"Are we being historical yet?": Colonialist interpretations of Shakespeare's Tempest

NOT LONG AGO, Carolyn Porter, in the article "Are We Being Historical Yet?," assessed the achievements of the "new historicists." Agreeing with Louis Montrose that new historicism was "on its way to becoming the newest academic orthodoxy," especially in Renaissance studies, she concluded, that although new historicism had provided a much-needed corrective to traditionally a historical literary study, the answer to the question raised in her title was "No."1 In what follows I shall extend her critique to recent work on The Tempest, a play that has attracted widespread attention among new historicists as a paradigm of early modern colonialism.[ 2] My findings corroborate Professor Porter's conclusion: we still have a long way to go before we can feel even somewhat confident that we are historicizing, if we ever can.

According to Professor Porter, it is their fixation on Foucault's conceptualization of power that stands between the new historicists and effective historicization.[ 3]

Foucault's perspective on the discursive field apparently fosters [a tendency in new historicist practice] to exclude, which is a necessary precondition for addressing a particular cultural discourse, but then to repress the fact of that exclusion, so that a particular discourse, or set of discourses, comes to stand for the horizonless field of Discourse.[ 4]

Thus she watches Stephen Greenblatt and Steven Mullaney marginalize the very others (Algonkians, Welsh) whose othering they so clearly deplore, erasing their history, in the process of showing how power on the Foucauldian model, "absolutized as a transhistorical force . . . . relentlessly produces and recontains subversion."[ 5] As a result, we are

limited to one set of discourses--those which form the site of a dominant ideology--and then reifying that limit as if it were coterminous with the limits of discourse in general- It is this issue of framing the discursive field which new historicists most urgently need to address.[ 8]

It is "this issue of framing" that I shall address again in a study of eight recent analyses of The Tempest. By choosing colonialism as a frame, and then "reifying" it as if it were "coterminus with the limits of discourse in general," I find that the new historicists do indeed marginalize not only a large field of pertinent contemporary discourse, but also The Tempest itself. For as we are constantly reminded, we must explore, "both the social presence to the world of the literary text and the social presence of the world in the literary text."? To carry out this project, we must answer the question, "What difference did The Tempest make to which fields of discourse?" By too assiduously implementing the colonialist frame, the eight critics I study here effectively forestall any attempt to answer the question in terms of a full range of possibilities, despite the ostensible variety of approaches they take to the play.

Thomas Cartelli (1987)[ 8], basing his account on the work of African and Caribbean writers, takes the stance that Shakespeare is to blame for the way in which British imperialists have justified colonial oppression on the model of Caliban's apparent ineducability. Curt Breight (1990)[ 9] holds that the play is innocent of this charge, and is instead an expose of James I's rule, in which Prospero's disciplinary measures caricature the crown's terror tactics in such broad strokes that a Jacobean audience could not miss them. Exactly reversing this position, Lori Leininger (1980)[ 10] perceives that far from exposing the injustices of the society in which it is embedded, the play is guilty of trying to cover them up, although it fails to handle all sorts of exasperating anomalies. Expressing the same dissatisfaction in more theoretical terms, Paul Brown (1985)[ 11] maintains that The Tempest actually "intervened" in "an ambivalent and even contradictory contemporary discourse" of colonialism:

This intervention takes the form of a powerful and pleasurable
narrative which seeks at once to harmonize disjunction, to
transcend irreconcilable contradictions and to mystify the
political conditions which demand colonialist discourse. Yet the
narrative ultimately fails to deliver that containment and instead
may be seen to foreground precisely those problems which it works
to efface or overcome.[12]

The team of Francis Barker and Peter Hulme[ 13] is more interested in the contradictions in our own society: "The onus on new readings, especially radical readings aware of their own theoretical and political positioning, should be to proceed by means of a critique of the dominant readings of a text."[ 14] Stephen Orgel (1987)[ 15], in the exhaustive Introduction to his splendid Oxford edition, avoids theoretical terminology, but his treatment is patently a deconstruction of the traditional idealist reading. Eric Cheyfetz,[ 16] who approaches colonialism and The Tempest via the metaphor of translation finds interesting parallels between Prospero as dictator of an official language and the way in which official languages are used in the conquest of native peoples. Finally, Stephen Greenblatt (1988) in his "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne"[ 17] frames his critique with his own theory of "salutary anxiety," derived from an anecdote of Bishop Latimer, and showing that governors, Prospero being a case in point, may raise the threat of imminent calamity in order to win credit for averting it.

For some reason the great variety of theoretical underpinning in this set of essays does not produce a corresponding variety of interpretation. All critiques proceed in much the same fashion to dismantle a presumed "authorized version" of the play that idealizes and romanticizes Prospero as a noble regenerator of fallen humanity.[ 18] Or to put it in the words of Barker and Hulme, "athwart its alleged unity, the text is in fact marked and fissured by the interplay of the discourses that constitute it."[19] When we have de-constructed the play, we find ourselves standing in the presence of naked power. It becomes evident, as one surveys these new historicist interpretations, that the "fissures" most commonly detected tend to be the same ones:

The storm:

All but one of these critics pick, as the opening fissure in the romantic surface of the. play the "refreshingly subversive"[20] storm scene that begins the play in which helpless, hapless nobles must endure the insults of desperate mariners trying to save the ship.[21] Immediately power reveals itself in subversion. The nearly unanimous choice of this scene is symptomatic of the whole critical approach. By framing the scene as colonial discourse, these critics foreclose the possibility that the storm (in nature and society) represents and dramatizes, as in Lear, the social disorder that ensues when a state is irresponsibly governed. What does the title signify? It seems more likely that The Tempest is participating here in contemporary discourse on government, about which I shall have more to say later.

Prospero's self-contradictory and contradicted prologue (1.2) [22]

In his long exposition to Miranda, telling her who they are, how they got here, and what they are doing now, Prospero, according to these critics, is at cross-purposes with himself. While his anger at the usurpers of his dukedom seems to know no bounds, he at the same time blames his overthrow on his inattention to duty, his having retired from public affairs to study "liberal arts."[23] Here we see power at work, disguising its own motives and intentions, even from itself. Here contemporary discourse on anger could be relevant, but the critical approach closes the door in advance on any nonpolitical explanation.

Further, by giving credit to "Providence Divine" (1.1.159) for casting them upon the island, Prospero implies that he legitimately rules the island by some sort of manifest destiny.[24] But the ensuing scenes with Ariel and Caliban make it clear that Caliban's mother once owned the island and that Caliban inherits it from her.[25] In short, the official version, for Miranda's ears only, is wrong: Prospero rules not by manifest destiny but by force.[26] Again the frame marginalizes other options, for it is not a forgone conclusion that Prospero's primary reason for taking charge of the island is to make it his colony.

