“Command these elements to silence”: Ecocriticism and The Tempest

Correspondence David Gray, Dalarna University, Sweden. Email: dgy@du.se Abstract As part of the response in the humanities to rising concerns of the human influence on the Earth system, ecocriticism – an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature focused on ecological and environmental concerns – became a major trend in literary and cultural studies by the first decade of the twenty-first century. This period also witnessed an increase in ecocritical studies of Shakespeare's works, which have continued to proliferate. It is timely therefore to consider those individual works that have interested ecocritics and featured in ecocritical studies. This article will provide just such a consideration of Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest (1611), providing a critical review of the play's ecocritical studies thus far, and drawing attention to central ideas and common themes in the process. Finally, the article offers its own ecocritical analysis of the play, based on historical accounts of a catastrophic tidal event that took place in south-west England, in 1607.

According to Bate, the desire in literary theory to speak for, or on behalf of, the other, finds in the ecocritical project an other (the natural world) that is still unspoken for. Bate justifies the need to speak on behalf of nature, because of the threat to the biosphere from modern concepts of progress, founded, as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue, on the "dialectic" of enlightenment, which reveals that "technology is the instrument which enslaves nature and exploits the masses" (2000, p. 77;Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979).
Further, Bate offers an ecocritical reading of The Tempest based in the language of négritude (2000, p. 79). Bate quotes from Lawrence Buell's The environmental imagination (1996) to define négritude as "a traditional, holistic, nonmetropolitan, nature-attuned myth of Africanity [and a] reaction to and critique of a more urbanized, 'artificial' European order." 5 In this "nature-attuned" mode, Bate challenges postcolonial readings of The Tempest that focus almost entirely on the relationship between Prospero and Caliban as part of a culture against culture debate: such is the reading of the play put forward by (Leo) Marx. For this reason, he contends that there is a need to draw attention to Caliban's closeness to nature, thus endorsing a key feature of négritude and promoting a culture against nature debate (2000, pp. 79-89).
The Ariel and nature conflation is facilitated further through a comparative analysis with the Tempest-inspired poem "With a Guitar. To Jane" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. 6 Bate posits that artin this case the guitar and Shelley's poemare comparable to the harnessing of the power of Ariel, which similarly relies on the subjugation of nature, in each case the felling of a tree: "The price of art is the destruction of a living tree" (2000, p. 92). Wood for making a guitar, paper for printing a poem and Prospero's splitting of "The pine" are all complicit, according to Bate's reading, of art's subtly disguised abuse of nature (Shakespeare,).
Bate's ecocritical reading of The Tempest presents several tentative analyses that in context shifted critical attention towards a more environmentally minded interpretation of the play. As a result, Bate's chapter clearly set a precedent that has since opened the way for further ecocritical study.

| METAMORPHOSIS, TRANSMUTATION, COSTUME CHANGE
In Gabriel Egan's chapter "Supernature and the weather: King Lear and The Tempest" (2006) there are several noteworthy connections to Bate's essay, along with a number of new paths of enquiry. Bate's analysis of the relationship between science and nature in The Tempest identifies Francis Bacon's Magnalia naturae, and the principle that knowledge is power and technology the essence of that knowledge, as key to understanding this relationship. Comparatively, Egan discusses scientific and technological progress in The Tempest in light of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica and Newton's acknowledgment that progress derives from previous generations, epitomised in the often-quoted adage "standing on the shoulders of giants" (2006, p. 148). Bate and Egan, while using different sources, concur that this pervasive concept of progress has since the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment led to widespread, long-term adverse effects on the environment, and is the chief ideology against which the environmental movement of the 1960s emerged.
Another point of comparison with Bate's analysis is the chapter's engagement with colonisation. Egan cites numerous examples in the play where deforestation is inferred, notably in relation to Caliban's subjugated role in sourcing firewood for Prospero and Miranda. Using William Strachey's shipwreck account of the Virginia-bound Sea Venture off Bermuda, a frequently cited textual source for the play, Egan argues that an early audience would have understood the evident deforestation taking place on the island in terms of colonization, since the characters rarely mention the need to build a ship to leave the island, a feat which the marooned Sea Venture crew achieved. 7 Egan points to several postcolonial studies that draw parallels between The Tempest and the Tudor conquest of (the island of) Ireland to show that in the play, as in Ireland, the prominence of deforestation can be interpreted as integral to the process of colonisation (2006, pp. 156-57).
