Free English Literature Dissertations - This Suggestion Of Patriarchal Power Is Interesting In The Light Of The Ideas
This suggestion of patriarchal power is interesting in the light of the ideas expressed in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), which strongly suggested that patriarchal sovereign power of the type wielded by Shakespeare’s Prospero was a mere historical accident, rather than being a dictate of nature, and that sovereign power authorised by its own subjects was the only milieu in which true freedom could exist. It is notable that Dryden and Davenant’s Prospero is a less magical figure than Shakespeare's. Whilst he may read as a repressive father attempting to subdue the burgeoning sexuality of his daughters, his magic seems flawed, creating merely ‘discord’ (in Clark p.172 l.256). He is by no means the embodiment of the absolute monarch wielding divine right that Shakespeare’s character is often perceived as, but is subject to ‘the Powers above’ (in Clark p.173 Act V Scene I l.10). The fact that Ariel (subjugated by Prospero in Shakespeare’s text) is instrumental in having to intervene to save the life of Hippolyto has again been linked back to Hobbes’ notion of the sovereign established by agreement, since
the potential for a creative political order resides not with the benevolent monarch but with the loyal, resourceful subject
(Clark p.lvii-lviii),
although, as Clark rightly points out, this is qualified by the colour symbolism of ‘the purple Panacea’ (in Clark p.174 Act V Scene I l.55) Ariel obtains from ‘the British Isles’ (ibid.). In truth, the play’s political stance is finally unclear, although it evidently attempts to concern itself with contemporary arguments about monarchy and government.
In the augmented comic subplot of Shakespeare’s play, it is Mustacho and Ventoso, along with the sailors Stephano and Trincalo who provide the most obvious political commentary within The Tempest. The drunken rhetoric they employ in Act II Scene III in their claims to dominion over and ordering of the island are a clear parody of the idea of contractual sovereignty that republicans had touted during the Interregnum, again discussed in Leviathan, as well as referring directly to the Civil War:
MUSTACHO:You declare for the people, who never saw your face! Cold iron shall decide it.
[They draw.]
STEPHANO:Hold, loving Subjects: we will have no Civil War during our Reign
(in Clark p.114 Act II Scene III l. 77-80).
Again, references to ‘a new Plantation’ (ibid p.112 l.60) by Ventoso would be clearly understood by a contemporary audience as an allusion to the disputed claims over the English colonies during the period of the Protectorate. Trincalo’s farcical marriage to Sycorax to shore up his claims to dominion since she, although repulsive, is ‘Heir of all this Isle’ (in Clark p.134 Act III Scene III l.7) is a further satirical gibe at the idea of succession.
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