The Tempest 967magic, takes command of the island, and enacts his
revenge plot to bring his usurping brother and his
cohort to the island by way of a storm. Because the
travelers become separated, the traditional multiple
plot line is executed in comic form, and each of the
groups is subject to magical interference and myriad
misunderstandings.
The play is thought to be loosely based on Wil-
liam Strachey’s A True Repertory of the Wreck and
Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, upon and
from the Islands of the Bermudas (1609), in which a
group of New World voyagers get lost in a storm
and land in Bermuda rather than Virginia. It is no
accident that, during a period of mass colonizing
of the Americas by Europeans, Shakespeare would
compose a story in which a king lands in a mys-
terious new world and immediately commands it,
despite the claims of the native, Caliban, that the
island belongs to him. Miranda’s famous line of
“O, brave new world, / That has such people in’t”
(5.1.185–186), resounds with irony because it is
the other Europeans she is amazed by, and not her
encounters with the one native and the spirits of the
island.
Christina Angel
aLIenatIon in The Tempest
Shakespeare’s The Tempest illuminates the early
modern condition of alienation in myriad ways. The
play is layered into several parallel plots, and so too
are the themes depicted in each, often ironically.
As a metaphor for colonialism, The Tempest utilizes
the “stranger in a strange land” motif well: Prospero
is an outsider who comes to the island and takes
command of it by way of magic, enslaving those
few who dwelt there prior. Caliban, despite his self-
proclaimed status as the owner of the island, is also
forced into outsider status through his enslavement.
In addition to the central characters, nearly all of
the subsequent characters are forced into other-
ness at various points in the story. The only excep-
tion to this is Gonzalo, who is kind but idealistic
in his utopia-style vision of an ideal society: “I’th’
commonwealth I would by contraries / Execute
all things” (2.1.150–151). Notable here is that this
small but key distinction highlights another layer of
the alienation theme: personal isolation.
Prospero’s alienation results from his exile, and
the play opens with his recounting the events lead-
ing up to and following his removal from Milan
with his daughter, Miranda. Surviving thanks to
Gonzalo’s preparations, Prospero becomes an alien
resident of the island. As he acquires magical power,
he then ironically usurps that same power from
Caliban. However, he also suffers a different kind
of alienation, which transcends the physical fact of
their being strangers in a strange land; he represents
the human condition of the early modern individual
around 1611 in England. The period immediately
following Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603) brought
not only centennial anxiety but also challenges to
the divine right of kings model. This centuries-
old belief that the blood line of kings was directly
handed down from God was shaken by the ascen-
sion to the throne of Elizabeth’s successor, James
I, her Scottish cousin. His claim to the throne was
controversial, and there were others who might have
had equal claim. Renewed debates on science and
religion also added to the anxiety into which The
Tempest was born. The social milieu had drastically
changed by the time of the writing of The Tempest,
and thus it correlates that Prospero is not only a
man in middle age faced with mortality but also
an early modern individual who feels isolated in an
ever-changing world. This effect can be seen when
Prospero states at the moment of his change of
heart, “Sir, I am vexed. / Bear with my weakness. My
old brain is troubled” (4.1.158–159).
Caliban suffers perhaps the most profound and
socially relevant alienation because of his role in the
colonial narrative of The Tempest. As the representa-
tive native figure in what is essentially a tale of New
World encounters, Caliban symbolizes all that is
terrifying about such encounters for English travel-
ers. His name is almost an anagram for “cannibal,”
and he is certainly “savage” by European standards
of the time. He lacks education, and there is much
discussion in the play of teaching him to speak: “You
taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know
how to curse” (1.2.363–364). It is probable Caliban
had his own language, but the one taught to him,
and the one emphasized as superior, would have
been European. Caliban’s mother is called a witch,
and he inhabits a place where magic is possible and