Secrets of the Selden Map - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 145

Caliban is enslaved by the central character, Prospero, who was driven from Milan
byhisusurpingbrotherandshipwreckedonthisisland.Shakespearegiveshisaudi-
ence a violent Caliban worth loathing, and yet he lets Caliban tell his story: that
he started as an innocent, a natural man who welcomed Prospero at the moment of
first contact. It was Prospero's expropriation of the island that turned Caliban into
what he became that created the monstrosity of colonialism. As Caliban reminds
his violent master,
You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
EventheplagueCalibancallsdownonProsperowasaneffectoftheEuropeans'
invasion of this terra nullius , disease turning Paradise foul. In the next act
Shakespeare sketches the two scenarios that could follow from a terra nullius
claim. The idealised vision he gives to the old counsellor Gonzalo, who imagines
the perfect 'commonwealth' he would create on this empty island: a regime
withoutcommerceorstate,contractorprivateownership,labourorwar.Heismer-
cilessly mocked as an old fool by the other shipwrecked courtiers, who turn his
vision inside out and declare his new golden age to be nothing but a society of
'whores and knaves' over which Gonzalo would simply end up declaring himself
king. Theirs is the other interpretation: that people placed in a state of nature will
pursue their own selfish interests, which of course - and the audience picks this
up - is what these courtiers have been doing ever since they deposed Prospero in
pursuit of their own gain. We can admire Gonzalo's sincerity, but we are under no
illusion that terra nullius caneverworkoutwell, evenwhenthedespot isbenevol-
ent. The play ends ambiguously with the triumph of civilisation over savagery as
Prospero's lost daughter Miranda, finding herself at last among her own civilised
kind, exclaims,
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's great plays, whereas News from the New
World will never rate highly in the oeuvre of Ben Jonson, but then Jonson wasn't
trying to write serious theatre. I offer both here at the start of the final chapter