by Robert C. Evans,

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“ ‘Had I Plantation of this Isle, My Lord–’:

Exploration and Colonization in Shakespeare’s Th e Tempest ”

by Robert C. Evans,

Auburn University at Montgomery

Exploration and colonization are important themes in Shakespeare’s Th e Tempest, and have been discussed extensively in recent criticism.

Indeed, such discussion has been so extensive and detailed, and has involved so many diverse and divergent perspectives, that (as often happens when any topic is exhaustively studied) the basic issues now seem more perplexed and perplexing than ever. Some critics, for instance, have argued strongly that European exploration and colonialism in the New World in general (and British exploration and colonialism in Virginia in particular) are especially relevant contexts for any understanding of Shakespeare’s play. Other critics have questioned this approach or have dismissed its relevance alto-gether. More recently, British colonialism in Ireland has been seen as the most signifi cant parallel to the kinds of colonialism presented in Shakespeare’s play, while others have argued for the importance of Mediterranean contexts, African parallels, and classical (espe-cially Virgilian) backgrounds. Many recent commentators have seen Caliban, in particular, as a victim of Prospero’s colonialist oppression.

Critic David Lindley has helpfully complicated matters even further by suggesting that it is possible to “argue that Caliban is not an

indigenous native, but rather a fi rst-generation colonist himself. His enslavement by Prospero repeats his mother’s earlier imprisonment of Ariel, who might be considered the island’s ‘real’ indigenous inhab-itant” (39). In responding to the play, in short, readers and audiences have many perspectives on exploration and colonialism to consider and (perhaps) to choose from.

When it is viewed with exploration and colonialism in mind, one of the most striking aspects of this drama is how few of the char-acters fi t common stereotypes about explorers or colonizers. None of the characters—with the possible exception of Ariel—seem to have set out with any deliberate intention to discover this particular unnamed island, or to take up anything approaching permanent resi-dence there. Th e “damned witch Sycorax” (Caliban’s mother), who originally lived in Algiers, was banished to the island after having committed “mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible” (1.2.264)—at least according to Prospero, with whose angry account Ariel readily concurs. On the island, Sycorax gave birth to Caliban and imprisoned Ariel within a tree. Ariel was only freed (after 12 years of painful torment) when Prospero and Miranda, having been set adrift in the ocean after Prospero’s overthrow as Duke of Milan, happened to arrive

“By providence divine” on the island (1.2.159). Prospero then liber-ated Ariel from the curse imposed by Sycorax, who had died in the meantime. Neither Sycorax nor Prospero, then, visited the island as an intentional explorer or purposeful colonizer; for them the place was, if anything, a penal colony—a kind of proto-Australia—rather than a place they deliberately sought out to explore or exploit. Prospero, meanwhile, hardly seems an explorer: he rarely ventures far from his

“full poor cell” (1.2.20), a dwelling which may in fact be a mere cave and which, in any case, is not the sort of elaborate residence we might expect an aristocratic magician to construct if he had any intention of making the island his permanent home. A man with Prospero’s wondrous powers could easily have transformed the island into a pleasant and splendid colony if he had wished; he could even have populated it with hundreds of compliant colonists. Instead, his main concern seems is to return to Milan and reestablish his ducal authority in Italy. Exploring the island, or establishing an elaborate colony there, is unimportant to him.

Meanwhile, the island once again functions as a kind of penal colony for its next set of unwilling visitors—Alonso, the king of Naples;

Antonio, Prospero’s conniving brother and his usurping successor as duke of Milan; Sebastian, the similarly conniving brother of Alonso;

and the various servants and courtiers (including the good-natured Gonzalo) who fi nd themselves shipwrecked on the island, thanks to the tempest Prospero has engineered. Th e island becomes their prison and Prospero (unbeknownst to them) now functions as their warden, with Ariel as an ever-vigilant guard and enforcer. Like Sycorax and Prospero, none of these men deliberately intended to land on this island, let alone explore it or turn it into a colony. Most of them assume they will somehow quickly return to their native Italy, even though their ship (as far as they know) is now at the bottom of the ocean, and the island seems uninhabited and perhaps uninhabitable.

Among the group of aristocrats and courtiers, only Gonzalo (and, to a much lesser extent, another courtier named Adrian) gives much serious thought to the prospect of long-term residence on the island.

Adrian notes that the island seems “to be desert” (i.e., deserted) as well as “Uninhabitable and almost inaccessible,” yet he also comments that “It must needs be of subtle, tender and delicate temperance” and that “Th e air breathes upon us here most sweetly” (2.1.37–49). Partly, of course, he is trying, in making these comments, to cheer up Alonso, the disconsolate Neapolitan king who assumes that his son and heir, Ferdinand, has died in the shipwreck. However, Adrian is also begin-ning to think in pragmatic terms about their prospects for survival on the island.

Even more pragmatic, in some ways, is Gonzalo, a character whose speeches and personality are diffi cult to interpret. In part he seems a garrulous and even simpleminded old man, and in both respects he has sometimes been compared to Polonius in Hamlet. On the other hand, Gonzalo seems genuinely compassionate in his eff orts to cheer Alonso; he also seems to understand that any further success for the survivors (however such “success” is defi ned) depends on reviving the fl agging spirits of their leader. Gonzalo’s optimism can be seen, then, either as foolishly naïve, or as pragmatically wise; either as genuine, or as partly studied. In any case, his words and personality are not cynical (which is much more than can be said of either Antonio or Sebastian).

