The Tempest

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The Tempest is a comedy that was written by William Shakespeare. It is generally dated to 1610-11 and accepted as the last play written solely by him,^[1] although some scholars have argued for an earlier dating.^[2] While listed as a comedy in its initial publication in the First Folio of 1623, many modern editors have relabelled the play a romance. It did not attract a significant amount of attention before the closing of the theatres in 1642, and after the Restoration it attained great popularity only in adapted versions.^[3] Theatre productions returned conclusively to the original Shakespearean text in the mid-nineteenth century.^[4] In the twentieth century, the play received a sweeping re-appraisal by critics and scholars, to the point that it is now considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works.^[5]

Contents 1 Sources 2 Date and Text 3 Characters 4 Synopsis 5 Analysis and Criticism 5.1 Genre 5.2 Dramatic structure 5.3 Themes and motifs 5.3.1 The theatre 5.3.2 Magic 5.4 Other interpretations 5.4.1 Postcolonialist 5.4.2 Feminist 6 Afterlife 6.1 Stage history 6.1.1 Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum 6.1.2 17th-19th century adaptations 6.1.3 18th-19th century performances 6.1.4 20th-21st century performances 6.1.5 20th-21st century adaptations 6.2 Screen versions 6.3 Music 6.4 Art 6.4.1 Painting 6.4.2 Illustrated editions 6.5 Literature 7 References 7.1 Notes 7.2 Editions of The Tempest 7.3 Secondary sources 8 Further reading 9 External links

[edit] Sources

There is no obvious, single source for the plot of The Tempest. Instead, the play seems to have been created out of an amalgamation of sources.^[6] Since source scholarship began in the eighteenth century, researchers have suggested that passages from Erasmus's Naufragium (The Shipwreck) (1523, English translation 1606) and Richard Eden's 1555 translation of Peter Martyr's De orbo novo, or Decades of the New Worlde Or West India (1530), influenced the composition of the play.^[7] However, most Shakespearean scholars see parallel imagery in a work by William Strachey, an eyewitness report of the real-life shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda while sailing toward Virginia. A character in the play makes reference to the still-vexed Bermoothes. Strachey's report was written in 1610; although it was not printed until 1625, it circulated in manuscript and many critics think that Shakespeare may have taken the idea of the shipwreck and some images from it. Another Sea Venture survivor, Sylvester Jordain, also published an account, A Discovery of The Barmudas, so the event would have been widely known. However, literary scholar Kenneth Muir believed that even though "[t]here is little doubt that Shakespeare had read . . . William Strachey's True Reportory of the Wracke" and other accounts, "[t]he extent of the verbal echoes of [the Bermuda] pamphlets has, I think, been exaggerated. There is hardly a shipwreck in history or fiction which does not mention splitting, in which the ship is not lightened of its cargo, in which the passengers do not give themselves up for lost, in which north winds are not sharp, and in which no one gets to shore by clinging to wreckage," and goes on to say that "Strachey's account of the shipwreck is blended with memories of St Paul's--in which too not a hair perished--and with Erasmus' colloquy."^[8]

The overall form of the play is modelled heavily on traditional Italian commedia dell'arte performances, which sometimes featured a magus and his daughter, their supernatural attendants, and a number of rustics. The commedia often featured a clown-figure known as "Arlecchino" (or his predecessor, "Zanni") and his partner "Brighella," who bear a striking resemblance to Stephano and Trinculo; a lecherous Neapolitan hunch-back named "Pulcinella," who corresponds to Caliban; and the clever and beautiful "Isabella," whose wealthy and manipulative father, "Pantalone," constantly seeks a suitor for her, thus mirroring the relationship between Miranda and Prospero.^[9]

In addition, one of Gonzalo's speeches is derived from On Cannibals, an essay by Montaigne that praises the society of the Caribbean natives "It is a nation ...that hath no kinde of traffike, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike superioritie; no use of service of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no ocupation but idle; no respect of kinred, but common, no apparrell but naturall, no manuring of lands, no use of wine corne, or mettle. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousnes, envie, detraction, and pardon, were never heard of amongst them."^[10][11] and much of Prospero's renunciative speech is taken word for word from a speech by Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses.^[12]

[edit] Date and Text

The Tempest is generally accepted to be the last play written solely by Shakespeare,^[13] although some scholars point out that it is impossible to determine if it was written before, after, or at the same time as The Winter's Tale,^[14] while other scholars have argued for an earlier dating. Generally dated to 1610-11, the play was entered into the Stationers' Register by Edward Blount on November 8, 1623. It was one of sixteen Shakespearean plays Blount registered on that date.