However, it turns out that Caliban has attempted to rape Miranda. Is he an innocent victim of colonial exploitation or a criminal deservedly punished for a crime? The question could be left open in the name of that plurality on which Orgel insists in his introduction. But the frame does not allow plurality, and the critics here surveyed do their best to weaken the force of the rape. First, say they, Prospero brings up the matter of the rape to divert attention from Caliban's rightful claim to the island; and second, colonialists always excuse their barbarity by attributing sub-human characteristics to the native population. Read properly, this business about rape is just another colonialist tactic, a tired excuse for repressive violence.[27]

This rationalization is not very convincing in terms of the text that it effaces, but which is nevertheless still there. To establish the rape = excuse theory, one must overturn three witnesses, including the would-be rapist himself still lusting after the victim. And if Caliban and Ariel are opposites, as we are certainly invited to suppose, the colonialist frame marginalizes this way of looking at the play as well.

Prospero's outbursts:

Barker and Hulme speak of "Prospero's well-known irascibility."[26] Chiefly noted are

--his impatient asides to Miranda during his introductory speech;[29]

--his annoyance at Ariel's plea for freedom;[30]

--his "hysterical" response to Caliban's claim of prior ownership;[31]

--his irate chastisement of Ferdinand, his own choice for his daughter's hand, on a trumped-up charge;[32]

--his obvious joy at the suffering of his enemies;[33]

--and certainly his exasperated realization, in the midst of the masque celebrating the betrothal of Ferdinand and Miranda, that if he doesn't act fast he may soon be murdered by Caliban's junta.[34]

Prospero's frequent and "puzzling" losses of temper do indeed mar the beautiful surface of a romantic Tempest. But are they really leaks in the play's romantic envelope which reveal the ugly colonialism within, or do they better fit another paradigm? Again the frame cuts off speculation.

However, close on the point where Prospero's rage peaks (4.1.145) comes Prospero's renunciation of vengeance and his abjuration of magic, acts which introduce real problems for the colonialist hypothesis, for, if we accept this reversal at face value, he repudiates his whole career as a despot. Again, instead of leaving us in a state of negative capability, the frame requires an elaborate exercise in looking the other way. In so doing the colonialist critics simply erase the climax of the play.

For Paul Brown, after the masque, after the trivialization by ridicule of Caliban's rebellion, after the celebration of upper-class solidarity in the wedding of Ferdinand and Miranda, Prospero's project is finished; he has "euphemized" his own power politics so well that he has virtually nullified himself, and now has nothing to do but go home and wait for death. "The completion of the colonialist project signals the banishment of its supreme exponent even as his triumph is declared."[35] Curt Breight, using the analogy of Prospero's scare tactics to James I's technique of death sentences and reprieves, sees Prospero's reformation in almost exactly the same way, as a further exercise of power.[36] Stephen Orgel argues that the ending in reconciliation and renunciation is a total sham. The evil brother has not repented; Prospero may not ultimately keep his promise to break his wand; he has not given up a daughter, but won a throne: in returning to Milan he will reach all the goals that his magic was meant to achieve. In the end we witness, not the renunciation of magic, but magic's "triumph."[37] Nor are Thomas Cartelli and Lori Leininger fooled by the ending, a vain attempt to hide an outrage that refuses to be hidden.[38] Francis Barker and Peter Hulme allow some ambivalence, but "the lengths [they say] to which the play has to go to achieve a legitimate ending may . . . be read as the quelling of a fundamental disquiet concerning its own functions within the projects of colonialist discourse.[39] It's just a cover-up after all, and the play is an egregious hypocrite. Here the application of the colonialist frame requires the "refutation of the ending."[40]

It is not just the climax that has been effaced,[41] but with it an extensive field of early modern European discourse on which it draws and to which it reports. Prospero's change of heart occurs just after Caliban and his fellow-mutineers have been punished for their assault on his life. Ariel is reporting the status of his chastening of the upper-class conspirators.

Your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your -affections
Would become tender.
Pros. Dost thou think so, spirit?
Ari. Mine would, sir, were I human. Pros. And mine shall.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling,
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am strook to th'quick,
Yet, with my nobler reason, 'gainst my fury
Do I take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance.

Some years ago Eleanor Prosser[42] traced this passage to John Florio's translation of Montaigne's essay On Cruelty. Florio's language is indeed close (I have emphasized the words that both he and Shakespeare use):

He that through a naturall facilitie and genuine mildnesse should neglect or contemne injuries received, should no doubt performs a rare action, and worthy commendation: but he who being toucht and stung to the quicke with any wrong or offence received, should arme himselfe with reason against this furiously blind desire of revenge, and in the end after a great conflict yeeld himselfe master over it, should doubtlesse doe much more. The first should doe well, the other vertuously: the one action might be termed Goodnesse, the other Vertue. For it seemeth that the very name of Vetrue presupposeth difficultie, and inferreth resistance, and cannot well exercise itselfe without an enemy.[43]

Long before Florio had translated these words (16033), Thomas Elyot had expressed very much the same sentiment in his handbook for gentlemen, named The Governour (1531), under the heading "Of Pacience in sustayninge wronges and rebukes:"

Unto hym that is valyaunt of courage, it is a great payne and difficultie to sustayne Iniurie, and nat to be forthwith reuenged. And yet often tymes is accounted more valyauntnesse in the sufferaunce than in hasty reuengynge.[44]

In awarding points for degree of difficulty, Elyot manages to anticipate Montaigne. King James I, in his letter of advice to his son (1603)--citing Cicero's advice to his son (De Officiis), Seneca's essay on clemency, the Aeneid, and Aristotle's Ethics--counsels the apparent future king to

Embrace trew magnanimitie, not in beeing vindictiue, which the corrupted Judgements of the world thinke to be trew Magnanimitie, but by the contratie, in thinking your offendour not worthie of your wrath, empyring ouer your owne passion, and triumphing in the commaunding your selfe to forgiue.[45]

In his Characters of the Virtues and Vices (1608), Joseph Hall, later Bishop, counsels likewise:

The Patient Man finds that victory consists in yielding. He is above nature, while he seems below himself. The vilest creature knows how to turn again, but to command himself not to resist, being urged, is more than heroical.[46]

These echoes suggest a common origin, and, of course, they have one: in the writings of the Roman moralists:

[Do not] listen to those who think that one should indulge in violent anger against one's political enemies and imagine that such is the attitude of a great-spirited, brave man. For nothing is more commendable, nothing more becoming in a preeminently great man than courtesy and forbearance. (Cicero, De Officiis)[47]

Revenge is the confession of a hurt; no mind is truly great that bends before injury. . . . There is no surer proof of greatness than to be in a state where nothing can possibly happen to disturb you. . . . The lofty mind is always calm, at rest in a quiet haven; crushing down all that engenders anger, it is restrained, commands respect, and is properly ordered. (Seneca, Moral Essays)[48]

Editors of The Tempest are puzzled by the fact that "virtue" and "vengeance" don't seem to be correlatives.[49] In Roman discourse of morality they are.

