Giants and Enemies of God revised

Giants and Enemies of God: the relationship of Caliban and Prospero from the perspective of insular literary tradition Lynn Forest-Hill This paper engages with a growing body of criticism that analyses early modern drama from the perspective of insular literary tradition. Its eventual focus is on Shakespeare’s Tempest but it begins in Anglo-Saxon literature, before moving on to the foundation myth that appears in the medieval Brut, or Chronicles of England. These sources illuminate the play’s engagement with political and religious controversies that were current in England when the play was first performed in November 1611. This approach adds another dimension to the established post-colonial critique of the play and adds depth and complexity to the relationship between Prospero and Caliban as it exposes additional cultural significance in the manipulation of images deployed in the play. Although these images reflect traditional eschatological and mythical sources, those sources have hitherto been obscured by the overwhelming preoccupation of earlier critics with classical influences. should like to thank Professor Greg Walker and Dr. Jane Cowling for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this essay as well as thanking other colleagues at the Centre for Antiquity and the Middle Ages (CAMA) at the University of Southampton for their support and encouragement during the development of this research. The significance of eschatological and apocalyptic tradition has, however, been noted in King Lear although the contexts for interpretation naturally differ. See Joseph Wittreich, ‘ “Image of the horror”: the Apocalypse in King Lear’, in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984) 175–206. The best known form of the mythical founding of Britain recounts the coming of Brutus, grandson of Aeneas of Troy, from Armorica, with a band of Trojans. They kill the giants they find when they land at Totnes in Devon and settle down to create a city-based society. European foundation myths citing Greek or Roman ancestors first appear in the work of the seventh-century Frankish chronicler, Fredegar. Susan Reynolds, ‘Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community of the Realm’, History 68 (1983): 375–90, 375. Reynolds observes that ‘origin stories … were unlikely to have had a single common descent.’ 378. These myths offer explanations of how a society, civilization, or realm came into being and include etiological material and eponymous characters. Many British myths, legends and stories include giants. From the work of Anglo-Saxon poets to that of sixteenth-century antiquarians, giants appear as the original inhabitants of the island of Britain. They are, of course, part of many foundation myths. The Titans of Greek legend are the classical version, and Genesis 6: 4 tells us that before the Flood ‘there were giants in the earth in those days’. Gigantes autem erant super terram in diebus illis. Gen. 6:4. Other biblical references to giants: Sap. 14:6; Ecclus. 16:8; Bar. 3:26. Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, rev., Robertus Weber, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1969). Giants are the quintessential primary inhabitants in the myths of many realms and regions. They are Other by virtue of their size, monstrosity, and animosity towards the humans who displace them and become the founders of the society to which each myth refers. The fact that they are savages vanquished and destroyed is always important as a sign of the beneficial process of establishing the society that succeeds them. Walter Stephen, Giants in Those Days (Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1989) 31–32. The political potential of such a mythology was constantly exploited, and indeed appears as the motivating factor in the development of the British founding myth after the Norman Conquest. The history of one particular giant introduces the potential for an analysis of The Tempest in terms of early modern eschatological anxieties, but in insular literature there are two views of giants, both of which offer insights into the relationship between Caliban and Prospero. The first conforms to the pattern of the hostile Other. In Beowulf, the hero’s first opponent is Grendel who is a troll, from Northern European tradition, and the enemy of God because he is one of Cain’s kin from the Christian tradition. Fr Klaeber, ed., Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd ed. (Lexington: D C Heath, 1922) l. 107. From him, we are told, arose all those monsters ‘who joined in long wars with God’. þanon untydras ealle onwocon,/eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas,/swylce gigantas, þa wið Gode wunnon / lange þrage [from him an evil brood all arose, ogres and elves and monsters, as well as giants who joined in long wars with God]. The poem uses both OE eotenas and gigantas from Latin although both may be translated as ‘giants’. All translations are mine. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf, ll. 111–14. Grendel is a giant in size and animosity, while his role as Other in the manuscript includes his opposition to Christianity. As the resentful outcast, he poses a threat to the ideal human community of Heorot, which he also envies. Andy Orchard suggests that ‘given Grendel’s central role as a man-eating monster, it seems extraordinary that the Beowulf-poet should choose to depict him as a character with a point of view, one that is capable of evoking sympathy, at precisely [the] key moment in the battle, when the predator becomes prey.’ Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003) 192. I would like to thank Professor David Hinton for this reference. However, this poem, like others in the Old English corpus, also gives a less threatening view of giants, enta or eotenas. Their ancient works are the objects of wonder. Grendel’s vengeful mother is killed with the sword whose hilt is described as being entisc or the ancient work of giants. enta ærgeweorc. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf, ll. 1679. Another ancient entisc sword splits Ongentheow’s helmet, which is also described as the work of giants. In all these references to giant artifacts, including the masonry of the dragon’s lair, age, strength, and wonderful skill are indicated, and the craft of giants elicits comment in other Old English poems. In The Ruin, the Gnomic Verses, and The Wanderer, ruined Roman architecture is described imaginatively as orþanc enta geweorc, the wonderful, or cunning, work of giants, and the Old English translation of Orosius’ fifth-century story of Cyrus of Persia, declares that ‘Membrath the giant first began to build Babylon.’ Membrað se ent angan ærest timbran Babylonia. Henry Sweet, ed., King Alfred’s Orosius, part 1 EETS OS 79 (N. Trübner and Co., 1883) 74. In this parallel edition Sweet also gives the Latin original: Namque Babyloniam a Nemrod gigante fundatam. This skill in building remains a feature of giants in post-Conquest versions of the founding of Britain and throughout implies their original tenure and settlement of the land. The Germanic tribes may have known the real source of Roman ruins but in England these are depicted as a sign of mutability in the work of the Anglo-Saxon poets who create an absent giant race characterized by its skill rather than its overt aggression. The sense of wonder associated with an imagined race of giants suggests a mythologizing impulse consistent with the trend observed by Susan Reynolds among people who participated in the great migrations of the first millennium. Reynolds, ‘Origines Gentium’ 375. The Anglo-Saxon view does not, however, constitute a coherent founding myth, perhaps because having established their own control over the land, they faced successive waves of northern raiders who provided a more immediate Other against which to define Anglo-Saxon society and tenure, but this view interrogates later myths of savage giants. The Norman invasion modified the perception of giants in accordance with the political interests of the conquerors. In his Historia regum Britanniae of c.1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth not only asserts that the name of Britain was once Albion, but that Brutus found giants inhabiting the island when he and his expedition arrived. He found the germ of Brutus’s story in Nennius’s ninth century Historia Brittonum, Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, ed., Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1966) 71. but a claim of descent from the Trojans was already an established continental topos. As the pre-existence of giants has biblical authority from the Genesis passage, Geoffrey offers no further explanation. In Geoffrey’s Historia, the only giant to survive the invasion is named Gogmagog and he is described very briefly as ‘particularly repulsive’ and strong enough to uproot an oak tree. Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain 72. He is kept alive to wrestle with the Trojan champion, Corineus, who eventually throws him over a cliff. The unusual name Gogmagog is a contraction of the names of two biblical opponents of God – Gog and Magog. Confusion arises over these names, because their first mention, in the Book of Ezekiel, is of a person and a place: Gog is a defiant prince from a land called Magog. Magog on its own is the name of a son of Japheth in Gen. 10:2. All biblical references are to the Authorized Version unless otherwise noted. However, in The Book of Revelation, Gog and Magog are the names of the peoples of the earth who will be deceived by Satan into fighting for him in the last days. Their eschatological significance is developed in medieval texts and becomes part of the legend of the coming of the Antichrist. It is found in the influential sixth-century text known as the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius, George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1956), 130. Adso Dervensis, De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi, ed. D. Verhelst, Corpus Christianorum, XLV (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976) 139. and in one early redaction of Adso of Montier-en-Der’s even more influential early eleventh-century Libellus de Antichristo. From the twelfth century onwards, English manuscripts gathered together versions of Adso’s treatise and copies of the Pseudo-Methodius Revelationes. . Adso Dervensis, De Ortu et Tempore Antichrist, ed. Verhelst 11. The story of Gog and Magog as servants of the Antichrist and heralds of the end of days was widely disseminated to a non-clerical audience in the medieval story of Alexander the Great. For the history and development of this myth see George Cary, The Medieval Alexander. Also D.J.A. Ross Alexander Historiatus: A Guide to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature (London: Warburg Institute, 1963). In all these texts, however, Gog and Magog remain separate entities. The authority for the conflation of the names into Gogmagog is Bede's eighth-century Expositio Apocalypsis in which he says that Gog and Magog in The Book of Revelation are to be understood as 'parts of the whole', and not differentiated, because they are alike enemies of God. Porro Gog et Magog uel a parte totum significant, uel iuxta interpretationem, quae <tectum> et <de tecto> dicuntur, occultos et apertos indicant hostes. Bede, Expositio Apocalypsis, Corpus Christianorum, CXXIA (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001) 20, 8─9. They will not, however, suffer the same fate as Satan and the Antichrist. ‘Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil, that deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are.’ Rev. 20:7–10. For an exposition see for example, St Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1972) 919–21. The contraction of their names encapsulates the undifferentiated negative significance attributed to them in their eschatological context, and when applied as a name to the last giant in Albion, creates a creature that is not only Other, but whose destruction could be regarded as righteous because he is an enemy of God, not simply an opponent of those who invade his land and usurp his autonomy. The definition of Gogmagog as an enemy of God is stated plainly in La3amon’s early thirteenth-century vernacular Brut. This verse chronicle of the British kings in alliterative form retains elements of Old English vocabulary. La3amon, Brut, ed. G.L. Brook and R.F. Leslie, EETS OS 250 (London, Oxford UP, 1963). Kenneth J. Tiller suggests that La3amon uses the mythical history of Britain to encourage resistance against post-Conquest suppression of Anglo-Saxon culture. Tiller, Translating Conquest (Cardiff: U of Wales P, forthcoming, 2005). La3amon’s Gogmagog is huge, strong enough to use trees as weapons, and he is defined as wiðersaca, arch-enemy of God. La3amon writes that Brutus and his Trojans funden I þon londe’/ twenti eotandes stronge. Heora nomen ne herdi neuer tellen a leoda ne a spella. Boten þes anes name’/ þa heore alre lauerd wes. Geomagog ihaten’/ þat was þe heiste. Godes wiðersaka’/ þe Wrse hine luuede. [They] found in that land twenty great giants. I never heard their names told or spoken by people, except for the name of the one who was their lord. He was called Geomagog who was the greatest adversary of God, the worst creature alive. La3amon, Brut, ll. 902–06. My translation. OE ‘ent’, ‘eoten’, and ‘gigant’ from Latin, occur in Beowulf. See Klaeber, ed. Beowulf, Glossary. ‘Wiðersaca’ is not found there. In OE eoten = giants; but ‘eotan’ = Jute; in ME eotandes = giants. This may be influenced by dialect or uncertain othographic transmission, like the variant spelling ‘Geomagog’ for Gogmagog. The translation of ‘wiðersaca’ in Old and Middle English is ‘arch-enemy, especially the devil or Antichrist’. J.R Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1894). Hans Kurath, and Sherman M. Kuhn, Middle English Dictionary (Anne Arbor, Mi.: U of Michigan P 1956–). This recalls the biblical depiction of the separate beings Gog and Magog. The plural noun appears in three manuscripts of Archbishop Wulfstan’s eleventh-century Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, Bede’s Expositio Apocalypsis influenced Adso’s treatise, which was itself a source for Wulfstan’s eschatological homilies. Adso Dervensis, De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi, ed. Verhelst 156. which warns that: ‘her syn on earde a Godes wiðersacan apostatan abroþene’ [there are always in this land God’s arch enemies, degenerate apostates]. Dorothy Beruthrum notes ‘apostatan’ is only recorded in Wulfstan’s works: Mss. Corpus Christi Cambs 419 (eleventh century) and Bodliean 343 (later twelfth century) read ‘Godes wiðersacan’ only. Ms. Corpus Christi Cambs 201 (late eleventh century), combines both. See The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed., Dorothy Beruthrum, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) 363n. La3amon’s explicit depiction of Gogmagog retains the connection with the Antichrist, as the giant takes on the mantle of God’s adversary. Bernard McGinn notes: ‘The conception of Antichrist as a giant was common in the early Middle Ages, as Bede and other commentators demonstrate.’ ‘Portraying Antichrist in the Middle Ages’, in W. Verbeke, et al, The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, Medievalia Lovaniensia Series 1; Studia 15 (Leuven: Leuven UP, 1988) 1–48, 7. Later versions of the founding myth construct Gogmagog’s oppositional condition from a less explicit direction. The particular version of the foundation myth that surfaces in The Tempest derives from a fourteenth-century development of these earlier versions. In about 1333, the Brutus myth was reworked in Anglo-Norman, in the form of a lai rather than a Chronicle. It is known as Des Grantz Geanz, Georgine Brereton notes that the vocabulary of the poem and errors in versification are ‘an unmistakable indication of insular origin’. Des Grantz Geanz, ed., Georgine Brereton, Medium Aevum Monographs II (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1937) xxxi–ii. More than 20 manuscripts are extant. Cotton Cleopatra D IX is the longer redaction. and it explains, without reference to biblical sources, how giants came to be on the island of Albion before Brutus arrived, and how it got the name Albion. It tells the story of a king and queen of Greece who had 30 daughters, the eldest of whom was called Albina. When the girls came of age they were married to noble kings. However, the young wives, because of their proud and noble upbringing, objected to being subservient to their husbands, and plotted to kill them while in intimate embrace. The youngest sister, however, told the plot to her husband, and