A Comparative Study Between Shakespeares
A Comparative Study Between Shakespeares
A Comparative Study Between Shakespeares
Rupsha Mukherjee
Professor S.Sen
9 April 2014
Written in the 17th Century Elizabethan England, The Tempest has invited critics over centuries
to interpret the text based upon their contemporary cultural contexts and the Shakespearean play
itself has provided readers and commentators enough reasons to do so. The characterization of a
dispossessed yet some what tyrannical Prospero and the enslaved Sub-altern Caliban in the
‘source’ text has presented an opportunity before postcolonial thinkers and playwrights like Aime
Cesaire to write his own “A Tempest” or “Une Tempete” in 1969. According to Graff & Phelan,
“If Shakespeare is ambivalent towards Prospero and Caliban, he may be reflecting this clash of
attitudes in the culture at the time… this predated the arrival of postcolonial criticism…the
Elizabethan theatre often reflected the contradiction ‘between the medieval and the modern’
views of the world.”(97). It is the undercurrent in The Tempest that prompts Aime Cesaire to
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rebellious Caliban in place. According to Linda Hutcheon “Adaptations are so much a part of
Western culture that they appear to affirm Walter Benjamin’s insight that ‘storytelling is always
the art of repeating stories.”(2). She further adds that “like parodies, adaptations have an overt
and defining relationship to prior texts, usually revealing called “sources” (though) adaptations
usually openly announce this relationship”.(3). In case of Une Tempete, the play cannot be
merely seen as an intertextual adaptation of The Tempest into another language but as an
contradictions (of a text)…parody simplifies drama; it reduces these voices to two; in sharp
contrast here, racist authoritarianism versus liberationist protest.” (Porter 364). Cesaire’s primary
intent in the play is to highlight the clash between Prospero and Caliban and as a result of that,
the love story between Miranda and Ferdinand and also the primary revenge plot in The Tempest
has been given a secondary status in Une Tempete. According to Brenda Mcnary, “Césaire’s
vision of Caliban’s proximity to the “natural world,” when contrasted with Prospero’s detached
“cold reason” and “methodical conquest,” clearly reflects his outlook on the colonial system and
forms a consistent link with his larger anticolonial political views.” (12).
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The very first dialogue in Une Tempete gives an insight about how the text tries to
subvert the hegemony and the accepted norms, even though Gonzalo’s comment of getting “ to
the eye of the storm” for safety is taken in jest by his co-passengers in the ship. The Martinique
playwright had the exotic Caribbean island in his mind as a setting to the play can be gauged
from the epithets used to describe the island. Gonzalo calls the island “magic lands… so different
from our homes in Europe… Look, even the lightning is different!” In Act 3, Scene 2 Trinculo
remarks, “Ah! An Indian. You never know with these tricky races.” Stephano proclaims that “it
looks like a Nindian!”, thus giving indications about Caliban’s Red-Indian or New World
identity. Shakespeare on the other hand dealt with a nameless island, between Tunisia and Italy.
Thus Cesaire again seems to pick up on the loose ends and hints provided in the ‘source’ to
concretize his own. Prospero’s arrival on the island has been given a different reason in Une
Tempete. In Cesaire’s play it is said that Prospero discovered lands upon which many others had
their eyes set. Antonio and Alonso hatched a plot to snatch his yet-unborn empire from him.
They stole his charts and documents and dispossessed him. Hence, Cesaire shows Prospero’s
Another interesting insight that the Cesaire play provides is of the power
hierarchy that pans out in the course of the narration. God occupies the topmost position,
followed by Prospero (the white emissary) and Caliban(the savage), occupying the lowest
position in the power pyramid. This equation though attains a dynamic nature with Prospero and
Caliban both challenging the status quo. Prospero in Une Tempete is charged with “heretical
perversion” as he tries to “insinuate and publish against God and his creation with regard to the
shape of the Earth and the possibility of discovering other lands.”, as claimed by the priests of
Holy Office (Act 1, Scene 2). Prospero challenges the ultimate authority of the Divine while
Caliban poses a threat to Prospero in order to re-claim what he thinks is rightfully his. According
to Laurence M. Porter, “Cesaire explains that it is the Europeans’ greed or ignorance or both,
which prevents them from recognizing that the other is in fact civilized, although
different.”(362). Language of the text is very modern and oftentimes profane, a far-cry from the
Shakespearean English of the 17th Century. In Act 2(Scene 3), a Masque is performed like in The
Tempest but with a difference brought about by an additional character called Eshu, the black
Devil God. He speaks in profane language, challenges the norms set by the Greek and Roman
Gods and Goddesses like Juno, Ceres and Iris. His blasphemous manner of speaking threatens
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conjuring the spirits to entertain Ferdinand and Miranda, as Eshu arrives uninvited and disrupts
Prospero’s “noble assembly”. Eshu representing the aspirations of a black Caliban says that Eshu
“is not the man to carry heavy load”. Hence, it is a strong symbolic gesture to threaten the
colonizer’s authority. It makes Prospero fear that his “power has gone cold…like foam, like a
cloud,( it will) one day fade.” Caliban accuses Prospero of confining him to a “ghetto” or a
filthy cave. The modern trope of using an image of a ghetto can be connected to Cesaire recalling
“the thousands of French sailors stranded in the Antilles for many months after the Nazi invasion
of France.”(Porter 363).
