Ways of Reading The Tempest
Shakespeare criticism has long been recognised as a touchstone to shifts in our critical discourses. The following paper constitutes an examination of two conflicting discourses. The analysis will be confined to the views presented in Stephen Greenblatt's article entitled "Martial Law in the Land of Cockaigne" and Ben Ross Schneider, Jr's "Are We Being Historical Yet?": Colonialist Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tempest - a contest, if you will, between two different theoretical positions as to where the text lies.In his article entitled "Are We Being Historical Yet?": Colonialist Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tempest, Ben Ross Schneider, Jr extends Carolyn Porter's critique of new historicism to recent work on The Tempest. Included in Schneider's study of eight recent analyses of The Tempest, is Stephen Greenblatt's article "Martial Law in the Land of Cockaigne." Schneider argues that by choosing colonialism as a frame, and then "reifying" it as if it were "coterminus with the limits of discourse in general," the new historicists marginalize not only a large field of relevant contemporary discourse, but also The Tempest itself (Schneider 121).Schneider maintains that the great variety of theoretical underpinning in the
" At the end of act 1, Ariel asks for his freedom. Second, that the audience who went to watch The Tempest, or any other play for that matter, must have been versed or at least familiar with the principles advocated by Cicero and Seneca. Any one theory will assume some things in order assume others. Schneider cites other examples of anger within The Tempest, and states that Prospero is governed by anger and is not, as romantic critics suppose, in control of his domain. Schneider points out that since both rhetoric and history were given strong moral emphasis, it may be said that the universities were to a great extent schools of virtue. Greenblatt uses the relationship between The Tempest and one of its presumed sources, William Strachey's account of the tempest that struck an English fleet bound for the fledgling colony at Jamestown, as a model in order to demonstrate the complex circulation between the social dimension of an aesthetic strategy and the aesthetic dimension of a social strategy (Greenblatt 147). According to Schneider, Seneca opposed the study of "liberal arts", with the execption of philosophy, because their aim was to make money. Apparently, his letter on the events of 1609-10 was unpublished until 1625 because the Virginia Company was engaged in a vigorous propaganda and financial campaign on behalf of the colony, and the company's leaders found Strachey's report too disturbing to allow it into print (Greenblatt 148). " This reveals Prospero's final position with respect to Caliban, "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine". Schneider's assertions raise as many questions as they seems to answer - the pitfall of any theoretical discourse perhaps. This platform provides Schneider with the ammunition for his assertion that Stoicism, like feminist discourse nowadays, acted as the prevalent discourse during the Renaissance period and consequently dominated the way other discourses were understood. First, that Shakespeare's audience predominantly consisted of the best educated and most well-read segment of society. Source X lends itself to source Y, which in turn lends itself to Source Z.
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Acceptance Essays