Compared to many of Shakespeare's other plays, The Tempest has relatively few textual problems. The text as we have it has a simple history: it was published in the First Folio in December 1623. In that volume, The Tempest is the first play in the section of Comedies, and therefore the opening play of the collection. This printing includes more stage directions than any of Shakespeare's other plays, although these directions seem to have been written more for a reader than for an actor. This leads scholars to infer that the editors of the First Folio, John Heminges and Henry Condell, added the directions to the folio to aid the reader, and that they were not necessarily Shakespeare's original intent. Scholars have also wondered about the Masque in Act 4, which seems to have been added as an afterthought, possibly in honor of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick in 1613. However, other scholars see this as unlikely, arguing that to take the Masque out of the play creates more problems than it solves.^[15]

The 1610-11 dating of The Tempest has been challenged by numerous scholars, most recently by researchers Roger Stritmatter and Lynn Kositsky^[16]who argue that Strachey's narrative could not have furnished an inspiration for Shakespeare, claiming that Strachey's letter was not put into its extant form until after the Tempest had already been performed on Nov. 1, 1611. The notion of an early date for Tempest has in fact a long history in Shakespearean scholarship, going back to 19th century scholars such as Hunter^[17] and Elze^[18], who both critiqued the widespread belief that the play depended on the Strachey letter.

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of Characters in The Tempest

• Prospero, the Duke of Milan and the story's protagonist
• Miranda, daughter of Prospero, often called "a wonder"
• Ariel, an airy spirit
• Caliban, deformed slave of Prospero and son of Sycorax
• Alonso, King of Naples
• Sebastian, Alonso's brother
• Antonio, Prospero's brother, the usurping Duke of Milan
• Ferdinand, Alonso's son
• Gonzalo, an honest, optimistic old councillor who gave Prospero food, water, and books prior to Prospero and Miranda being cast off
• Adrian and Francisco, lords
• Trinculo, a jester
• Stephano, a drunken butler
• Boatswain
• Master of the ship
• Iris, Ceres and Juno, spirits

• Sycorax, (mentioned, but deceased when the action of the play begins) Witch and mother of Caliban

[edit] Synopsis

The sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded for twelve years on an island, after Prospero's jealous brother Antonio—helped by Alonso, the King of Naples—deposed him and set him adrift with the three-year-old Miranda. Prospero secretly sought the help of Gonzalo and their small and shoddy boat had secretly been upgraded to be more than sea worthy, it had been supplied with plenty of food and water, it had an excellent library and contained surviving material in case the boat capsized. Possessed of magic powers due to his great learning and prodigious library, Prospero is reluctantly served by a spirit, Ariel, whom he had rescued from imprisonment in a tree. Ariel was trapped therein by the Algerian witch Sycorax, who had been exiled to the island years before and died prior to Prospero's arrival; Prospero maintains Ariel's loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the "airy spirit" from servitude, but continually defers that promise to a future date, namely at the end of the play. The witch's son Caliban, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by the Milanese sorcerer. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion and their own language. Following Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by Prospero to serve as the sorcerer's slave, carrying wood and gathering pig nuts. In slavery Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper, and grown to resent the magician and his daughter, feeling that they have betrayed his trust. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with contempt and disgust.

The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother, Antonio, is on a ship passing close by the island (having returned from the nuptials of Alonso's daughter Claribel with the King of Tunis), has raised a storm (the tempest of the title) which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Antonio's friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso, Alonso's brother Sebastian, Alonso's royal advisor Gonzalo, and Alonso's son, Ferdinand. Prospero, by his spells, contrives to separate the survivors of the wreck into several groups and Alonso and Ferdinand are separated, and believe one another dead.

Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with Stephano and Trinculo, two drunken crew members, whom he believes to have come from the moon, and drunkenly attempts to raise a rebellion against Prospero (which ultimately fails). In another, Prospero works to establish a romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda; the two fall immediately in love, but Prospero worries that "too light winning [may] make the prize light", and so compels Ferdinand to become his servant so that his affection for Miranda will be confirmed. He also decides that after his plan to exact vengeance on his betrayers has come to fruition, he will break and bury his staff, and "drown" his book of magic. In the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and his advisor Gonzalo, so that Sebastian can become King. They are thwarted by Ariel, at Prospero's command. Ariel appears to the three "men of sin" as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio are deeply affected while Gonzalo is unruffled. Prospero manipulates the course of his enemies' path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him. In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Prospero, who forgives Alonso (as well as his own brother's betrayal, and warns Antonio and Sebastian about further attempts at betrayal) and finally uses his magic to ensure that everyone returns to Italy.

