Context: Divine Right, Magic, and the New World

🏛️ Context: Divine Right, Magic, and the New World

The Tempest was performed at the Jacobean court (1611 and 1613). James I believed in the Divine Right of Kings — that monarchs were appointed by God and that usurpation was therefore a cosmic crime as well as a political one. Prospero's Milan dukedom was legitimately his; Antonio's seizure of it is framed in these terms. The play stages the restoration of legitimate rule, which its Jacobean court audience would have received as morally satisfying.

James I also wrote Daemonologie (1597), a treatise on witchcraft. Prospero's magic therefore occupies contested ground: is it the legitimate "white magic" of a learned man, or transgressive occult practice? Shakespeare uses the word "rough" at the moment of renunciation, which points toward the latter. Prospero's power is never entirely sanctified.

The New World colonial context (1609 Bermuda pamphlets; Virginia Company) shapes the Prospero-Caliban power relationship, as explored in the Caliban topic. Power over the indigenous inhabitant of the island exists within this colonial frame — a Jacobean audience may have read it as legitimate governance of the uncivilised; later readers have read it as the foundational injustice the play cannot resolve.