Civilization and Savagery in Shakespeare's Othello and The Tempest

Introduction: Two Worlds, One Question

Shakespeare's Othello and The Tempest could not appear more unlike. Othello is a tale rooted very firmly in the here-and-now — the actual city of Venice, an important and central location for the Renaissance man. The Tempest, by contrast, is a fantasy taking place on a "marvelous" island. However, a closer look reveals that Venice, too, is marvelous, and is, moreover, the perfect link between the civilized and the savage. It is no wonder, then, that the story of the "noble savage" in the character of Othello was placed there, nor that the less noble savage, Caliban, is found on an island that — while not straddling the literal old and new world orders — nonetheless bears representatives of each on its shores.

Both Othello and The Tempest are exemplary illustrations of a central Renaissance tension: European contact with people of other cultures had a disorienting effect, as it raised the question of who was truly "civilized" and who was truly "savage." Shakespeare seems to answer that question in both plays, often in ways that may at first — like the true meaning of Venice — be hidden.

The Tempest and the Colonial Encounter

The Renaissance was about discovery — artistic, scientific, and geographic. The geographic discoveries led Europeans to "find" new lands, though those lands had clearly existed long before any European sailed to them, and thus to European culture encountering cultures far different from its own. Because Europeans had "discovered" those other peoples, they found it easy to set themselves up as superior to the discovered populations. From that position, they began to colonize the natives of those places — to civilize them, or, as one might say in a more politically sensitive age, to Europeanize them, though that term sounds even more paternalistic than "colonizing."

Cefalu argues that hierarchy was central to the European concept of civilization; any culture that lacked masters and subordinates was, therefore, uncivilized — such as the culture found in The Tempest, which paralleled, Cefalu argues, the lack of stratification in the American colonies at the outset (Cefalu 2000). Furthermore, feudal relations had fallen away in Europe but had not been replaced in any methodical fashion by capitalism. The Tempest, described by Cefalu as "a compressed working out of history" (2000), takes a culture from the disjointed — split between the civilized Prospero and the "savage" (though veneered with civility to a point) Caliban — to the homogeneous, in the few hours it takes to present the play.

Caliban proved his savagery when he attempted to destroy Prospero's books. Although Caliban can speak, he cannot read; to him, books are magical objects (Taylor 1993), a concept that would have been laughable to civilized Europeans. Although commercial printing was still in its infancy at the time, Europeans had had access to books for centuries through the illuminated manuscripts produced by learned monks in abbeys across the continent.

Cefalu notes that "one finds the narratives of process unfolding in dramatic texts like The Tempest more so than in historical writing proper" (2000). Such works, he adds, "obscure and suppress" the unsettling realities inherent in contact between the so-called civilized societies of Europe and the savage ones Europeans identified everywhere else. "Straddling both feudalism and capitalism, The Tempest performs a bypass on diseased history, clearing from its path any masterless impediment that might halt seamless economic transformation" (Cefalu 2000). Whether or not one accepts the feudalism-to-capitalism viewpoint, a process was clearly underway — one that involved incorporating the exotic, or savage, into the civilized world of the European.

Othello: The Noble Savage in Venice

Shakespeare's representations of "savages" range from Caliban — a character of no particular worthiness in a European sense — to Othello, a man who, like the city he lives in, straddles the old and new worlds with at least some success, despite the tragedy that follows. Shakespeare's savages are no more monolithic than were the reasons for colonialism or the bases of his plays. While Caliban cannot accept "civilization," and therein lies a tragedy of sorts, Othello, to some extent, has accepted European civilization — and therein lies a tragedy of far greater magnitude.

Othello, a Moor, straddles the gap between the outposts of the Elizabethan world: those outposts include "Turks, barbarism, disorder, and amoral destructive powers" (Platt 2001). Venice, with its seafaring tradition, is a jumping-off point to all of that or, alternatively, a gateway to all that is civilized. The play moves from Venice to Cyprus — a barely civilized place dangling at the edge of a sea beyond which, symbolically at least, true savagery reigns in North Africa. One could argue that Othello reaffirms his roots in the Muslim and Berber culture of North Africa, exported to Spain and arguably "civilized" along the way. In short, one might contend that one can take the savage out of a savage landscape, but one cannot take the savage culture out of the man. Or, again, one could argue that the character of Othello was simply a dramatic device Shakespeare needed to make his points about love, fealty, betrayal, fear, and ignominy.

Young (2004) noted that Othello "exemplifies the highest virtues of Western Christendom — fortitude, courtesy, devotion to duty, and sexual delicacy — in a character who seems, to some observers, their antithesis: a black African who could routinely be associated with Islam or with barbarism." Gable (1998), too, found in Othello a worthy man "obsessed with purity and duty" and regarding heaven, not earth, as the foundation of reality — in short, an idealist. Shakespeare seems to say that it is not Othello's civilized virtues that are at fault, but his propensity to take them too far, at least for a "civilized" world in which absolutes are disappearing. Indeed, that may be at the heart of the question about the disorienting effects of contact with other cultures.

All this is conjecture, however, and it seems sensible to propose that Shakespeare used the character of a "noble savage" simply because it was so dramatically potent to do so. Besides, the possibility of using such exotic characters was fairly new in European history at that time. Then, as now, newness sells.

References

Cefalu, Paul A. (2000). Rethinking the discourse of colonialism in economic terms: Shakespeare's "The Tempest," Captain John Smith's Virginia Narratives, and the English Response to Vagrancy. Shakespeare Studies, January 1. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from www.highbeam.com.

Gable, Harvey L. (1998). "Wieland," "Othello," "Genesis," and the floating city: the sources of Charles Brockden Brown's "Wieland." Papers on Language & Literature, June 22. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from www.highbeam.com.

Platt, Peter G. (2001). "The Meruailouse Site": Shakespeare, Venice, and paradoxical stages. Renaissance Quarterly, March 22. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from www.highbeam.com.

Storhoff, Gary. (1995). "The only voice is your own": Gloria Naylor's revision of "The Tempest." African-American Review, March 22. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from www.highbeam.com.

Taylor, Mark. (1993). Prospero's books and Stephano's bottle: Colonial experience in "The Tempest." CLIO, January 1. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from www.highbeam.com.

Young, R.V. (2004). The bard, the black, the Jew. First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, March 1. Retrieved January 13, 2005, from www.highbeam.com.