In “The Tempest and Colonialism,” Ariel Rafaelov reveals how Aimée Césaire interprets The Tempest in order to illuminate and challenge the colonialist and racist undertones of Shakespeare’s play. Rafaelov addresses the power dynamics of the island as a microcosm of colonialism and European land- grabs (an ironic parallel to the power grab in Naples that led to Prospero’s exile to the island). He also highlights the importance of language in The Tempest and in Caliban’s resistance in A Tempest.

Gabriela Chrysostomou’s essay “The 4th Wall in The Tempest(s)” effectively demonstrates how both Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Césaire’s A Tempest purposefully break the fourth wall in order to engage the audience and blur the lines between fiction and reality. She uses Bertolt Brecht introduce the larger theoretical issues involved in breaking the fourth wall—for Brecht, theater that calls attention to itself as theater forces audiences to recognize the extent to which reality, too, requires a willing suspension of disbelief. Brecht believed that theater could be used to inspire revolutionary action by making audiences recognize that other worlds are possible. A Brechtian reading allows us to understand how both Shakespeare and Césaire blur the boundaries between theater and reality; but as Chrysostomou argues, the two playwrights do so with different aims. Read Chrysostomou’s reflection here.

Sharee Campbell uses familiar visual symbols to depict the power dynamics in The Tempest. The chess pieces can be readily understood as depicting the characters as “pawns” in a power struggle, while the chess board can be seen as representing the stage of action. By attaching a ball and chain to both a pawn—a symbol of powerlessness—and the queen—a symbol of power —she demonstrates, like Césaire, the way that the system of colonialism ensnares both colonizer and colonized. The disembodied hands that seem to emanate from the island itself, and the crown that perches atop a volcano rising from the sand, force us to question who is actually “pulling the strings,” so to speak. While Campbell’s reflection interprets the red threads connecting the characters as the “thread of life,” it can also be interpreted as the strings controlling puppets, and it bears a striking visual similarity to the thread one might tie around a finger as a memory aid, perhaps symbolic of how Prospero’s memories of his lost kingdom tie him to an ongoing power struggle. Read Campbell’s reflection here.