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The plays
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rule with the Commonwealth. Some critics argue that Shakespeare
supported the monarchy and set himself against any revolutionary
tendencies. Certainly he is on the side of order and harmony, and his
writing reflects a monarchic context rather than the more republican
context which replaced the monarchy after 1649.
It would be fanciful to see Shakespeare as foretelling the decline of
the Stuart monarchy. He was not a political commentator. Rather, he
was a psychologically acute observer of humanity who had a unique
ability to portray his observations, explorations, and insights in dramatic
form, in the richest and most exciting language ever used in the English
theatre. His works are still quoted endlessly, performed in every
language and culture in the world, rewritten and reinterpreted by
every new generation.
Shakespeare’s final plays move against the tide of most Jacobean
theatre, which was concentrating on blood tragedy or social comedy.
After the tragedies of Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, and the
sheer misanthropy of Timon of Athens, there is a change of tone, a
new optimism. Prose writing about voyages across the sea and faraway
places had created a vogue for romances. The late plays, from Pericles
to The Tempest, have been variously described as pastorals, romances,
and even tragi-comedies. They all end in harmony, and use the passage
of time (usually a whole generation) to heal the disharmony with
which the plays open. They echo the structure of the masque form
which was now popular at court: ‘anti-masque’ or negative elements
being defeated by positive elements, and a final harmony achieved. A
‘brave new world’, as Miranda describes it in The Tempest, is created
out of the turbulence of the old.
Prospero’s domination of the native Caliban has been interpreted
by some critics as having overtones of colonialism, which reflect the
period’s interest in voyages and in the new colonial experiments in
Virginia and elsewhere.
CALIBAN This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou tak’st from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strok’st me, and made much of me; wouldst give me
Water with berries in it; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee,