Much attention has been given to Caliban as red man or black man, the first of Mannoni's victims of colonialism. Almost none, even in the context of Stephen Greenblatt's cultural poetics, has been given to the other victim of colonialist Prospero, Ariel. Whether as man or woman (another red herring), Ariel has gained more attention from theatre directors than he has from critics. Jonathan Miller for instance in his Old Vic production in 1988 matched his black Caliban with a black Ariel. When left on the island at the end of the play his Ariel took up Prospero's broken staff and put it together again in his own hands, smiling meanly at Caliban while he did so. But such hints about the post-colonial politics of the black Europeans as this suggests, the input of Wabenzi neo-colonialism, have not been very conspicuous in academic studies. So Ariel ought to be put back opposite Caliban. In the process I think that the image of Prospero as colonialist changes its colour a little, into something rather more like London blue.

The post-colonial interpretation of The Tempest has had a long and distinguished history by now. Octave Mannoni used the relationship between Prospero and Caliban to characterize Malagasy colonialism, in his Psychologie de la colonisation, as long ago as 1950. When it appeared in English in 1956 it was given the name Prospero and Caliban.