ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a close reading of the play-text which emphasizes the coexistence of contrary and antagonistic influences, and its mercurial performance history. The Tempest grasps the unsettled hierarchies and sharp contradictions of the primitive accumulation of capital. Not only does the play foreground global locations and intra- and interclass conflict, but it also draws attention to various ‘other’ identities. The play’s association with alterity is so pronounced and wide-ranging that it has today become metonymic for colonization, and Ariel, Caliban, Miranda, and Sycorax have all variously been taken up as symbols of both oppression and liberation—around race, gender, sexuality, religion, and disability—in diverse guises. The Tempest registers a pivotal moment marking the origins of many modern forms of discrimination, and intervenes in residual and emerging discourses around ‘witchcraft,’ ‘nature,’ ‘science,’ and ‘magic.’ Its gender dynamics include both Manichean oppositions and paradoxical mirroring while indicating that women’s social role was in a state of flux. The play’s persistent schematic dualism is constantly disrupted by unexpected associations and mirroring. The dissolution intimated by the phrase ‘all that’s solid melts into air’ combines with the paradoxical quality of felix culpa—the fortunate fall—to produce a very specific contradictory duality, a potent expression of the radically unstable ideological moorings and sharp social conflicts of the age.