The idea that Shakespeare is the universal man, tied to no time or place, dies very hard, so hard that even the scholars most dedicated to rehistoricizing him cannot seem to break themselves of the habit of thinking of him as one of us, seeing his times through our eyes. Between us and Shakespeare lie the development of capitalist society, and the French, romantic, and industrial revolutions. But we read Shakespeare almost as if nothing had happened. Should we not, in order to understand him, his audience, and, by virtue of the uncompromising law of believability, his characters, become familiar with the "ethic" that preceded The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism? What notions of good and bad governed early modern decision-making? Social historians generally agree that they were quite different from ours. According to Karl Marx,

The Bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single unconscionable freedom--Free Trade. (Communist Manifesto)[50]

In his fact-filled study, The World We Have Lost (1965), Peter Laslett quotes this passage as the "words [of] the most penetrating of all observers of the world we have lost."[51]

The great Max Weber expands on Marx's "icy water of egotistical calculation" in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but has more to say about the ethic that comes before in his Essays in Sociology:

The ancient economic ethic of neighborliness [was fostered] by the guild, or the partners in seafaring, hunting and warring expeditions. These communities have known two elemental principles: first, the dualism of in-group and out-group morality; second, for in-group morality, simple reciprocity: 'As you do unto me I shall do unto you.' From these principles the following [consequences] have resulted for economic life: for in-group morality the principled obligation to give brotherly support in distress has existed. The wealthy and the noble were obliged to loan, free of charge, goods for the use of the property-less, to give credit free of interest, and to extend liberal hospitality and support. Men were obliged to render services upon request of their neighbors, and likewise, on the lord's estate, without compensation other than mere sustenance. All this followed the principle: your want of today may be mine tomorrow. This principle was not, of course, rationally weighed, but it played its part in sentiment. Accordingly, higgling in exchange and loan situations, as well as permanent enslavement resulting, for instance, from debts, were confined to outgroup morality and applied only to outsiders.[52]

For Jurgen Habermas, Marx's "egotistical calculation," stripped of its emotive ramifications, becomes the "purposive-rational" behavior of modern western man, in which right action is whatever makes sense given the goal, as opposed to "symbolic interaction," in which right action is that which coincides with mutually-understood social norms, in default of any ultimate goal.[53] Today a "rational choice model" governs the research of most political scientists, though it is now strenuously challenged (see, for instance, Sven Longstreth, Frank Steinmo and Kathleen Thelen, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, ch. 1).[54] For Shakespeare's society, if we are to take the advice of the social historians, a "symbolic interaction model" would produce a better fit.

Karl Polanyi, in The Great Transformation, holds that although "purposive-rational" ethics go hand in hand with industrialization, no truly purposive-rational society has ever existed, except, perhaps for a short time in the "satanic mills" of Dickens's England, when some level starvation was rationalized as necessary for labor to become a commodity in fact. Before and since, though they have tolerated a high degree of rationality in human relations, "free market" societies have simply refused to tolerate starvation. In 1944 Polanyi wrote

The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man's economy as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end.[55]

Or, as Shakespeare put the case, out of the mouth of Iago into the ear of Othello:

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Or again, from the mouth of Cassio: "O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial" (2.3.262-65).

The "norms" of which these social scientists speak are, of course, a prominent feature of those "primitive" societies that captivate the anthropologists: for example, Marcel Mauss in his classic The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, introduced by E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1954)[56] and Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics, his amazing account of the idyllic life of actual hunters and gatherers.[57] In The Gift: imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde explored the function of these same Stone Age economics in the production of art.[58] The Romans apparently remembered or observed or retained vestiges of this pre-agricultural age, and admired it, as Seneca testifies in quoting Virgil's Georgics:

No ploughman tilled the soil, nor was it right
To portion off or bound one's property.
Men shared their gains, and earth more freely gave
Her riches to her sons who sought them not.

What race of men [comments Seneca] was ever more blest than that race? They enjoyed all nature in partnership. Nature sufficed for them . . . and this her gift consisted of the assured possession by each man of the common resources.[59]

When we study Kwakiutl society, we try to find out what the Kwakiutls think they are doing before we decide what we think they are doing. If it were known that every Kwakiutl had access to a book of rules for righteous living, we would certainly consult this book before presuming to explain Kwakiutl behavior. Closer to home, before we declare the Jacobean position on colonialism, shouldn't we know what ethical tools the Jacobeans brought to the task of judging it? For Shakespeare's society hundreds of moral rule books are available, but they are almost never consulted. The result, to use Habermas's terms, is that we're trying to impose a "purposive-rational" model on a society controlled by "symbolic interaction," about as sensible a procedure as using the Boy Scout's Law to explain the Kwakiutls.

Considering our manifest need for cultural material pertaining to Shakespeare's work, it is difficult to imagine how we can have overlooked the ocean of early modern ethical discourse opened to us in Ruth Kelso's monumental bibliography of Renaissance books pertaining to the Doctrine of the English Gentleman (1929) and The Doctrine for the Lady (1956).[60] These works comprise almost 1500 titles, about one-third in English. And Professor Kelso does not include classical moralists in their own or modern languages, which would more than double that number. In her second book she summarizes her findings as follows: "the bulk of all that these treatises contain is made up of commonplaces, culled mostly from the ancients, whose names besprinkle the pages of all writers. There is plenty of evidence that these same commonplaces were not of mere academic interest, for the letters, speeches, and fiction of the time are full of the same ideas and rules for conduct."[61] The famous "humanists" who populated Renaissance universities made their livings by teaching grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.[62] Since both rhetoric and history were given strong moral emphasis, it may be said that the universities were to a great extent schools of virtue. At Oxford and Cambridge, undergraduates may still "read" moral philosophy for the B.A. degree.

