Shakespeare’s ‘racist’ Tempest ‘is harmful’
VIOLENT colonial themes in The Tempest could be “harmful” to modern audiences, experts have claimed as part of a project to decolonise William Shakespeare’s work.
The 17th-century play about magic and shipwreck on a remote island is embedded in a “system of settler colonialism”, according to academics taking part in the Globe theatre’s Anti-racist Shakespeare programme.
Prospero, arriving at the play’s island setting and suppressing its inhabitants, the spirit Ariel and the monstrous Caliban, has “violent colonial implications”.
These alleged colonial themes in The Tempest are among those that make Shakespeare’s work “capable of harm” for audiences, it has been claimed.
Director and academic Madeline Sayet, said: “There is a lot of unwillingness to accept that those plays aren’t neutral, that they do have politics attached to them, that they do have these violent colonial implications.”
She added: “The fundamental system of settler colonialism cannot be erased from that play. That play is operating in that system.”
Ms Sayet, of Arizona State University, said that such themes need to be addressed by theatre producers. She said that “there are things in the plays that are really harmful to audiences”.
She added: “If you’re reading Shakespeare’s plays and you’re not seeing any sexism or racism, then there’s a lot of education that I think, as a human being, you need to be looking at.”
Ms Sayet spoke during a Shakespeare’s Globe discussion of The Tempest’s “colonialist context”. The talk was the latest in the Anti-racist lecture series launched by the Globe to help “liberate Shakespeare from the shackles of idolatry and subservience and put him to work for all people”.
The Globe’ website states: “There are harmful, challenging and uncomfortable moments in Shakespeare.”
Lectures in the series offer advice on
‘If you read Shakespeare’s plays and you’re not seeing sexism and racism, there’s a lot you need to be looking at’
how to contend with these academically and on stage. Ms Sayet suggested that in order to stage an “anti-racist” version of The Tempest, producers should ask questions including “where does the power live?” and “how do we dismantle oppression in this scene?”.
Dr Manning Stevens highlighted the “insistence” on the “monstrosity” of Caliban as a problem in the play, which could be addressed by casting a “beautiful” actor in the role of the enslaved islander. The fate of Caliban in the play, written during a period of British expansion, has been seen by some as mirroring 17th-century colonialism.
Caliban’s name has also been interpreted as having echoes of the word “cannibal”, and being linked to contemporary European views of native populations in the New World.
The Globe’s latest discussion follows a session on “problematic” language in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play in which “white is beautiful, that fair is beautiful, that dark is unattractive”.
Michelle Terry, the artistic director at Shakespeare’s Globe, said: “The antiracist webinars are an exploration of the plays rather than an analysis of our productions.”