is another kind of conversion in the play where characters achieve the freedom to be true to themselves.

Caliban: Searching for the Other

Prospero attempts to strip away Caliban’s dignity. Prospero forces him to remain “stied” in a hard rock. In the Ryerson performance, Antoine Yared playing Caliban chose his first moments on stage carefully. Rather than obeying Prospero’s commands to “come,” he walked past Prospero, his back turned in a sign of his rebellion. For Caliban, even the act of walking around the Island, his home, was now charged with submission or defiance.

When Caliban encountered the shipwrecked servants he would recruit as co-conspirators against Prospero and when one of them fed him liquor, Caliban thought he had at last come face to face with God. He said to the drunken servant:

“Hath thou not dropped from heaven? … I prithee be my god.”

The drunk Caliban began singing and shouting:

“Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom! Freedom!, high-day, freedom!”

But when the invisible Ariel began to make her magical music, the two servants quaked in terror. They knelt at Caliban’s feet. Caliban rose up — straight and fine like a young tree. He stood triumphantly over the two trembling servants. The music was something he knew well. It was nothing to be afraid of.

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, That if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.”

That was in rehearsal. But when Yared played Caliban in front of the audience, he changed the way he did the speech. His lines about the music of the island were no longer triumphant. They were something that could break your heart.

Yared’s Caliban was a man who had once been at one with the natural world, but who had been cast out and could only recapture some sense of the beauty of nature by dreaming. When he said, “I cried to dream again,” it was as if he were a man turning and turning, trying to find the beloved he had lost.

The workshop taught the actors, the scholars and the members of the audience how the play The Tempest , with its depiction of slavery, resistance and love might have challenged people of the past to see Caliban’s humanity and might also speak to audiences in the 21st century.

Yared’s Caliban left us with this urgent question. It was as if he were echoing Ariel and asking the audience:

“If you have eyes to see this suffering one, if you are human, your affections would become tender.”

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In Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Margaret Atwood’s retelling Hag-Seed , most of the characters spend time trapped in literal and metaphorical prisons . Shakespeare’s protagonist Prospero is trapped on a desert island after losing his kingdom in a coup; Atwood’s equivalent, Felix , exiles himself to a remote cabin after being fired from his job. However, the two men’s reactions to their imprisonment are starkly divergent. Prospero uses his magic powers to imprison others, entrapping and abusing the half-human monster Caliban who inhabited the island before him. On the other hand, when Felix takes a teaching job at a prison, he takes charge of a group of men who, like Caliban, have been demonized and exiled within their own society; he uses his power as a director to help them confront their pasts and to stage a revolt against the politicians who exploit prisoners for their own ends. Changing the role of her protagonist, Atwood gives the marginalized characters in her narrative their chance to speak, thus looking to a future of empowerment rather than a continuation of the cycle of incarceration.

In The Tempest , Prospero reacts to the loss of his kingdom by imprisoning the inhabitants of the desert island where he himself is trapped. When Prospero arrives on the island, it’s inhabited by a spirit named Ariel and Caliban, a half-human, half-monster being who claims to own the island. Prospero enslaves Caliban, forcing him to do chores and constantly describing him as inhuman and unworthy of better treatment. He also forces Ariel, who has magic powers, to do his bidding, although he releases him at the end of the play. It’s obvious that Prospero reacts to his own imprisonment by worsening the lives of those around him.

It’s probable that Prospero’s forcible domination of the island, and his campaign to dehumanize its original inhabitant, mirrors the relationship between European colonizers and natives of conquered territories. In this sense, the proliferation of imprisonment in The Tempest reflects anxiety about colonialism, which was becoming a phenomenon as Shakespeare wrote the play. While The Tempest at times presents Caliban’s grievances as legitimate and gives him some compelling speeches, it ultimately privileges Prospero over him and refrains from protesting too strongly at his plight.

Unlike Prospero, Felix reacts to his own imprisonment by helping to liberate others. While he’s often a self-centered character, Felix insists on emphasizing the prisoners’ humanity, treats them with dignity, and helps them stage a revolt against the politicians who have no respect for them. By staging Shakespeare’s political dramas within the prison, he helps the prisoners confront the traumatic pasts that led them to prison and prepares them to eventually build new lives. At the end of the novel, he’s helped secure an early release for one of the prisoners, 8Handz , and takes the young man under his wing during the period of reentry. Rather than perpetuating cycles of imprisonment as Prospero does, Felix works to undo them.

Importantly, the prisoners themselves identify deeply with Caliban; in their staging of The Tempest , they transform him from a victim of oppression into a symbol of empowerment. In many ways, the prisoners at Fletcher Correctional Center are much like Caliban: they’re demonized and marginalized by their society, especially the powerful politicians that occasionally descend to visit the prison. Atwood even strengthens this connection by suggesting that their current incarceration is the result of living within a society defined by its racist and colonialist past. Red Coyote , a Native Canadian prisoner, points out that Caliban was driven to villainy because he “got his land stole,” just as many prisoners turned to crime because of their disadvantaged social status.

At the end of the novel, a prisoner named Leggs presents a rap he’s written from the perspective of Caliban, in which he says he “ain’t gonna get on the back of the bus / and you can give your land right back to us!” The prisoners tie Caliban to the struggle of various marginalized groups for civil rights, making him a positive rather than a negative character. Ultimately, it’s their strong identification with Caliban that inspires them to revolt against the politicians visiting the prison to see their play—men who, in their exploitative and disrespectful attitude towards prisoners’ rights, have taken on the oppressive character that Prospero displays in the world of The Tempest .

