The Tempest’s Caliban was said to voice the fury and distress of the people forced from the Fenlands which were being drained and enclosed.
Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy
Worrying environmental issues dominated the time of William Shakespeare as they do now, from depleted fish stocks and food shortages, to overpopulation and animal exploitation.
Scholars have scoured the works of the great playwright for clues about his faith. A scholar of theology and Shakespeare’s works says it isn’t as simple as that.
Madeleine MacMahon as ‘Sebastianne’ in a live production of The Tempest by Creation Theatre from 2019.
Creation Theatre/ Big Telly Theatre Company
We can’t go to the theatre but some creative theatre groups are bringing it to us, via Zoom.
Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ contains timeless themes around resistance and colonialism. Here in an engraving by Benjamin Smith based on a painting by George Romney of Act I, Scene 1 of ‘The Tempest’ by William Shakespeare.
(Benjamin Smith/George Romney/ Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division /pga.03317)
Actors and theatre scholars seek to understand how ‘The Tempest’ could have been used by both European colonialists and also by advocates of resistance.