But it was not. It was a science. In part , I glanced at the idea of the microcosmic nature of the game of chess. It is obviously a microcosm of the medieval life that existed at the time it was modified from the older game from Persia and India for the milieu of Europe.
This is easily realized in the chess game depiction of two kingdoms warring against each other complete with Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights, Castles, or Barons, foot soldiers, and so on.
It epitomizes the medieval world. Moreover, the microcosmic content is alluded to in the dialogue of the two chess players Ferdinand and Miranda: Miranda says,. But the connection of board games with the macrocosm-microcosm concept, and more specifically the connection of chess with this idea, has a more universal background.
Since time and space does not exist in Esse, Esse is everywhere macrocosmic to the microcosm of Percipi. The realization of this among ancient people seemed to have played a large part in their universal notions of the macrocosm and the microcosm, although along side this existed the other idea of the emanative basis of creation in which everything began with a protocosmos that was replicated on successively diminishing scales. The symbolism at the beginning of The Tempest depicts a descent into the world of time from the world of the Esse.
The root from which the word "tempest" is derived, actually means "time". In his monumental work, "Anacalypsis" Godfrey Higgins says, "Among the ancient philosophers there was no superstition or doctrine more universal than that of the microcosm, though it is now nearly lost. In "The Orion Mystery", Robert Bauval and Adrain Gilbert show that the position of Great Pyramid of Giza along with the other two smaller pyramids beside the river Nile were exactly designed to replicate an image on earth of the three stars in the belt of Orion beside the celestial river of the Milky Way.
In his "Secret of the Great Pyramid" Peter Tompkins showed that the Great Pyramid of Giza was designed to be a replica in miniature of the northern hemisphere of the earth projected on a flat surface on an exact scale of , Microcosmic constructions were by no means limited to ancient times. The great traditional fairs still flourishing in England today, such as the Cambridge Midsummer Fair, were laid out in grid patters as a microcosm of the country itself, reflecting not only the country but the order of the cosmos, temporarily brought to earth at a specific place for a limited duration.
Along with microcosmic constructions originating in the ancient recognition of the Esse, was the wide spread use of this grid pattern which was later embodied in the chequered configuration of the surface of board games.
Many divine beings were represented as carrying or embodying the sacred grid. An image from an ancient Indian manuscript show the goddess as a chequerboard. Pennick says:. This was also related to the fact that unlike today, when most people are unaware of which way anything faces, in former times directions played an integral part in traditional ways of life.
Today accurate time is a commodity almost as available as air and sunshine. Most people have a watch. Those who don't can find clocks almost anywhere. In Bacon's day these useful devices were scarcer than the fabled Philosopher's Stone. Common people knew the approximate time of day by the location of the sun. More accurate time required consulting someone especially skilled in the art of Aettcunning.
Aettcunning was the knowledge of directions. This was such a familiar part of life in Bacon's day that almost no one bothered to write about it. Aettcunning is closely connected with the origins of board games and of chess. It is important for understanding the cosmological symbolism that underlies the sacred layout of the countryside and its microcosmic reflection - the game board.
Pennick points out that ancient augurs were always aware of the horizon visible from a site, "both for the observation of the apparent motions of Sun, Moon and stars, and to be in harmony with the powers inherent in the shape of the landscape. The horizon was then divided by lines that bisects the four directions.
This created eight directions. These were related to the physical structure of the world, the north-south polar axis and right angle lines of the east-west directions. Moreover, in addition to the fixed structure of the world, there were variable features composed of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies in relation to the fixed site. The position of the rising and setting Sun, at the solstices the longest and shortest days , and on other important sacred festivals of the year, were at different places on the horizon from the lines bisecting the four cardinal directions.
The height of the horizon above or below the viewing-point would alter the rising place of the Sun, Moon or star, and unless the site had an equal-height horizon all around it, this would destroy the symmetry of sunrises and sets. On a level horizon, a solar geometry exists in which midsummer sunrise is diametrically opposite midwinter sunset and midwinter sunrise opposes midsummer sunset, and since the length of day varies with the season of the year that is clearly designated by the position of the sunrise on the horizon, the calendar can be marked by means of the direction of the sunrise.