Ariel (as his final task for Prospero) is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Alonso and his entourage back to the Royal fleet and then to Naples. Ariel is set free to the elements. Prospero pardons Caliban who is sent to prepare Prospero’s cell, to which Alonso and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Prospero indicates he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. In his epilogue, Prospero invites the audience to set him free from the island by their applause.

[edit] Analysis and Criticism

[edit] Genre

The story draws heavily from the tradition of the Romance, which featured a fictitious narrative set far away from ordinary life. Romances were typically based around themes such as the supernatural, wandering, exploration and discovery. Romances were often set in coastal regions, and typically featured exotic, fantastical locations; they featured themes of transgression and redemption, loss and retrieval, exile and reunion. As a result, while The Tempest was originally listed as a comedy in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, subsequent editors have chosen to give it the more specific label of Shakespearean romance. Like the other romances, the play was influenced by the then-new genre of tragicomedy, introduced by John Fletcher in the first decade of the seventeenth century and developed in the Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations, as well as by the explosion of development in the courtly masque being conducted by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones at the same time.^[19]

[edit] Dramatic structure

The Tempest differs from Shakespeare's other plays in its observation of a stricter, more organized neo-classical style. The clearest indication of this is Shakespeare's respect for the three unities in the play: the Unities of Time, Place, and Action. The play's events unfold in real time before the audience, Prospero even declaring at the end of the play that everything has happened in mere hours. All action is unified into one basic plot: Prospero's struggle to regain his dukedom; it is also confined to one place: Prospero's Island. Shakespeare's other plays rarely respected the three unities, taking place in separate locations miles apart and over several days or even years.^[20] One author notes: "Why Shakespeare observed the three unities in The Tempest is not known. In most of his other plays, events occur on several days and characters visit numerous settings. Some scholars have suggested that, because The Tempest contains so much fantasy, Shakespeare may have wanted to observe the unities to help audiences suspend their disbelief. Others have pointed to criticism that Shakespeare received for ignoring the unities; they say he may have wanted to prove once and for all that he could follow rules if he felt like it."^[21]

The entire play is set on a fictional Island, which most scholars now agree is meant to be located in the Mediterranean Sea. However, another reading of the play with a large following states that the play is meant to take place in the New World, as parts of it read like records of Spanish conquest in the Americas. Still others argue that the Island can represent any land that has been colonized.^[22]

[edit] Themes and motifs

[edit] The theatre

The Tempest is overtly concerned with its own nature as a play, frequently drawing links between Prospero's Art and theatrical illusion. The shipwreck was a "spectacle" "performed" by Ariel; Antonio and Sebastian are "cast" in a "troop" to "act"; Miranda's eyelids are "fringed curtains". Prospero is even made to refer to the Globe Theatre when claiming the whole world is an illusion: "the great globe... shall dissolve... like this insubstantial pageant". Ariel frequently disguises himself as figures from Classical mythology, for example a nymph, a harpy and Ceres, acting as the latter in a masque and anti-masque that Prospero creates.^{[citation needed]}

Early critics saw this constant allusion to the theatre as an indication that Prospero was meant to represent Shakespeare; the character's renunciation of magic thus signalling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage. This theory has fallen into disfavour;^{[citation needed]} but certainly The Tempest is interested in the way that, like Prospero's "Art", the theatre can be both an immoral occupation and yet morally transformative for its audience.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Magic

Magic was a controversial subject in Shakespeare's day. In Italy in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his occult studies, and John Dee, an Englishman and student of supernatural phenomena, died in disgrace in 1608. Outside the Catholic world, in Protestant England, where Shakespeare wrote "The Tempest," magic was also taboo. While not emulating his great aunt, the Bloody Queen Mary, it must be remembered that King James I - under whose rule "The Tempest" was written - both had a Catholic wife and oversaw the translation of the King James Bible. Yet, not all magic was considered evil.^[23] Several scientists took what they called a more "rational" approach to the study of the supernatural, determined to discover the workings behind unusual phenomena. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa was one such scientist, who published in De Occulta Philosophia his observations of "divine" magic. Agrippa's work influenced Dr. John Dee, an Englishman. Both Agrippa and Dee describe a kind of magic similar to Prospero's—one that is based on 16th-century science, rationality, and divinity, rather than the occult. When King James took the throne, Dee found himself under attack for his beliefs, but was able to defend himself successfully by explaining the divine nature of his profession.^[24]

