Context — The Tempest — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The Jacobean context of The Tempest: voyages to the Americas, the Virginia Company and the wreck of the Sea Venture,
the divine right of kings and usurpation, magic and James I's views on it, the court masque, and colonial readings of Caliban.
How to use this context in an answer about the play rather than as background.
When the play was written and first seen: around 1610 to 1611, at court before James I in 1611, and again for Princess Elizabeth's wedding celebrations in 1612 to 1613.
Jacobean colonialism: the Virginia Company, chartered by James I in 1606 to settle Virginia, and the wreck of its flagship Sea Venture on Bermuda in 1609, echoed in the storm and Ariel's 'still-vex'd Bermoothes'.
The divine right of kings: James I's belief that kings are God's lieutenants on earth, so that overthrowing one is a sin, and the play's usurpations in Milan, in Sebastian's plot and on the island.
Magic: James I's book Daemonologie and the Witchcraft Act passed in 1604, which made calling up evil spirits punishable by death, and Prospero's learned magic set against Sycorax's witchcraft.
The court masque of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, and the masque Prospero stages for the betrothal in Act 4.
Caliban and colonisation: Montaigne's essay on the peoples of the Americas behind Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth, Caliban's name and the word 'cannibal', and readings since about 1950 that see Prospero as a coloniser.
Genre: a late romance printed first among the comedies in the 1623 First Folio, ending in marriage and forgiveness rather than death.
On Edexcel's paper, context earns marks only in part (b) of the Shakespeare question, 5 of its 20: use it to support an argument about the play, woven into the point rather than added as a separate paragraph.
Edexcel's Shakespeare question has two parts: part (a) on the printed extract marks only language, form and structure (AO2), so context earns nothing there; part (b) on the play elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1, 15 marks) and context (AO3, 5 marks), not language analysis. Say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