The extreme south position of the sunrise marks the midwinter solstice, and the extreme north marks the midsummer solstice, thus defining the two halves of the year - the dark half, and the light half. In the traditional rural calendar of the north the division between the two solstices marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter at the festivals of Beltane May Day and Samhain November 1.
A further division of the aett the eight was made into the traditional European division of the upper hemisphere into 16 lines running from the center to the circumference - that was the fourfold division of each of the four quarters.
An equal division was made of the lower hemisphere deriving the 32 division that were adapted to the use of the magnetic compass and remains with us today in the names of the directions. In the original usage aetting designated the actual compass direction. At Chartres Cathedral, a white pane of glass in an otherwise coloured window allows the rays of the Sun at midday on Midsummer's Day to strike a brass tablet in the pavement, marking the moment of the Sun's apex. At Tonnerre, a brass lemniscate shape figure-of-eight in the floor tracks the position of the midday Sun throughout the year.
The great architectural symbolist W. Lethaby noted in that 'Even now in some of the French cathedrals-Bourges and Nevers for instance-diagonal lines may be seen right across the floor graduated into a scale of months and days.
When rays of the Sun are projected onto such a grid, the various portions of it have a specific geometrical relationship to a time of day and the time of year. By these means, a harmonious relationship with the universal order is created. The cosmologist C. Menon believed that chequered playing board came from the custom of representing the year-cycle and its subdivisions in a square format.
This format survived in European horoscopes until the eighteenth century, and is still used in laying out the figures in divinatory geomancy. The children's game of Fortune Telling, played in Britain to day, involves a paper square folded on the same pattern. Allied symbolism exists in the square cosmographic mosaic pavements of medieval Europe, such as those at Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey in England. These are overt symbols of the structure of the world, with the four directions, elements, and humours laid out in corresponding geometrical patterns and colored stones.
Menon argued that the Chess board originated as a symbolic planisphere upon which the motion of the seven planets of traditional astronomy were represented by corresponding pieces located in appropriate correspondences.
He speculated that the Knight's move in chess may have originated in the movement of heavenly bodies in their orbits 'round the corner' of the square planisphere. In books or articles on the history of chess the origin of the game is usually given as India. But it is interesting to observe that only regions along the Silk Road, the trade route for goods and ideas linking China with the Mediterranean world, have been named as possible countries of origin for the game of chess.
A number of people have endorsed the idea that the game of chess actually began in China. In his monumental work Science and Civilization in China Joseph Needham of Cambridge, not only gives China as the country of origin for the game, but also gives some very interesting information that has a very close connection with the symbolism in The Tempest.
In the course of delivering some Thoughts on the Origin of Chess, Needham says the game of chess as we know it has been associated throughout its development with astronomical symbolism, and this was more overt in related games now long obsolete.
According to Needham the battle element of chess developed from a technique of divination designed to determine the balance of ever-contending Yin and Yang forces in the universe. The preface by Wang Pao still exists. The pieces on the board in the divination technique represented the sun, moon, planets, stars, constellations, etc.
The "image-chess" derived in turn from a number of divination techniques which involved the throwing of small models, symbolic of the celestial bodies, on to prepared boards. A dice element as well as a move element was involved, and there were many intermediate forms between pure throwing and placement followed by combat moves. All these go back to China of the Han and pre-Han times, i. The most significant of the ancient boards was the shih used from the Warring States period onwards - a double-decked cosmic diagramm having a square earth-plate surmounted by a rotatable discoidal heaven-plate, both being marked with cyclical and astronomical signs compass-points, lunar mansions etc.
The reason for this is because among the symbolic models used there was one representing the Great Bear the Northern Dipper , so important in Chinese polar-equatorial astronomy - carved into the shape of a spoon. This replaced the picture of the Great Bear, or Northern Dipper, which previously had been carved on the heaven-plate of the diviner's board. Since polarity would establish itself along the main axis of a bar of the mineral, whether or not it was removed from the rock in a north-south direction i.