Shakespeare is also careful to make the distinction that Prospero is a rational, and not an occultist, magician. He does this by providing a contrast to him in Sycorax. Sycorax is said to have worshiped the devil and been full of "earthy and abhored commands". She was unable to control Ariel, who was "too delicate" for such dark tasks. Prospero's rational goodness enables him to control Ariel where Sycorax can only trap him in a tree. Sycorax's magic is frequently described as destructive and terrible, where Prospero's is said to be wondrous and beautiful. Prospero seeks to set things right in his world through his magic, and once that is done, he renounces it, setting Ariel free.^[25]

[edit] Other interpretations

[edit] Postcolonialist

In Shakespeare's day, most of the planet was still being "discovered", and stories were coming back from distant islands, with myths about the Cannibals of the Caribbean, faraway Edens, and distant Tropical Utopias. With the character Caliban (whose name is roughly anagrammatic to Cannibal), Shakespeare may be offering an in-depth discussion into the morality of colonialism. Different views are discussed, with examples including Gonzalo's Utopia, Prospero's enslavement of Caliban, and Caliban's subsequent resentment. Caliban is also shown as one of the most natural characters in the play, being very much in touch with the natural world (and modern audiences have come to view him as far nobler than his two Old World friends, Stephano and Trinculo, although the original intent of the author may have been different). There is evidence that Shakespeare drew on Montaigne's essay Of Cannibals, which discusses the values of societies insulated from European influences, while writing The Tempest.^[26]

Beginning in about 1950, with the publication of Psychology of Colonization by Octave Mannoni, The Tempest was viewed more and more through the lens of postcolonial theory. This new way of looking at the text explored the effect of the colonizer (Prospero) on the colonized (Ariel and Caliban). Though Ariel is often overlooked in these debates in favor of the more intriguing Caliban, he is still involved in many of the debates.^[27] The French writer Aimé Césaire, in his play Une Tempête sets The Tempest in Haiti, portraying Ariel as a mulatto who, unlike the more rebellious Caliban, feels that negotiation and partnership is the way to freedom from the colonizers. Fernandez Retamar sets his version of the play in Cuba, and portrays Ariel as a wealthy Cuban (in comparison to the lower-class Caliban) who also must choose between rebellion or negotiation.^[28] Although scholars have suggested that his dialogue with Caliban in Act two, Scene one, contains hints of a future alliance between the two when Prospero leaves, in general, Ariel is viewed by scholars as the good servant, in comparison with the conniving Caliban—a view which Shakespeare's audience would have shared.^[29] Ariel is used by some postcolonial writers as a symbol of their efforts to overcome the effects of colonization on their culture. Michelle Cliff, for example, a Jamaican author, has said that she tries to combine Caliban and Ariel within herself to create a way of writing that represents her culture better. Such use of Ariel in postcolonial thought is far from uncommon, as Ariel is even the namesake of a scholarly journal covering post-colonial criticism.^[30]

[edit] Feminist

The Tempest has only one visible female character in Miranda. Other women, such as Caliban's mother Sycorax, Miranda's mother, and Alonso's daughter Claribel, are only mentioned. Because of the small role women play in the story in comparison to other Shakespeare plays, The Tempest has not attracted much feminist criticism. Miranda is typically viewed as being completely deprived of freedom by her father. Her only duty in his eyes is to remain chaste. Ann Thompson argues that Miranda, in a manner typical of women in a colonial atmosphere, has completely internalized the patriarchal order of things, thinking of herself as a subordinate to her father.^[31]

The less-prominent women of the play are subordinated as well, as they are only described through the men of the play. Most of what is said about Sycorax, for example, is said by Prospero. Further, Stephen Orgel notes that Prospero has never met Sycorax—all he learned about her he learned from Ariel. According to Orgel, Prospero's suspicion of women makes him an unreliable source of information. Orgel suggests that he is skeptical of female virtue in general, citing his ambiguous remark about his wife's fidelity.^[32]

[edit] Afterlife

[edit] Stage history

[edit] Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum

The first recorded performance of The Tempest occurred on November 1, 1611, when the King's Men acted the play before James I and the English royal court at Whitehall Palace on Hallowmas night. It was also one of the eight Shakespearean plays acted at Court during the winter of 1612-13, as part of the festivities surrounding the marriage of Princess Elizabeth with Frederick V, the Elector of the Palatinate in the Rhineland.^[33] There is no public performance recorded prior to the Restoration; but in his preface to the 1667 Dryden/Davenant version (see below) Sir William Davenant states that The Tempest had been performed at the Blackfriars Theatre. Careful consideration of stage directions within the play supports this, strongly suggesting that the play was written with Blackfriars Theatre rather than the Globe Theatre in mind.^[34]

[edit] 17th-19th century adaptations

Adaptations of the play, not Shakespeare's original, dominated the performance history of The Tempest from the restoration until the mid-nineteenth century.^[35]

