The Imperial Design and Shakespeare

Abstract

This paper discusses Shakespeare as a two-pronged author contributing to the establishment and expansion of the British Empire on the one hand, and the site of resistance on the other. He was used by the British Imperialists as the foremost representative of liberal humanism which was the watchword for the imperial expansion, but he also turned out to be the source of resistance for many of the anti-imperialist movements of the colonized peoples. He was and has been treated both as a Prospero and a Caliban. This paper further wants to recognize the fact that even Shakespeare was a tangential part of the poetic geography that according to John Gillies was formed in the ancient Greek time, which subsequently was adopted by the British intellectual leaders of the Renaissance, who held the strong belief the Britain must expand. The idealistic empire preceded the physical empire.