During later centuries the frictional drag of the lode-stone spoon on its bronze base-plate was avoided by inserting the piece of lode-stone in a piece of wood with pointed ends which could be floated, or balanced upon an upward-projecting pin. Thus the ancestor of all dial-and pointer-readings, the greatest single factor in the voyages of discovery, and the oldest instrument of magnetic-electrical science may perhaps be said to have begun as a proto-chess-man used in a divination technique.
According to Needham, the evidence indicated that the recreational game of chess, and the magnetic compass, with all that flowed from it, took their origin at a single point - namely, a group of divination techniques in ancient Chinese proto-science. A site on the Web called "The Weave" presents a case for the claim that chess is the game of the goddess. According to this site, The original concept for "Goddess Chess" arose out of our participation in a discussion group in December, , exploring the question of whether chess is the Game of the Goddess.
Their claim is that for their hypotheses and proofs they explored ancient civilizations Babylon, Lemuria, China, Sumeria, Egypt, the Hittites, the Mayans, Urartu, the Hykssos, and the Khemetians, among others , as well as etymology, proto-Indo-European language roots, ancient migration patterns, numerology, archaeology, astrology, Sacred Geometry, Magic Squares, and many other topics!
The pawns are females striving toward the ultimate goal of promotion to Queen and the possibility of union with the King; the Rook or Castle the castle tower is an ancient symbol of the goddess, worn as a headdress by Ephesian Diana, Tyche, and the Syrian Cybele , is the protector of the width and breadth of the Chessboard, scanning for enemies while his Queen maneuvers toward unification with the other color's King.
The Bishop once wore breasts and was the original female element on the chessboard; alas, she lost her breasts in the dim reaches of "History", when the rise of patriarchy gave way to persecution of the Great Mother Goddess and the concept of balance in The Game was subverted into one of war. Some of that original balance was restored to The Game in the late 's in Spain, where the Queen was first given sweeping new powers, perhaps a reflection of Spain's own powerful Queen Isabella.
Many race games, such as the group containing Ashtapada and Saturankam followed paths similar to those of traditional labyrinths. In addition, it is worth noting in view of the Mystery symbolism in The Tempest , that many of the ancient Mystery sites were connected with labyrinths. There was a close and direct connection of chess with labyrinths. Thus we see that, if we delve into the symbolism, The Tempest has a multitude of connections with the game of chess. In order to test that theory it is necessary to "map" The Tempest in such a fashion that the patterns, resulting from the operation of the discovery device into The Tempest , can be detected.
The first step is a high-level mapping of The Tempest:. The character that take part in this scene are:: Boatswain, Mariners, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo significantly, although Ferdinand is listed in the stage direction he has no speaking part. The ship is given up for lost at the end of the scene and all of the passengers leap overboard.
The scene begins with Prospero talking to his daughter Miranda. Prospero is a magician and was formerly the Duke of Milan. He has created the tempest and used it to make the men on the ship believe that they have wrecked. Instead he has ensured that all survive unharmed.
Why was Prospero banished? Who is Ariel and why does he work for Prospero? Why does Caliban hate Prospero and Miranda? How does Prospero manipulate Alonso and his company? Why does Prospero give up magic? The original audience like modern audiences probably found it dificult to distinguish the tiny little chessmen that moved on the board, especially if they sat or stood far from the stage.
The board, seen from afar, might also have been easily confused with that of some other game. Also, because chess was chiely a royal pastime, part of the audience might not have known what it looked like exactly. Besides, the short dialogue that follows the stage direction does very little to explain to the audience what game they are playing — it could apply to any other popular early modern board game: MIRANDA Sweet lord, you play me false. In this sense Ferdinand and Miranda are one of the coldest couples that Shakespeare ever created — unlike, for example, Romeo and Juliet or Lorenzo and Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, or Troilus and Cressida before her departure.
