Essay — Civilisation in The Tempest (A-)

“Most of the characters in this play are from a civilised world, although certainly not all of them are civilised.” Discuss the presentation of civilisation and the court in The Tempest. The Tempest occupies the liminal space between civilisation and barbarism: most of its characters comprise a court that traditionally exemplifies the civilised world, yet its events take place on a magical isle far away from civilisation. Against this backdrop, the play peels off the court’s veneer of authority and respectability, exposing its powerlessness vis-a-vis natural and supernatural forces and its composition of uncivilised men. Ultimately, Shakespeare ultimately highlights our inability to fully eradicate these ills of civilisation and the court — we can only hope to check them with appropriate supervision and authority. From the beginning, the play disrupts traditional notions of courtly power amidst the chaos and disorder of the titular tempest: the court and its authority are presented as unimportant and ineffectual in the face of elemental forces. Upon the court’s entry in Act 1 Scene 1, the Boatswain directly challenges courtly protocol: while the court speaks in order of descending rank from Alonso (the King) to Antonio (the Duke of Milan) to Gonzalo (a councillor), they are consistently interrupted by the Boatswain in violation of courtly rules. The Boatswain instructs Alonso and Antonio to “keep below”, tells Antonio bluntly that “you mar our labour” and “you do assist the storm”, and even brusquely commands Gonzalo to go away (“Hence!”) and shut up (“Silence!”). His constant use of imperatives, exclamations and the second-person pronoun to address his superiors creates a highly impudent tone, reflecting the irrelevance of courtly hierarchy in his eyes. However, the Boatswain’s impertinence is justified by the peril of the tempest: he asks “what cares these roarers for the name of king?” The tempestuous elements (“roarers”) have no respect for courtly authority, which is a truth made self-evident not only by the use of the rhetorical question, but also by the reduction of kingship to a superficial title or “name” conferred by society. In this way, the court is rendered powerless outside of the civilisation over which it presides. This weakness is underscored by the Boatswain’s subsequent promise to let Gonzalo take over “if [he] can command these elements to silence” using his position as “councillor”. This task is clearly impossible, as emphasised by the conditional “if” and the implausible personification of the “elements” as subjects subject to a councillor’s “command”. This highlights the limits of the court’s power: Gonzalo’s political authority is meaningless when faced with natural forces, or Prospero’s supernatural magic which commands those “elements”. In this way, the court’s ‘civilised’ conceptions of courtesy, hierarchy and authority are immediately undermined from the start: they are societal constructs with little relevance in the