These points of comparison with Bate's chapter highlight a number of early, common areas of ecocritical interest in the play, and yet Egan draws attention to other ecologically minded interpretations, such as the changes within the life sciences available to Shakespeare. In this vein, Egan argues that The Tempest is "clearly concerned with the possibilities of transmutation, especially regarding human flesh," though "most commonly understood [by literary commentators] as the influence of Ovid" (2006, p. 149). Egan cites B. J. Sokol's study of the "pearls that were his eyes" (1.2. 395-402) metaphor from Ariel's song, to show how Shakespeare understood recent discoveries in the life sciencesas in this case the accurate account of how pearls are formed (2006, pp. 149-50). According to Egan, this historical-biological idea of transmutation can also be applied to descriptions of Caliban, particularly Trinculo's initial (mis)perception of whether he (Caliban) is "a man or fish?" (2.2.24). This in turn fits well with an early-audience understanding that Caliban's and Ariel's costumes had been re-used in a sea-pageant staged in 1610 "on the Thames celebrating the investiture of Prince Henry as Prince of Wales": a self-referential theatrical device that provides a visual motif for the process of transmutation (2006, p. 152). 8 Egan contends, moreover, that Shakespeare's chief concern is with "the power to give the appearance of a transformation, belief in which then performs a real [psychological/emotional] transformation" on one or more characters (2006, p. 150). This theatrical trickery is skilfully illustrated by way of Ariel's account of the appearance of a storm to Prospero. In comparison to the Dover Cliff scene in King Lear, the audience is initially shocked and deceived to learn that the storm was unreal, since they "have no reason to suppose that the tumult of the first scene is an illusion created by Ariel" (2006, p. 151). Ultimately, it is the ambiguity of the knowledge behind Prospero's control (his "art") over the physical world that Egan finds appealing for its "ecological significance" and consequently motivating in terms of an ecocritical study (2006, p. 153).

| " THE SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE OF INTERVENING YEARS " 9 : THE TEMPEST AND CHARLES DARWIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION
Another ecocritical study of The Tempest that deals with later discoveries in the life sciences is Glen A. Love's journal article "Shakespeare's Origin of Species and Darwin's Tempest" (2010). 10 Love begins by stating that The Tempest "is rich in its anticipation of Darwinian evolutionary theory ideas" (2010, p. 121). The two main theories applied in Love's article demonstrate the capacity for The Tempest to mediate between the humanities and the life sciences through the contemporary idioms of bioculture and applied cognitive science. 11 To clarify the distant historical connection of Shakespeare and Darwin, Love asserts: "What the comparison offers, I believe, is a surprisingly relevant science/humanities dialogue, not appreciably dimmed by the intervening gap of 250 years, on the most abiding and profound of subjects: nature, and especially human nature" (2010, p. 121). Love claims that in The Tempest, there is a long-lasting sense of "abeyance," which continues to be resolved, in part, through discoveries in the life sciences (2010, p. 123). Quoting Kenneth Burke on drama and Mark Johnson on cognitive philosophy respectively, Love shows that the satisfying of an expectation or the satisfaction that comes with the completion of patterns depends upon a dialectic of the dénouement and a continued sense of abeyance in The Tempest. One key example of this, according to Love, can be shown by tracing Darwin's theories on evolutionary thinking and the question of human origins back to ideas in The Tempest, in particular through the character of Caliban.
