THE TEMPESTChapter 19

SHAKESPEARE: Script, Stage, ScreenBevington, Welsh and Greenwald

Pearson Longman, 2006

“Our Revels Now Are Ended”

THE TEMPEST was the first play in the Folio of 1623 suggesting that Shakespeare’s colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell believed it to be one of his most important works.

Shakespeare’s farewell to the

theatre?The text suggests as such…

…But this rough magic I here abjure…I’ll break my staff…Bury it certain fathoms in the earthAnd deeper than did ever plummet

soundI’ll drown my book. (V.1. 50-57)

Scholarship is inconclusive

Associating Shakespeare with Prospero provides an intriguing view of the play, but THE TEMPEST can still be appreciated as the capstone to his career for its “superb synthesis of his themes, language, and theatricality.” (820)

It is unique among his works

…seemingly the only play for which there is no attributable source for its plot.

Several contemporary sources suggest that he might have been inspired by accounts of numerous shipwrecks during the age of exploration. To place it in a faraway place, he chooses a mysterious Mediterranean island.

Prospers is the artist-autocrat, creating situations in which people are tested to learn about themselves and their values.

When faced with the choice, however, between vengeance or forgiveness, he chooses forgiveness, even relinquishing his extraordinary powers before returning to his home in Milan.

First Performance November 1, 1611 at King James’s court theatre at

Whitehall Scholars speculate that the folio edition was a

revision of this 1611 text Apparently Shakespeare amended the text to honor

the royal wedding in January 1613 when 17-year-old Princess Elizabeth married Frederick of Heidelberg, the union which produced the royal Hanoverian line

Celebrations at that wedding included court performances of THE TEMPEST and BEATRICE AND BENEDICK

Public performances During his lifetime, the play was produced

numerous times at THE GLOBE and BLACKFRIARS (the indoor home of the King’s Men)

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep…” (IV.1.148-153)

CHARACTERS

Single plot, single locale

Spans two days in actual time Only subplot is the comic rebellion of Trinculo,

Stephano and Caliban which is integrated into the main plot

The best example in Shakespeare of Neoclassicism

Like his early plays, however, it is romantic dramatizing magic, spirits and monsters

Its unity of action, however, is its strength, Prospero’s obsession is limited by time

Traditional/stock characters

Prospero is the artist-magician

William Hutt – Stratford Festival, Ontario

AntonioProspero’s Machiavellan brother banished Prospero from Milan 12 years earlier

Chris Cooper as ANTONIO in the Julie Taymor film

MirandaProspero’s innocent daughter

CalibanGrotesque creature in love with Miranda and enslaved by Prospero

Djimon Hounsou in the Julie Taymor film

Ferdinand Young Prince, son of King

Alonzo

Joseph Wright engraving (1800) of Ferdinand and Miranda in Prospero’s cell

SebastianVillainous brother of King Alonzo

Alan Cumming in the Julie Taymor film

GonzaloThe faithful Counselor

ArielThe sprite who carries out Prospero’s magical commands (like Puck)

Trinculo and Stephano

The clowns. Stefano is Alonzo’s butler and Trinculo is the court jester.

Russell Brand and Alfred Molina in the Julie Taymor film

Sources and inspirations

ACTUAL EVENTNine English ships set out on a 1609 Voyage to Jamestown, Virginia. On July 24, a powerful storm struck the fleet near the Bermuda Islands. Eight ships escaped. Survivors from the flagship, “Sea Adventure” constructed two small boats and made it to Jamestown in May 1610. Several accounts of this voyage were widely published. Shakespeare’s text seems to echo accounts by Sylvester Jourdain (A Discovery of the Bermudas) and a 1610 manuscript by William Strachey.

Sources and inspirations

THE COURTLY MASQUE Originated by the French

and popularized at the Courts of Elizabeth, James and Charles in England. The fourth act of THE TEMPEST features a Masque in which Juno, Iris and Ceres, goddesses of fertility and marriage bless the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand.

Sources and inspirations

New Technology for the Theatre

Inigo Jones, the foremost designerof Court Masques developed manyintricate theatrical machines toprovide “the quaint device” whichis employed at the end of the Masque in THE TEMPEST.

Sources and inspirations

Some Literary Inspirations

Sources and inspirationsOvid’s Matamorphoses

Language, Music, Dance

Written while Shakespeare was “at the height of his powers” so he made use of everything available to himSome of his most eloquent poetry is given to CalibanThe text demonstrates his most flexible command of Blank Verse. In addition to Caliban’s speeches, Prospero is provided with memorable “arias”

Patrick Stewart, RSC, 2006

Music and Dance

Caliban describes the “thousand twangling instruments” (III.2.139) Songs and incidental music was composed, in part, by Robert Johnson, a musician to King James. Particularly memorable is Ariel’s (Come unto these yellow sands). The dances that accompany the masque no doubt took advantage of dance-masters at court

Themes and issues Virtue and vengeance. The play considers the

consequences of usurpation…amazingly rather than vengeance or violence, the play ends in forgiveness

Art and artifice. As with other of his great late plays, Shakespeare uses the Theater as a metaphor and even ends with an epilogue seeking the forgiveness of the audience.

