The Tempest

Shakespeare’s play of a magician conjuring up a storm and bringing together a group of men to his island—his mastery over a native, a compliant spirit, and a daughter who is ‘made’ to fall in love with a prince—is a meta-story of the theories propounded by Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Montaigne. The Tempest should be read as political theory. The island becomes a controlled experiment in governance, power, and legitimacy, with Prospero playing the role of the philosopher-king, the Machiavellian ruler, and the Hobbesian sovereign all at once.

It’s also obvious why Caliban’s treatment has inspired countless critics to see him as a hero of anti-colonialism. Shakespeare was deeply aware of the Age of Exploration that was unfolding around him, and The Tempest can be read as a meditation on European encounters with the New World.

Montaigne’s essay Of Cannibals was the inspiration for Shakespeare, in which Montaigne compares the so-called ‘barbaric’ indigenous natives of the New World with the ‘civilized’ Europeans. He argued that these people lived in a state of simplicity and virtue, closer to nature, and questioned whether their way of life was truly inferior to that of Europeans.

Caliban’s famous lament reflects this:

“This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak’st from me.”

The dispossession of Caliban in The Tempest was a prescient commentary on colonialism before the full force of European imperialism had even taken shape. Harold Bloom dismissed this argument, for Caliban was punished for his attempted rape of Miranda.  

Even the romantic subplot between Ferdinand and Miranda serves a political function. Their union is not merely about love but about the consolidation of power—Prospero orchestrates their relationship to ensure a dynastic alliance between Milan and Naples. This was probably Shakespeare’s critique of marriages of convenience.

Next on the list: ‘The Merchant of Venice’

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