Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Politics! Monsters! And a foreign island of magic!

Politics, monsters, a foreign island of magic and a epilogue/prayer, wow Shakespeare has certainly changed up the usual format of his plays for The Tempest.
It was interesting to see Prospero’s transition between each type of control. First having political control of Milan (losing it through distractions and manipulation) to harnessing the magical powers of the island and taking servants of Caliban and Ariel and imprisoning Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian. To finally releasing control of the island and handing his freedom to the audience was quite a compelling switch.
Has his treatment of others changed for each new position? Also who is he placing in responsibility for his actions? By asking the audience to applaud him I felt it was reminiscent when he asked his brother Antonio to rule Milan for him.
(The epilogue also reminded me of Puck, at the end of Midsummer, when he asks the audience to think of the play as a dream.) If the magical play of island forces and spirits was only a dream, who is held responsible for the actions (pain to Prospero’s prisoners and servants? )

Reflection left over from last week: Politics! As we talked about in class last week The Tempest offers a TON of political commentary! It sure was interesting to hear how it was a commentary on the times! Our class question of "Can you take the social structure of England and put it in a new place?" is super interesting- especially considering how we have historical answers/examples to this question.
I continued thinking about the question and then asked myself is the social structure that England (and other world powers) recreated in colonized lands still there?

I also wonder:
Did Prospero give up the right to rule his country when he left his brother with all of the legwork of running a nation?

One of the most interesting things I noticed while reading was how many of the men hoped to create a society where there was no structure and they did nothing but lounge around all day! Gonzalo's "commonwealth" was a place of major relaxing, is this about convenience or more representative of the lack of government on the island?

How do we further historical traditions of imperialism and slavery today? Just as Prospero used the island and Caliban for his advantage do we take similar steps today unknowingly?
This video has very little to do with Shakespeare but might help in understanding our original question of “Can you take the social structure of England and put it in a new place?", maybe it addresses the result of trying to transplant and support certain places.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF-sJgcoY20&feature=player_embedded
A note on commodities trading: At the end of the play Antonio notes how Caliban can be marketed.

2 comments:

Cyrus Mulready said...

Thanks for posting the link to this video, Lauren. It gives us a very interesting take on the line from /The Tempest/: "what's past is prologue." Many writers and theorists have used /The Tempest/ as a way of exploring the imperial tendencies in Western history. It's interesting to me that it's not entirely clear whether this play commends such imperial actions, or condemns them. Critics have argued both ways, and it may be another of those wonderful questions that Shakespeare prompts and leaves us to answer.

Jared Y. said...

I also thought of Puck in A Midsummer Night's dream when I read the epilogue of The Tempest. They seem pretty similar, especially in the way the characters speak to the audience. It makes me wonder if this might have been commonplace within plays, to have a character speak directly to an audience.
Also, the whole foreign island, magic, and monsters was a weird concept for me to grasp after the other plays we have read. We saw a little bit of this in A Midsummer Night's Dream with the fairies but this play definitely took the cake. Considering this was his last play I wonder if he was trying to do something to have people remember him by, kind of a "go-out-in-a-bang" play.