Perhaps we have slighted Renaissance morality because we're following a false scent. Although a great many classical writers were re-discovered and re-born during the Renaissance, there was no renaissance of moral philosophers, because they never died, and couldn't be reborn. They simply weren't what happened, and therefore they do not figure in our history of the Renaissance.[63] So, for example, Kerrigan and Braden's Idea of the Renaissance (1989) abandons the period's enormous investment in morality in order to pursue a vision of personal, political, and philosophical development leading to democratic (bourgeois) individualism and Kantian idealism.[64] Similarly, in a chapter of his book on the Senecan tradition actually entitled "Stoicism in the Renaissance," Braden omits any mention of Stoicism's domination of school and college education and the self-improvement market.[65] In such ways the vast ocean of moral discourse on which Shakespeare's plays float has been drained out of the past by the Whig view of history and the idea of progress.

We may also be victims of a misdefinition of Stoicism leading to the mistaken notion that Shakespeare rejected the whole system. If Stoicism is defined simply as lack of feeling, as we tend to do,[66] then Shakespeare is obviously not a Stoic. But Stoics have lots to say about responsibility, reciprocity, courage, integrity, reputation, fortune, love, duty, death, education, government, and many other categories of life. They cannot be reduced to their position on passion. And because Stoic discourse only makes explicit for Shakespeare's generation a precapitalist ethical scheme whose origins are the tribal experience, antiquity, Christianity, chivalry, the Roman occupation itself, and school and university education, it only reinforces habits that already make up the fabric of society. Although his status as an intellectual requires him to show familiarity with their discourses, the Stoics do not really "influence" Shakespeare. They are already an integral part of his reality and of the test of probability that his characters must pass.

Fortunately for us Professor Kelso's list of those ancients most commonly cited in conduct books is very short, consisting solely of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca.[67] Since only scholars commonly read Greek, that leaves Cicero and Seneca in command of the greater part of the reading public. Apparently the principal conduits of classical moral thought in Shakespeare's time were Cicero's De Officiis and Seneca's Essays and Epistles, in particular his De Beneficiis, a comprehensive philosophical investigation of every possible ramification of gift exchange (translated into English in 1578).

De Officiis was the first classical text ever printed. (1465)[68] The British Museum Catalogue lists 11 printed editions of it before 1600--eight interlinear trots, one English without Latin, and two in Latin. Eighteen more editions were published before 1700. For comparison, the BMC lists no edition of any dialogue of Plato in any language printed in England before 1600, and only one edition of Aristotle's Ethics, a translation into English of Brunetto Latini's compendium of its "preceptes of good behaviour and perfighte honestie." Sir Thomas Elyot, in his famous Governour (1531), a standard work on the training of gentlemen, lists three essential texts: Plato's works, Aristotle's Ethics, and De Officiis. "Those three bokes," Elyot says, "be almost sufficient to make a perfecte and excellent governour".[69] In The Complete Gentleman (1622), Henry Peacham implies that De Officiis is a standard beginning Latin text, along with Aesop's Fables for beginning Greek.[70] In the preface to his translation of 1681, Sir Roger L'Estrange calls De Officiis "the commonest school book that we have," and goes on to observe, "as it is the best of books, so it is applied to the best of purposes, that is to say, to training up of youth in the study and exercise of virtue." King James I's own de officiis, Basilikon Doron, in which he tells his son Prince Henry his duties as man and ruler, refers him to Cicero fifty-five times, sixteen of them to De Officiis.

"In the Renaissance no Latin author was more highly esteemed than Seneca," said T. S. Eliot.[71] Montaigne confesses that his oeuvre is totally dependent on Seneca and Plutarch.[72] Erasmus, Justus Lipsius, and J. F. Gronovius published "famous editions" of Seneca's Essays in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[73] The British Museum Catalogue shows that in 1547 the first Senecan epistle was translated into English by R. Whyttynton, Poet Laureate. Arthur Golding translated his De Beneficiis in 1578, quite soon enough for Shakespeare to have read it before writing The Merchant, and in 1614 Thomas Lodge translated the complete moral works. Something called Seneca's Morals, probably a compendium of excerpts, was published in English in 1607. Then, in 1678, Sir Roger L'Estrange published Seneca's Morals by Way of Abstract. By 1793 it had gone into seventeen editions. I found a copy (Cleveland: 1856) in my mother-in-law's Illinois farmhouse.

If Ann Jennalie Cook is right, the field of discourse I have been describing would have been a major means of communication between Shakespeare and his audience, for her copious evidence shows that the best educated and most well-read segment of society, and therefore the most steeped in classical morality, composed the main body of his audience.[74] Some discourses dominate the way other discourses are understood, as for instance, nowadays, feminist discourse. Was not Stoicism, in the comprehensive sense I argue for here, such a discourse during the Renaissance?

Discourse of Anger

If what I am proposing is true, it is no surprise that Montaigne's essay on Cruelty, where Professor Prosser found the passage on virtue and vengeance, is a remake of Seneca's treatise on Anger.[25] For Seneca, this passion is one of the two most destructive that plague mankind. (The other is Lust.)

Anger [he says] is temporary madness. For it is equally devoid of self-control, forgetful of decency, unmindful of ties, persistent and diligent in whatever it begins, closed to reason and counsel, excited by trifling causes, unfit to discern the right and true.[76]

If we identify Prospero as an exemplar of the Senecan angry man, his behavior is easier to explain. He joins a sizable list of Shakespeare's angry madmen, whose fury drives them down an irreversible course to certain disaster, notably Lear, Hotspur, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Othello, and Timon. Anger interrupts the tale of Prospero's deposition--that he had himself to blame only adds fuel to the flame. Anger bridles at Ariel's recalcitrance. Anger punishes Caliban's insubordination with extreme cruelty.[77] Anger makes him unable to contain his hatred of Ferdinand, his chosen heir, because he is the son of his mortal enemy. And anger produces his evident glee at the success of his punishments of the conspirators.

It is only an illusion of romantic critics that Prospero is in control of his domain. (In their adaptation of The Tempest for Restoration audiences, Dryden and Davenant emphasize his bungling incompetence.[78]) "A man cannot be called powerful--no, not even free if he is the captive of his anger," says Seneca.[79] Anger is in charge, and Prospero dances to its tune. No wonder he explodes into the most remarkable rage in his daughter's memory when he remembers, during the masque, that he is about to be murdered by Caliban and his drunken crew. We have been watching a slow burn. When will he have peace? Seneca speaks to his predicament:

Rage will sweep you hither and yon, this way and that, and your madness will be prolonged by new provocations that constantly arise. Tell me, unhappy man, will you ever find time to love? What precious time you are wasting upon an evil thing! How much better would it be at this present moment to be gaining friends, reconciling enemies, serving the state, devoting effort to private affairs, than to be casting about to see what evil you can do to some man, what wound you may deal to his position, his estate, or his person . . .[80]

When, prompted by his "nobler reason" (5.1.26), he admits his common humanity--admits "feeling [the same] passion as they" (5.1.24)--the play is again speaking the language of Stoicism, for following reason to such a conclusion is Seneca's recommended therapy for anger.

