NEW WORLD IN THE TEMPEST

The Tempest is still erudite and allusive enough, full of echoes of literature, from the classics to the pamphlets of Shakespeares own time. The scene of the play, an island somewhere between Tunis and Naples, suggests the journey of Aeneas from Carthage to Rome. Like The Tempest, the Aeneid begins with a terrible storm and goes on to tell a story of wanderings in which a banquet with harpies figures prominently. Echoes from the shipwreck of St Paul from St Augustine, who also had associations with Carthage, and from Apuleius, with his interest in magic and initiation, are appropriate enough in such a play. Most of the traditional magical names of elemental spirits were of Hebrew origin, and Ariel, a name occurring in the Bible was among them. The imagery of contemporary accounts of Atlantic voyages has also left strong traces in The Tempest, and seems almost to have been its immediate inspiration. One ship of a fleet that sailed across the ocean to reinforce Raleghs Virginian colony in 1609 had an experience rather like that of Alonsos ship. It was driven aground on the Bermudas by a storm and given up for lost, but the passengers managed to survive the winter there and reached Virginia the following spring. William Stracheys account of this experience, True Repertory of the Wracke, dated 1610 is considered by most critics to be one of Shakespeare's primary sources because of certain verbal, plot and thematic similarities but it was not published until after Shakespeares death, and as Shakespeare certainly knew it, he must have read it in manuscript. Shakespeares work was affected with so called new geography of discoveries and his knowledge about voyages and exploration; so The Tempest either reflects the 16th century invention of America or enacts Jacobean colonial experiment of Virginia. Colonialism began much earlier with Columbus discovery of America and it was a big issue during Shakespeares time. The opening up of new frontiers and new land being discovered stimulated European information. Shakespeares imagination has taken this in to account and exploration of new geographical spaces and control of those lands by the explorers is basically what we know by colonialism. According to this Shakespeares character Prospero is an example of typical colonizer who takes control over the island and inhabitants there like Caliban. Throughout this play different attributes are given to the 'Old World' being Europe and the civilized world, and the 'New World' or an uninhabited uncivilized island. During the writing of The Tempest, accounts of the New World, the Americas, and expositions of its men, animals and beasts were circulating through Europe. In this exchange between father and daughter, the characters discuss what has been left in the Old World. It is a little puzzling why New World imagery should be so prominent in The Tempest, which really has nothing to do with the New World, beyond Ariels reference to the still-vexed Bermoothes and a general, if vague, resemblance between the relation of Caliban to the other characters and that of the American Indians to the colonizers and drunken sailors who came to exterminate or enslave them.