'The Tempest' in Context

Keith Linley

Description

Bringing to life the historical, cultural, social and moral background of Shakespeare’s magical and mysterious final play

How would a Jacobean audience have assessed ‘The Tempest’? What would King James I have thought of it? This book provides detailed in-depth discussion of the various influences that an audience in 1611 would have brought to interpreting the play. How did people think about the world, about God, about sin, about kings, about civilized conduct? Historical, literary, political and sociological backgrounds are explained within the biblical-moral matrices by which the play would have been judged. This book links real life in the 1600s to the world of Prospero on the stage. Learn about the social hierarchy, gender relationships, parenting and family dynamics, court corruption, class tensions, the concept of tragi-comedy – and all the subversions, transgressions, and oppositions that made the play an unsettling picture of a world attempting to come to terms with capitalism and colonialism while re-addressing the nature of rule.

Introduction; Prologue; 1. The Historical Context: An Overview; 2. The Elizabethan World Order: From Divinity to Dust; 3. Sin, Death and the Prince of Darkness; 4. The Seven Cardinal Virtues; 5. Kingship; 6. Patriarchy, Family Authority and Gender Relationships; 7. Man in His Place; 8. Images of Disorder: The Religious Context; 9. The Context of Education: Nature versus Nurture; 10. The Contemporary Political Context; 11. Enchantment: The Context of Magic; 12. The Context of Colonialism and Cannibals: Theft or Duty?; 13. Literary Context; 14. Tender Patriarch or Tyrant? The Limits of Authority; 15. The Moral Context: Sins, Virtues and Transgressions; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sujets

• Idioma inglés
• English
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783083763
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE TEMPEST IN CONTEXT
ANTHEM PERSPECTIVES IN LITERATURE
Titles in the Anthem Perspectives in Literature series are designed to contextualize classic works of literature for readers today within their original social and cultural environments. The books present historical, biographical, political, artistic, moral, religious and philosophical material from the period that enable readers to understand a text’s meaning as it would have struck the original audience. These approachable but informative books aims to uncover the period and the people for whom texts were written; their values and views, their anxieties and demons, what made them laugh and cry, their loves and hates. The series is targeted at high-achieving A-level, International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement pupils, first-year undergraduates and an intellectually curious audience.

Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2015 by ANTHEM PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © Keith Linley 2015
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Linley, Keith. The Tempest in context : sin, repentance and forgiveness / Keith Linley. pages cm. – (Anthem Perspectives in Literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78308-375-6 (papercover : alk. paper) 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616. Tempest. 2. Literature and society–England–History–17th century. I. Title. PR2833.L56 2015 822.3’3–dc23 2014049137
ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 375 6 (Pbk) ISBN-10: 1 78308 375 1 (Pbk)
Cover image © Andrew_Howe/iStockphoto.com
This title is also available as an ebook.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue: The Setting
Part I. The Inherited Past
1. The Historical Context: An Overview
2. The Elizabethan World Order: From Divinity to Dust
3. Sin, Death and the Prince of Darkness
4. The Seven Cardinal Virtues
5. Kingship
6. Patriarchy, Family Authority and Gender Relationships
7. Man in His Place
8. Images of Disorder: The Religious Context
Part II. The Jacobean Context
9. The Context of Education: Nature versus Nurture
10. The Contemporary Political Context
11. Enchantment: The Context of Magic
12. The Context of Colonialism and Cannibalism: Theft or Duty?
13. Literary Context
14. Tender Patriarch or Tyrant? The Limits of Authority
15. The Moral Context: Sins, Virtues and Transgressions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
INTRODUCTION
About This Book
This book concentrates on the contexts from which The Tempest emerges, those characteristics of life in early Jacobean England which are reflected in the values and views Shakespeare brings to the text and affect how a contemporary might have responded to it. These are the primary central contexts, comprising the writer, the text, the audience and all the views, values and beliefs held by these three. The actions taken and words spoken by the characters do not all represent Shakespeare’s own views, but they will have evoked ethical judgements from the audience in line with the general religious and political values of the time. There would have been a range of differing responses though the fundamentals of right and wrong would have been broadly agreed. These primary contexts, this complicity of writer, audience and text and their shared mediation of the play, are the prime concern of this book.
Where relevant, the book also focuses on a range of secondary contexts. A play does not come into being without having a background and does not exist in vacuo . It will have its own unique features, but also characteristics inherited from its author as well as sources derived from and traits resembling the writing of its time. Other secondary contexts – the actors, their companies, the acting space, the social mix of general audiences – do not figure in this study except as occasional incidentals. The first recorded performance was at the king’s palace at Whitehall on 1 November 1611. The book discusses that space and that unique audience; this is a play about three fictional courts and would have evoked reflection about the fourth real one.
There are tertiary contexts too. There is the afterlife of the text (its printed form, how subsequent ages interpreted it on stage and changed it) – what is called its performance history. And there is the critical backstory, showing how critics of subsequent times bring their agendas and the values and prejudices of their period to analysis of the text. These are referenced incidentally where they seem useful and relevant, but are not a major concern. The ‘Further Reading’ list provides broad guidance on the critical and performance history and any scholarly edition of The Tempest will cover these areas in greater detail.
This book is for students preparing assignments and exams for Shakespeare modules. The marking criteria at any level explicitly or implicitly require students to show a consistently well-developed and consistently detailed understanding of the significance and influence of contexts in which literary texts are written and understood. This means responding to the play in the ways Shakespeare’s court audience would have done in 1611. You will not be writing a history essay, but along with considering the play as a literary vehicle communicating in dramatic form, you will need to know something of how Shakespeare’s audience might have reacted. A text is always situated in some way within its historical setting. The correlatives in this case would have been the classics (for the educated), the Bible, Christian ethics and the society of the day, the latter meaning they would see the play in the light of what had happened in recent history and what was currently happening in the court, in the city, in the streets, on the roads and in the villages. No one could watch Prospero’s behaviour and manner and not think of King James, nor hear Antonio’s comments on the moral cowardice and corruptibility of the Milanese court and not think of England’s court.
The following material will enable you to acquire a surer grasp of this cultural context – the socio-political conditions out of which the play emerged, the literary profile prevailing when it was written, and the religious-moral dimensions embedded in it. Because The Tempest was written in an age of faith, when the Bible’s teachings and sermons heard in church formed part of everyone’s mindset, it is vital to recreate those factors, for the actions of the characters would have been assessed by Christian criteria. You may not agree with the values of the time or the views propounded in the play, but you do need to understand how belief mediated the possible responses of the audience that watched the piece.
Key to this book’s approach is the idea that The Tempest is full of sins, transgressions, boundary crossing and rule breaking – in the personal world and in the public and political arenas. Prospero’s backstory (Act I Scene ii) provides information about where the sinning began, with a ruler neglecting his role and his brother usurping power. Accumulating sins invite judgements, until the final scene when the play turns round on itself, reverses the revenge Prospero seems intent upon taking and embarks upon the more positive Christian line of reconciliation and forgiveness. Alerted to the subversive behaviour of the characters the audience would expect the unrepentant to be punished and those repenting to find forgiveness and new understanding. In the event a positive mood prevails and the play ends with apparent hope for a better future. Though biblical values may underpin much of the action, there is much more going on scene by scene than a series of echoes of what the Bible says about virtue and vice. Interwoven are political concerns about rule (of the self, of a state – or an island), parenting, education, colonialism and considerations relevant to attraction and love.
What Is the Primary Context?
Any document – literary or non-literary – comes from the environment which produced it, the biographical, social, political, historical and cultural circumstances which form it (the author’s and the viewers’), and the values operating within it and affecting the experience of it, including what the author may have been trying to say and how the audience may have interpreted it. These features are embedded in it, overtly and covertly. This is its primary context.
A text in isolation is simply an accumulation of words carrying growing, developing meanings as the writing/performance progresses. It is two dimensional – a lexical, grammatical construct and the sum of its literal contents. It has meaning, we can understand what it is about, how the characters interact, but context provides a third dimension, it adds value, making meaning comprehensible within the cultural profiles of the tim