'This Island's mine': Caliban and Colonialism

Abstract

The political and colonial themes of The Tempest excited a considerable degree of theatrical interest in Britain, both in the later part of the nineteenth century, at a time when Social Darwinian ideas and Imperialistic doctrines were making a major impact on the British public, and in the I970s, when the retreat from Empire permitted a very different view of the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. In this paper I propose to trace such politico-colonial interpretations of The Tempest, and critics' responses to them from their beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day. In so doing, I do not wish to suggest that a theatrical or critical interpretation of The Tempest which gives prominence to the play's specifically colonial elements has more or less intrinsic worth than one that does not. Nor will I