No man of sense will hate the erring; otherwise he will hate himself. Let him reflect how many times he offends against morality, how many of his acts stand in need of pardon; then he will be angry with himself also.[81]

Whereas Seneca gloomily insists that we are all as bad as the worst, Elyot trusts that we are all as good as the best:

Of no better claye (as I mought frankely saye) is a gentilman made than a carter, and of libertie of wille as moche is gyuen of god to the poore herdeman, as to the great and might emperour.[82]

But perhaps equating up is no different from equating down.

Observing that we do not get revenge on dumb animals who injure us, Seneca wonders why we are so hard on our own species:

For what difference does it make that [a man's] other qualities are unlike that of dumb animals if he resembles them in the one quality that excuses dumb animals for every misdeed--a mind that is all darkness?[83]

That "darkness[84] that fills the mind" torments Seneca--

not so much the necessity of going astray, as the love of straying. That you may not be angry with individuals, you must forgive mankind at large, you must grant indulgence to the human race.[85]

From here it is an easy step to Prospero's final position with respect to the "beast Caliban" (4.1.141), "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine" (5.1.275),[86] not so puzzling a remark in its moral context as it is in the strictly-framed view of colonialist critics.[87]

Discourse of Freedom

At the climax of the play, then, Prospero wins freedom from the darkness that fills his mind. "Freedom" is another of The Tempest's power words, so important that Shakespeare uses his dramatic medium's points of strongest emphasis to call it to our attention. Three acts close on freedom, and the play ends with the word "free." At the end of act 1, Ariel asks for his freedom. At the end of act 2, Caliban runs offstage shouting "Freedom, high-day!" Act 4 ends with Prospero promising Ariel his freedom after one more task.

If freedom is mastery, act 3 also ends on freedom, when Prospero has his enemies where he wants them. This is the same kind of freedom that Caliban crowed about at the end of act 2. But the only true freedom in all these act endings is the one that the audience may or may not give the actor of Prospero by applauding his last line: "As you from crimes would pardoned be / Let your indulgence set me free."

Much of The Tempest is devoted the pursuit of freedom as power. At the end of act 2, this kind of freedom comes into vivid contrast with an entirely different kind. As act 2 closes, Caliban goes offstage singing that he will no more "fetch in firing / At requiring. . . . Freedom, high-day! high-day, freedom! freedom, high-day, freedom!" (2.2.184-187). The very next scene opens, "Enter Ferdinand bearing a log," introducing an entirely different attitude toward fetching firing at requiring. This juxtaposition highlights a dialog between two senses of freedom that drives the play as a whole. Let's call them freedom of the soul and freedom of the body.

Before the play starts, before Antonio usurped his dukedom, Prospero sought freedom of the body from the cares of office and retired to his chamber to study the "liberal arts" (1.2.73). Again, the context is Stoic. Seneca opposed the study of "liberal arts," because their aim was to make money. The one exception was philosophy, which Prospero obviously hadn't studied.[88] Cicero takes a very dim view of reluctant administrators like Prospero, declaring flatly: "to be drawn by study away from active life is contrary to moral duty."[89] Following this emphasis on doing one's job, James I warns his son and heir not to seek

for knowledge nakedly, but that your principall ende be, to make you able thereby to vse your office; . . . not like these vaine Astrologians, that studie night and day on the course of the starres, onely that they may, for satisfying their curiositie, know their course."[90]

Prospero's magic, be it black or white, is analogous to Gyges's ring, but as Plato wrote his whole Republic to prove, Gyges's ring is a snare and a delusion: absolute power over one's fellow men is not the route to freedom. Cicero tells the whole story of Gyges in De Officiis.[91]

Seneca thought that a man who avoided public service had "died even before he was dead."[92] The ancients and their Renaissance popularizers agree that rulers have an especially strong obligation to serve the public. "The citizen who is patriotic, brave, and worthy of a leading place in the state . . . will dedicate himself unreservedly to his country, without aiming at influence or power for himself," says Cicero.[93] In fact, Seneca agrees, "ruling [is] a service, not an exercise of royalty."[94] And moreover, "Instead of sacrificing the state to themselves, [rulers] have sacrificed themselves to the state."[95] Elyot echoes these sentiments, saying "that auctorite, beinge well and diligently used, is but a token of superioritie, but in very dede it is a burden and losse of libertie."[96] On this note James I begins his advice to his son, reminding him "that being borne to be a king, ye are rather borne to onus, th[a]n honos."[97]

As defined in Stoic discourse, freedom is a state of mind, not of body. As Ferdinand very significantly says, provided that we are tuned in to this dialog, he is as happy to be a slave for Miranda's sake "as bondage e'er of freedom" (3.1.89) If it is the way to win her, he accepts bondage to labor as eagerly as Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban seek freedom from it. Love, as defined so beautifully in this scene, is mutual voluntary servitude, and voluntary servitude is the only freedom The Tempest offers. When Alonso and Prospero give each other their children in the denouement, this ancient ritual of gift-exchange signifies peace between them. There are two ways of establishing cooperation in society: enslavement (either to a master or to the law, as in modern democratic societies); and reciprocal exchange of benefits (gifts or services).

Starting from the Aristotelian premise that man is a social animal, Cicero finds that the social bond is established by means of a system of" mutual interchange of kind services; . . . [for] those between whom they are interchanged are united by the ties of an enduring intimacy."[98] Hence

we ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry and our talents to cement human society more closely together, man to man.[99]

Seneca allegorizes the social cement in the process of answering some questions about the Three Graces (Gratiae, as in "gratitude," "congratulate," "gratuity, . . . gracias," etc.). First, why are there three of them?