Ariel has been projected as an obedient general to Prospero in The Tempest. His only
target is to earn freedom once Prospero grants it to him. Ariel in Une Tempete though has a more
sympathetic view towards Caliban and his cause. He questions Prospero’s actions at several
instances in the play and also says “ Sometimes I almost regret it…After all, I might have turned
into a real tree in the end.”, in response to Prospero’s claim that he freed him from the clutches of
the tree in which Sycorax imprisoned him. Thus Caliban and Ariel act as the two voices of the
freedom movement, whose methods are divergent while the cause remains the same. As a white
mulatto slave, Ariel has been given human emotions as he questions Prospero’s decisions and
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appears connected to the colonized sections including Caliban. Coming to the most critical
character in Une Tempete, that is, Caliban, one can see a significant difference in him from his
‘The Tempest’ counterpart. There are numerous verbal battles between Caliban and Prospero.
When Prospero calls Caliban an “ugly ape”, he retorts back by addressing him as “that big
hooked nose… old vulture.” He says that Prospero taught him language in order to get his own
work executed and accuses him of not sharing his scientific knowledge and magical insights with
Caliban. Prospero’s position is solemnly challenged as he says” I did not summon you here to
The politics of language is highlighted when Caliban expresses his desire to be called X
(a nameless entity), as his colonizer master gave him the name of Caliban. He thinks that “Every
time it’s spoken, it’s an insult.” Prospero realizes that “Caliban is the (real) enemy” and not the
“people on the boat”, as they are men of his “race, and of high rank” (Act 1, Scene 2). Here
Caliban, like Ariel, sings many songs, unlike just one inarticulate song in a drunken state in The
Tempest. It alleviates his pain and ventilates his contempt for Prospero. Thus he is put on an
almost equal intellectual footing as Ariel. He does not say that “the isle is full of noises” in Une
Tempete , as opposed to that in The Tempest. He deciphers those noises here as he has been
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made intellectually stronger by Cesaire. He is ready to accept Stephano and Trinculo as masters
but he does not swear his allegiance to them in blatantly subservient and self-denigrating terms
like in The Tempest. He dreams of a revolution and abhors the tomfoolery that the two carry out
with colourful clothes in Act 2, Scene 4. Caliban enters the play with the native word “Uhuru”,
but his conversation with the other characters continue in their language, that is, French and in
English in the translated version of the play. Thus, Caliban as a postcolonial subject belongs to
what Homi K.Bhabha calls the “Third Space” (Bhabha 36). “The colonizer and the colonized
negotiate their cultural differences and create a culture that is a hybrid”( Bhabha) Thus,
Prospero’s decision to stay back in the island at the end of Une Tempete fuels the possibility of
this cultural hybrid to flourish even more. The self of Prospero needs the other Caliban to
validate his own existence in both the physical and the symbolic world. Cesaire communicates to
his audience that the colonization project is never-ending and the struggle for liberation for
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Works Cited
Cesaire, Aime, and William Shakespeare. A tempest: based on Shakespeare's The tempest :
adaptation for a Black theatre. New York, NY: Ubu Repertory Theater, 1992. Print.
Comparative Study. 1. Aufl. ed. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009. Print.
Shakespeare, William, Virginia Mason Vaughan, and Alden T. Vaughan. The tempest. London:
McNary, Brenda. "He proclaims Uhuru : Understanding Caliban as a speaking subject." critical
theory and undergraduate research journal on critical theory and occidental college 1
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/40247009>.
Bhabha, Homi . "Homi Bhabha." Homi Bhabha. N.p., 20 Nov. 2000. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.
<http://rowenasworld.org/essays/newphil/bhabha.htm>.
Bhabha, Homi K.. The location of culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Shakespeare, William, Gerald Graff, and James Phelan. "why study critical controversies about
The Tempest." The tempest: a case study in critical controversy. Boston: Bedford/St.