All theatres were closed down by the puritan government during the Commonwealth. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them.^[36] Sir William Davenant's Duke's Company had the rights to perform Shakespeare's Tempest. However, the play was considered unsuitable for Restoration audiences, and in 1667 it was heavily cut and adapted by Davenant and John Dryden, and given the title The Tempest or, The Enchanted Island.^[37] Dryden and Davenant added characters and plotlines: Miranda has a sister, named Dorinda; and Caliban's mother is named Sycorax. As a parallel to Shakespeare's Miranda/Ferdinand plot, Prospero has a foster-son, Hippolito, who has never set eyes on a woman.^[38] Hippolito was a popular breeches role, a man played by a woman, popular with restoration theatre management for the opportunity to reveal actresses' legs.^[39] Scholar Michael Dobson has described Enchanted Island as "the most frequently revived play of the entire Restoration" and as establishing the importance of enhanced and additional roles for women.^[40]

In 1674, Thomas Shadwell re-adapted Dryden and Davenant's Enchanted Island as an opera: although in Restoration theatre "opera" did not have its modern meaning, instead referring to a play with added songs, closer in style to a modern musical comedy.^[41] Restoration playgoers appear to have regarded the Dryden/Davenant/Shadwell version as Shakespeare's: Samuel Pepys, for example, described it as "an old play of Shakespeares" in his diary.^[42] The opera was extremely popular, and Pepys considered it "full of so good variety, that I cannot be more pleased almost in a comedy"^[43] The Prospero in this version is very different from Shakespeare's: Eckhard Auberlen describes him as "...reduced to the status of a Polonius-like overbusy father, intent on protecting the chastity of his two sexually naive daughters while planning advantageous dynastic marriages for them."^[44] Enchanted Island was successful enough to provoke a parody, The Mock Tempest, written by Thomas Duffett for the King's Company in 1675. It opened with what appeared to be a tempest, but turned out to be a riot in a brothel.^[45]

In the early eighteenth century, the Dryden/Davenant/Shadwell version dominated the stage. Ariel was (with two exceptions) played by a woman, and (invariably) by a graceful dancer and superb singer. Caliban was a comedian's role, played by actors "known for their awkward figures".^[46] In 1756, David Garrick staged another operatic version, a "three-act extravaganza" with music by John Christopher Smith.^[47]

The Tempest was one of the staples of the repertoire of Romantic Era theatres. John Philip Kemble produced an acting version which was closer to Shakespeare's original, but nevertheless retained Dorinda and Hippolito.^[48] Kemble was much-mocked for his insistence on archaic pronunciation of Shakespeare's texts, including "aitches" for "aches". It was said that spectators "packed the pit, just to enjoy hissing Kemble's delivery of 'I'll rack thee with old cramps, / Fill all they bones with aches'."^[49][50] The actor-managers of the Romantic Era established the fashion for opulence in sets and costumes which would dominate Shakespeare performances until the late nineteenth century: Kemble's Dorinda and Miranda, for example, were played "in white ornamented with spotted furs".^[51]

[edit] 18th-19th century performances

In 1757, a year after the debut of his operatic version, David Garrick produced a heavily-cut performance of Shakespeare's script at Drury Lane, and it was revived, profitably, throughout the century.^[52] However, it was not until William Charles Macready's influential production in 1838, that Shakespeare's text established its primacy over the adapted and operatic versions which had been popular for most of the previous two centuries.^[53] The performance was particularly admired for George Bennett's performance as Caliban, described as "maintaining in his mind, a stong resistance to that tyranny, which held him in the thraldom of slavery".^[54]

The Victorian Era marked the height of the movement which would later be described as "pictorial": based on lavish sets and visual spectacle, heavily cut texts (making room for lengthy scene-changes), and elaborate stage effects.^[55] In Charles Kean's 1857 production of The Tempest, Ariel was several times seen to descend in a ball of fire.^[56] The 140 scene hands supposedly employed on this production were described by the Literary Gazette as "unseen ... but alas never unheard".^[57] Hans Christian Andersen also saw this production and described Ariel as "isolated by the electric ray", referring to the effect of a carbon arc directed at the actress playing the role.^[58] The next generation of producers, which included William Poel and Harley Granville-Barker, returned to a leaner and more text-based style.^[59]

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it became Caliban, not Prospero, who was perceived as the star act of the Tempest, and was the role which the actor-managers chose for themselves.^[60] Frank Benson researched the role by viewing monkeys and baboons at the zoo: on stage, he hung upside-down from a tree and gibbered.^[61]

