William Shakespeares The Tempest and Montaignes On Cannibals - Essay Example

William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Montaigne’s “On Cannibals A Comparison William Shakespeare’s“The Tempest” is, most probably, the last play he wrote entirely alone and has often been referred to as “Shakespeare’s Play” in that the character of Prospero seems to be orchestrating the actions upon the island in the same creative, artful way in which Shakespeare himself must have conducted the actors and the scenes upon the stage (Frye, 1370). Within the action of the play, one learns that Prospero was once the Duke of Milan, but was overthrown by his own brother, Antonio, who had conspired with the King of Naples, Alonso, to seize all power of the Dukedom. With the help of some friends, Prospero was able to escape with his life and the life of his infant daughter in a small boat that was also provisioned with some food, fresh water, clothing and Prospero’s treasured books, which gave him the power he now wields in the play. The father and daughter landed peacefully enough on the nearly uninhabited island, finding there only the abandoned son of Sycorax, a man called Caliban, and the imprisoned character of Ariel. It was the freeing of Ariel that gave Prospero the ability to command the elemental and therefore to take command of Caliban’s island. Montaigne, on the other hand, was writing as a means of illustrating the first glimpses of a new land that had recently been discovered, including his impressions of the people he found there. It is interesting to note the similar features Montaigne and Shakespeare ascribe to their native characters, whether one is discussing Shakespeare’s character of Caliban or Montaigne’s impressions of the cannibals as well as the similarity with which they see the untouched land upon which their narratives focus. As Shakespeare’s play opens, we see Caliban as an unwilling servant to Prospero, kept in line through threats and cruel treatment. Caliban is loyal because if he is not, “thou shalt have cramps / Side-stitches that shall pen they breath up; urchins / Shall, for that vast of night that they may work / All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinched / As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging / Than bees that made ‘em” (I, ii, 325-30). Although he was a free man before Prospero’s arrival on the island, Caliban is now referred to as a slave, forced to perform the menial tasks involved in serving the former Duke and his daughter. As he is introduced in the play, he makes it clear that while he was uneducated in the knowledge that Prospero brought with him, his knowledge of the island was necessary to facilitate Prospero’s survival and his resentment over his current treatment knows no bounds. Nevertheless, he is portrayed as a fool and simpleton who appears quick to trust others (II, ii in his quick devotion to Stephano as a replacement of Prospero) and becomes easily frightened by threats of physical harm, again emphasizing his lack of wits in that the most effective means of controlling him is through physical, rather than mental, measures. Yet even within his restraints, Caliban continues to struggle for command of the lonely kingdom of the island he had once ruled before Prospero came. Although demonstrated to be a fool in his willingness to follow a drunkard as ruler, Caliban continues to demonstrate an intelligence of his own, understanding how to defeat the magician and learning from his mistakes in the end. In his essay, Montaigne also takes issue with the concept of the native man as necessarily a savage or unintelligent barbarian. This is first introduced as he discusses the observations of the Greeks as they came upon armies that were considered barbarian because of their foreign origin, but that were at least as capably organized and knowledgeable in the art of war as they had been themselves. He takes this historical observation and applies it to the individuals found on the new continent. “Those ‘savages’ are only wild in the sense that we call fruits wild when they are produced by Nature in her ordinary course: whereas it is fruit which we have artificially perverted and misled from the common order which we ought to call savage” (82). He sees these barbarians as purely natural constructions of the ideal land of God and thus their activities, while not those that are considered appropriate or desirous by the ‘civilized’ and ‘learned’ man, are not something to be reviled and destroyed but rather learned from and appreciated. This again calls to mind the character of Caliban in that he is not book-wise like Prospero or cultured like the other men he meets on the island, but he is highly skilled and knowledgeable regarding the vagaries and treasures of his island home. Another comparison that can be made between the character Caliban and the natives described by Montaigne is their ability to find happiness in simply living in unfettered natural