Importantly, Prospero often derides Caliban with the pejorative “Hag-Seed,” meaning that he’s the son of a witch. Felix and the prisoners reclaim this word, employing it positively in the speeches they write about Caliban, and Atwood uses it for the title of her book. The transformation of the name from insult to acclamation reflects the novel’s shift towards active protest against mass incarceration and the oppressive social systems this phenomenon represents.

Imprisonment and Marginalization ThemeTracker

Imprisonment and Marginalization Quotes in Hag-Seed

By choosing this shack and the privations that would come with it, he would of course be sulking. He’d be hair-shirting himself, playing the flagellant, the hermit. Watch me suffer . He recognized his own act, an act with no audience but himself.

Your profanity, thinks Felix, has often been your whoreson hag-born progenitor of literacy. Along with your whoreson cigarettes, may the red plague rid them.

“Colonialism,” says 8Handz, who spent a lot of time on the Internet in his former life as a hacker. “Prospero thinks he’s so awesome and superior, he can put down what other people think.”

But my other name’s Hag-Seed, or that’s what he call me He call me a lotta names, he play me a lotta games He call me poison, a filth, a slave, He prison me up to make me behave, But I’m Hag-Seed!

Prisons are for incarceration and punishment, not for spurious attempts to educate those who cannot, by their very natures, be educated. What’s the quote? Nature versus nurture, something like that. Is it from a play?

“We could put them on show,” says TimEEz. “Gibbering lunatics. Street people. Addicts. Dregs of society. Always good for a laugh.”

You called me dirty, you called me a scum, You called me a criminal, a no-good bum, But you’re a white-collar crook, you been cookin’ the books, Rakin’ taxpayer money, we know what you took, So who’s more monstrous…than you?

Ain’t gonna any more lick your feet Or walk behind you on the street, Ain’t gonna get on the back of the bus, And you can give our land right back to us!

Prospero says to the audience, in effect, Unless you help me sail away, I’ll have to stay on the island – that is, he’ll be under an enchantment. He’ll be forced to re-enact his feelings of revenge, over and over. It would be like hell.

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A perfect storm: Margaret Atwood on rewriting Shakespeare’s Tempest

How do you update a play about a castaway sorcerer, a malevolent creature and an air spirit? Margaret Atwood on the prisoners, politicians and hackers who make up her modern day Tempest

W henever people ask me that inevitable question, “Who’s your favourite author?” I always say “Shakespeare”. There are some good reasons for that. First, so much of what we know about plots, characters, the stage, fairies and inventive swearwords comes from Shakespeare. Second, if you name a living author the other living authors will be mad at you because it isn’t them, but Shakespeare is conveniently dead.

Third, Shakespeare refuses to be boxed in. Not only do we know very little about what he really thought, felt and believed, but the plays themselves are elusive. Just when you think you’ve got a meaning nailed down, your interpretation melts like jelly and you’re left scratching your head. Maybe he’s deep, very deep. Or maybe he didn’t have a continuity editor. And Shakespeare will never turn up on a talkshow and be asked to explain himself, the lucky devil.

Shakespeare is infinitely interpretable. We’ve had a fascist Richard III , we’ve had a Canadian First Nations Macbeth , we’ve had a Tempest with a female Prospero called Prospera, starring Helen Mirren. In the 18th century they had a Tempest opera, which used only a third of Shakespeare’s original text. Caliban had a sister called Sycorax, Miranda had a sister called Dorinda, and there was an extra young man so Dorinda would have someone to marry.

People have been redoing Shakespeare for a long time, often with odd results. And I too have redone Shakespeare, also with odd results. In honour of his 400th anniversary the Hogarth Shakespeare project has invited a number of authors to choose a play and revisit it in the form of a prose novel. I chose The Tempest . It was my first choice, by miles. It contains a great many unanswered questions as well as several very complex characters, and the challenge of trying to answer the questions and tease out the complexities was part of the attraction.

I’d thought about The Tempest before, and written about it as well. In my book about writers and writing – called, oddly enough, On Writers and Writing – there’s a chapter on the artist as magician and/or impostor called “Prospero, the Wizard of Oz, Mephisto & Co”. All of these figures are illusionists, as artists are. And illusionists always have a dubious side to them. The Wizard of Oz is only pretending to be a real magician: really he’s a fraud. But the magic in The Tempest is real.

It is the story of a magician and former duke of Milan, Prospero, set afloat with his infant daughter Miranda after being deposed in a coup by his treacherous brother Antonio and Alonso, the king of Naples. They land on an island, already inhabited by a savage creature called Caliban, the son of a dead witch, Sycorax, and the air-spirit Ariel, who was imprisoned by Sycorax in a pine tree. Prospero at first befriends Caliban, but when the creature tries to rape Miranda, Prospero enslaves him with the aid of his magic.

When an auspicious star brings Prospero’s enemies within his reach 12 years later, he raises an illusory tempest with the aid of Ariel. His enemies, his one-time helper Gonzalo and Ferdinand, son of Alonso, end up on the island and are manipulated in various magical ways by Prospero, with the upshot that Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love and the enemies are entranced, tortured and, at length, forgiven.

Meanwhile, Caliban has joined two lowlifes, Trinculo and Stephano – a drunken butler and a jester – and the three of them plan to murder Prospero, but are punished by Prospero’s goblins. At the end, Ariel is set free, everyone sails off to Naples and Prospero steps out of his own play and asks to be released from it: perhaps the most puzzling ending to any Shakespeare play.

