Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Tempest at Stockton

I have just finished teaching Shakespeare's The Tempest for close to the 50th time -- perhaps more. I'm not exactly sure because I have been teaching full-time for 45 years. Trained as a Medievalist, I early on got selected to teach Renaissance literature because "the two time periods are so close" and because I had had a few graduate courses in Renaissance and 17th c. literature.

I'm not at all complaining; teaching Shakespeare has been one of the highlights of my career. Some terms he is easier to teach than Chaucer. As I said, I finished the term -- as most everyone does -- with "The Tempest".

Students like to end with this play because the previous play is King Lear and they really struggle with that terrifying and difficult play. So The Tempest seems to bring us back to the light.

Much has been written about whether or not Shakespeare meant Prospero's island to suggest the New World. Those who support this interpretation refer to William Strachey's account of being shipwrecked in the Bermudas that Shakespeare probably knew about (there is a new book -- Hobson Woodward's A Brave Vessel -- which examines, again, all of the relevant documentation of Strachey's adventure).

I assume that the play could easily portray common Renaissance views about the New World whether Shakespeare knew of Strachey's account or not. Those views saw the New World as a "new Eden" and part of it's attraction was that English citizens could themselves become new by casting off old values and taking on new identities in America. The Virginia Company certainly made that argument though it was frequently couched in economic terms.

One of the most famous sections of the play is the speech by Gonzalo which considers what it might be like to create a new society and what that society might value and reject. Here is the speech:

GONZALO: Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,--


ANTONIO: He'ld sow't with nettle-seed.


SEBASTIAN: Or docks, or mallows.


GONZALO: And were the king on't, what would I do?


SEBASTIAN: 'Scape being drunk for want of wine.


GONZALO: I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty;--


SEBASTIAN: Yet he would be king on't.


ANTONIO: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the
beginning.


GONZALO: All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.


SEBASTIAN: No marrying 'mong his subjects?


ANTONIO: None, man; all idle: whores and knaves.


GONZALO: I would with such perfection govern, sir,
To excel the golden age.

Gonzalo argues for a kind of confused -- Gonzalo is old and can be excused his rambling -- communism reminescent of More's Utopia. "All things in common", "riches, poverty,/And use of service, none; contract, succession,/Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;" -- nothing that would mark class or rank.

What is important here -- as I read it -- is the ironic switch where young men -- Antonio and Sebastion -- refuse to throw off old, European values (they show only mocking interest in Gonzalo's speech and are at that moment planning the murder of Alonso, the King of Naples in a seizure of power). Stereotypically, one would expect the elderly not to accept such radical change and the youth to eagerly seek it. This is the opposite of what happens in this scene.

What does this have to do with the Book that we are co-editing and, even more importantly, what does this have to do with the early days of Stockton?
Be patient.

I think I have mentioned that Wes Tilley called me in March of 1970 and asked: "Would you like to come to New Jersey and build a college?" That question has haunted me for 40 years. Few of us get asked and fewer still get the opportunity to actually do it. I did.

In a sense, it is the implied question in Gozalo's opening statement

"Had I plantation of this isle...."

"If I owned this land this is what I would do" is not logically far from the question Wes Tilley asked me. The thing that strikes me over and over is not the creation of the College but how quickly we made conservative changes and that the effort was primarily (but not exclusively) led by the faculty.

This was brought home to me today when I reviewed a section of a video recording recently produced by the staff of the College of a discussion held in 1995 on the early days of the institution. I was particularly struck by a four minute segment featuring Bill Gilmore -- he taught American history and studied colonial literacy and reading habits -- remembering what brought him to the College in 1970. The video can be seen HERE (13 minutes into the video)

Gilmore reviews a set of early ideas -- General Studies, faculty building book and media collections, interdisciplinary courses, etc. -- but what interests him most is the equality of the faculty to each other. He sees this idea as truly radical. He also notes -- accurately -- that it didn't last.

The connection between Stockton and The Tempest seems clear -- at least to me. There was much about our early ideas that, to a conservative mind, were chaotic, silly, subversive, dangerous and even, perhaps, immoral. Those of the Founding Deans who came up with these ideas then found it strange and unexpected that young faculty wanted early to overthrow these ideas with their own (usually more conservative). Gilmore is right that many things we thought up didn't survive but not because of executive fiat, senior faculty power grabs, political threats or community pressures. From my perspective, some faculty seemed to want to recreate their graduate experiences ideologically, structurally, politically and culturally. Like Antonio and Sebastion, they carried with them old fears, old patterns and old structures and like in The Tempest it was the older Founding Deans who thought the unthinkable.