Colonialism.Caliban’s character expresses a view of “the noble savage” that was depicted in Shakespeare’s day. Revolution, usurpation, colonialization are all explored in this play.

Staging challenges The Tempest and the Shipwreck

Shakespeare’s Globe 2013

The Sprite and the Monster

The Sprite and the Monster

The Masque

The Magic Circle

The Magic Circle

The Magic Circle

The Tempest on stage

In the Elizabethan era, many productions at court, at Blackfriars and at the Globe

The Globe and Blackfriars had stage machinery that would allow for the magic effects as well as a discovery space to be used when Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda “playing at chess”

17th and 18th centuries

In 1667, it was re-devised as THE ENCHANTED ISLE by John Dryden and William Davenant

It became a popular spectacle throughout the period with music, musicians, extravagant stage effects. A 1674 operatic adaptation by Thomas Shadwell was revised as recently as 1959 at the Old Vic and in 1983 by the RSC

In 1757, David Garrick replaced Shakespeare’s text for the Shadwell opera at Drury Lane. When his version failed, he staged the original text, a novel concept for its time.

In 1787, John Philip Kemble created a pastiche with elements from Dryden, Shadwell, Shakespeare and some stage business of his own

19th Century: Spectacle and

Calibans William Charles Macready (1838) played

Prospero restoring almost all of Shakespeare’s text

Still most 19th century productions were the operatic version

Notable examples are the 1857 production by Charles Kean and an 1889 production at the McVickers Theater

In his 1904 spectacular, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree invented a pantomime to bridge Acts I and II

Tree as Caliban in 1904

Caliban evolved over time

In the Shadwell opera, Caliban is a grotesque

In the 1838 Macready production, George Bennet played him as a victim of Prospero’s oppression

William Evans Burton in 1854 played him as a comic rebel

Darwin’s ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (1859) provided future Caliban’s with new possibilities

Hogarth’s depiction (1753)

The Maly Theatre 1905

Detail from Hogarth painting

The 20th CenturyPeter Brooks version in 1957 at Stratford featured John Gielgud as Prospero and was very simply staged.

1974 – National Theatre

Gielgud was also lauded for his performance in the 1975 production under the direction of Peter Hall.The production featured areproduction of a JacobeanCourt Masque.

At end of 20th century

Producers seemed more interested the the play’s politics rather than its spectacle. As early as 1934, Caliban was portrayed at the Old Vic as a Black man enslaved by a white Prospero.

In a 1945 production, American Canada Lee, played Caliban in a fish-like costume

1970, Jonathan Miller

Max Van Sydow played Prospero.Both Ariel and Caliban were depicted as tattered “field slaves.”

American productions followed suit

1980 – Shakespeare and Company (Tina Packer) In this production, Stephano was also black. And in the course of the action enslaved a black Caliban.

Geroge C. Wolfe’s multicultural Tempest at the New York Shakespeare Festival presented Ariel and Caliban as black slaves to Prospero

Other productions of note

Caliban as a Jamaican Rastafarian in a 1989 production at London’s OLD VIC

Peter Brook’s 1990 production featured a white actor as Caliban. Prosero and Ariel were played by black actors.

1982 - RSC

Derek Jacobi as Prospero, Alice Krige as Miranda

1993 – Sam Mendes - RSC

When Prospero set Ariel free, Ariel spat in his face

Alec McGowen wasProspero, Simon RussellBeale played Ariel

RSC-2006

Patrick Stewart as Prospero, Ariel (Julian Bleach), Miranda (Mariah Gale).

2012- RSC

Kirsty Bushell as Sebastian in The Tempest.

Television and Film Very cinematic in nature, the play has

enjoyed most of its success on film…but primarily as adaptations.

Peter Greenway’s Prospero’s Books

1960 NBC Television

Roddy McDowell as Ariel, Maurice Evans as Prospero, Richard Burton wasCaliban and Lee Remick played Miranda. Produced by Hallmark Hall of Fame.

1980-BBC (John Gorrie)

Michael Hordern (Prospero)

Derek Godfrey (Caliban)

David Dixon as Ariel

1980 – Derek Jarman

The Tempest by William Shakespeare, as Seen Through the Eyes of Derek Jarman was a low budgetavant-garde experiment

Adaptations

Prospero’s Books (1991) Directed by Peter Greenway

Yellow Sky (1948)

Forbidden Planet (1954)

Paul Mazurky’s Tempest (1982)

Paul Mazursky, MollyRingwald, Susan Sarandon,Raul Julia

The Tempest - 1998

Featurning Katharine Hegel and Peter Fonda, it was set in the American Civil War

Julie Taymor - 2010