Hegemony is everything - The Tempest.

     The advantages of Gonzalo’s commonwealth are multiple in my eyes.  The island as the reader knows it is filled with people who do not want to be there.   Gonzalo, in his optimistic nature, describes a way to make a commonwealth that would accentuate the positives of the situation.  In his commonwealth, society would be completely opposite to the way they knew it, and quite frankly the way society is today.  His society is described as one without the constraints of money and poverty, and because of that there is no need for servants, inheritance, or even employment.°   One can see this as an advantage, because without the greed associated with the allocation of money society is not driven by the same self-centered, monopolistic forces.  These forces arguably are the same forces that cause strife, war, murder, and in the case of the Tempest usurpation.  Gonzalo describes his commonwealth as,

“All things in common nature should produce  

             Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony  

      Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine  

      Would I not have; but nature should bring forth…”° 

As a result, Gonzalo comes up with a society that just focuses on living, with no basis on commerce or military conquest.  He goes so far to even eliminate the need for literature, learning or even study, because they are not necessary in a society just focused on survival and not gain.°

     There are some minor disadvantages of Gonzalo’s commonwealth, the first being the most obvious; that it is not realistic.  Antonio describes it as, “The latter of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.”°  A commonwealth as Gonzalo describes it would be hard to implement because it would only be possible if society could rid itself of basic human nature.  Civilized society is driven on the idea of discover and conquer, and it has not changed since the years of Shakespeare.  This is made evident from the beginning of the play when the reader is made known that Prospero’s kingdom and title were usurped by his own brother Antonio, and continued when Antonio begins to convince Sebastian to kill his brother (Alonso), by telling him that “My strong imagination see a crown/Dropping upon thy head.”°   Treachery, deception, and the necessity for power appear to be key themes throughout the play, and they parallel Shakespeare’s England.

     Another disadvantage to Gonzalo’s commonwealth is made evident in Act 2, scene 1, line 170, “And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty.”  Gonzalo, even though he is good-natured and hearted for all intensive purposes, is a product of the time.  Even though Gonzalo emphasizes making no class distinctions and goes so far to not even have poor at all, he still gives no power to woman.  In an ideal commonwealth, matters of race, color, and gender should not matter because society as Gonzalo depicted it was to be opposite to what was customary.°  Giving women the same secondary role in society contradicts an ideal commonwealth of equals.

     Gonzalo’s ideal commonwealth had a significant dual role in this play regardless of the advantages and the disadvantages.  Its first role was to show what the island really should have been about.  Instead of characters such as Antonio devising ways to kill Alonso and Prospero seeking ways to arrive at more power, inhabitants of the island needed to work together as equals to just survive.  The second role of the ideal commonwealth was to parallel society as Shakespeare knew it.  When Shakespeare made this play England and other parts of the world were becoming more and more focused on sovereignty and discovering new worlds.  Inevitably, this led to thievery, strife, and war.  One could argue that he saw what was to come, and some would say he wrote about what has been constant for ages...Hegemony is everything.