So why does Shakespeare insert the game of chess which, apart from posing all these issues, is only a glimpse which easily runs the risk of being overlooked, since the momentum of the scene is created by the reunion between Ferdinand and his father?
Shakespeare inserts chess-related terminology in some other plays, referring for example to some of the chessmen, like the pawn, the Queen or King, or to the idea of checkmate,4 but nowhere else, apart from The Tempest, does he actually show any direct reference to the game on stage.
This is what I propose to do in this article. There are many versions of the origins of chess. But it is not just a question of them doing what the sorcerer wants them to: the shipwrecked characters, the concealed ship, and Miranda — almost everyone on the island — act indeed like inanimate chessmen. When Prospero decides where to conine them, they just stay where they are without wandering around.
Expressions dealing with the idea of coninement and stasis recur throughout the text. In all these cases reference is made to closed, well bordered, secluded spaces where any chance of free movement is impossible. It is as if all these characters were put into giant chess squares and only Prospero could decide when and how to move them. At the same time the King of Naples and his train are left in a deserted spot of the island where, instead of thinking about how to save themselves or try to ind their missing companions, they show their stillness and complete lack of initiative by engaging in nonsensical activities like betting on who will start speaking irst, debating whether Dido was the Queen of Tunis or Carthage, or starting an absurd conversation about how they would manage the island if they were its colonisers.
Only Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano, from a certain point onwards, seem to elude his guard but they will be well taken care of in the end. They, along with Ariel of course, are the only ones who, in spite of everything, enjoy the greatest freedom of movement.
The rest of the characters are not only enclosed in physical prisons, but Prospero makes very sure that they are also mentally imprisoned, and he attains this by magically forcing his enemies but also his daughter to sleep. This is in fact the charm he, also through the help of Ariel, uses most throughout the play. However, chess is above all a game of conlict. It is a game where a king tries to defeat an enemy king. The idea that it is actually a war that everyone is ighting also emerges from the use of certain military expressions.
Chess is also a ight between two colours: the White House against the Black House. Finally when Prospero relieves all his enchantments in V. Other than colours, also some of the dynamics that are typical of the game of chess seem to be physically reproduced in the play.
Each of the two houses represents the perfect feudal society and all the classes are represented: there are the King and Queen, the Knights, the Bishops which represent religious power, and the Rooks, while the front row is made up of pawns, which stand for the lower classes.
Prospero is at the same time player of the game and chessman, because he is also King of one of the two houses. The very way in which he ights against the company of the Neapolitans reminds us of the way the King of chess moves. This piece can move only one square at a time, suggesting his old age and the need to be protected.
Indeed, the initial formation of the chess pieces implies that the irst who will go to war will be the pawns, that is, the common people. Also, a King can never directly face the other King, because it will always be at least one square away from it. All this we may ind in the play too. Prospero never gets close to his enemies until the very end, Act 5 Scene 1, when he decides they have been suficiently punished and prepares to forgive them.
This happens when the King remains alone surrounded by enemies with no other pieces of his house to defend him, and at the same time unable to free himself. Prospero does not resemble only the King of Chess, but he shows some analogies with the roles of the bishop and the rook. The bishop was considered, like Prospero, a man of science,26 and he was represented sitting on a chair with a book open in front of him.
Saul explains the reason for this name: the duke, or rook, is the highest in degree after the monarchs, and should function as a leader, but the author then adds that, because the rooks do not move much from their rank, the name duke would better it the Queen. So although these Dukes seeme remote from the King and Court [ In this sence I say may the Rookes bee called Dukes.
There are other characters in the play whose behaviour bears some resemblances to the moves of the corresponding chess pieces.
The case of the pawn is interesting. The pawns are the weakest pieces of the chessboard because they can move only forward and at the pace of one square at a time31, but they can defeat any stronger piece.
Besides, if they are lucky enough to get to the other end of the board, they are rewarded with a promotion32 and they are immediately endowed with the freedom of movement of a Queen.
In this sense pawns can climb the social ladder, which is exactly the same aspiration some of the low characters in the play have. Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano know that if they want to become the new lords of the island they need to kill Prospero, and to do that they get as far as into his cell, where they plan to do an ambush.
