The Story of Us: Five Years Ago Today

What I "Tweet" about The Tempest: A play about colonization?



William Hogarth's painting of The Tempest ca. 1735
(The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.)



After reading the first two acts of The Tempest, we have coincidentally discovered that “the main theme of the play is colonization”. However, the “eureka feeling” dissipates as soon as our minds are occupied with a question: is our impression the genuine intention of Shakespeare when writing the play?

        To many readers, the culmination of the play is reached in Act 3, scene 3, when the spirit Ariel appears as an avenging harpy, pronouncing the wrongs of Antonio, Alonso and Sebestian that have been done to Prospero, and the punishment to Antonio by taking his son in the shipwreck. In contrast, the scenes of Caliban and his new “lord” Stephano seem to serve as a short slapstick episode in the play.