freedom within the scope of their own small piece of the world (88). Highlighting the ‘true honor’ of these natives as they remain steadfastly loyal to their two primary ideals of never admitting defeat and loving their wives, Montaigne, like Shakespeare, struggles to couch the native in terms of our highest ideals by removing the refined definitions of society to look at the underlying principles of such concepts. Shakespeare’s Gonzalo, upon discovering the seemingly pristine island, imagines a world free of any kind of mastery: “I’ th’ commonwealth I would by contraries / Execute all things; for no kind of traffic / Would I admit; no name of magistrate … No occupation; all men idle, all; / And women too, but innocent and pure; / No sovereignty” (II, i, 143-45, 150-52). He sees the island as a miniature paradise in its lush greenery and its refreshing and renewing atmosphere, as is evidenced in his observations that the garments he wore had been scrubbed clean and made new upon their shipwrecked arrival onshore. He envisions natural utopia here, with all residents living off of the effortless bounty of the island in perfect harmony with each other and with the land. His visions of the islanders understand them to be monstrous of form but gentle and loving of manners, again portraying them in ways that contrast sharply with the self-serving beautiful appearing yet monstrously behaving individuals of the ‘civilized’ world (III, iii). As he learns more of it, however, he comes to wish for the known barbarities of his own world rather than the mysterious and frightening things he’s witnessed on the island. Like Gonzalo, Montaigne describes the land itself in terms of its pristine beauty and its perfect relationship with the natural order of things – the way in which God first created it. In praising this state, he chastises his readers for their inability to appreciate it: “It is not sensible that artifice should be reverenced more than Nature, our great and powerful Mother. We have so overloaded the richness and beauty of her products by our own ingenuity that we have smothered her entirely. Yet wherever her pure light does shine, she wondrously shames our vain and frivolous enterprises” (83). He furthers this argument by pointing out that despite mankind’s best efforts, we remain unable to replicate the beauty and intricacy inherent in nature in such objects as the bird’s nest and the spider’s web. Like Gonzalo, he envisions the native peoples to be organized around a more suitable, utopic societal construction of equals in which there remains plenty for all in effortless profusion. The land is described as rich and bounteous, easily providing for the subjects that live in such close harmony with it. Also like Gonzalo, Montaigne discovers that his idyllic land of perfect peace and balance was marred by war and such horrendous practices as cannibalism, yet he also tried to understand more about the beliefs such practices sprang from and acknowledged that before his race should judge theirs, first they should examine their own practices and behaviors (86). Both Shakespeare and Montaigne indicated a general tendency to designate native peoples as unintelligent or barbarian simply because they were unfamiliar with ‘civilized’ societies social mores, but both seemed to disagree with this assessment. Shakespeare portrayed his barbarian as easily tricked by Prospero’s willingness to deal falsely with him and utterly angry about this treatment, but not unintelligent in that he was thoroughly knowledgeable about his island and how to survive on it as well as having learned the means by which to overcome the magician himself. This corresponds closely with Montaigne’s portrayal of the barbarians of the new land as having at least as much intelligence, poetry and love of life as his contemporaries from more civilized societies while also hinting that they may be even a bit better in that they remain steadfastly true to their fellow community members and their societal ideals. Both authors tended to draw a connection between this ideal natural man and his ideal natural environment in which the land provided all that was required without additional effort or struggle on the part of the natives. It was the result of living in a land of plenty, they indicated, that produced men who had few requirements for what was unnecessary or that caused strife to erupt between individuals. To reach utopia, one must first discover unspoiled land and then establish societies based upon mutual respect, interdependence and shared resources. Works Cited Frye, Northrop. “Introduction to ‘The Tempest’.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Alfred Harbage. New York: Penguin Books, 1969. 1369-1372. Montaigne, Michel de. The Essays: A Collection. Ed./Trans. M.A. Screech. New York: Penguin Classics. Shakespeare, William. “The Tempest.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Alfred Harbage. New York: Penguin Books, 1969. 1373-1395. Read More