“THIS ISLAND’S MINE”: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF SHAKESPEARE’S THE TEMPEST

Abstract

This paper uses the theories of William Shakespeare and postcolonial criticism in particular, as I mostly focus on the work of Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin (2003) to see The Tempest (2015) in the light of postcolonialism. It points to the manner in which the play, in dramatic economy, dramatises the gestures of the colonial encounter: the appropriation of land, the representation of the native as a savage “other” (Said, 1978), the use of a coloniser's language, and the response to this colonialisation that it precipitates. The analysis shows how the text rehearses imperial ideology whilst also providing materials for its critique, based on Prospero and Caliban's relationship in the text, and how, in the text, Caliban defiantly states “This island's mine by Sycorax, my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me” (Shakespeare, 2015, p. 37). In the wake of Loomba's discussion of colonial discourse, hybridity, and an uneven distribution of power, and Orkin's focus on institutional and political histories of empire (1987), the paper argues that The Tempest is not simply colonial or against colonialism, but an unsettled space that has been possessed by different subjects and whose meanings have been redefined in the formerly colonized world. The conclusion considers the relevance of a postcolonial analysis today.