Some would have it appear that there is one for bestowing a benefit, another for receiving it, and a third for returning it . . . Why do the sisters hand in hand dance in a ring which returns upon itself? For the reason that a benefit passing in its course from hand to hand returns nevertheless to the giver; the beauty of the whole is destroyed if the course is anywhere broken, and it has most beauty if it is continuous and maintains an uninterrupted succession. In the dance, nevertheless, an older sister has especial honor, as do those who earn benefits. Their faces are cheerful, as are ordinarily the faces of those who bestow or receive benefits. They are young because the memory of benefits ought not to grow old. They are maidens because benefits are pure and undefiled and holy in the eyes of all; and it is fitting that there should be nothing to bind or restrict them, and so the maidens wear flowing robes, and these, too, are transparent because benefits desire to be seen.[100]

For Elyot the virtue that cements us all together

is called humanitie whiche is a generall name to those vetrues in whome seme to be a mutuall concorde and 1oue in the nature of man. And all thoughe there be many of the said vertues, yet be there thre principall by whome humanitie is chiefly compact; beneuolence, benificence ["goode tournes"], and liberalitie.

By virtue of this instinct human beings, while still inferior to God, are superior to beasts.[101]

Essentially what happens in The Tempest is that Prospero tries to gain freedom by maximizing his power--the Gyges ring method--but eventually, perhaps prompted by Ferdinand and Miranda, he melts into a generous paradigm. He learns that a cruel master cannot ever have the joy of a willing servant. That discovery, I believe, induces Prospero's change of heart, and that is what his epilogue is about: Prospero (duke/actor), having used magic/stagecraft to coerce his subjects (audience/islanders/citizens of Milan] into obedience, now breaks his magic wand/theatrical spell and frees his erstwhile slaves (audience/islanders/citizens). Essentially, he commits unilateral disarmament. Of such grand gestures, Seneca says, "To help, to be of service . . . [to give] benefits, imitates the gods; he who seeks a return [imitates] money-lenders."[102] The antisocial duke has come a long way.

A typical actor/audience relationship differs radically from the duke/citizen relationship that has prevailed up to this point, for it is a form of the reciprocal benefit system we have been discussing, in which the actor gives entertainment and the audience returns applause. It is love, it is mutual satisfaction: gratitude warms both sides of the footlights. Perhaps, if Prospero now alters radically his tactics of rule and becomes a magnanimous and just ruler concerned only with the welfare of the city entrusted to him, the people will be grateful, and will serve him with all their hearts. The moralists believe so. Tyranny never works, says Elyot, brandishing potent authorities

For the beneuolente mynde of a gouernour nat onely byndeth the hartes of the people unto hym with the chayne of 1oue, more stronger than any materiall bondes, but also gardeth more saulfely his petsone than any toure or garison. The eloquent Tulli, saithe in his officis, A liberall harte is cause of beneuolence, although perchance that power some tyme lackethe. Contrary wise he saith, They that desire to be feared, nedes must they drede them, of whom they be feared.Also Plini the yonger saith, He that is nat enuironed with charite, in vaine is he garded with terrour; sens armure with armure is stered. Whiche is ratified by the mooste graue philosopher Seneke, in his boke of mercye that he wrate to Nero, where he saith, He is moche deceiued that thinketh a man to be suet, where nothynge from hym can be saulfe. For [only] with mutuall assurance suertie is optained.[103]

But the final effect of a good deed cannot be assumed in advance, for if it is calculated, then it isn't a good deed: it's a deal. It's entirely up to the citizens of Milan, as it is to an audience at the end of a play, whether to catcall/kill the actor/duke or applaud/serve him and "with [their] indulgence [to] set [him] free"--by gratefully applauding his willing service.

The colonialist approach perceives that Prospero's final gambit fails. After all, Antonio and Sebastian do not burst into tears and fall on their knees.[104] But read in terms of the relevant field of discourse, their inaction signifies no failure. In Stoic terms, Prospero is concerned with getting control over himself, not over his enemies. Stoicism also puts a different spin on the situation: what we have here is clemency, not forgiveness, and the point is to deprive the injuror of any enjoyment from watching the injured one's anger and chagrin. On this point Elyot says

The best waye to be aduenged is so to contemne Iniurie and rebuke, and lyue with suche honestie, that the doer shall at the laste be therof a shamed, or at the leste, lese [lose] the frute of his malyce, that is to say, shall nat reioyce and haue glorie of thy hyndraunce or domage [damage].[105]

Hall's Characters (1608) focuses on the glory of imperturbability, rather than on the repentance of the perturber:

The Valiant Man['s] power is limited by his will, and he holds it the noblest revenge, that he might hurt and doth not.[106]

Furthermore, when we reach the end of a Shakespearean comedy things seldom are settled. There is never any guarantee that the remedies discovered in the green world will serve when the persons of the play return to the real world. The poet says good-bye and good luck. He has shown the audience what they are capable of (both good and evil). Now they're on their own. Will gratitude for Prospero's new start overcome the years of his neglect? The sulking characters remain to keep this question on the table.

But wait: there's still that final note of despair. When Prospero tells us, in his epilogue that after his return to Milan his "every third thought will be [his] grave." Can we call this a happy ending? Their vision still hampered by their frame, the colonialist critics who pick up on this talk of the grave think not.[107] Again Stoic discourse sheds a better light on the passage. Cicero said "to think as a philosopher is to learn to die." Montaigne used this sentence as the title of a long essay on death.[106] Epictetus exhorts, "Let death . . . be daily before your eyes . . . and you will never think of anything mean."[109] Montaigne would have us

combat [death] with a resolute minde. And being to take the greatest advantage she hath upon us from her, let us take a cleane contrary way from the common, let us remove her strangenesse from her, let us converse, frequent, and acquaint our selves with her, let us have nothing so much in minde as death, let us at all times and seasons, and in the ugliest manner that may be, yea with all faces shapen and represent the same unto our imagination. At the stumbling of a horse, at the fall of a stone, at the least prick with a pinne, let us presently ruminate and say with our selves, what if it were death it selfe? and thereupon let us take heart of grace, and call our wits together to confront her. . . The premeditation of death is a fore-thinking of libertie.[110]

Again Montaigne sounds like Seneca, who is always advising that "the soul must be hardened by long practice, so that it may learn to endure the sight and the approach of death."[111] Indeed Seneca is antiquity's expert on death, and one gathers that he conceives of a man's life as a tale that has no meaning until it's over. For a duke, one assumes, dying well would mean dying well-beloved. Furthermore, since death is one of those common denominators that level out the distinction between the angry man and his victim, thinking on death will ease Prospero's fury.[112] "Nothing will give you so much help toward moderation as the frequent thought that life is short and uncertain here below; whatever you are doing, have regard to death."[113] Finally, one must come to terms with death in order to achieve that precious freedom of the soul, because fear of death is certainly the ultimate slavery. "To think on death," counsels Seneca, is to "think on freedom. He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery; he is above any eternal power, or, at any rate, he is beyond it."[114]

These sentiments and those I have already quoted, I argue, tether The Tempest to the discursive field of early modern ethical discourse, to which the play reports back, in terms defined by that field, a vivid illustration of what it means to be free.