Also, at the beginning of the play, the tempest overturns hierarchy: the sailors understand they have nothing more to lose and, in order to get everyone safely ashore, become the new authorities of the ship. This chess piece was introduced by a crucial new rule only in So far it has been suggested that the inal game of chess acknowledges and conirms a series of issues that are featured in the preceding part of the play.
Yet it also seems to anticipate the epilogue. One of the medieval stereotypes concerning chess, though less exploited than its tie with courtly-love traditions, is the motif of Death playing the game with Man. Melin observes that in these types of representations the chessboard stands for the unpredictable game of life, where death comes unexpectedly and may lead either to salvation or eternal damnation in Hell.
Or will he end up conined in the text just as both houses will be put in a bag at the end of a chess game? While hierarchy collapses, only the actors remain.
Seymour and C. Hodges, The Complete Works. Second Edition, eds. In King John II. See Paul G. This is generally considered to be pure speculation but Jeffrey A.
Netto sees it as a symbolical representation of the rivalry between the two greatest theatrical wits of the time. See Jeffrey A. Alexander Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , Allen, , Also P. Gent, , sig. Honemann and Ferm, Come sostiene lo studioso egiziano M. Badawi: The appeal of the tragedies [ Preme sottolineare che in una prima fase di ricezione gli articoli e i commenti alle esibizioni teatrali erano cospicui, laddove erano minori gli studi critici che aderivano a un grado culturale ed accademico elevato3.
This exchange in both directions is necessarily modiied by the perception of the Other and the modes of literary production of the time5. Diversamente, a seguito dei conlitti politici e della colonizzazione, essa esprime la propria indignazione per aver ricevuto un ritratto ingannevole. Questo lavoro si preigge semplicemente di analizzare uno dei percorsi di comunicazione letteraria tra il mondo arabo-islamico e quello europeo. Negli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta vi sono numerose rappresentazioni teatrali della tragedia, con interpretazioni piuttosto distanti dal testo originale.
I contrasti si presentano sotto forma di divari tra le differenti classi sociali nel mondo arabo-islamico, tra poveri e ricchi, oppure sotto forma di dissidi fra i generi.
La maggior parte delle performance teatrali sono riconducibili al contesto sociale nel quale esse vengono rappresentate, ponendo in risalto le problematiche del periodo. In questi scritti il dramma di Shakespeare viene riadattato al contesto storico e culturale arabo del Novecento, nel quale viene accentuato il tema del conlitto.
Nei suoi racconti e astuzie analogamente a Iago, la mente di Mustafa si rivela acuta e tagliente come la lama di un coltello Mustafa costituisce un ibrido tra un soggetto coloniale e un soggetto post-coloniale. Mustafa stesso afferma: I, over and above everything else, I am a colonizer, I am the intruder whose fate must be decided […] Yes, my dears, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of your poison which you have injected into the veins of history In un gioco perverso tra i due, lui inisce per cedere alla richiesta di lei di essere uccisa.
Mustafa viene processato per aver assassinato Jean Morris e per aver spinto al suicidio altre tre donne. It was I who killed them. I am a desert of thirst.
I am no Othello. I am a lie. Si sposa con una donna del luogo di nome Hosna Bint Mahmud. Mustafa dimostra che in fondo nonostante lo scontro con il colonizzatore, egli aveva ancora bisogno della sua presenza culturale.
Non potendo convivere con questa condizione, Hosna decide di uccidere il promesso sposo, per poi togliersi la vita. Il discorso di Desdemona proferito in presenza del senato di Venezia ne costituisce un valido esempio Nel suo animo avviene una lacerazione, egli si sente perduto tra il nord che ha lasciato e il sud che tenta di ritrovare; un dolore acutizzato dalla perdita di Hosna della quale si era innamorato e che egli non ha avuto il coraggio di proteggere.