In On Writers and Writing , I wrote:

Prospero uses his arts – magic arts, arts of illusion – not just for entertainment, though he does some of that as well, but for the purposes of moral and social improvement. That being said, it must also be said that Prospero plays God. If you don’t happen to agree with him – as Caliban doesn’t – you’d call him a tyrant, as Caliban does. With a slight twist, Prospero might be the Grand Inquisitor, torturing people for their own good. You might also call him a usurper – he’s stolen the island from Caliban, just as his own brother has stolen the dukedom from him; and you might call him a sorcerer, as Caliban also terms him. We – the audience – are inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to see him as a benevolent despot. Or we are inclined most of the time. But Caliban is not without insight.

Add to that the fact that Prospero’s loss of his dukedom is largely his own fault – by his own admission, he neglected to take care of his realm, plunging himself into his magic studies instead and delegating his power to Antonio – and we find him altogether an ambiguous gentleman.

The first thing I did when starting this project was to reread the play. Then I read it again. Then I got my hands on all the films of it that I could find, and watched them. Then I read the play again.

Then came the usual episodes of panic and chaos: why had I foolishly agreed to write a book in this series? Why had I chosen The Tempest ? Really it was impossible! What was the modern-day equivalent of a magician marooned on an island for 12 years with a now adolescent daughter? You couldn’t write that straight: all the islands are known, there are satellites now, they would have been rescued by a helicopter in no time flat. And what about the flying air spirit? And the Caliban figure?

Calm, calm, I told myself. I read the play again, this time backwards. The last three words Prospero says are “Set me free.” But free from what? In what has he been imprisoned?

I started counting up the prisons and imprisonments in the book. There are a lot of them. In fact, every one of the characters is constrained at some point in the play. This was suggestive. The play is about illusions: magic is the only weapon Prospero has. And it is about vengeance versus mercy, as in so many of Shakespeare’s plays. But it’s also about prisons. So I decided to set my novel in a prison.

Other questions quickly arose. Is Prospero’s island magical in itself? How to suggest that quality in a modern novel? Is the island a place of trial? Maybe both.

And the characters: is Prospero wise and kind, or a tetchy old crank? Is Miranda sweet and pure, or a more savvy, tougher girl who knows about wombs and abuses and vilifies Caliban? Is Caliban himself the Freudian id? Is he Natural Man? Is he a victim of colonial oppression, as he is frequently played these days? But what about his rapist tendencies? Is he bad by nature? Is he Prospero’s dark shadow? What does Prospero mean when he says of Caliban, at the end of the play, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine?” And by the way, who is Caliban’s father?

The Tempest is also a musical: it has more songs and dances and music in it than any other Shakespeare play. The main musician is Ariel, but Caliban also has musical talents. So I incorporated a lot of song and dance numbers in the novel.

But above all, The Tempest is a play about a producer/director/playwright putting on a play – namely, the action that takes place on the island, complete with special effects – that contains another play, the masque of the goddesses. Of all Shakespeare’s plays, this one is most obviously about plays, directing and acting.

How to do justice to all these elements in a modern novel? It was a huge challenge.

I called my novel Hag-Seed , which is one of the names used by Prospero when he is railing at Caliban, and Caliban is cursing him right back. Why name it after Caliban rather than Prospero? I won’t tell you that in advance, but there is a reason.

Hag-Seed is set in the year 2013, in Canada, in a region somewhat close to a town where there is an actual Shakespeare festival. It opens with a video of The Tempest that’s been made in a prison and is being watched by an unseen audience inside the prison. Act 1, Scene 1 – the actual tempest, with sailors running around and yelling – is in progress on screen, when suddenly there are sounds of a prison riot. Lockdown!

Cut to the backstory. (This is what Shakespeare gives us in Act 1, Scene 2.) Twelve years earlier, Felix Phillips, artistic director of the Makeshiweg theatre festival, was ousted from his position by Tony, his second in command, and Tony’s pal Sal O’Nally, a politician. In The Tempest , these characters are dukes and kings, but Canada does not have an overpopulation of those. The nearest equivalent to courtiers and influence-peddling and backroom deals is to be found in the world of federal politics.

Felix has been living in exile in a countryside shanty built into a hillside by 19th-century settlers – the closest I could get to Prospero’s “cave” or “cell” – modelled, incidentally, on a real shanty I know quite well. Shakespeare does not provide Prospero with an outhouse, but I’ve taken care of that for Felix.

In isolation, one can hear voices. Felix has come to half-believe that the spirit of his only beloved child, Miranda – who died at the age of three – is with him, and is now 15. To ease his solitude, he’s taken a position as a drama teacher at the Fletcher Correctional Institute, and has been putting on Shakespeare plays there. (Similar prison programmes do in fact exist, or have existed, in the UK, US and Italy as well as in Canada.)

When an “auspicious star” – here, a twinkly female character called Estelle, who has a lot of influence – brings Felix’s enemies within his reach, he stages The Tempest in his prison, thereby hoping to entrap them, enchant them, and get both his revenge and his old position back. He has the aid of a young hacker inmate, who uses digital technology to great effect: what is Ariel to Prospero but an extremely efficient special-effects man, especially good with virtual thunder and lightning, not to mention musical accompaniments? Since no prisoner wants to play a girl, Felix hires a female actor to play the part of Miranda. Meanwhile, the spirit-girl Miranda, fascinated with the play, decides to … but no spoilers!