The colonialist critics have laid to rest forever the idealist interpretation of Prospero, and definitively located the mythos of colonialism in his treatment of Caliban. But it appears that we do find, upon extending Professor Porter's critique of new historicism to The Tempest, that the oversights she describes in the work of Greenblatt and Mullaney do also occur in new historicist work on The Tempest. The play is too large to look at through the knothole of colonialist discourse. In so doing these critics unconsciously silence other kinds of discourse that the play could clearly hear, and overlook the rhetorical strategy by which the play talks back to the "horizonless field." Certainly The Tempest hears and contributes to many other fields of discourse: Arthurian legend, Jungian archetypes, Freudian psychoses, regeneration rituals, vegetation cults, Plato's three parts of the soul, good angels/bad angels, chess, Italy, drama theory, Shakespeare's life, magic, the ethics of magic, and who knows what else? And discourse of colonialism does of course participate. But if we open the window far enough to include Stoicism, Prospero's conquistadorial activities become a product of his anger, and his colonizing becomes a category of tyranny, which by definition governs by enslavement. Since both anger and tyranny are bad, and their consequences are bad, the play deplores colonization. But The Tempest's relation to colonialism is more complex than the view from the colonialist critics' window.

Notes

1. Carolyn Porter, "Are We Being Historical Yet?" South Atlantic Quarterly 87 (1988): 743-86, especially 750, 782.

2. In "Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in The Tempest," Meredith Anne Skura tests the claims of colonialist critics against an exhaustive reconstitution of contemporary English discourse on the new world. She finds that records of British colonization were not available to Shakespeare when he wrote The Tempest, at which time colonialist discourse in England was still in its romantic phase. She also contributes a most useful comprehensive survey of extant literature on The Tempest (Shakespeare Quarterly 40 [Spring 1989):42-69]. However, the ugly practices of other nations had been published abroad long before the writing of The Tempest, and Montaigne protests against them in the very essay "Of Canniballes" to which Shakespeare clearly refers in Gonzalo's speech at 2.1.143-60. (The essays of Michael lord of Montaigne, trans. John Florio, World's classics [London: Frowde, 1904], vol. 1, chap. 30.

3. Similar doubts about Foucaldian methods have recently been voiced in other quarters. See essays in The New Historicists, ed. H. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989) by Frank Lentricchia: "Foucault's Legacy: a New Historicism?" 231-42; by Gerald Graff: "Co-Optation," 168-81, esp. 172; and by Brook Thomas: "New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics," 182-203, esp. 202.

4. Porter, "Are We Being Historical Yet?" 771.

5. Ibid., 787.

6. Ibid., 770-71.

7. Ibid., 747, Porter quoting Greenblatt.

8. Thomas CartelIi, "Prospero in Africa: The Tempest as Colonialist Text and Pretext," in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, ed. Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O'Connor [New York & London: Methuen, 1987), 95- 115.

9. Curt Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper': The Tempest and the Discourse of Treason," Shakespeare Quarterly 41 (1990): 1-28.

10. Lori Leininger, "Cracking the Code of The Tempest," Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Approaches, ed. Harry Garvin (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1980), 121-131.

11. Paul Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism," Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) 48-71.

12. Ibid., 46.

13. Francis Barker and Peter Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Con-texts of The Tempest," Alternative Shakespeare, ed. John Drakakis (London: Methuen, 1985).

14. Ibid., 195.

15. Stephen Orgel, "Introduction,' The Tempest, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 1-87.

16. Eric Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

17. Stephen Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 129-98.

18. They have been anticipated by at least two critics of the play who reject the "authorized version" without the aid of theory. As early as 1906, Lytton Strachey objected to the received opinion that Prospero portrays a "spirit of wise benevolence," perceiving instead

Sixty-two years later John P. Cutts read Prospero as another Faustus, manipulating people for his own enjoyment, an almost certain candidate for damnation whose repentance likewise comes too late. (Rich and Strange: A Study of Shakespeare's Last Plays [Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1968]).

