What is the context for the presentation of service in The Tempest?

A key context for the presentation of service in The Tempest is that of Elizabethan/Jacobean colonialism. Explorations of the New World had received fresh impetus in the period during which Shakespeare would have been writing The Tempest - the Virginia Company was given its royal charter in 1606 and had gone on to found Jamestown in Virginia the year after. The figure of Caliban has been connected by many critics (such as Stephen Orgel) with the new world natives (echoing popular descriptions of the Indians in colonialist travel pamphlets such as Thomas Harriot's A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588)) and Prospero interpreted as a metaphor for the educated European colonist. In this context, we might question what Shakespeare's presentation of Caliban's service to Prospero - involuntary, we must remember - can tell us about the Bard's attitudes to contemporary colonial activities. Does Shakespeare appear to be endorsing or subversively attacking these? As usual, the best answer will be one that mediates between these two extremes, reflecting that, in different ways, Shakespeare is most probably doing a bit of both.

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Answered by Will T. English Literature tutor

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