[edit] 20th-21st century performances

Continuing the late-nineteenth-century tradition, in 1904 Herbert Beerbohm Tree wore fur and seaweed to play Caliban, with waist-length hair and apelike bearing, suggestive of a primitive part-animal part-human stage of evolution.^[62] This "missing-link" portrayal of Caliban became the norm in productions until Roger Livesey, in 1934, was the first actor to play the role with black makeup.^[63] In 1945 Canada Lee played the role at the Theatre Guild in New York, establishing a tradition of black actors taking the role, including Earle Hyman in 1960 and James Earl Jones in 1962.^[64]

John Gielgud played Prospero numerous times, and called it his favorite role.^[65] Douglas Brode describes him as "universally heralded as... [the 20th] century's greatest stage Prospero".^[66] His first appearance in the role was in 1930: he wore a turban, later confessing that he intended to look like Dante.^[67] He played the role in three more stage productions, lastly at the Royal National Theatre in 1974.^{[citation needed]}

Peter Brook directed an experimental production at the Round House in 1968, in which the text was "almost wholly abandoned" in favour of mime. According to Margaret Croydon's review, Sycorax was "portrayed by an enormous woman able to expand her face and body to still larger proportions - a fantastic emblem of the grotesque ... [who] suddenly ... gives a horrendous yell, and Caliban, with black sweater over his head, emerges from between her legs: Evil is born."^[68]

In spite of the existing tradition of a black actor playing Caliban opposite a white Prospero, colonial interpretations of the play did not find their way onto the stage until the 1970s.^[69] Performances in England directed by Jonathan Miller and by Clifford Williams explicitly portrayed Prospero as coloniser. Miller's production was described, by David Hirst, as depicting "the tragic and inevitable disintegration of a more primitive culture as the result of European invasion and colonisation."^[70][71] Miller developed this approach in his 1988 production at the Old Vic in London, starring Max von Sydow as Prospero. This used a mixed cast made up of white actors as the humans and black actors playing the spirits and creatures of the island. According to Michael Billington, "von Sydow's Prospero became a white overlord manipulating a mutinous black Caliban and a collaborative Ariel keenly mimicking the gestures of the island's invaders. The colonial metaphor was pushed through to its logical conclusion so that finally Ariel gathered up the pieces of Prospero's abandoned staff and, watched by awe-struck tribesmen, fitted them back together to hold his wand of office aloft before an immobilized Caliban. The Tempest suddenly acquired a new political dimension unforeseen by Shakespeare."^[72]

Psychoanalytic interpretations have proved more difficult to depict on stage.^[73] Gerald Freedman's American Shakespeare Theatre production in 1981 and Ron Daniels' RSC production in 1982 both attempted to depict Ariel and Caliban as opposing aspects of Prospero's psyche. However neither was regarded as wholly successful: Shakespeare Quarterly, reviewing Freedman's production, commented that "the allegorical meaning was not clear to an audience that had not been alerted to it in advance".^[74]

In 1988, John Wood played Prospero for the RSC, emphasising the character's human complexity. The Financial Times reviewer described him as "a demented stage manager on a theatrical island suspended between smouldering rage at his usurpation and unbridled glee at his alternative ethereal power".^[75]

Sam Mendes directed a 1993 RSC production in which Simon Russell Beale's Ariel was openly resentful of the control exercised by Alec McCowen's Prospero. Controversially, in the early performances of the run, Ariel spat at Prospero, once granted his freedom.^[76] An entirely different effect was achieved by George C. Wolfe in the outdoor New York Shakespeare Festival production of 1995, where the casting of Aunjanue Ellis as Ariel opposite Patrick Stewart's Prospero charged the production with erotic tensions.^[77] Late twentieth-century productions have gradually increased the focus placed on sexual (and sometimes homosexual) tensions between the characters, including Prospero/Miranda, Prospero/Ariel, Miranda/Caliban, Miranda/Ferdinand and even Caliban/Trinculo.^[78]

The Tempest was performed at the Globe Theatre in 2000 with Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero, playing the role as neither male nor female, but with "authority, humanity and humour... a watchful parent to both Miranda and Ariel."^[79] While the audience respected Prospero, Jasper Britton's Caliban "was their man" (in Peter Thomson's words), in spite of the fact that he spat fish at the groundlings, and singled some of them out for humiliating encounters.^[80]

BBC Radio has aired over 300 Shakespeare performances in its history, and The Tempest is the most popular of them, having been produced 21 times.^[81]

[edit] 20th-21st century adaptations

In 1916, Percy MacKaye presented a community masque, Caliban by the Yellow Sands, at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York. Amidst a huge cast of dancers and masquers, the pageant centers on the rebellious nature of Caliban but ends with his plea for more knowledge ("I yearn to build, to be thine Artist / And 'stablish this thine Earth among the stars- / Beautiful!") followed by Shakespeare, as a character, reciting Prospero's "Our revels now are ended" speech.^[82][83]

The most successful twentieth-century musical adaptation of The Tempest is Michael Tippett's 1971 opera The Knot Garden, in which the central character, the psychoanalyst Mangus, pretends to be Prospero and uses situations from Shakespeare's play in his therapy sessions.^[84]

Japanese theatre styles have been applied to The Tempest. In 1988 and again in 1992 Yukio Ninagawa brought his version of The Tempest to the UK. It was staged as a rehearsal of a Noh drama, with a traditional Noh theatre at the back of the stage, but also using elements which were at odds with Noh conventions.^[85] In 1992, Minoru Fujita presented a Bunraku (Japanese puppet) version in Osaka and at the Tokyo Globe.^[86]

In 2006, a new musical version of The Tempest, with book and lyrics using Shakespeare's original words, premiered at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City. The Tempest Musical featured songs by Daniel Neiden and a book adapted from the original play by Ryan Knowles and Daniel Neiden, based on a concept by Tony-award winner Thomas Meehan (writer).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Screen versions

See also Shakespeare on screen (The Tempest).

The Tempest first appeared on the screen in 1905. Charles Urban filmed the opening storm sequence of Herbert Beerbohm Tree's version at Her Majesty's Theatre for a 2½-minute flicker, on which individual frames were hand-tinted to give the impression of colour film, long before its invention.^[87] In 1908, Percy Stowe directed a Tempest running a little over ten minutes. Much of its action takes place on Prospero's island before the storm which opens Shakespeare's play.^[88] At least two further silent versions, one of them by Edwin Thanhouser, are known to have existed, but have been lost.^[89] The plot was adapted for the Western Yellow Sky, directed by William A. Wellman, in 1946.^[90]

The 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet set the story on the planet Altair-IV. Professor Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis) are the Prospero and Miranda figures. Ariel is represented by the helpful Robbie the Robot, but Caliban is represented by the dangerous and invisible "monster from the id": a projection of Morbius' psyche.^[91]

In the opinion of Douglas Brode, there has only been one screen "performance" of The Tempest since the silent era: he describes all other versions as "variations".^[92] That one performance is the Hallmark Hall of Fame version from 1960, directed by George Schaefer, and starring Maurice Evans, Lee Remick and Roddy McDowall.^[93] Critic Virginia Vaughan praised it as "light as a soufflé, but ... substantial enough for the main course."^[94] Contrary to Brode's opinion, two full-text performances have been screened, one for the "BBC Television Shakespeare" series, starring Michael Hordern as Prospero (UK, 1979) and another for the "Shakespeare Collection" (also known as the "Quantum Leap") series, starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Prospero (USA, 1983).^{[citation needed]}

In 1980, Derek Jarman produced a homoerotic Tempest which used Shakespeare's language, but was most notable for its deviations from Shakespeare. One scene shows a corpulent and naked Sycorax (Claire Davenport) breastfeeding her adult son Caliban (Jack Birkett). The film reaches its climax with Elisabeth Welch belting out Stormy Weather.^[95] The central performances were Toyah Willcox' Miranda and Heathcote Williams' Prospero, a "dark brooding figure who takes pleasure in exploiting both his servants"^[96]

Paul Mazursky's 1982 modern-language adaptation of The Tempest, with Phillip (Prospero) as a disillusioned New York architect who retreats to a lonely Greek island with his daughter Miranda, dealt frankly with the sexual tensions of the characters' isolated existence. The Caliban character, the goatherd Kalibanos, asks Phillip which of them is going to have sex with Miranda.^[97] John Cassavetes played Phillip, Raul Julia Kalibanos, and Molly Ringwald Miranda. Susan Sarandon plays the Ariel character, Phillip's frequently-bored girlfriend Aretha. The film has been criticised as "overlong and rambling", but also praised for its good humour, especially in a sequence in which Kalibanos' and his goats dance to Kander and Ebb's New York, New York.^[98]

John Gielgud has written that playing Prospero in a film of The Tempest was his life's amibition. Over the years, he approached Alain Resnais, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, and Orson Welles to direct.^[99][100] Eventually, the project was taken on by Peter Greenaway, who directed Prospero's Books (1991) featuring, in Laurie Rozakis' words, "an 87-year-old John Gielgud and an impressive amount of nudity".^[101] Prospero is reimagined as the author of The Tempest, speaking the lines of the other characters, as well as his own.^[102] Although the film was acknowledged as innovative in its use of Quantel Paintbox to create visual tableux, resulting in "unprecedented visual complexity",^[103] critical responses to the film were frequently negative: John Simon called it "contemptible and pretentious".^[104]