As with The Tempest , at the end the action is projected into the future, as the inmate student actors submit their reports about what they think will happen to the main characters once they’re aboard the ship to Naples. Hint: it’s not all good. One of the questions that’s bothered me about The Tempest : why would Prospero, having been betrayed by his evil brother once – an evil brother who does not repent, even when he’s been forgiven – throw away his magic weapons and then climb onboard a ship with that very same evil brother? What might happen then?

Writing Hag-Seed was strangely invigorating, and also very informative. I now know what a pignut is: not a peanut, as I’d previously thought, but a vegetable with nodules on the underground stem. And, in a blinding flash of light, I discovered the answer to something that’s always bothered me. Why do Trinculo and Stephano go on and on about Caliban smelling like a fish? Are they just being bullies? No, came the shattering insight! Caliban smells like a fish because he’s the one who catches the fish for Prospero and Miranda. That’s what they’ve been eating for 12 years: fish, pignuts, and scamels, whatever they are. No bread, no butter, no pepper. And no wine – that’s why Caliban falls victim to the demon drink the first time he encounters it.

Oh, and marmosets. And jays’ nests. It’s basic. No wonder Prospero is in such a mad hurry to get back to Milan.

• Margaret Atwood
• William Shakespeare

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Comparative Essay – The Tempest & Hag-Seed Essay

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‘The Tempest’ and ‘Hag-Seed’ dialogically focus the reader on imprisonment. This is evident literally in the setting and the predicament of the characters but it also is a construct of the characters and their mindsets. To what extent do you agree with this statement? In your answer refer to your two prescribed texts ‘The Tempest’ and ‘Hag-Seed’

The complex and provocative amalgamation of the universal themes of revenge, tragedy, comedy and romance within Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ has inspired many modern authors, such as Margaret Atwood’s adaptation of this text, ‘Hag-seed’. Both texts explore the metaphorical and literal means of imprisonment. They also highlight the damaging consequences revenge can have on a person, and the rejuvenating effect forgiveness has, reflecting the importance of christian values during the elizabethan era. Power and control is interwoven into both texts, acting as the driving force for the characters to further their objectives. These prevalent themes in ‘The Tempest’ have been reshaped in ‘Hag-Seed’ to recapture the complex mindsets of these characters in a modern setting.

Imprisonment is a central theme evident in both texts, entrapping characters within their own mindsets or within their setting. In ‘Hag-Seed’, Felix imprisons both himself and Miranda within his thoughts, punishing himself, as well as attempting to make amends for Miranda’s death. “When she was eight, he taught her to play chess” Dramatic irony is used to convey the effect this self-imprisonment has on Felix, that without Miranda, he is slowly losing his sense of reality. The textual allusion draws the reader’s mind towards the Tempest, and Ferdinand’s love for Miranda. Except in this context, it’s alluding to the love Felix has for Miranda, so much so that he will imprison them both together, away from society.Prospero and Miranda have physically been imprisoned in an uninhabited island, yet Miranda has kept his mind free and sane. “O, a cherubin Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile Infused with a fortitude from heaven”. An asyndeton was used to emphasize the effect Miranda has had on his will to live. A hyperbole was used to convey that it is Miranda that has kept him grounded during their shared imprisonment on the island. An undiscovered island was used as their place of imprisonment to reflect the Age Of Exploration occurring in Europe during the 17th century, involving the audience further within the play. So while Miranda was the cause of Felix’s self-imprisonment, she was the cause of Prospero’s lack thereof. The cause of Prospero’s self – imprisonment is the detrimental resentment he holds towards Alonso, as well as the guilt he has of which the matter is unknown to the audience. “Let your indulgence set me free” The double entendre in this statement refers not only to Prospero’s letting go of the guilt that is keeping him imprisoned on the island, but also Shakespeare letting the audience go. He is asking the audience to free him from the burden of writing, but also for forgiveness for abandoning it. This line is echoed in Hag-Seed “What was he thinking – keeping her tethered to him all this time?… to the elements be free.” This textual allusion provides closure for Felix, similar to how it did for Prospero and Shakespeare. The motif of the elements within his Internal monologue was used to highlight the struggle Felix had to let both Miranda’s ghost and himself free. It is through reflection individuals are able to set themselves free from their own entrapment.

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Home Essay Examples Literature The Tempest

Textual Conversations In Hag-seed And The Tempest

• Category Literature
• Subcategory Plays
• Topic The Tempest

The concept of textual conversations is greatly explored throughout both Margaret Atwood’s Hag-seed and the text of its origins, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. One textual conversation that is evident in both texts is the idea of freedom and imprisonment, both metaphorical and literal. This is further explored through the main protagonists of Prospero from The Tempest and Felix from Hag-seed.

Within the texts of Hag-seed by Atwood and Shakespeare’s The Tempest forms of metaphorical and psychological imprisonment is represented through the protagonists of each text, Prospero from The Tempest and Felix from Hag-seed. One thing that both characters have in common is the way in which they are both restricted by their past trauma. For Prospero, he is imprisoned by the guilt that he feels for not being the leader his country deserved as well as the guilt and grief he feels for his daughter Miranda as they were both exiled when Antonio took over Prospero’s role as Duke of Milan. It can be seen in The Tempest that Prospero is blinded by the trauma he has experienced in his life, this later causes him to perceive his past actions as crimes and that he may have been deserving of the punishments that were placed upon him. In Atwood’s Hag-seed, Felix, the protagonist of the novel expresses various signs of his own personal imprisonment that may have been brought on by the trauma of losing both his wife and daughter as well as his job in the theatre. In the novel, it is clear that the more Felix begins to lose control the more confines himself by his past and finds comfort in his illusions. “Fool, he tells himself. She’s not here. She was never here. It was imagination and wishful thinking, nothing but that. Resign yourself. He can’t resign himself.” This is a quote from the novel, and it was spoken by the narrator. From this quote, the reader gains further insight into the psychological imprisonment that Felix put himself through as well as the way in which it caused him to experience hallucinations. This is done through the use of visual imagery.

