'Go Bring the Rabble': The Subaltern in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest has proved to be an invaluable source of critical controversy in regard to race, gender, and class inequalities. Expanding the common scholarly view that treats these issues in isolation, this essay scrutinises those characters subordinated to a hegemonic power under the unifying concept of the subaltern, as developed by Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. The present analysis of the circumstances, attitude, and resistance of all individuals in the “brave new world” of the island reveals subjection to be mostly inescapable, power to function through repression, and subversion to be generally doomed to failure, hence establishing subalternity as an almost permanent position.