Sycorax
Sycorax | |
---|---|
The Tempest character | |
Created by | William Shakespeare |
In-universe information | |
Family | Caliban (son) |
Sycorax
According to the history provided by the play, Sycorax, while pregnant with Caliban, was banished from her home in
Scholars generally agree that Sycorax, a
Role in the play
In The Tempest, Prospero describes Sycorax as an ancient and foul witch native to Algiers, and banished to the island for practising
Sources
Scholars have unearthed very few facts about Shakespeare's sources for Sycorax. In fact, other than her connection to the magical sorceresses Medea and Circe of Greek mythology, nothing conclusive has been proposed.
Several competing linguistic theories have been put forth. Some scholars argue that her name may be a combination of the Latin sus ("pig") and korax ("crow"). Another rough translation produces the phrase "the
The general idea for Sycorax's character may have come from the classical literature familiar to many in Shakespeare's day. Sycorax is similar to Medea, a witch in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in that both are powerful, magical female figures.[6][8] Scholars have also pointed out that Sycorax resembles the magical Circe from Greek mythology as well as perhaps a version of Circe found in the mythology of the Coraxi tribe in modern-day Georgia.[6][9]
Sycorax also draws on contemporary beliefs regarding witches. For example, she may embody the belief that all witches have blue eyes. The character may even be a reference to a specific historical personage. According to
Analysis
Silent Sycorax
“[Sycorax is] a paradigm for all women of the Third World, who have not yet, despite all the effort, reached that trigger of visibility which is necessary for a whole society”[10] - Kamau Braithwaite.
Sycorax's silent role plays an important part in
Other postcolonial scholars have argued that Shakespeare's audiences would have connected Sycorax with the threat of
Interpretations of Sycorax as silenced focus not only on her race but her gender as well. Most of what is said about her in the play is said by Prospero. However, as scholars point out, Prospero has never met Sycorax—all he learned about her he learned from Ariel—and his suspicion of women makes him an unreliable source of information. Skeptical of female virtue in general, he refuses to accept Caliban's prior claim to the island, accusing him of being a bastard "got by the devil himself / Upon thy wicked dam."[14]
Sycorax and Prospero
In The Tempest, Shakespeare presents two powerful sorcerers, Prospero and Sycorax, who have both controlled the island. Initially it appears that the two characters are a contrasting pair: the benevolent Prospero and the rapacious Sycorax. However, upon closer analysis, the differences between the two characters disappear and the similarities grow. For example, Prospero, like Sycorax, coerces Ariel into doing his bidding, using the sprite to regain his inheritance as a duke, and tortures Caliban with magic the way Sycorax tortured Ariel. Also, both Prospero and Sycorax were exiled from their respective homelands and both have children, which was possibly the reason why they were both spared being executed. The fine line between Sycorax's black magic and Prospero's white blurs even further during his renunciation of magic in Act V, a speech which has strong parallels to one given by the dark witch Medea in the Metamorphoses. In comparing himself to Medea, Prospero is implicitly comparing himself to Sycorax. Emphasizing the relationship between Prospero and Sycorax demonstrates the ambiguity of Prospero's supposedly benevolent character.[14][15]
Sycorax as mother
Sycorax has been described as the
Ethnicity
Some critics have seen both Caliban and Sycorax as instances of indeterminate racial or ethnic identity. Leah Marcus argues that the phrase "blue-eyed hag",[18] suggests racial uncertainty because "as a blue-eyed Algerian Sycorax would have failed to fit our racial stereotypes in a number of interesting ways [w]e tend not to think of Africans as blue eyed, even though North Africans of 'Argier' and elsewhere sometimes are."[8] Most critics have interpreted the phrase "blue eyed" to be a reference to blueish rings around the eyes, indicating tiredness or pregnancy, on the grounds that this was the most common meaning of the term at the time.[6][8] However both Marcus and Diane Purkiss suggest that a reference to race might be implied, suggesting that Sycorax's ethnicity cannot be clearly defined, as although she was born in Algiers, her parentage is not known. Kelsey Ridge, who argued that the Algiers-born Sycorax was a colonizer who stole the island from Ariel and his people, suggested that Sycorax's blue eyes "do not disprove her North African lineage, and indeed they may serve to call attention to the similarity of her to the other colonizers."[19]
Avoiding execution
Scholars have wondered what it was that Sycorax did to avoid execution, as described in act one, scene two by Prospero: "for one thing she did / They [the Algerians] would not take her life."