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Within the texts of Hag-seed by Atwood and Shakespeare’s The Tempest forms of literal imprisonment are greatly expressed through the main protagonists Prospero and Felix. In Hag-seed literal imprisonment is expressed through the Fletcher correctional facility where Felix teaches Shakespeare to prisoners. The theme of imprisonment is enhanced by Atwood as the correctional facility is the main location or setting of the novel. This allows the

This facility is the equivalent to the ‘prison’ of The Tempest which is the enchanted island that Prospero and his daughter Miranda are exiled to.

The connective concept of Freedom is one that is widely explored throughout Margaret Atwood’s novel Hag-seed and William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. This is done once again through the protagonists in each text Felix and Prospero. In both the play and the novel Both Prospero and Felix gain a sense of freedom by letting go of their past griefs and moving on with their life. For Prospero, this is coming to terms with the fact that he wasn’t fulfilling his role as the Duke of Milan to the best of his ability. It is evident in the play that Prospero’s trauma and past grief blind him from acting consciously, which later causes him to feel guilt and perceive his actions both current and past, as crimes that deserving of the punishment, he received from his brother Antonio. “Unless I am relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults As you from crimes would be pardoned be Let your indulgence set me free.” This is a quote from Prospero in Act 5 of the play. During this part of the play, the audience becomes involved with Prospero’s ‘fate’ and are the ones who are asked to make the decision on whether he is worthy of freedom. However, for Felix, he becomes free by coming to terms with his past griefs, for example, the loss of both his wife and daughter as well as his job.

To conclude it is evident through an analysis of both William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Margaret Atwood’s Hag-seed that Atwood’s appropriation Shakespeare’s classic ‘tragic comedy’ “…is both remarkable in its awareness of its textual origins and remarkably original.” This is shown through the textual conversation and connective concept of imprisonment and freedom between the two texts and how it is explored through Prospero and Felix, the protagonists of each text. 

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The Tempest Themes: Freedom, Imprisonment and Authority

This essay sample on The Tempest Themes provides all necessary basic information on this matter, including the most common “for and against” arguments. Below are the introduction, body and conclusion parts of this essay.

In the Tempest you see a variety of themes set in many different contexts which develop further as the play progresses, many of the themes are based on what would have been current issues around the time the play was written. However the strongest of these themes have to be Freedom, imprisonment and the Authority, which Shakespeare has decided specifically to highlight.

This is probably due to the fact that the Tempest was written in the early 17th Century, which is a period in time well known for the very powerful monarchy.

It is also during this era that Magicians were very high profile, and people in these times actually believed the magic they witnessed on stage and therefore in this play the audience would have believed the unrealistic elements and spellbinding scenes that take place.

Such as Prospero having the ability to create the illusion of a storm to the sailors and having a spiritual slave. The Oxford Dictionary definition of Imprisonment is “put into prison, confine”.

An overview of the play would be that only Ariel was imprisoned in the tree and Ferdinand in a prison, however an in depth look at the play shows that there are many other examples of confinement, be it physically or emotionally. The definition of Freedom is “the condition of being free or unrestricted”, which we see only at the end of the play when Ariel is set free and Caliban is left alone.

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Other examples of freedom are of being free of the island and in the Kings case, free of feeling guilty for exiling Prospero, an innocent man.

Authority Theme in The Tempest

The definition of Authority is “the power or right to enforce obedience”, which is exactly what Prospero does throughout the play, he “enforces” people under his control. It is in the very first scene where the sailors are being put through the storm where the theme of authority arises for the first time. A complete role reversal occurs and the authority of the king and his men is almost completely taken away by the Boatswain. “Good Boatswain, have care. Where’s the master? Play the men. ” “I pray now keep below. ” “Where’s the master boatswain? ” “Do you not hear him? You mar our labour – keep your cabins.

You do assist the storm. ” Shakespeare has tried to emphasise that fact that although the king is regarded as the absolute power, when put in this situation he has no real power. Which could also be seen as a criticism of society then, how they just do as they are told, without questioning the king. Similarly in Act 5, Scene 1, where Prospero addresses the king a complete role reversal occurs again. Here the king asks Prospero for forgiveness which a King in these times, or even today would never have done because of the high power they had and because people in those times believed in the Divine Right of Kings.

This means that people thought the Monarch was chosen by God to take up his position on earth as the head of England. “Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat thou pardon me my wrongs. ” Although both Prospero and the King remain powerful, there is one huge difference in their authority. Whereas Prospero gains his power by scaring people through his magic, the king’s status is enough to make him as powerful as he is. The theme of imprisonment is one that is highlighted throughout the play and from the very beginning, is the strongest theme.

It can be expressed in a variety of ways, such as Prospero and Miranda trapped on the island, or even the actual imprisonment of Ariel in a tree under Sycorax’s control. The sailors being put through the storm can be seen as them being imprisoned on their boat, they are unable to go anywhere and are trapped on the boat. However sleep is not a punishment it is seen as a relief, however the sleep the sailors are being put through could be seen as a punishment to them for forcefully being made to do something.

