The court for which Shakespeare wrote The Tempest was essentially a Renaissance court, t, where the king presided over a court of astonishing cultural brilliance and diversity. Artistic achievements often labelled �Elizabethan� were, in fact, Jacobean. James actively encouraged not only players and playwrights but also musicians, designers and architects who worked under the best conditions that money could buy to harness their creative talents to celebrate James� kingship. Masques of such splendour and sophistication were devised by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones that they have been described as �the liturgy of divine right kingship�. They wrote masques for the court which celebrated virtues which were supposed to reflect James� kingship and masques became ever more popular. Shakespeare�s plays were written for the royal court rather than public performance, as he was one of the Kking�s Mmen, which may be a reason for his inclusion of a masque in �The Tempest�. Scholars, philosophers, theologians, scientists and literary men were welcomed and rewarded by James and his family.
Shakespeare, who died in 1616, wrote The Tempest as well as many of his other great plays for the Kings Men. The Kings men were set up by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of England to be his own company of players, while the finest work of Ben Jonson, John Webster and Beaumont and Fletcher was accomplished at this time. The King and Queen and each of their children employed a separate company of stage players who were kept particularly busy during Christmas and the New Year. During the festive season of 1609-10, for instance, no fewer than 24 plays were performed at court.
This, then, was the intellectual atmosphere in which The Tempest was written and although the most immediate contemporary historical reference in the play is in the themes of exploration and colonialism, the references to learning and to statecraft are of their particular historical time. Prospero is a Renaissance prince. Act 1, Scene 2 is full of references to Prospero�s love of learning:
�Prospero, the prime duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal Arts
Without a parallel, those being all my study� (72-74)
�My library was dukedom large enough� (110)
�I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind� (89-90)
�Knowing I loved books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom� (165-168)
For all Prospero�s desire to win back his kingdom from his usurping brother Antonio, he still reveres thehis books which caused him to lose it in the first place. Caliban evidently believed the books to be the root of Prospero�s magical power, as when he is plotting to kill Prospero he insists that they seize his books:
�������there thou mayst brain him,
Having first seiz'd his books��remember
First to possess his books; for without them
He�s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
One spirit to command�
His love of learning leads him to attempt to educate Caliban:
����������teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less� (336-337)
�Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
one thing or other��..� (355-356)
Prospero however, for all his learning, ignores the one thing that no Renaissance prince could afford to neglect. That is statecraft. The prince, as instructed by Machiavelli, is liable to be, at worst, usurped or, at best, conspired against, if he neglects to exert control over the state. For all his love of the liberal arts and intellectual pursuits James kept a tight control of the state. He had a well developed spy system and was well informed of any possible conspiracy against him. Although the court was riven with factions and favouritism James was never going to allow control of the state to pass into any other hands but his own. This was the king whose father had been murdered by courtiers supposedly acting on behalf of his mother, and whose mother had been beheaded by Elizabeth. He had come to the throne of England by surviving the treacherous Scottish regency court and becoming seen as acceptable to the English, a previously sworn enemy. James was a political sophicate who knew how to gain and to retain power and who would know how to use patronage for his political advantage. Although his favourites were notorious for their influence, that influence was essentially derived from James and depended upon him. Prospero�s downfall had come about because of his neglect of his state duties and his surrender of patronage to his brother discussed in Act 1 Scene 2:
��..and to him put
The manage of my state���.
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger� (69-76)
�being once perfected how to grant suits
How to deny them, who t�advance. And who
To trash for over-topping, new created
The creatures who were mine, I say, or chang�d �em
Or else new form�d �em; having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts I� th� state
To what tune pleas�d his ear� (79-85)
����..he did believe
He was indeed the duke��� (102-103)
Prospero�s right to kingship over something at least, albeit only the island and Caliban, is never denied, and the text does not condemn him for using magic to make sure he got back his principality. While Alonso has been wrong in the past to Prospero, it is never suggested that Prospero usurp to state of Milan, or that Alonso give it up. This would fit with James� belief in the divine right of kings, that their rule was divinely appointed by God. People would also have recognised in Miranda�s marriage to Ferdinand echoes of James� marriage of his beloved daughter Elizabeth, who was his favourite and whom he missed a great deal, however, marrying her to Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine who was a great Protestant ruler of what is now Germany. James used Elizabeth to cement Protestant alliances on the Continent against the league of Catholic nations including France and Spain.
Witchcraft/Magic
The England of Shakespeare�s time believed in the power of witchcraft. Scientific and the supernatural explanations of phenomena existed together and, where the science couldn�t explain, a supernatural causation was believed. Science was still indistinguishable from alchemy and magic - Dame Frances Yates wrote that �The occult philosophy in the Elizabethan age was no minor concern of a few adepts. It was the main philosophy of the age. Science had changed a great deal from the Middle Ages, however, as no longer would people spend their lifetimes discussing problems such as how many angels could stand on the head of a pin. Copernicus had revolutionised thinking, by being the first non-classical writer to advocate a heliocentric idea of the world order (revolving around the Sun) rather than a geocentric. Many things had changed, not least in ship-building, as there had been developments in rigging which enabled the exploration of the world and the discovery of the New World. Science was not as we imagine it today, however, as the search for the Philosopher�s Stone (which would change base metals into gold) and for the elixir of life still continued. �Scientists�, as such, were still little more than magicians, and feats like Prospero�s were not counted as being outside possibility. Many great scientists, as well as ordinary people, dabbled in alchemy and alchemists were believed to have access to secret learning. James I himself, was interested in witchcraft and in the secrets of the old learning.
In 1604 the conjuring of spirits was declared a felony punishable by hanging. Black witches were often put to death and it was stated that cunning men � wizards � were very numerous in England. By the end of the 16th Century it was estimated that there were almost as many witches as clergy. In 1616, after it was found that the Countess of Somerset had been a client of many cunning men, Lord Chief Justice Coke started a purge on magicians. He said that in London alone he had found �thirteen impostors or wizards pretending to sell fortunes, to procure love, to alter affections, to bring again stolen goods and other such like deceits.�
Prospero�s Art (his magic) is real. He is seen as able to summon and control tempests and he wears the magician�s mantle when he uses his Art. He is able to control a Spirit � Ariel � who can perform magical and mischievous acts for him. Dame Frances Yates wrote that �the lofty religious magus can conjure spirits or intelligences to his aid. T