Inherited at such a young age, language appears an embedded, inherent function of human experience. It provides a lexical framework through which meaning can be communicated, shared, and recorded. Shakespeare’s deployment of variable meanings through puns endow language a dominant role in the creation of cultural tradition; language is a tool for persuasion and interaction. The figure of Caliban, however, punctures the hegemony of conventional linguistic traditions that seek to distinguish and categorize through naming. By creating space for alternative sounds, Caliban concomitantly reimagines the position of man in nature that initiates am early eco-consciousness. Continue reading
Tag Archives: tempest
Prospero from an Actor’s Eyes
When readers’ eyes confront the homogenous sheets of a Shakespeare manuscript, any actor would insist that the sheer words flatten the fullest potential of the plays. At best in a perceptive reading, shadows of tones emerge as rhetorical implications.. The critical eye, as a holistic overarching consciousness often prefers to gravitate to rhetoric, images, and themes. The characters aren’t as much individuals as tropes, or fragments subsumed into a whole. But an actor/actress, whose entire vocation depends on a single character, can afford no such flexibility. Any indecision will shout mediocrity to the keenly peering audience. Absorbing this more demanding interpretation can be rewarding to literary readers who never plans to must the gall to step on stage. To this end, actor Phillip Voss’ award-winning essay on his role as Prospero in The Tempest is a particularly fine example for this exercise. Continue reading
Otherization in The Tempest
In her article “Shakespeare’s Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism”, Deborah Willis seeks to criticize the current state of discourse regarding the depiction of colonialism in The Tempest. Specifically, she seeks to criticize the arguments made by Paul Brown in a recent essay. Continue reading
Compositional Analysis of Romney’s “Tempest”
In 1790, George Romney received a commission to paint the first act of The Tempest. Although the finished painting has apparently not survived, a 1797 engraved copy of the work by Benjamin Smith as well as multiple preparatory studies of the work are readily available on the Internet. Continue reading
Narrative and the Plantation Colony
What are the plantations of The Tempest? Plantation, as defined in Shakespeare’s time, referred to the literal cultivation of the earth—to the creation of a colony on conquered land—and to the sowing of an idea, a belief system: a narrative.
Imagine The Tempest
Imagine the tempest… not Shakespeare’s play itself, but the actual storm described. Do you imagine a dark, chaotic scene filled with powerful, crashing waves? Do you see sailors scurrying around, trying to keep the ship from sinking?