Beginning with "the evolutionary-biological implications of its pastoral structure," Love proposes that Marx's consideration of The Tempest as Shakespeare's American Fable and an implicitly pastoral play is foundational to an ecocritical thinking of the playin this case, as an evolutionary fable (2010, p. 129). 12 Further, he maintains that literary pastoralism has a shared history with evolutionary history and adaptation. Whether from Arcadian, Persian, Roman or biblical narratives, Love suggests that Caliban fulfils a generic role, represented in one story of origin with the ancient Arcadians, who "were linked with animals, herding, and hunting, and led by the god Pan, who was halfman and half-animal and who copulated with both" (2010, p. 130). The ambiguity surrounding Caliban's identity as human or non-human, his attempts to rape Miranda and his core primal nature, support this evolutionary-pastoral nexus according to Love. In addition, Love proposes that island ecology is a crucial facet of The Tempest that enhances Shakespeare's pastoral range. The separateness or experimentalism of an island setting for human interrelations is a decisive factor in The Tempest according to his island-ecology analysis. 13 Love demonstrates the value of reading The Tempest through an island model put forward by ecologist Robert MacArthur and biologist E. O. Wilson -"dispersal, invasion, competition, adaptation, and extinction"which works remarkably well to "describe the successive narrative action of The Tempest" (2010, p. 132). 14 The chief interpretative claim being made here is that The Tempest, when read in this way, provides a host of features relatable to ideas in biogeography and, by extension, evolutionary biology. As Egan demonstrated, when confronted with Prospero's relentless gathering of wood, an early audience would have understood this deforestation in the context of colonisation (2006, pp. 156-57). Love suggests that it is therefore productive to consider issues of colonisation in a biological sense using terms such as "invasion" and "competition." According to Love, in this scene "Shakespeare seems to anticipate the Darwinian discovery that the evolutionary history of humans is to be found in the fossilized bodies of other animals, including sea animals" (2010, p. 134). 16 Finally, the transition in literary-critical interpretation of Caliban that took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is generally given as being from beast to noble savage and then to colonial oppressed Other. Yet the interest for Love lies in the connection made by Prospero to Caliban: "this thing of darkness I/Acknowledge mine" Tempest may seem to invest the play with an almost prophetic capacity, it should be noted that Love and several of the critics studied in this article embrace, at least in part, the New Historicist position that Shakespeare is studied for its modern significance as well as in its historical context. And for many ecocritics, this is a modern context where ecological and environmental lines of enquiry are highly relevant.

| ECO-PERFORMANCE AND THE TEMPEST
One of the opening claims in Downing Cless's essay "Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest" (2010) confronts the speculation surrounding the lack of primary or central sources for these plays, which "has perplexed critics" (2010, p. 91). Cless highlights a wealth of critical analysis that testifies to the vast range of images about nature and Shakespeare's knowledge of the environment (his early education) within his plays. Accordingly, Cless contends that Shakespeare's "two most nature-laden plays" give a strong indication that "nature was  17 Focusing on two recent biographies of Shakespeare by Greenblatt and Park GRAY Honan, Cless argues that consensus can be found to consolidate A. L. Rowse's claim that Shakespeare was "an outof-doors, country man; not an urban intellectual like [Christopher] Marlowe or [Ben] Jonson" (2010, pp. 93-4). 18 Subsequently, Cless confirms: "Greenblatt and Honan convincingly argue that each play is original and heavily dependent on Shakespeare's memories, in the case of Tempest obviously overlaid on the Mediterranean island which he derives from several sources" (2010, p. 95). Aside from references to a pageant that included a dolphin-riding mermaid, which Shakespeare saw when he was 11 years old, Cless agrees with Honan that there is little evidence of any visit to the seashore and little chance for him to have seen a real dolphin. Essentially, Cless proposes that the main textual sources on islands and marine life for The Tempest included "recent travel accounts of newly explored islands alongside classical descriptions of ones off of Greece and Italy" and the accounts of the Sea Venture shipwreck off the Bermuda coast. Borlik contends that agrarian land-enclosure efforts to reclaim "the desolate fens of eastern England" and representation of "the region's eerie folklore" in key medieval texts offer convincing indigenous sources for The Tempest as a counterpoise to reports from the Mediterranean or the New World, which have become commonplace in historicist studies (2013, p. 22). For instance, a cursory glance through the section on "sources and contexts" in the Norton Critical Edition (2019) of The Tempest includes extracts from Strachey's "True Reportory" as well as other travelaccount and fictional depictions of sea voyages and storms, all of which are set in the Mediterranean or the Americas. 19 Borlik's call to reconsider Shakespeare's milieu has several companionable studies in this regard. Cless's argument for Dream considers the crop failures as a result of disastrous local weather conditions, towards the end of the sixteenth century: effects of the so-called "little ice age." Cless notes that Shakespeare had witnessed flooding on the Avon "that obstructed farming and ruined crops" (2010, p. 99). Moreover, though not relating specifically to

| CALIBAN, LINCOLNSHIRE FEN SPIRITS AND LOCAL WEATHER
The Tempest, Melissa Croteau mentions the "devastating flooding in 1607" in her discussion of apocalyptic narratives and Shakespeare (2009, p. 16). Considering the appeal of abnormal climactic-conditions to an ecocritical study, it is surprising that the tempestuous weather, and subsequent flooding, of the west coast of England in 1607 has been little discussed with regard to The Tempest.
