Shakespeare criticism has long been recognised as a touchstone to shifts in our critical discourses. The following paper constitutes an examination of two conflicting discourses. The analysis will be confined to the views presented in Stephen Greenblatt's article entitled "Martial Law in the Land of Cockaigne" and Ben Ross Schneider, Jr's "Are We Being Historical Yet?": Colonialist Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tempest - a contest, if you will, between two different theoretical positions as to where the text lies.

In his article entitled "Are We Being Historical Yet?": Colonialist Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tempest, Ben Ross Schneider, Jr extends Carolyn Porter's critique of new historicism to recent work on The Tempest. Included in Schneider's study of eight recent analyses of The Tempest, is Stephen Greenblatt's article "Martial Law in the Land of Cockaigne." Schneider argues that by choosing colonialism as a frame, and then "reifying" it as if it were "coterminus with the limits of discourse in general," the new historicists marginalize not only a large field of relevant contemporary discourse, but also The Tempest itself (Schneider 121).

Ben Ross Schneider, Jr, "Are We Being Historical Yet?": Colonialist Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tempest, Shakespeare Studies 23 (1995), 120-45.

in her book The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London 1576-1642. Cook's evidence suggests that the best educated and most well-read segment of society composed the main body of Shakespeare's audience. Schneider advocates that the field of discourse mentioned above, would have been a major means of communication between Shakespeare and a audience which was "steeped in classical morality" (Schneider 132). This platform provides Schneider with the ammunition for his assertion that Stoicism, like feminist discourse nowadays, acted as the prevalent discourse during the Renaissance period and consequently dominated the way other discourses were understood.

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Approximate Word count = 2079
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)