This carries on for the duration of the play, when Ariel says to Propsero, “The mariners all under hatches stowed, whom, with charm joined to their suffered labour, I’ve left asleep. “, It proves the situation the sailors have been left in. You can almost describe the sailors as being confined from the rest of the island by their own sleep. Another element of this imprisonment is the fact that Prospero and Miranda are trapped on the island, they are unable to go anywhere else safely.

They were as good as given the death penalty when they were put on “a rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, nor tackle, sail, nor mast. ” But their arrival on the island cannot be seen as them being given their freedom, as they are restricted to the island, unable to go anywhere, like being given a prison sentence to life on the island. Miranda does not, however see herself as being imprisoned, because that is how she had been brought up and would not have known any difference although in reality she is confined and deprived.

The further implications of this confinement to the island are clearly seen later on in Miranda’s remarks upon seeing Ferdinand for the first time. “It carries a brave form. But t’is a spirit… A thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble. “, this is not because Ferdinand is so incredibly handsome, but because he is the first man, bar her father than Miranda can ever remember seeing, which means that any other human is going to be beautiful to her.

Similarly the implications of this entrapment on the island is visible in Prospero by his ever-growing sense of wanting power. Following his banishment from his Dukedom he is reluctant to let go of Miranda to another man an in turn uses Ferdinand as his slave, showing he is unwilling to have another human being on the island without them under his authority. Or this can be seen as the caring father scared for his confused teenage daughter to get hurt, as he probably well knows what it feels like to be betrayed or cheated by someone close to you, in Prospero’s case, Antonio.

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Colonialism and Shakespeare: A Critical Overview Of "The Tempest".

2018, Vidyasagar University

Colonialism and Shakespeare: A Critical Study of "The Tempest"

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arzu rahman

In this theses paper I tried to explore the postcolonial features in the play ‘The Tempest’ of William Shakespeare. This is my personal intention to prove that The Tempest by William Shakespeare plays an important role in the development of post-colonial literature and criticism. It was created in a moment when the colonial system was just beginning to come into being and that is now falling apart from us. I tried to investigate what the post-colonial writers and critics found in The Tempest evidence of a history of colonial context. Because my argument depends on the contention that The Tempest was created in a world where colonialism was coming into being. I explored the historical context surrounding the moment of the play’s creation , in spite of the contention of many historians and some literary critics to the contrary. After verifying and illustrating the historical roots of several popular themes in The Tempest that post-colonial writers have discussed , I turn to the work of writers and critics from the Third World to show how The Tempest plays a significant role in postcolonial studies. It is a matter of analyzing the issues such as subjugation, dominance and language in relation to power. It also discusses the complex relationship that exists between the master and slave. This text “Tempest” have dealt with each issue in its own way. Frantz Fanon‘s Black Skin White Mask , Edward Said‘s Orientalism, Peter Barry’s Beginning theory, Key Concepts Of Post-Colonial Studies and some more texts that I have studied in perspective of Post-Colonial view. I have been used these texts from Post-colonial perspective just for making my point of view a practical one. Except from these texts as primary sources I also took help from many journals, articles and other online resources that i have been used as secondary sources.

Farhana haque

Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' represented the emblem of colonialism, racism, and social hierarchy. Prospero's superlative attitudes have created the prevalent touch of suppression over the native people in the play The Tempest. He was the man to supress the inhabitants in the strange land which he has been occupied illegally. Most of the characters in this play remained in a civilized way, although perfectly all of them were not civilized. Several times Prospero was referred as a tyrannical figure who was responsible about the concept of colonialism, racism and illustrated the ideas of social hierarchy. In the Renaissance world this social hierarchy has paved the way of rigidity, extreme political attitudes, God of higher class society. Prospero showed him as the true representator of Elizabethan social higher class. Hence the suppressive conquest has arrived over the lives of African, Asian and North American regions during the 16 th century which was known as Shakespearean era. Later on, this process came to be known as colonialism, racism and the phase of social hierarchy. As a whole the effort of this paper is to unfold the character of Prospero to present the British colonization over the inferior peoples in a strange native land.

This paper intents to explore the postcolonial features in the play The Tempest of William Shakespeare. It is possible to read the play in a postcolonial context and the relationship between Prospero and Ariel or Caliban as one of master and slave. The relationship between Caliban and Prospero is especially relevant for a discussion of colonial exploitation and resistance as Caliban tries to betray and murder Prospero for his imprisonment. Prospero can even be viewed as a kind of colonialist who arrives on the island and "civilizes" the natives like Robinson Crusoe. Prospero is a sympathetic protagonist, but he treats Caliban and Ariel cruelly. Caliban's actions can also be read in the context of his relationship to his mother, the witch Sycorax. Prospero, under a misguided kind of benevolent despotism, creates an ongoing living environment throughout the play. Thus an in-depth discussion into the morality of colonialism is offered by Shakespeare in this play.