then to her father, who had all the other sisters arrested for treason. In his rage, he condemned them to death, but the other judges, considering the honour of the parents and husbands, commuted this to exile for life. So the sisters were set adrift in a rudderless ship without food. Des Grantz Geanz, ed. Brereton 12. For three days and nights the ship was battered by a storm. When this abated the ship fetched up on an island and Albina stepped ashore. Later, she declared that as the eldest sister she was taking possession of the land, using the legal term ‘seisin’ at this point, and that it was to be called Albion after her own name. The sisters found wild herbs, fruit, game, and fish in the rivers, and fresh water to drink, but found no other inhabitants. They made fire with flints to cook the game they caught and ate so well that they became grossly fat. This provoked the women’s lust and they desired male company. The Devil saw this and, taking human form, satisfied their lust. Giants were born from these unions with the Incubus. More giants were born from subsequent incestuous relationships. They were excessively large and massively strong. They were also hideous to look at, because they were fathered by the Devil and their mothers were already gross. This huge supernatural race lived in caves and on mountains. Like the giants in earlier versions of the myth, they built great walls and deep ditches around their dwelling places, but, the story tells us, the defenses these giants built have fallen through tempest and storm. This was the race that held the land when Brutus and his men arrived, but because there was strife between the giants, when the Trojans landed there were only 24 of them to oppose the invaders. Brutus destroyed all but Gogmagog who was allowed to live because the Trojan not only marveled at his size and wanted him to wrestle the Trojan champion, as in Geoffrey’s and La3amon’s versions, but wanted to know how giants came to inhabit the land. When Gogmagog had told his story and been killed, Brutus obliterated the name Albion, called the island Britain after himself, and established cities. My paraphrase throughout. This story became hugely popular. An abridged version became the basis for two prose translations into Latin, Des Grantz Geanz, ed. Brereton xxxvi. and for the prologue to a Latin prose translation of the Brute Chronicle. The versions of the Brute Chronicle dating after 1333. Des Grantz Geanz, ed., Brereton xxxiii. A metrical version in English forms the prologue to Castleford’s Chronicle of England. Caroline D. Eckhardt argues that Castleford’s Chronicle was composed shortly after 1327. If so, this challenges the date of Des Grantz Geanz. See Castleford’s Chronicle or The Boke of Brut, ed. Caroline D. Eckhardt, EETS OS 305 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996). A version of the story in which Albina and her sisters are the offspring of the King of Syria accompanies 10 of the 14 extant texts of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut; and this Syrian version became the most widely known form because it was used, in translation, as the preface to the Middle English Brut. James P. Carley and Julia Crick, ‘Constructing Albion’s Past: An Annotated edition of De Origine Gigantum’, in Arthurian Literature 13, James P. Carley and Felicity Riddy, eds (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995): 41–114, 47 This form of the story was printed in Caxton’s Chronicle. The popularity and dissemination of The Chronicles of England is testified by the 167 manuscripts still extant in English, French, and Latin, as well as the 13 editions printed between 1400 and 1528. I am most grateful to Richard Barber for additional information about sources. He includes the story of Albina in his book Myths and Legends of the British Isles (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999). Wynkyn de Worde included the Syrian version in his 1528 Chronicles of England as did John Rastell. The many versions of the Albina revision to the Brutus myth demonstrate continuous interest in this story of the foundation of Britain. Its Anglo-Norman lai form suggests an intention to entertain, but the translation into Latin suggests a more serious purpose. As Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia sought to legitimate the Norman Conquest, Geoffrey wanted ‘to give “a precedent for the dominions and ambitions of the Norman kings”.’ The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. Thorpe, 10, citing J.S.P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and its early vernacular versions (U of California P, 1950), 426. so the anonymous Des Grantz Geanz addresses a later topical political problem. Commentators suggest that the Albina revision was a response to Scottish assertions of independence in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath. See for example, Lesley Johnson, ‘Return to Albion’, Arthurian Literature 13, James P. Carley and Felicity Riddy eds (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995): 19–40, 25. Also Carley and Crick, ‘Constructing Albion’s Past’ 55–59. This claimed, in the face of English incursions, Scotland’s ancient independence by reason of its foundation by Scota, daughter of a king of Egypt. By claiming a separate founding myth, Scotland portrayed an ancient authority for its independence from England. In response, the Albina myth challenged Scottish separatism through what James Carley and Julia Crick describe as an ‘expression of the natural state of the island polity’. Carley and Crick, ‘Constructing Albion’s Past’ 42. The Latin form gave the myth the aura of authority. In all cases, the Brutus myth appears to legitimate conquest and usurpation by depicting the original inhabitants of the island as violent cave-dwelling monsters, while the classical authority implied by the mythical Greek origins of Brutus and his men suggest that they represent the coming of civilization, order, and patriarchal law to an otherwise barbaric land. Most versions of the Albina revision preserve this idea. However, De origine gigantum, a reworking in Latin prose of the abridged version of Des Grantz Geanz, renders the giants differently, depicting them as living a peaceful life until Brutus invades. Et perdurarunt gigantes pacifice in hac terra usque as aduentum britonum. De origine gigantum, ed., Carley and Crick’ Constructing Albion’s Past’ 113. Ruth Evans notes the specific and continual ‘toning down’ of the giants’ violence in line with more political purposes. Ruth Evans, ‘Gigantic origins: An Annotated Translation of De Origine Gigantum’, Arthurian Literature 16, James P. Carley and Felicity Riddy eds (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1998): 197–211, 211. This version alters the perception of the actions of Gogmagog and his comrades as these hitherto peaceful first inhabitants of the island unsuccessfully confront an invading Trojan fighting force. From this perspective, Brutus is the violent colonizer usurping the giants’ inheritance. Anke Bernau, ‘Problematic Origins: The Struggle over Nation and Historiography in Medieval and Early Modern England’, in Gordon McMullan and David Matthews, eds, Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, forthcoming. This is the perspective found in later versions of the myth where Gogmagog and his kin are said to have ‘dwellyd in caues and in hylles atte ther wylle And hadde the londe of Albyon as them lykyd / unto ye tyme that Brute arryued.’ The Chronicles of England and St Alban’s Chronicle (1485), printed by Julian Notary (1515) STC 9995; and by Wynkyn de Worde (1528) STC 9986. The freedom of the giants within their own land is important as a context for reviewing The Tempest, but it is only one aspect of the political potential of the Albina myth. That potential is significant for understanding the extraordinary popularity of the story. It influences Chaucer’s late fourteenth-century Man of Law’s Tale. The story of the Roman maiden Constance, taken from Nicholas Trevet’s chronicle of world history written c. 1334, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987) 857. Trevet was writing for Marie, daughter of Edward I. has heavy overtones of hagiography, but in Chaucer’s version Constance is set adrift from Syria rather than from Trevet’s Saracen land, The Life of Constance from the Anglo-Norman Chronicle of Nicholas Trevet, Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed., and trans., Edmund Brock, part 1, The Chaucer Society (London: N. Trübner, 1872) l. 136. and she speaks a form of Latin, ‘A maner Latyn corrupt was hir speche’, The Man of Law’s Tale, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson l. 519. Constance’s use of a form of Latin reflects her origins in Rome and suggests her function as a symbol of the Roman Church. rather than Saxon as she does in Trevet’s story. ‘And she answered him in Saxon … as one who was learned in divers languages’. The Life of Constance, ed. Brock 12. A translation into Middle English from Trevet’s French original dates c. 1430–1440, too late to be Chaucer’s source, but still preserves the Saracen-land location, 221. In both versions, however, she travels in a ship that cannot be steered and eventually arrives on the coast of Northumberland, bringing Christianity specifically to the region that had frequently been contested between the English and the Scots. Chaucer, following Trevet, apparently contributes to an ongoing political debate about unified control of the island of Britain. He may also have perceived the problem with the Albina story, which had then been part of insular literary tradition from some sixty years. In the process of claiming insular unity, the myth depicted the first inhabitants as monstrous adversaries of God akin to the Antichrist, who would be born, according to one version of his genealogy, from the union of a human mother and the Devil. Chaucer, however, appears to conflate the Albina myth with the story of Constance to rewrite it in terms of the re-establishment of Christianity. Like Trevet, he depicts the prior existence of British Christianity declaring that In al that lond no Cristen dorste route; Alle Cristen folk been fled fro that contree Thurgh payens, that conquereden al aboute The plages of the north, by land and see. To Walys fledde the cristyanytee Of olde Britons dwellynge in this ile. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, MLT ll. 540–45. Chaucer’s version of Constance’s arrival taints Scottish incursions with the stigma of paganism as well as challenging Scottish separatism by alluding to the Albina myth. It justifies English control by asserting a Christian agenda against the gross sin implied by the myth, depicting the Roman Church in the image of the Latin-speaking daughter of Rome restoring the faith of the unified island. At the same time it challenges the implicit Anglo-Norman suggestion that Britain needed the civilizing process of the Conquest. The significance and dissemination of the Albina myth in late medieval and early modern England is not yet widely recognized. Gogmagog’s name, on the other hand, occurs not just in literature, The story of Brutus and Gogmagog also surfaces in the Anglo-Norman prose romance Fouke Fitz Waryn. Gogmagog is slain in the Payn Peverel episode and a devil enters his body Thomas E. Kelly, ‘Fouke Fitz Waryn’, in Medieval Outlaws, ed., Thomas H. Ohlgren (Stroud: Sutton, 1998) 106─67, 113─15. but also in topographical legends. ‘Gogmagog’s Hill (Cambridgeshire) was called Windlebury beforetime’. William Harrison, A Description of England (1576), ed., Georges Edelen, Folger Shakespeare Library (Ithaca, New York: Cornell UP, 1968) 224. No explanation is suggested for the change of name. He is one of the giants adopted from legend and romance to serve as mascots. The claim to have a protecting giant, or to have overthrown one during the founding process, may be a playful sign of civic status but Gog and Magog are London’s giants and were historically associated with the city’s claim to great antiquity. In 1859 in his discussion of the significance of the London Guildhall figures of the giants, Frederick Fairholt noted that: Tales of Albion and Brutus were so much valued by our forefathers that they were transcribed as well-authenticated and sober early history in their Liber Albus, as well as in the Recordatorium Civitatis Speculum; and advanced in a memorial presented to Henry VI, and now preserved in the Tower of London, as an evidence of the Great Antiquity, precedency and dignity of the City of London, even before Rome. Frederick W. Fairholt, Gog and Magog: The Giants in Guildhall (London: John Camden Hotton, 1859). The Recordatorium is lost. There is no mention of Albina in the Liber Albus, only Brutus, but the preservation, transmission, and explicit purpose attached to these legends increased in political significance during the fluctuations of the Reformation. The Liber Albus asserts the preeminence of London over Rome through its prior foundation by Brutus and derives all the liberties, laws, and customs of London from the Trojan, ignoring his pagan condition. Haec prius a Bruto in similitudinem magnae Trojae condita est quam illa a Remo et Romulo; unde adhuc ejusdem antiquae civitatis Trojae libertibus, juribus, et consuetudinibus utitur. Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis: Liber Albus, Liber Customarum, Liber Horn, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 2 vols, (London; Longman Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860), vol 1, Liber Albus 61. Similarly, the depiction of the prior inhabitants as offspring of murderous women who in their lust were impregnated by the devil, did not prevent transmission in official and popular texts, and Victor I. Scherb has argued that whether as Gogmagog or Gog and Magog, this biblical phenomenon came to define English consciousness. Victor I. Scherb, ‘Assimilating Giants: The Appropriation of Gog and Magog in Medieval and Early Modern England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 32, no.1 (Winter 2002): 59–84. The pride or pleasure late medieval English people evidently took in their foundation myth, including the story of Albina, clearly continued because it became the subject of controversy. John Rastell in his early sixteenth-century Chronicles of England rejects it; Holinshed remarks upon it in the late sixteenth century, as does the antiquarian John Trussell in the seventeenth. John Trussell, Touchstone of Tradition (1617), condemned those who ‘haue endeavoured to question the truth’ of the Brutus myth. Hampshire Records Office, W/K1/12, f.19r. The Albina story appears in the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, which Shakespeare used as a source for Henry IV part II, Cymbeline and other plays. Holinshed condemns with some force writers who used inappropriate myths of the founding of Britain, declaring irritably: most of all they erre in that endevour to fetch it from Albine the imagined daughter of a forged Dioclesian, wherein our ignorant writers have of late not a little stained our historie. Raphael Holinshed, The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Ireland, 2nd ed. (1587) 3. The objections perhaps explain why the Albina myth disappeared. Nevertheless, Shakespeare would have known it and the controversy surrounding it. Indeed, much of the imagery he uses in The Tempest seems chosen to prompt a Jacobean audience to recall Albina, Gogmagog and Brutus, the controversy over the myth, and its significance in the context of Jacobean religious and political sensitivity. It is not hard to read The Tempest in terms of the Albina story. Sycorax, for ‘mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible’, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (London, The Arden Shakespeare, 1999) 1.2.264. All quotations are from this edition. was exiled and shipped off to the unnamed island. Her monstrous son Caliban was fathered by a devil, and she was ‘grown into a hoop.’ Although Prospero claims it is through age and envy, the image is still of a grossly fat female, Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1.2.258–59. The is no evidence in the OED nor in other plays by Shakespeare that anything other than horizontal rotundity is implied by ‘hoop’ at this time. like Albina and her overfed sisters. However, Prospero implies that Sycorax’s lust was directed towards the reluctant Ariel when he reminds the airy spirit ‘thou wast a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorred commands’ (1.2.284). The Jacobean audience would have known Satan’s title: ‘prince of the power of the air’, ‘Ye walked according to the … prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’. Eph. 2:2 so despite Ariel’s comic reluctance, Comic because it suggests that Sycorax is so fat this minor incubus is deterred. this airy spirit is still an echo of the demonic Incubus that the Chronicles assert took a body of air and the nature of men in order to impregnate Albina and her sisters. ‘þe Deuyll … nome bodyes of þe eyre & likyng natures shad of men, & come into þe land of Albyon and lay by þe wymmen.’ The Brut, or The Chronicles of England, ed. Friedrich W.D. Brie, part 1, EETS OS 131 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1906) 4. After Sycorax’s death, Caliban inherits the island, which is then wrested from him by an invader who makes him live in a cave. Caliban complains to Prospero: ‘…you sty me / In this hard rock’ (1.2.336). Although there is no evidence that Caliban lived in one previously, nor that he built, as the originary giants built walls and ditches, nevertheless, the relationships and intertextual echoes imply his equivalence to the giant Gogmagog, His knowledge of the island’s resources: the plants, berries, and springs also echo the resources Albina and her sisters initially lived on and, by reference to the printed Chronicles at least, confirm his peaceful prior tenure of the island. The Chronicles of England and the St. Alban’s Chronicles (1485) STC 9995, printed by Julian Notary (1515) STC 9986, and Wynkyn de Worde (1528) STC 10002, all assert the peaceful prior tenure of the giants. There are admittedly problems with using the Albina myth as an interpretive tool for The Tempest. Sycorax originates from Algiers, but although the Syrian version of the myth would have been known from the English Chronicles and from Caxton’s edition of The Canterbury Tales, Algiers would have been just as exotic and would have had more entertaining political significance for the Jacobean audience than Syria. Algiers, like Tunis, had been under Catholic (Spanish) control in the mid-sixteenth century and was linked to Milan and Naples. Philip II of Spain, who was also King of Naples and Duke of Milan, had lost the North African territories in the second half of the sixteenth century and had been unable to regain control of them, much to the displeasure of Pope Pius IV. Peter Pierson, Philip of Spain (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975) 66 and 152. By 1591, originating from Milan, Pope Clement XIV was known in England as Philip’s ‘milanoise vassal’. See A Declaration of Great Troubles Pretended Against the Realme, Bodleian Library, Arch Bodl. G.C.6, 18 October 1591. STC 565. Sycorax, moreover, is not the only character in the play to reach the island by boat. The resonance between Prospero’s tale and The Man of Law’s Tale signals a Christian aspect to his biography, casting him, briefly, as evangelical victim. Prospero and Miranda were set adrift in an uncontrollable ship, Prospero declares he is set adrift, not assassinated, because ‘…so dear the love my people bore me.’ (1.2.141) The mitigation of the punishment of Albina and her sisters is cast as a similar rejection of excessive violence in The Brut, where the king their father ‘wolde hem all haue brent; but alle þe barouns & lordes of Sirrye conseilyd hym not so for-to don suche sternys to his owne doughtres.’ The Brut ed. Brie 4. and their circumstances resemble those of Constance and her child. Their ship is provisioned and Prospero claims to be innocent of any sin, except the desire for occult knowledge. Equally problematic is Prospero’s assertion that Sycorax is a witch. This could be merely spiteful slander in support of his claim to the island. In The Man of Law’s Tale, Constance is defamed as an evil spirit, and her infant son is called a monster, but this is a malicious lie. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, MLT, ll. 743–79. However, Ariel and Caliban support Prospero’s assertion. The airy spirit acknowledges that he had been imprisoned in a tree. Caliban’s ineffectual curse is less convincing evidence but certainly suggests Sycorax’s occult activity when he says: As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both. (1.2.323–35) Furthermore, in early modern terms mating with a devil was characteristic of a witch. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Penguin, 1971) 521. Caliban is born of this union and is thus the dramatic descendant of the giant Gogmagog, the adversary of God. However, in spite of his parentage, he has no magic or occult powers, his curse, unlike Prospero’s, has no effect, a detail worthy of note in the light of Keith Thomas’s observation that In Shakespeare’s plays, the curses pronounced by the characters invariably work. This is not just for dramatic effect; it was a moral necessity that the poor and injured should be believed to have this power of retaliation when all else failed. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic 605. Caliban’s impotent expressions of violence brings him closer to the earlier tradition of peaceful giants who had prior possession of their island, inherited from monstrous mothers, and could not drive out the invaders. In addition, although demonic paternity and adversarial condition were well known attributes of the Antichrist, despite these characteristics, Caliban does not show any of the Antichrist’s other defining features. He does not perform any of the tricks or false miracles for which the Antichrist was famed. He does not create storms, upturn trees, or raise the dead, all of which are actions associated with the Antichrist in all the versions of his biography from Adso’s eleventh-century treatise to the late fifteenth-century Chester Play of Antichrist. Caliban may be viewed, therefore, from a mythical perspective, as a descendant of the usurped and hitherto peaceful giant, but he may also be seen from an eschatological perspective in terms of the deceived undifferentiated figure of the apocalypse. A number of medieval and early modern plays of the Antichrist have been identified. Klaus Aichele finds twenty-five Antichrist plays across Europe during the Reformation and Counter-reformation, but does not identify The Tempest as one. See Klaus Aichele, Der Antichristdrama des Mittlealters, Reformation, und Gegenreformation (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff: 1974). See also, Richard Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages (Seattle: U of Washington P, 1981). The earliest is the massive twelfth-century Tegernsee Play. Alboin who revised Adso’s Libellus c. 1026 was abbot of Tegernsee. It is hardly surprising then that the earliest play emerged from this location. The medieval English representative is the Chester play, in which Antichrist boasts of his ability to invert trees, open graves, and resurrect the dead. This play is included in the five manuscripts of the complete Chester cycle dating from 1591 to 1607. David Mills, ‘Chester’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed., Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994) 110. The play alone is in the late fifteenth century Peniarth ms. By reference to this earlier tradition The Tempest may be considered as a more subtle version of Antichrist drama in which the eschatological pre-occupations of early modern Protestant England are conflated with the Albina myth in a series of semiotically complex and unstable but familiar images. All the actions that traditionally characterized the Antichrist are those which Prospero in his renunciation speech declares he has previously performed. He boasts: I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread-rattling thunder Have I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak With his own bolt: the strong-based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar; graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, ope’d and let ‘em forth By my so potent art. (5.1.41–50) His subsequent promise to Alonso to ‘bring forth a wonder’ takes the form of Ferdinand’s apparent ‘resurrection’ (5.1.164), a stage trick like the ‘resurrections’ in the Chester play. In addition, the torments the Antichrist is prophesied to inflict on the faithful in all versions of his biography are, in part, those of which Caliban complains in homely terms. Ancient tradition asserts that during Antichrist’s reign: ‘every Christian who is discovered will either deny God or perish in the fire of the furnace, or by the sword, or by snakes or wild animals, or by some other kind of torment.’ See for example Liber Anselmi de Antichristo: Tunc omnis christianus, qui unuentus fuerit, aut Deum negabit, aut siue per ignem fornacis, siue per ferrum, siue per serpentes, siue per bestias, siue per aliud quodlibet genus tormentorum, iteribit. Adso Dervensis, Ortu et Tempore Antichristi, ed. Verhelst, 163. My translation. The insular writer known as Pseudo Anselm took the version of Adso’s work written by Alboin and altered the mode to address a public audience. The text was frequently copied. A version from Worcester Cathedral library was lost in 1624 en route to London. . Adso Dervensis, Ortu et Tempore Antichristi, ed. Verhelst 156. Caliban does not suffer the capital punishments associated with apostasy and religious dissent which are suggested by references to the fiery furnace and the sword, but complains of Prospero’s spirits: For every trifle they are set upon me: Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount Their pricks at my footfall. Sometimes am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness. (2.2.8–14) I have argued elsewhere that Caliban’s torments may be read in terms of contemporary deprivation, Lynn Forest-Hill, ‘Prospero’s Art: Magic or Mycotoxicology’, Times Literary Supplement, April 23, 2004, pp. 12–13. but an eschatological interpretation relates closely to the wider politico-religious situation of England in the early seventeenth-century. Caliban’s torment may be read through apocalyptic imagery to shed new light on the extent to which his characterization reflects the giant adversary of God. He is troubled by visions of apes, a colloquial reminder of apocalyptic deception: the Devil, because of his perverted nature, was called God’s ape. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), Chapter 6, ‘The Devil, God’s Ape’. An even more familiar image of the Devil as a serpent takes the homely form of the adders with cloven tongues, and demonic deceit is again implicit in this nightmarish vision. Insofar as his characterization echoes the legends of Gogmagog, Caliban may suggest the barbaric giant usurped by a violent invader. He may also be considered in terms of the wiðersaca, the enemy of God, as he was seduced into being Prospero’s willing servant. As Gog and Magog are deceived by Satan and serve his purpose Caliban is deceived into servitude by Prospero who then usurps his autonomy; his enslavement is the extreme form of this servitude. In his folly, or innocence, Caliban recalls male characters in earlier drama who were allegorical representations of the English nation. Commynnalte, son of the widow Englande in John Bale’s King Johan (1538, revised 1560), John Bale, King Johan, ed., Peter Happé, The Complete Plays of John Bale 1 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985) ll. 1548–1600. and People, in Respublica (1553), Respublica, ed. W.W. Greg, EETS OS 226 (London: Oxford UP, 1952) 5.7.1580–1605. are also intimidated by illegitimate authority. However, if Caliban is considered in terms of Gog and Magog, the undifferentiated servants of Antichrist, his relationship with Prospero suggests the conflict of the end of days, but while his negative signification is enhanced through this relationship with Prospero, the Antichristian aspect of the magus’s characterization is confirmed. Although together they imply eschatological conflict, a comment perhaps on the turmoil of the Reformation, when Prospero torments Caliban the slave’s negative characterization is redefined by eschatological legend and insular mythology. Caliban, the earlier inhabitant, in the tradition of the peaceful giant freely inhabiting his own land, who then willingly serves an invader, evokes an image of the Christian English nation as first misguided, and then persecuted, by a demonic tormentor. Beginning with Adso’s treatise on the Antichrist, the coming of this enemy of God was a recurring image deployed to address politically contentious situations. Bernard McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality (London: SPCK, 1979) 87. In England in 1014 Archbishop Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos warned the English that the Danish raids were a sign of the Antichrist’s coming because of the disobedience and sins of the people. Ne dohte hit nu lange inne ne ute, ac wæs here and hete on gewelhwilcan ende oft and gelome, and Engle nu lange eal sigelease and to swyþe geyrigde þurgh Goddes yrre, and flotmen swa strange þurgh Godes þafunge þæt oft on gefeohte an feseð tyne and … eal for urum synnum. Wulfstan, De Antichristo, ed. Beruthrum, Homilies 106. Quoted by permission of the Oxford University Press. Wulfstan cites Gildas’s earlier warning to the British that God would give victory to the Angles because of the laziness of priests and bishops. An þeodwita wæs on Brytta tidum, Gildas hatte, se awrat be heora misdædum, hu hy mid heorasynnum swa oferlice swyþe God gegræmedan þæt he let æt nyhstan Engla here heora eard gewinnan and Brytta dygeþe fordon mid ealle…þurgh biscopa asolcnesse and þurgh lyðre yrðhe Godes bydela þe soþes geswugedan ealle to gelome and clumedan mid ceaflum þær hy scoldan clypian. Wulfstan, De Antichristo, ed. Beruthrum 92. Quoted by permission of the Oxford University Press. This sense of a Christian nation willfully bringing about its own suffering echoes in The Tempest, where the division of the Albina and Antichrist myths between Prospero and Caliban delineates their shared but unequal culpability. As the learned magus and male conqueror, Prospero may have offered Jacobean audiences a comforting image of the imposition of patriarchal order on an island formerly in the chaotic state of being ruled by successive Others – an Albina figure and her monstrous offspring. Bauer, ‘Problematic Origins’. But this magisterial image of Prospero is challenged by his characterization as the violent colonizer, expressed in his threat to Ariel, which reiterates Sycorax’s cruel spell, and the violent exchanges he initiates with Caliban, even before it is disrupted by the eschatological revelations of his renunciation speech. In Caliban’s case, his enslavement seems justified by his assault on Miranda. Like Grendel, he is depicted as a resentful outcast, but unlike Gogmagog or Grendel, he once participated as a willing servant in a loving relationship with the object of his hatred. In addition to the standard view that Prospero’s renunciation speech derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, well-known Christian traditions reveal the presence of Antichristian attributes in this speech. A Protestant Jacobean audience would not only have perceived the fashionable humanist Ovidian source but would also have been able to identify the more familiar and traditional references in it to the Antichrist’s ‘false miracles’ for which Prospero’s magic may be regarded as a euphemism. William Tyndale had commented on the Church’s use of Latin ‘as a form of magic’. David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1994) 44. That audience would also have been familiar with the religious and political conflict attributed to the Antichrist in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England when this character was constantly used as a metaphor for the abuse of power by the papacy. For the Elizabethan interest in the Antichrist, see Peter Lake, ‘The Significance of the Elizabethan Identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, Journal of English History 31 (1980): 161–78. In The Obedience of a Christian Man, in 1528, William Tyndale remarked that ‘we borrow likenesses or allegories of the Scriptures … to express our miserable captivity and persecution under antichrist the pope.’ William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, Christian Classics Series V (London: Religious Tract Society, n. d.) 271. The conflation of the Antichrist with the Pope in Protestant polemic also served as a metaphor for usurped power. As the Antichrist usurped the role of Christ, so, Protestants alleged, the Pope usurped the power of temporal monarchs. Indeed, Cranmer said at his trial that ‘he had devoted … many years to proving that the Pope was Antichrist (the particular mark of whom was usurped power over princes).’ Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven: Yale UP, 1996) 576. By 1609 King James was using the same identification in his own anti-papal treatise An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance and with some justification. Bernard Capp remarks ‘It was a major step for a reigning monarch to give public endorsement to Protestant apocalyptic teaching’. Capp, ‘The political dimension of apocalyptic thought’, in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984) 93–124, 102. In opposition to James’s assertion of divine right, the political theories of leading continental Jesuits such as Juan de Mariana and Cardinal Robert Bellarmine proposed the legitimacy of regicide. Juan de Mariana’s De rege et regis institutione (1599) put forward the thesis of the ‘permissability of regicide’. John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993), 233–34. W.B. Patterson King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, Cambridge Studies in Early British History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) 93. Robert Miola mentions very briefly Mariana and Suarez, but does not note their significance with respect to The Tempest, nor does he mention Bellarmine. See Miola, Shakespeare’s Reading (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000) 45. In 1610 James engaged in public controversy with the Cardinal over his treatise De potestate summi pontificis in rebus temporalibus, in which he asserted the pope’s right to depose monarchs. David Wootton, ed. Divine Right and Democracy (London: Penguin, 1986) 92. Although Prospero presents himself as rightful ruler of the Island, Caliban’s complaints of usurpation can be upheld by reference to the well-known myths and chronicle traditions. In the context of Bellarmine’s assertions a threat to the body politic may then be perceived as the Antichristian aspect of Prospero’s persona alludes to a view of the papacy as a threat to the authority of the rightful monarch, which simultaneously inflicts oppression upon the native Christian population. Prospero’s occult practices and oppression hint at the abuses of power of which the Roman Catholic Church stood accused by Protestants, while Caliban may be read as the abused population awed but resentful of its authority. Caliban’s complaint that he is tormented by adders recalls earlier Protestant polemic in which ‘adder’ was used as a term of abuse for the Catholic clergy. See for example, John Bale, King Johan, ed. Happé, ll. 2428–30. From within these politicized contexts, their relationship then redefines the relationship between the Catholic Church and the faithful as that between a tyrannical master and his rebellious slave and in turn contextualizes Prospero’s comment concerning Caliban: ‘this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine.’ (5.1.275–76) The proprietorial confession offers a view of the Catholic Church as unwilling to relinquish its grasp on the English people, and defines its responsibility for those it has oppressed, and who rebel against it. Caliban is not a comfortable metaphor for the English nation’s devotion to the Catholic Church, but this characterization is significant in the context of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century attempts to strengthen the legitimacy of the Protestant Church. John Bale commented on the ‘purity of the ancient British Church’, in his Vocation of 1553, Peter Happé, John Bale, Twayne’s English Authors Series, no. 520 (New York: Twayne, 1996) 38. contrasting it with later Roman Catholicism, and in the same cause, William Camden in his Britannia, First published in 1586. Last edited by Camden himself in 1607. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Elizabeth’s First Historian (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971) 8. drew attention to the continuation of the first English Church. Trevor-Roper, Elizabeth’s First Historian 6. Although he deplores the Albina myth, Camden’s historical work nevertheless echoes Chaucer’s and Trevet’s revision of the story. Both medieval writers note the existence of British Christianity before the arrival of the Roman Church symbolized by Constance the daughter of Rome, and Camden reports that Halyston in Northumberland was regarded as the place where ‘Paulinus in the primitive Church of the English nation baptized many thousands’. William Camden, Britain, or a Chorographicall Description of England, Scotland, and Ireland, trans P. Holland, 2 parts (London: G. Bishop and J. Norton, 1610) 813. Paulinus was consecrated bishop in A.D. 625. Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. R.E. Latham (London: Penguin, 1955) 115. From this perspective, Caliban’s resentful recollection of Prospero’s former affection offers a brief lyrical metaphor for the relationship between that early Church and the people. Caliban reminds Prospero When thou cam’st first, Thou strok’st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in’t …. And then I loved thee.’ (1.2.333–37) This image of reciprocal affection challenges both the interpretation of Caliban as the violent originary giant and that of Prospero as the brutal colonizer. Nevertheless, this invader, later configured in Antichristian terms, usurps Caliban’s inheritance, and it is against this that Caliban rebels, his violence, like that of the giants in De origine gigantum and the later Chronicles, being directed against the usurping oppressor. So we return to Caliban’s assault on Miranda. Although the play does not encourage allegorical readings, this attack may be read allegorically as both an attempt to gain control of the island, and an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. The image of the nubile daughter may be approached from two ancient and allegorical traditions. The mythical and secular tradition perceives the land allegorically as female and as the bride of the ruler. The biblical and allegorical tradition uses the image of the daughter as the Church, which is the bride of Christ. In biblical allegory, ‘daughter’ signifies the Church of God, Ps. 45:9, 10; Cant. 5.8. Alexander Cruden, A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament (London: n. p. 1831). St Augustine commented on the Song of Songs and described ‘the marriage of the king and queen … namely Christ and his Church.’ St Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry bettenson (London: Penguin Classics, 1984) 757. In spite of Protestant complaints regarding Catholic glossing and exegesis, the King James or Authorized Version of the Bible retains in its chapter heading the interpretation of the Song of Solomon as the mutual love between the Church and Christ. Both perspectives suggest potentially political interpretations of Miranda’s relationships with Caliban and Prospero. As an allegorical representation of the island, she is desired by Caliban but controlled and denied to him by her father, the usurper; this depiction of patriarchal control then problematises the interpretation of Miranda’s relationships from within the Christian allegorical tradition. As Constance symbolizes the church in The Man of Law’s Tale, Miranda too may be read as symbolizing the Church, but her role in the play suggests the problematic view of the Roman Catholic Church as the dependent of the papacy that controls it. Reformers such as Tyndale and Bale distinguished the ‘papal church’ from the church of Protestantism, David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography ( New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1994) 207. Bale called it the ‘churche of the pope’. Happé, Bale 50. and this distinction is significant for its implication of papal control. Insofar as Miranda may be taken to reflect the familiar image of the Church, she is not defined by her relationship to Christ but by the control of her earthly father, with all his echoes of pagan magic and eschatological arrogance. Nevertheless, in his assault on Miranda, Caliban evokes an image of culpable English violence against that Church. His culpability, punishment and rebellion then offer a comment on the condition of the nation that fell temporarily into the role of Gog and Magog – God’s lesser adversaries and servants of the Antichrist, who engage in a conflict that is typical of the end of days. However, by the end of the play, Caliban is no longer rebellious. His willingness to serve Prospero again not only takes place in the context of Prospero withdrawing from the island, but signifies Caliban’s acceptance of his place in what is now a temporary insular hierarchy. His reaffirmation of obedience to an oppressive master should be seen in terms of the traditional theory that tyrants were God’s punishment on a sinful people. King James reiterated the view when he wrote ‘I grant in deede that a wicked king is sent by GOD for a cursse to his people, and a plague for their sinnes. But that it is lawfull to them to shake off that cursse at their owne hande, which God has lain on them, that I denie.’ James VI and I, The Trve Lawe of Free Monarchies (1598), in James Craigie, ed., Minor Prose Works of King James VI and I (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1982) 77. After his humiliating devotion to the clowns, and still awed by Prospero, he declares ‘I’ll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace.’ (5.1.295–96) This brief reference not only acknowledges Caliban’s acceptance of the will of God, but simultaneously introduces the difference between Catholic and Protestant doctrine concerning the need for God’s grace in order to be saved, The Book of Common Prayer, The Articles of Religion, articles XI and XII, cited the Protestant view of grace. and signals religious differentiation between the usurper and the usurped native. In 1586 and 1593 Bellarmine had published a statement of Catholic doctrine including grace. See Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet 1555–1606 and the Gunpowder Plot (London: Longmans, 1964) 17 Prospero has already renounced his most superstitious practices that connote the Antichristian aspect of his characterization and concomitantly the usurping power of the papacy: the storms, inversion of trees and resurrections, and he is leaving the island. Prospero also destroys his book of ‘magic’ in the same year that the new Authorized Version of the Bible displaced the older Bishop’s Bible and Geneva Bible. He nevertheless appears obstinately Catholic in his need for the prayers of others when he begs the audience in his Epilogue: ‘… release me from my bands / With the help of your good hands.’ He then tells them ‘… my ending is despair / Unless I be relieved by prayer.’ (Epilogue 9–10; 15–16) These comments suggest continuing adherence to the old religion with its belief in the power of other people’s prayers to aid the soul of the deceased through the pains of Purgatory. They therefore engage with the 1606 Oath of Allegiance that was ‘intended to separate Roman Catholics who adhered to the doctrine that a pope could depose a temporal ruler from Roman Catholics who did not hold this view and could be therefore considered loyal subjects’. W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) 124. This implication of unreformed Roman Catholicism sets Prospero apart from Caliban, who, like a good Protestant, will seek for grace personally. The opposing doctrines had long been controversial. In 1534 Cranmer stipulated that no one should preach for a year either for or against the view that… that “faith only justifieth”, … since these “things have caused dissension amongst the subjects of the realm already.” Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation 1500–1800 (London: UCL P, 1998) 6. The train of revelation that emerges in The Tempest may be seen as mimetic the process by which the nation moved from the earliest form of ‘primitive’ Christianity, to willing servitude under Roman Catholic hegemony, through awakening resentment, to a more rational selfhood grounded in the Protestant doctrine of grace. By looking back to literary traditions, Caliban’s prior claim to the Island is established in mythical terms and Prospero takes on the characteristics of an Antichrist figure as well as a usurper: a perversion of the evangelical Constance. The magic he uses has long polarized critical opinion. It has been read as benign white magic used to bring about reconciliation, See for example, John Mebane who refers to Prospero as ‘Benevolent Artist’. Mebane, Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age (Lincoln, Nebraska: U of Nebraska P, 1989) 180. but it has also been seen as black magic used to torment and terrify, See for example, Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare Negotiations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) 143. in the tradition of the maleficium that defined witchcraft throughout its history. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic 519. This darker interpretation of Prospero’s magic is consistent with, and enhanced by, the eschatological references even more than by the Medea connection that taints him with pagan witchcraft. His Antichristian aspect is thus an extension of his equivocal role as magus that also comments on papal intervention in British politics. Caliban, however, insofar as he may be considered a dramatic descendant of Gogmagog, is not without blame. Like Gildas’s Britons and Wulfstan’s English, he is punished for his sins: his violence, rebellion, and disobedience, and the same sense of the nation being punished occurs in a pamphlet of 1607 describing the inundation of large parts of southwest England and Wales. The anonymous author exhorts ‘England, be not ouercome with thine owne folly … neyther sinke thou thy selfe in thine owne sinne; For since … the time of Noy, neuer the like Inundation or watery punishment then hapned … as by this sequell it shall heare appear.’ God’s Warning to His People of England (London: W. Barley and Io. Bayly, 1607) STC 10011. However, although Caliban is sinful and tainted by association with the Antichrist myth this association also defines him as victim of both apocalyptic deception and of political usurpation. The traditions of insular literature, and particularly the Albina myth, open up suggestive new perspectives on The Tempest and the relationship between its ambiguous main characters. These perspectives have hitherto been obscured by theories derived from twentieth-century politics, and by a persistent critical emphasis on interpretations from classical tradition. They would nevertheless have been familiar to the early modern audience. Shakespeare’s division of the myth between Sycorax and Prospero is not exact, because that would engage too closely with early-modern controversy surrounding the origins of Britain, but it provides insights into other areas of controversy, Virginia and Alden Vaughan have observed ‘Controversy has marked the play almost from the outset.’ Vaughan and Vaughan, eds, The Tempest 1. as well as illuminating the characterizations of Caliban, Sycorax, and Prospero. The dramatic recapitulation of the ancient foundation myth may also have been taken as an allusion to the unifying presence of James VI and I on the throne of England. While Jacobean audiences would have recognized the echoes of the secular myth, the familiarity of Shakespeare and his audience with eschatological myth is not an issue in this reading. In addition to the eschatological pre-occupations of the prevailing official Protestantism, Shakespeare and his audience, ‘lived in a world still permeated with a Catholic vision of life expressed through traditions developed over centuries.’ Velma Bourgeois Richmond, Shakespeare, Catholicism, and Romance (New York and London: Continuum, 2000) 16. The conflation of the Antichrist with the pope, and their association with usurped power had long been a Protestant motif and had grown in political popularity in the early Jacobean era; but Shakespeare does not create overt anti-papal propaganda in The Tempest. Nor does he satirize a contemporary pre-occupation with anti-Catholicism, as Ben Jonson did in 1610 when the Puritan Ananias, in The Alchemist, tells Surly the gambler: ‘Thou look’st like Antichrist in that lewd hat.’ Ben Jonson: Four Comedies, ed., Helen Ostovich (Harlow: Longman, 1997), The Alchemist 4.7.55. The eschatological myth provides a trenchant means of apportioning blame from within the contexts that governed early modern religious controversy. Although time and changing culture may have obscured them from us, Shakespeare’s allusions and their political potential would have been accessible to a Jacobean audience familiar with both the Albina and the Antichrist traditions and this approach via insular literary tradition illuminates further the complex hermeneutics of The Tempest, enabling a view of the play’s reflection of the politically sensitive issues of the day, just as the Albina and Antichrist myths had traditionally been used. 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