instance, Frank Brevik expresses surprise that former Soviet Bloc countries did not point to the
play as analogous to their own circumstances as they began to revolt and break away from the
Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As Brevik notes, one reason Eastern
European countries may have been reluctant to utilize The Tempest as speaking to their own
oppression, as Caribbean countries had during the 1960s, was because in the interim, the play
had become nearly inextricably linked to New World colonialism (132-33).
As Shakespeare scholars in this country began publishing articles and books containing
this postcolonial understanding of The Tempest and began teaching students this reading of
Shakespeare's play, a backlash developed both in academia and in popular culture. Political
commentator George Will wrote a piece that appeared in Newsweek April 22, 1991 titled
“Literary Politics,” in which he spoke out against what he deemed unnecessarily politicized
readings of literature, such as the reading that “Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest’ reflects the
imperialist rape of the Third World" (111). Will was particularly distressed by the assumption
that literary works are political, and he said such a belief “radically devalues authors and
elevates the .. . critics . . . as indispensable decoders of literature” (111). In other words, Will’s
charge is that not everything is political, and critics are ruining Shakespeare by forcing their
political readings on the texts. Instead, they should limit themselves to “esthetic” readings of
the texts, which by all appearances would be those more in keeping with Will’s own reading.
He does not go into detail what would constitute an “esthetic” reading versus a political
reading, but presumably such a reading of The Tempest would not see Caliban as a victim of
oppression analogous to those victimized by imperialist powers in the New World.
Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt responded to Will’s article with an article of
his own titled “The Best Way to Kill Our Literary Inheritance Is to Turn It into a Decorous
Celebration of the New World Order,” which appeared in the Chronicle o f Higher Education on
June 12, 1991. In it, Greenblatt states it is curious that Will would argue The Tempest is not
about imperialism in the New World, as The Tempest contains several key indicators that
Shakespeare intended exactly that interpretation when he wrote the play. For instance,
Greenblatt notes that the secretary of the Jamestown settlement had written of a storm and
shipwreck off the coast of Bermuda that was similar to the storm in the first act of The Tempest
(114). He also points to an essay written by Michel de Montaigne around t his same time period
called “Of the Cannibals,” which spoke admiringly about the native people of the New World.
40