Paulus Sarwoto

Jen Chichester

Throughout Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, Caliban utilizes a mixture of French (a colonial language), Yoruba, Creole, and Swahili to establish agency and identity. By employing this combination of traditionally hegemonically privileged versus disempowered (via European colonizers) languages, Caliban exerts authority in how he hails himself, although he cannot control how he is hailed by others, especially Prospero. Césaire illustrates, as he states in an interview added to the end of the book Discourse on Colonialism, the “struggle against alienation” which “gave birth to Negritude” (89). As Antilleans experienced shame over being identified as Negros and employed less negatively-connoted euphemisms, Césaire and others “adopted the word négre, as a term of defiance.” Similarly, in the play, Caliban utilizes defiant language in order to construct his identity and establish agency. A new language is not essentially formed, but a new attitude toward freedom is born through the intertwining of both already-present linguistic aspects of Caliban’s identity. Simultaneously, Prospero’s sense of identity and agency wavers, exposing inherent instability in the colonizer’s socio-linguistically constructed perception. Prospero’s limited colonial language only allows him to identify in binary terms of privilege versus disempowerment, and his cognitive dissonance cracks under the pressure of Caliban’s introduction of mixed language as empowerment. This essay will examine the language mixture Caliban exercises in his quest for identity and agency in the midst of a rapidly-deteriorating colonial power (Prospero) that has long relied on unsteady, self-deconstructing rhetoric in the form of the colonial language to dictate Caliban’s identity and strip him of his self-authority. Emphasis will be placed on the ways in which these mixed-language terms evoke a sense of rebellious insubordination as a marker for a major shift in power in the colonized Caribbean, as well as in Africa. In addition to Césaire’s two texts and supporting articles which discuss Caliban as a speaking subject striving toward emancipation, I will also utilize Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks as a way of illustrating the intricate link between “language and the community” and how, historically, the language of the colonizer (e.g., French) has been the one that “the black man wants to speak” – a history from which Césaire and Caliban are not exempt but must attempt to navigate (21). I will, as Brenda McNary does, draw from Judith Butler’s theory on performativity of language and how Caliban shapes and is shaped by the mixed language he speaks. The essay will start with a brief historical and cultural analysis of language and decolonization, then will move into a specific, contextualized, deconstructive inquiry into Césaire’s A Tempest.

International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies [IJCLTS]

Ramayana Lira

Taking on assumptions about oppression, identity and representation as they are developed in contemporary postcolonial theory, this study proposes the analysis of the 1993 theatrical production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). It aims to discuss the role of Caliban’s monstrosity in the production and how it pertains to issues such as power relations and spectacle. The main benefit of doing an analysis of a performance of a Shakespearean text seems to be the possibility of seeing the play’s meaning as contingent, as a result of a series of elements (actor’s body, visual clues, the theatrical institution, spectatorship) that release it from the burden of being considered as the work of a single, universal, non- contradictory mind that contemporary criticism has pointed out as the ‘Shakespeare Myth’. I conclude that the 1993 RSC production presents a Tempest that, in many ways, reinforces traditional positions about the legitimacy of Prospero’s dominion over the island.

José Antonio Giménez Micó

Working from the perspective of decolonial feminism, this essay critiques works that view Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) as a symbol of resistance to eurocentrism, as represented in the character of Prospero. I focus on the literary figure Sycorax, the racialized, sexualized and witched mother of Caliban, because the celebration of Caliban as a symbol of subaltern resistance in Latin American/Latino studies has led to her discursive erasure or marginalization. I critically trace appropriations of Caliban, as well as Miranda (Prospero’s daughter), that silence Sycorax. Fundamentally urging the construction of a “literacy of Sycorax,” this essay explores the eurocentric reluctance of writers and critics to seriously address issues of spirituality–particularly “feminine” and racialized spirituality–that are negatively coded as magic or superstition within the western modern-colonial imagination. I challenge Latin American/Latino, American, Women’s, and Literary studies to consider what it means to position oneself alongside Sycorax–or the racialized, sexualized, spiritually powerful woman of color other that she represents–in order to learn from her occluded tongue. As I argue, the literacy of Sycorax speaks to a third space beyond the oppositional cursing tongues of Caliban and Prospero. Here lies the prospect of healing internalized fear and loathing about “feminine” and racialized spirituality within ourselves and others. Published in Journal of International Women’s Studies. v. 9, n. 1 (November 2007): 80-98.

Raad Abd-Aun , QAISR AL-DORRAH

Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest is one of the earliest adaptations of a Western canonical work. It is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Césaire’s play conveys his anti-colonist ideas, exploring the relationship between Prospero, the colonizer, and his colonial subjects, Caliban and Ariel, from the perspective of the colonized. Comparing the characterization and the colonizer/colonized relationship in the two plays, this paper attempts to illustrate how Césaire uses Shakespeare's text to address the ills of colonialism and turn the tables on the colonizer using one of the masterpieces of the western canon. It also attempts to show how Césaire uses the mechanics of adaptation and appropriation to achieve his goals.

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A story of shipwreck and magic, The Tempest begins on a ship caught in a violent storm with Alonso, the king of Naples, on board. On a nearby island, the exiled Duke of Milan, Prospero, tells his daughter, Miranda, that he has caused the storm with his magical powers. Prospero had been banished twelve years earlier when Prospero’s brother, Antonio—also on the doomed ship—conspired with Alonso to become the duke instead. Prospero and Miranda are served by a spirit named Ariel and by Caliban, son of the island’s previous inhabitant, the witch Sycorax.

On the island, castaways from the wreck begin to appear. First is Alonso’s son Ferdinand, who immediately falls in love with Miranda. Prospero secretly approves of their love, but tests the pair by enslaving Ferdinand. After secretly watching Miranda and Ferdinand exchange vows, Prospero releases Ferdinand and consents to their marriage.

Other castaways who appear are Trinculo and Stephano, Alonso’s jester and butler, who join forces with Caliban to kill Prospero and take over the island. The nobles from the ship search for Ferdinand and are confronted with a spectacle including a Harpy, who convinces Alonso that Ferdinand’s death is retribution for Prospero’s exile.

Having all his enemies under his control, Prospero decides to forgive them. Alonso, joyously reunited with his son, restores Prospero to the dukedom of Milan and welcomes Miranda as Ferdinand’s wife. As all except Caliban and Ariel prepare to leave the island, Prospero, who has given up his magic, bids farewell to the island and the audience.