Later scholars, however, have argued that Sycorax was saved from execution because she was pregnant. This was not uncommon, as many female criminals in Shakespeare's day got pregnant to avoid execution.[8]
Sycorax in later versions of the play
Sycorax has been conceptualised in a variety ways by adapters and directors of The Tempest. In
Film versions of The Tempest have portrayed Sycorax in
Sycorax in later literature
In Ernest Renan's play Caliban the anti-hero states that Sycorax went to "all the devils" but left him as rightful ruler of the island.[24] Marina Warner reimagined the witch in her 1992 book Indigo, in which Sycorax is a healer and dyer of indigo who uses her magic to help slaves. Her attempts to give up sorcery fail, because "she cannot abjure, give up, control the force by which she is possessed".[25]
In Tad Williams' novel Caliban's Hour (1994), Caliban tells how, although Sycorax was a powerful witch, people in Algiers (especially the mayor) had needed her powers for their own needs and purposes, but eventually they had turned on her; after she was denounced and arrested,
- "So frightened were they of her magical words, her curses, that they scorched out her tongue with a heated iron-but even that was not enough. Afraid that the killing of even a silenced witch would bring a plague of bad luck down on them, they put her in a boat, my pregnant mother, and towed her out to the open sea, where she was set adrift."
Caliban further states that although mute, Sycorax was able to communicate with him by putting pictures into his mind, and that her death was caused by her choking on a fish bone two years before Prospero and Miranda's arrival.
J.B. Aspinall's novel Sycorax (2006) places the origin of the story with a 14th-century peasant woman from Yorkshire.[26] The Indian poet Suniti Namjoshi in Sycorax: New Fables and Poems imagines Sycorax returning to the island after Prospero and the others have left (including Caliban). Namjoshi has stated, "The Sycorax in my poem is still alive... She is still defiant, still fierce, but she is old and knows that death is no longer so far away that it need not be thought of... I wanted to follow Sycorax, keep her company, as it were, up to the final moment".[27]
Sycorax is also revived in the "Baroque pastiche" opera The Enchanted Island, devised by Jeremy Sams, in the first production of which she was played by Joyce DiDonato.[28]
Sycorax in music
The Decemberists' 2006 album The Crane Wife features the song "The Island/Come and See" which references Sycorax in the line "its contents watched by Sycorax / and Patagon in parallax".
References
- ^ Shakespeare, William. "Act V Scene 1". The Tempest. Open Source Shakespeare. Retrieved 30 August 2007.
- OCLC 606501035.
- ^ Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare (1807) via Google Books
- ^ Harder, Dan. The Tempest in the Trivium. Connotations 15 (2005/2006): 127–30.
- ^ Harder, Dan. The Tempest in the Trivium. The Upstart Crow 26 (2006/2007): 70–74.
- ^ ISBN 0-415-08761-9
- ^ Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Horace Howard Furness (ed). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1920. pp. 58–59.
- ^ ISBN 0-415-09934-X
- ISBN 0-8101-0738-4
- ISSN 0196-3570.
- ^ Busia, Abena P. A. "Silencing Sycorax: On African Colonial Discourse and the Unvoiced Female." Cultural Critique. pp. 81–104
- OCLC 7374854332.
- ^ Fuchs, Barbara. "Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest." Shakespeare Quarterly, April 1997, 48.1. pp. 45–62.
- ^ a b Orgel, Stephen. "Prospero's Wife." Representations. pp. 1–13.
- ^ Gilman, Ernest B. "'All eyes': Prospero's Inverted Masque." Renaissance Quarterly, July 1980, 33.2. pp. 214–230.
- ISBN 0-252-01016-7
- ^ Libby, Anthony. "God's Lioness and the Priest of Sycorax: Plath and Hughes." Contemporary Literature. July 1974, 15.3. pp. 386–405.
- ^ Shakespeare, William. "Act I Scene 2". The Tempest. Open Source Shakespeare. Retrieved 30 August 2007.
- ISSN 1754-9469.
- ^ Lamb, Charles (1823). "On a Passage in 'The Tempest'". London Magazine. London: Baldwin, Craddock & Joy.
- ^ Dean, Winton. "Operas on 'The Tempest'." The Musical Times. November 1964, 105.1461. pp. 810–814.
- ^ Croyden, Margaret. "Peter Brook's 'Tempest'." The Drama Review: TDR. April 1969, 13.3. pp. 125–128.
- ISBN 0-292-70224-8
- ^ Renan, Ernest, Caliban, suite de La tempête, drame philosophique, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1878, p. 4.
- ^ "Indigo". Marina Warner – writer and mythographer. Archived from the original on 3 May 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
- ^ Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, The Independent on Sunday, 26 November 2006.
- ^ Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, "Time for fables and lessons", The Hindu, Sunday, 3 December 2006.
- ^ Church, Michael (23 January 2012). "The Enchanted Island, Everyman Belsize Park". The Independent. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 23 March 2017.