Shakespeare, The Tempest

Question 1

Tempest: written when?

Answer 1

~1611

Question 2

Tempest: discuss nature, ethnicity

Answer 2

Observing ethnically mysterious natures—is Caliban even human?

Question 3

Tempest: nature, “brave”

Answer 3

“Brave”: the new, wonderful, as well as a kind of audacious fearlessness in the face of it

Question 4

Tempest: ideology, new lands

Answer 4

• New lands = opportunities to establish (ideal) new states

- “Brave”: the new, wonderful, as well as a kind of audacious fearlessness in the face of it

Question 5

Tempest: ideology, colonization

Answer 5

• Octave Mannoni: “Prospero and Caliban and the Psychology of Colonization”—colonizer has a Prospero mindset, scapegoats colonized one.

Question 6

Tempest: identity

Answer 6

• Caliban treated as subhuman and his actions sometimes seem to sustain this prejudice but he’s also given powerful and beautiful lines and it’s hard not to sympathize with him

Question 7

Tempest: morality, magic, James’s interest in magic

Answer 7

• Ultimately how different are Prospero’s and Sycorax’s magic?
• Magical elements of the masque

Question 8

Tempest: art, theater, metacommentary, performance, framing

Answer 8

• Prospero making the whole performance for the others

Question 9

Tempest: genre

Answer 9

• Getting closer to court masque style—spectacular—indoor theatre
• A bit atypical for Shakespeare—so unified: four hours of them on the island, nested into 9 carefully crafted scenes which parallel one another neatly. (Scene V = the central scene)

Question 10

Tempest: discuss the play in relation to James

Answer 10

-	About 8 years after Elizabeth’s death, into James’s reign—James’s interests
o	Family (heirs, etc., as opposed to virgin Elizabeth)
o	Magic (James had written on it)
o	Political liaisons between Milan & Naples

Question 11

Tempest: what are Sh’s sources?

Answer 11

o historical account of a shipwrecked crew in the Bermudas
o Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals”—their innocence; their lack of commerce
o Prospero’s island, at least the way Gonzalo talks about it, has Utopian qualities. Gonzalo mocked by others for these ideas.
o Rudolf II—the wizard emperor—gives up the throne to bury himself in magic books. Cf. James.

Question 12

Tempest: what type of occasion?

Answer 12

• Played for the court—at a royal wedding in 1613