“Meaner Ministers”: Mastery, Bondage, and Theatrical Labor inThe Tempest

Vitkus, Daniel

doi:10.1002/9780470996560.ch22

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“…Early Theatre 25.1 Mirandas that today continue to abuse and steal the homelands and soundscapes of Indigenous and African peoples. 70…”

Section: Acousmatic Noise 103mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acousmatic Noise: Racialization and Resistance in The Tempest's 'New World' Soundscape

Cortes

2022

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I analyze Shakespeare’s racialization of noise in The Tempest as an acousmatic phenomenon and suggest how the acousmatic — sound whose source remains hidden — is imagined as a weapon of resistance that the racialized noisome Other could use to resist aristocratic and colonial power. Shakespeare’s play echoes the Algonquian-speaking Powhatan use of acousmatic singing in Tsenacommacah as a mode of warfare against the English in Virginia in 1611 with that of Caliban and his companions’ (Stephano and Trinculo) singing revolt.

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“…Early Theatre 25.1 Mirandas that today continue to abuse and steal the homelands and soundscapes of Indigenous and African peoples. 70…”

Section: Acousmatic Noise 103mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acousmatic Noise: Racialization and Resistance in The Tempest's 'New World' Soundscape

Cortes

2022

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“…161–163). There is of course a long history of critical scholarship on representations of labour, service and servitude in The Tempest ; for just some examples, see, in addition to the aforementioned work, Brown, 1985; Hall, 1995; Rivlin, 2012; Schalkwyk, 2008; and Vitkus, 2003.…”

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confidence: 99%

Spirited away: Race, slavery and childhood in early modern England

Chakravarty

2021

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This essay explores the insidious but persistent desire to affix whiteness to modes of bondage and to argue for an original 'white slavery' located in early modern forms of traffic, indenture and forced transport. This essay aims to recover the genealogy of this belief, beginning with one of its conceptual origins: the practice of 'spiriting' in the seventeenth century. Reading accounts of 'spiriting', I firstly trace the narrative genealogies of English bondage to argue that consent emerges as a racialised rubric. Secondly, I think in particular about the representation of (very different kinds of) spirits in contemporary literary and cultural texts, including The Tempest, to suggest that even as they engage and anticipate the practice of 'spiriting', they also strategically elide their own histories of the traffic and transport of non-white bodies. As one early modern understanding of 'spiriting' specifically comes to associate the practice with the capture and bondage of children, the nexus of slavery, race and children emerges as particularly fraught. If 'white slavery' denotes the limit case for the legibility of slavery, the photographs of 'white' enslaved children later circulated by white abolitionists in the nineteenth century to invoke sympathy for their cause played on the fundamental irreconcilability of 'whiteness' and bondage even as they re-asserted the imbrication of slavery and sanguinity. This study attends to the trajectory of discourses of slavery written on and in the body to explore the histories of both a contemporary and an insistently current investment in frameworks of 'white slavery', as it attempts to discover the early modern

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“…Andrew Gurr, for instance, posits Prospero as a ‘London citizen‐employer’ rather than a colonialist (202), whereas Douglas Bruster aims to revise post‐colonialist readings of the play by focusing on the parallels between its dramatic elements (the ship in the opening scene; Miranda as an auditor and spectator) and the material practices of Shakespeare’s theater (‘Local Tempest ’). Daniel Vitkus seeks to combine these ‘Old World’ and ‘New World’ approaches, arguing that the ‘ “bonds” that held theatrical laborers in London operated similarly to the “bonds” that held colonial laborers … in servitude abroad’, both of which are figured in the play’s power relations (420). Vitkus’ interest in the global context of labor and servitude has been shared by several other critics of The Tempest in recent years.…”

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confidence: 99%

Shakespeare and Work

Dowd¹

2010

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This article examines recent critical approaches to Shakespeare and work. Although the word ‘work’ itself could signify a range of practices in Shakespeare’s England, such definitional uncertainty has not been an obstacle to research. On the contrary, recent scholarship has demonstrated that the ambiguous nature of work offers a productive starting point for critical inquiry, as it encourages scholars to ask how Shakespeare’s texts actively construct ‘work’ as a social, historical, and literary activity. Written and performed during a crucial period in the development of a capitalist labor economy in England, Shakespeare’s plays were a vital part of the artisanal workplace that was the London public theater. As such, Shakespeare’s works offer a particularly rich vantage point for investigating the cultural significance of labor in early modern England. This article examines a wide range of critical approaches to Shakespeare’s working world and concludes by suggesting possible avenues for further research.

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“Meaner Ministers”: Mastery, Bondage, and Theatrical Labor inThe Tempest

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Acousmatic Noise: Racialization and Resistance in The Tempest's 'New World' Soundscape

Acousmatic Noise: Racialization and Resistance in The Tempest's 'New World' Soundscape

Spirited away: Race, slavery and childhood in early modern England

Shakespeare and Work

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