Author(s): Lotfi Salhi

Abstract: New Historicists and their British counterparts, cultural materialists, viewed classical texts from Renaissance and romanticism in less favourable terms. In so doing, they highlighted the view that great works of literature, Shakespeare’s plays for instance, advocated dominant discourses of power and sustained existing political systems of their period. This paper, therefore, explores not so much the theory of New Historicism and British Cultural Materialism, but uses the assumptions of these two literary movements in favour of the view that Shakespeare’s plays were instruments for the promotion of European culture, particularly its colonial aims at the start of empire building age. The interest of this paper is to trace through reproductions of The Tempest the contours of the dialogue between Shakespeare and the colonial question, arguing that the Shakespearean theatre whatever its ideological complexities is not somehow above the historical and political conditions of its production.

Keywords: Shakespeare, text, colonialism, history, culture, representation, hegemony.