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Guest Essay

A Reversal Cannot Undo the Damage Caused by This Voting Fraud Case

By Gregory Nolan

Mr. Nolan is a senior counsel at Brown White & Osborn and a former federal prosecutor and counsel at States United Democracy Center.

When a Texas appeals court reversed itself last week and acquitted Crystal Mason, a mother of three, in a voting fraud case, it ended almost a decade in which Ms. Mason lived in fear of being torn away from her family and imprisoned.

In 2018, she was sentenced to a five-year prison term for illegally casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election.

Though the prosecution of Ms. Mason ultimately failed, it still could chill people’s willingness to exercise their right to vote. Few would want to vote if it means going through what Ms. Mason did. As such, the reversal in her case cannot undo much of the damage that irresponsible Texas prosecutors wrought.

As the federal circuit court of appeals that oversees Texas recognized decades ago, “short of physical violence,” nothing has “a more chilling effect” on voting than “baseless arrests and prosecutions.” Unfortunately, that may be the point of bringing cases like Ms. Mason’s, as they suggest apparent racial disparities at work in voting-fraud prosecutions.

In November 2016, Ms. Mason went to vote in the presidential election. She was on the fence about voting, but her mother convinced her : “If you can vote, go vote, you have to have your voice heard,” Ms. Mason recalled her saying.

But when she arrived at her precinct, she was surprised to learn that her name wasn’t on the rolls, so she cast a provisional ballot. In return for trying to do her civic duty, Texas prosecutors tried to put her in prison .

When Ms. Mason voted, she was on federal supervised release, which is like a term of probation that federal criminal defendants serve after leaving prison. Those on release must obey certain court-ordered conditions but are otherwise free to live their life as they see fit. Under Texas law, such individuals are ineligible to vote, which Ms. Mason did not know. Prosecutors charged her anyway, convicting her on a theory that they did not have to prove that she knew she was ineligible; they just had to prove that she was ineligible.

An appellate court agreed with the prosecutors’ theory and upheld her conviction while noting , “The evidence does not show that she voted for any fraudulent purpose.”

Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that the state’s voter fraud statute requires proof that a defendant knew she was ineligible and sent the case back to the lower appellate court, where Ms. Mason’s conviction was overturned .

Last year I represented a bipartisan group of former state attorneys general, U.S. attorneys and Justice Department officials who argued as amici curiae in Ms. Mason’s appeal that “if eligible voters believe that a mistake about their eligibility could lead to prosecution and conviction, they will understandably think twice before voting.”

Other unjust voter fraud cases, like a number of those after the creation of an election police unit by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, unleashed havoc in those defendants’ lives, even though a large proportion of the cases were dismissed. And anecdotal evidence indicates that the chilling effect of these Florida cases is very real, not theoretical. As a voting rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund recounted , “We’ve heard stories about voters who are eligible to vote but have a criminal conviction in their past, and they are now scared to register and vote.”

To avoid such misguided prosecutions, prosecutors need to adopt the maxim that when a potentially criminal act has a close relationship to a constitutional right, only cases with robust evidence of criminal intent should be prosecuted.

Prosecutorial restraint is especially critical in the context of former felons who impermissibly try to cast a ballot, like Ms. Mason. As a Brennan Center report explains: “The laws concerning eligibility vary from state to state and can be confusing: Different voters are disenfranchised for different convictions for different lengths of time.”

The same report even provides survey data showing that election officials often do not know the law in their state for felon re-enfranchisement. Commenting on Ms. Mason’s case in 2021, a Republican legislator in Texas said , “I would not have known that being on supervised release would have made you ineligible” to vote.

Notably, felon-disenfranchisement laws do not affect racial groups equally. A 2022 report from the Sentencing Project shows that “one in 19 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.5 times that of non-African Americans,” with more than 1 in 10 being disenfranchised in seven, mostly Southern states. So when prosecutions under these laws chill votes, it is Black votes that they are disproportionately chilling. Indeed, approximately two-thirds of those rounded up in the first wave of Governor DeSantis’s election unit’s arrests were Black.

Sentencing can add another layer to the racial aspect, which should be no surprise, given the disproportionately harsher sentences that Black defendants generally endure. Facing similar charges, Ms. Mason and well-heeled white offenders received strikingly divergent sentences — a five-year prison sentence for her, a slap on the wrist for them. In Ms. Mason’s home county, for example, a justice of the peace who falsified names to get on a primary ballot was sentenced to probation. In Georgia, a state Republican official just last week received a $5,000 fine for illegally voting nine times.

The problem with prosecuting marginal voter fraud cases goes beyond its chilling effect. If the goal is truly to ensure that only eligible voters vote, it is actually an ineffective tool in a state’s arsenal. Texas, for instance, has numerous safeguards in place that are designed to permit only lawful votes to be counted. In the context of felons improperly voting, these safeguards exist at the local, state and federal levels. Indeed, in Ms. Mason’s case, such safeguards worked: The provisional vote that almost cost her five years of her life was never counted.

It is unjust that some people might not vote because reckless prosecutions like Ms. Mason’s intimidate them. As Ms. Mason’s own case demonstrates, courts cannot stop these injustices from happening; only ethical prosecutors with a firm commitment to safeguarding constitutional rights can do that.

Gregory Nolan is a senior counsel at Brown White & Osborn and a former federal prosecutor and counsel at States United Democracy Center.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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An earlier version of this article included an outdated affiliation for an organization. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is no longer part of the N.A.A.C.P.

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