• 19. Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 197.
• 20. Breight, "Treason doth never Prosper," 10.
• 21. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 10, 18; Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 53; Barker and Hulme "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 198; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 156; Leininger, "Cracking the Code of The Tempest," 122; Orgel, "Introduction," 4, 13.
• 22. All citations of Shakespeare's plays are taken from the Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, 1974.
• 23. Brown, "The thing of darkness I acknowledge mine," 59-60; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 76; Oriel, "Introduction," 8, 14, 15-16, 21, 52; Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 10, 14; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 46, 142-43,156, 160.
• 24. Orgel, "Introduction," 36, 47, 52; Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 59; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 147, 154; Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 10, 17, 23.
• 25. CartalIi, "Prospero in Africa," 105; Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 195,198-200,202; Brown, "'The thing of Darkness I acknowledge mine,;" 85; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 161; Leininger, "Cracking the Code of The Tempest," 125; Orgel, "Introduction," 41, 49.
• 26. Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 109.
• 27. Cartelli, "Prospero in Africa," 106, 107, 110; Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 58, 61-62; Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 10; Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 199; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 161; Orgel, "Introduction," 41, 49.
• 28. Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 196.
• 29. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 24; Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 60.
• 30. Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 60; Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 199; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 160; Orgel, "Introduction," 15, 22; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 159.
• 31. Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 199; CartelIi, "Prospero in Africa," 106-7; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 157; Orgel, "Introduction," 23, 28.
• 32. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 11; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 143, 144; Orgel, "Introduction," 28-29.
• 33. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 18; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 143.
• 34. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 11; Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 196; Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 202; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 77; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 144; Orgel, "Introduction," 50.
• 35. Brown, "'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,'" 67.
• 36. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 22-23.
• 37. Orgel, "Introduction," 54.
• 38. CartelIi, "Prospero in Africa," 116; Leininger, "Cracking the Code of The Tempest," 127-130.
• 39. Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 202.
• 40. The critical malpractice of "refuting the ending" was first identified by Richard Levin in New Headings vs. Old Plays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Edward Pechter finds the practice still prevalent in his "New Histori-cism and Its Discontents," PMLA 102 (1987): 292-303, esp. 299.
• 41. The advocates of a benevolent magus also iguored Prospero's change of heart, because it contradicted their hypothesis as well. In their interpretations, D'Orsay Pearson ("'Unless I Be Reliev'd by Prayer': The Tempest in Perspective," Shakespeare Studies 7 [1974]: 253-82, esp. 273) and Joseph Summers ("The Anger of Prospero," Dreams of Love and Power. On Shakespearees Plays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1984]) restore the climax, Pearson having Prospero recover from the sin of magic, and Summers, relying on intra-textual evidence, having him recover from a seizure of anger, thus anticipating what follows here.
• 42. Eleanor Prosser, "Shakespeare, Montaigne, and the Rarer Action," Shakespeare Studies I (1965): 261-64.
• 43. Montaigne, The essays of Michael lord of Montaigne, 2:11.
• 44. Thomas Elyot, The Governour, Everyman edn. (London: Dent, 1907), 235.
• 45. James I, "Basilikon Doron," Political Works of James I, ed. C. E. McIlwain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918), 3-52, esp. 41.
• 46. Joseph Hall, "Characters of Virtues and Vices," Works, ed. Philip Wynter (New York: AMS Press, 1969), vi:89-125, esp. 97.
• 47. Cicero, De Officials, trans. Walter Miller, Loeb edn. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968) 89.
• 48. Seneca, Moral Essays, trans. John W. Basore, The Loeb Classical Library (London: W. Heinemann, 1928-1935), 1:268-9.
• 49. In their glosses on the line both Frank Kermode (Arden edn. [London: Methuen, 1958]) and Stephen Orgel (Oxford edn, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987]) feel the need to explain (unconvincingly) why "vengeance" (5.1.28) is not balanced by "forgiveness" or "pardon." See also Prosser, "Shakespeare, Montaigne, and the Rarer Action," 262.
• 50. Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Regnery, 1954), 12-13.
• 51. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (New York: Scribner, 1965), 17.
• 52. Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 329.
• 53. Jurgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 91-93.
• 54. Sven Longstreth, Frank Steinmo and Katherine Thelen, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) chap. 1.
• 55. Karl Polyanyi, The Great Transformation [1944] (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 46.
• 56. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (New York: Norton, 1954).
• 57. Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago and New York: Aldine-Atherton, 1972), 2-14.
• 58. Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
• 59. Seneca, Moral Epistles, trans., Richard M. Gummere, The Loeb classical library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1917-25), 2:423-24.
• 60. Ruth Kelso, The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964); Doctrine for the lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956).
• 61. Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, 322.
• 62. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 22.
• 63. Ibid., 25, 36-37, 128.
• 64. William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969).
• 65. Gordon Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition: Anger's Privilege (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
• 66. For a random example, consider Marvin Vawter, "'Division 'tween Our Souls.': Shakespeare's Stoic Brutus," Shakespeare Studies (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974), 173-95, esp. 173-79. Or consider William R. Elton's magnum opus, King Lear and the Gods (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1966), a book heavily documented by primary sources, in which Stoicism stands for little else than hardness of heart. Though Elton calls upon Cicero many times, he pays no attention to De Officiis, his most important (and most pragmatic) book.
• 67. Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, 311.
• 66. Cicero, De Officiis, xvii.
• 69. Elyot, The Governour, 47-48.
• 70. Henry Peacham, The Complete Gentleman, The Truth of Our Times and The Art of Living in London, ed. Virgil B. Heltzel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 29.
• 71. T. S. Eliot, "Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca," Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), 107-120, esp. 52.
• 72. Montaigne, The essays of Michael lord of Montaigne, 1:161.
• 73. Seneca, Mom/Essays, 1:xv.
• 74. Ann Jennalie Cook, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London 1576-1642 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981):
• 75. Seneca, "De Ira," Moral Essays, 1:107-355.
• 76. Ibid., 1:107.
• 77. Cf. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 20-21, 24-26.
• 78. Cf. Matthew M. Wikander, "'The Duke My Father's Wrack': The Innocence of the Restoration Tempest," Shakespeare Survey, ed. Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 91-98, esp. 91, 93, 95, 97.
• 79. Seneca, Moral Essays, 1:263.
• 80. Ibid., 1:325.
• 81. Ibid, 1:143.
• 82. Elyot, The Governour, 202.
• 83. Seneca, Moral Essays, 1:323.
• 84. The Latin word is "callgo," one meaning of which, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary is "moral and intellectual darkness."
• 85. Seneca, Moral Essays, 1:185.
• 86. Lear's anger similarly subsides when he learns "to feel what wretches feel" (3.4.34) and recognizes in Poor Tom a fellow human being.
• 87. Brown, "The thing of darkness I acknowledge mine," 64; CartelIi, "Prospero in Africa," 111; Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 157; Orgel, "Introduction," 23; Leininger, "Cracking the Code of The Tempest," 127.
• 88. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 2:349.
• 89. Cicero, De Officiis, 6.
• 90. James I, "Basilikon Doron," 38-39.
• 91. Cicero, De Officiis, 305.
• 92. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 3:5.
• 93. Cicero, De Officiis, 89.
• 94. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 2:399.
• 95. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 3:271.
• 96. Elyot, The Governour, 140.
• 97. James I, "Basilikon Doron," 3.
• 98. Cicero, De Officiis, 59.
• 99. Ibid., 25.
• 100. Seneca, Moral Essays, 3:13.
• 101. E]yot, The Governour, 147.
• 102. Seneca, Moral Essays, 3:155.
• 103. Elyot, The Governour, 155.
• 104. Greenblatt, "Martial Law in the Land of Cokaigne," 46; Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,'" 13; Orgel, "Introduction," 23; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 158.
• 105. Elyot, The Governour, 236.
• 106. Hall, "Characters of Virtues and Vices," 96.
• 107. Breight, "'Treason doth never Prosper,"' 20; Barker and Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish," 67; Brown, "The thing of darkness I acknowledge mine," 68; Cheyfetz, The Poetics of Imperialism, 176; Orgel, "Introduction," 29.
• 108. Montaigne, The essays of Michael lord of Montaigne, l:xix.
• 109. Epictetus, Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments, trans. George Long (London: George Bell, 1877), 387.
• 110. Montaigne, The essays of Michael lord of Montaigne, 1:80-81.
• 111. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 2:251.
• 112. Cf. Seneca, Moral Essays, 1:353.
• 113. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 3:319.
• 114. Seneca, Moral Epistles, 1:191. Montaigne thinks of the day of death as the only day in our lives when "whatever the pot containeth must be shown" (1:71).

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By BEN ROSS SCHNEIDER, JR.