Gonzalo seems to understand instinctively that if the shipwrecked group hopes to survive and prosper, they must not give in to the sort of despair that affl icts the Neapolitan king. Gonzalo considers their “preservation” a “miracle” (2.1.6–7)—phrasing that implies his

humility, his gratitude, and his spiritual sensibilities. Meanwhile, he also urges Alonso to “wisely . . . weigh / Our sorrow with our comfort”

(2.1.8–9)—phrasing that implies his own wisdom as well as his commitment to practical reason. Th ese qualities help make Gonzalo an intelligent and well-motivated counselor. Gonzalo, in short, is precisely the sort of man who might in other circumstances make a good colonist, and who might help establish a successful colony. He is an embodiment of some of the best qualities of Western European civilization, and he who would make a good member of a common-wealth just about anywhere.

Unfortunately, also among the survivors are the cynical, treacherous Antonio and the self-serving Sebastian—exactly the sort of persons who corrupt societies wherever they happen to be. Th ese are the kinds of people who undermine any hope of making a fresh start or of establishing a truly “New World”; they symbolize the sinful selfi shness that Christians of Shakespeare’s time would have seen as endemic in human nature. Antonio and Sebastian personify the perverse pride that both led to, and resulted from, the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Th ey embody the inevitable fl aw in any colonial project—any eff ort to establish a utopian society anywhere. Just as the European colonists arrived in America with hopes of spreading the blessings of Christianity among supposedly unenlightened heathens, but inevi-tably brought with them their own perversities and innate corrup-tions, so Antonio and Sebastian symbolize the predictable futility of any eff ort to start over, to begin again, to create a brave new world diff erent from or better than the world the explorers and colonists have left behind. Just as the European colonists in America introduced devastating physical infections unknown to the native inhabitants, so Antonio and Sebastian bring with them, to this seemingly uninhab-ited island, their own (but also quite common) moral corruptions and spiritual fl aws. Yet these sorts of fl aws and corruptions, of course, are already present on the island, partly in the personality of Prospero and partly in the character of Caliban. Pride, selfi shness, and ethical and spiritual shortcomings (Shakespeare seems to suggest) are part of the inevitable human condition. We bring them with us wherever we go because they are so deeply engrained in our nature. Th ey are inescap-able, and they inevitably doom any utopian colonial dreams.

Th is is part of the point of the sniping by Antonio and Sebastian against Gonzalo and Adrian in the fi rst scene of the second act of Th e

Tempest. Antonio and Sebastian consider themselves very clever and witty in the ways they mock and abuse Gonzalo and Adrian, and at fi rst Shakespeare seems to be encouraging his audience to identify with this joking and seemingly sophisticated pair (2.1.10–48). It soon becomes evident, however, that both men are sarcastic cynics, and it isn’t long before their sneering witticisms begin to boomerang. Th us, when Adrian comments that “Th e air breathes upon us here most sweetly,” Sebastian immediately retorts, “As if it had lungs, and rotten ones,” and Antonio adds, “Or, as ‘twere perfumed by a fen” (2.1.49–51).

If, however, anything is “rotten” in this play, it is Sebastian himself, just as Antonio’s reference to a “fen” (commonly associated with disease and rank odor) suggests his own putrid moral nature. Moreover, the cynicism of both men is implicitly pessimistic and defeatist. When Gonzalo remarks that “Here is everything advantageous to life,”

Antonio responds, “True, save means to live” and Sebastian concurs by saying, “Of that there’s none, or little” (2.1.52–54). Gonzalo’s comment may seem either unintentionally naïve or calculatedly optimistic, but at least it is not cynically hopeless. If a colony on the island had any hope at all for practical or moral success, such hope would depend on Gonzalo and Adrian, not on scoffi ng and pessimistic misanthropes Antonio and Sebastian.

Gonzalo’s next comment—“How lush and lusty the grass looks!

How green!” (2.1.55)—symbolically associates him with the very vitality he praises. In contrast, the predictable cynicism of the ripostes by Antonio (“Th e ground is indeed tawny”) and by Sebastian (“With an eye of green in’t”) once more imply their own sarcastic and life-denying outlooks. Indeed, Sebastian’s comment seems especially intriguing. Most editors, following the Oxford English Dictionary, gloss the word “eye” as meaning “slight shade, tinge” (see Lindley, Orgel, the Vaughans, and Hulme and Sherman), and that is obviously the main meaning. However, it is hard not to overhear, also, an echo of one of Shakespeare’s own most famous phrases from two of his most signifi cant plays, Th e Merchant of Venice and Othello. In the fi rst of those works, Portia refers to “green-eyed jealousy” (3.2.110), while in the latter Iago cautions Othello to beware of “jealousy,” the “green-eyed monster” (3.3.168). Jealousy and envy, in fact, seem to be among the main motives of Antonio and Sebastian, not only in the dealings with Gonzalo but also in their general outlooks on life. Th ose motives have already led Antonio to usurp the dukedom of Prospero, his own