A recent retrospective risk-management report asserts that the 1607 flooding "caused the largest loss of life from any sudden onset natural catastrophe in the United Kingdom during the past 500 years" and remains "the most catastrophic flood in western Britain" (" Bristol," 2007. This report argues that despite suggestions that the floods were the result of a tsunami, the evidence supports "the theory that the event was a wind driven storm surge superimposed on an extreme spring tide" (2007, p. 7). Pamphlets describing this event were sold by printers "who also published Shakespeare, operating out of the churchyard of St Paul's in London" (2007, p. 2). Some examples from these pamphlets provide accounts of an extreme weather event that can be interpreted as viable figurative sources for The Tempest: In a short tyme did whole villages stand like Islands (compassed rounde with waters) and in a more short time were those Islands vndiscouerable, and no where to be found. The tops of trees and houses onely appeared (especially there where the Countrey lay lowe,) as if at the beginning of the world townes had been builte in the bottome of the Sea, and that people had plaide the husbandmen vnder the Waters. (A true report, 1607, para. 6).
The islands in this case are neither Mediterranean nor Caribbean, but an area of rural countryside in Somersetshire; flooding affected counties on either side of the Severn Estuary including Shakespeare's neighbouring county Gloucestershire.
Another pamphlet account of the event, which includes a striking woodcut of a galleon in stormy waters, titled Gods warning to his people of England includes this description: Sometimes it so dazled the eyes of many of the Spectators, that they immagined it had bin some fogge or miste, comming with great swiftnes towardes them: and with such a smoke, as if Mounjtaynes were all on fire: and to the view of some, it seemed as it: [millions] of thousandes of Arrowes had bin shot foorth all at one time, which came in such swiftjnes, as it was verify thought, that the Fowles of the ayre could scarse fly so fast, such was the threatning furyes thereof…(p. 5).
The description of the event bears similarities to the account of the tempest provided by Ariel to Prospero: ARIEL. I flamed amazement. Sometimes I'd divide.
And burn in many places; on the topmast, The yards, and bowsprit would I flame distinctly, Then meet and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors.
And sight-outrunning were not. The fire and cracks.
Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune.
Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble, Yea, his dread trident shake (1.2.198-206).
The style and content of the flood account embodies imaginative visions of flaming mountains or clouds, which contained the "threatning furyes thereof". Ariel has been referred to as "Fury-like" and in the same way his supernatural effects of a storm appear analogous to the "real" account from Gods warning to his people of England. 20 Furthermore, the account from Gods warning to his people of England also includes a story regarding a maid stranded by the flood waters on a temporary island. Several rescue attempts are related until "At last some of her friends, deuised a deuise, and tyed two broad Troughes the one to the other, (such as in those countreys they vse to salt Bacon in) and put therin two lustie strong men […] (as if they had bin boates)" ("Gods warning," p. 10). The writer of the pamphlet then expresses in great surprise the scene that confronted the two rescuers: The Hill or Banke where the maide abode all that space was all so couered ouer, with wilde beastes and vermin, that came thither to séeke for succour that she had much adoe to saue her selfe, from taking of hurt by them: and much a-doe she had to kéepe them from créejping vpon and about her, she was not so much in daunger of the Water on the one side: as she was troubled with these Uermin on the other side (Gods warning, p. 10). This passage includes several parallels with the plot of The Tempest: a young woman trapped on an island overrun with wild, threatening beasts, as well as men enduring rough waters to arrive at the island.
Further, the writer remarks that the girl is saved by an unseen act of divine intervention: "But the Almighty God, who is the Creator of all good things, when he thought meete, sent his holy Angell to commaund the Waters to cease their fury" ("Gods warning," p. 9). The passage compares favourably to the Boatswain's charge to Gonzalo during the storm at sea in the opening scene: "You are a councillor: if you can command these elements to silence and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more." (1.1. [18][19][20]. Prospero's supernatural control over the elements becomes of course the chief irony, for the reader/audience, behind the Boatswain's rhetorical statement.
Comparatively, it is also Prospero's apparent act of controlling the waters in scene one that serves to save/rescue Miranda from a life trapped on the island.
In other words, the island setting, the arrival of a boat of men and a guiding force able to cease the power of the waves are all features of The Tempest, suggesting that the pamphlets describing the human-environmental turmoil surrounding the 1607 flooding are worth considering as alternative textual sources. Ultimately if, as argued by Borlik, Caliban can be considered to some extent a composite figure of folkloric spirits and mythical beasts from the Lincoln fens, so too can reports of disastrous flooding on the River Severn, a stranded maid, strange new beast-infested island homes and supernatural forces be considered part of the purview of The Tempest.