I was unable to continue, unable to return. Per avviarsi verso la conclusione, nella Stagione della migrazione a Nord trovano rafigurazione i conlitti razziali, di genere e tra Oriente e Occidente. Lo scritto viene tradotto in lingua inglese nel con il titolo Lina: a Portrait of a Damascene Girl. Distorted relections of his image poured on her like small moons, the boy who followed her on the stairs with a bunch of daisies in his hand begging her for a kiss, the boy who told the neighbourhood boys that she was his beloved and stood under her balcony in the sun, in the rain, in the wind as if he were a statue, the boy who threatened to strangle her and to strangle himself if he saw her on the arm of another man and wrote her broken poems, the boy who sent her a bad translation of Othello and once in a while gave her yellow books Desdemona diviene simbolo di una donna tenace che si ribella al potere maschile.
Attraverso il monologo interiore, Lina esplora il sentimento di amore e odio verso il idanzato. Ripensa alle donne di sua conoscenza, anche loro costrette a subire la prepotenza maschile. Quando Lina rilette sulla gelosia morbosa del idanzato, rievoca le parole di Otello prima di uccidere Desdemona, ripercorrendo la scena nella mente Tematica presente anche nella prosa araba classica, che ha suggestionato numerosi mistici e ilosoi islamici.
She was suffering just like a sparrow that is incapable of battling against the wind. Do you understand? Listen: human beings can express such pain in many ways.
As soon as the door closed her mother would be in the hallway, meeting her with abuse, and she would say that she had been at school in the group taking coaching in physics, and her father would shout out that he had the curriculum of the group and that there were no classes on Tuesday. Muna trova nel proprio animo le stesse emozioni che Desdemona aveva percepito di fronte al rancore ingiusto di Otello.
Ghazoul, Idem. Per uno studio dettagliato del romanzo si veda: I. Denys Johnson-Davies, London, Heineman, , Khanam, ; The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. Ghazoul, op. The play grimly chronicles the events of the Roman civil wars from Pharsalus to Philippi. If she was so politic a coquette here she is certainly not the utterly sincere and frank Miranda we have learned to take pleasure in.
The question should be: What does this whole scene mean? Why did Shakespeare write it at all? What was his object? The solution consists in pointing out the whole dramatic scheme of the author when he invented the scene.
When Shakespeare sat down to write this he had come to the fifth act of "The Tempest"; and almost the end of the act. The characters have all gone through their strange experience; deep lessons have been taught, past wrongs retributed and the fond lover tried; the magic wand has been discarded and Ariel is all done except for a slight remaining service. It is really the end of the play with only a formal conclusion to be observed. At this point, Shakespeare wished to give us a final glimpse of the happy lovers; and he wanted to do it in some short climactic way which would give us the deepest and most delighted insight of perfect unselfish love.
How would he contrive to do it? With only blank paper before him, and in his usual mood of close scrutiny into human nature, he sat and thought it over.
When he was through he had done it in five lines; and here is what the audience saw: The entrance to the cave or cell being uncovered, Miranda and Ferdinand were seen within at a game of chess.
Pawns, knights, castles, bishops in their respective colors were prominent on the board; and what an audience would take account of at once they were mostly in Miranda's possession. Miranda was winning. And now we hear her say: Sweet lord, you play me false.
In other words, Ferdinand was deliberately giving the game away to her. He answers: No, my dearest love, I would not for the world. As a matter of fact he was not playing her false. So utter is his unselfishness toward her, so far removed from his mind is any thought but that of giving where she is concerned, that he has actually been helping her to win and taking pleasure every time a move was in her favor. But a game is of such a nature that it will not go on under such conditions — it will not be a game.
A game is in the nature of a contest, and there must at least be a mimic desire to gain the victory and leave the other person the loser. Miranda, knowing by the promptings of her own soul what the difficulty is, sees that he must, in order to be desirous of winning, stir his mind with a lively imagination of tremendous stakes.
And so she stirs him up: Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, — And then she adds tell-tale words that show us she is just as pleased to lose to him as he is to her — And I would call it fair play.
By wrangle , she means contest by every means in his power, and whatever means he took to win she would call it fair.
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