Closer to the spirit of Shakespeare's original, in the view of critics such as Brode, is Leon Garfield's abridgement of the play for S4C's 1992 Shakespeare: The Animated Tales series. The 29-minute production, directed by Stanislav Sokolov and featuring Timothy West as the voice of Prospero, used stop-motion puppets to capture the fairy-tale quality of the play. ^[105] Disney's animated feature Pocahontas has been described as a "politically corrected" Tempest.^[106] Another "offbeat variation" (in Brode's words) was produced for NBC in 1998: Jack Bender's The Tempest featured Peter Fonda as Gideon Prosper, a Southern slave-owner forced off his plantation by his brother shortly before the Civil War. A magician who has learned his art from one of his slaves, Prosper uses his magic to protect his teenage daughter and to assist the Union Army.^[107]

[edit] Music

See also the sections on stage adaptations, above.

Two settings of songs from The Tempest have survived which may have been used in performances during Shakespeare's lifetime. These are Full Fathom Five and Where The Bee Sucks There Suck I from the 1659 Cheerful Ayres or Ballads, in which they are attributed to Robert Johnson, the lutenist to James I.^[108] It has been common, throughout the history of the play, for the producers to commission contemporary settings of those two songs, and of Come Unto These Yellow Sands.^[109] The Tempest has proved more popular as a subject for composers than most of Shakespeare's plays. Scholar Julie Sanders ascribes this to the "perceived 'musicality' or lyricism" of the play.^[110] Ballet sequences have often been used in performances the play, since Restoration times.^[111] Tchaikovsky wrote an orchestral work, The Tempest (Tchaikovsky), based on the play. Sibelius wrote a suite for The Tempest, for a lavish 1926 production at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. He represented individual characters through instrumentation choices: particularly admired was his use of harps and percussion to represent Prospero, said to capture the "resonant ambiguity of the character".^[112] The Tempest also influenced music in the "folk and "hippie" traditions: for example, versions Full Fathom Five were recorded by Marianne Faithfull for Come My Way in 1965 and by Pete Seeger for Dangerous Songs!? in 1966.^[113]

Full Fathom Five and The Cloud-Capp'd Towers are two of the Three Shakespeare Songs set to music by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. He wrote the pieces for a cappella SATB choir in 1951 by for the British Federation of Music Festivals, and they remain a popular part of British choral repertoire today.^{[citation needed]}

Several operatic or semi-operatic versions of The Tempest exist: in addition to the Dryden/Davenant and Garrick versions mentioned in "Adaptations" above, Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1821, with music by Sir Henry Bishop.^[114] Swiss composer Frank Martin produced Der Sturm in 1965; and American composer John Eaton, in 1985, produced a fusion of live jazz with pre-recorded electronic music, with a libretto by Andrew Porter.^[115] The soprano who sings the part of Ariel in Thomas Adès' 21st century opera is stretched at the lower end of the register, highlighting the androgyny of the role.^[116]

[edit] Art

[edit] Painting

From the mid-eighteenth century, Shakespeare's plays, including The Tempest, began to appear as the subject of paintings.^[117] In around 1735, William Hogarth produced his painting A Scene from The Tempest, in the rococo style.^{[citation needed]} The painting is based upon Shakespeare's text, containing no representation of the stage, nor of the (Davenant-Dryden centred) stage tradition of the time.^[118] Henry Fuseli, in a painting commissioned for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789) modelled his Prospero on Leonardo da Vinci.^[119] These two eighteenth century depictions of the play indicate that Prospero was regarded as its moral centre: viewers of Hogarth's and Fuseli's paintings would have accepted Prospero's wisdom and authority.^[120] Millais's Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1851) is the most important Pre-Raphaelite painting based on the play.^{[citation needed]} In the late nineteenth century, artists tended to depict Caliban as a Darwinian "missing-link", with fish-like or ape-like features^[121], as evidenced in Noel Paton's Caliban.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Illustrated editions

Charles Knight produced the Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakespeare in eight volumes, from 1838-1843. The work attempted to translate the contents of the plays into pictorial form. This extended not just to the action, but also to images and metaphors: Gonzalo's line about "mountaineers dewlapped like bulls" is illustrated with a picture of a Swiss peasant with a goitre.^[122] In 1908, Edmund Dulac produced an edition of Shakespeare's Comedy of The Tempest with a scholarly plot summary and commentary by Arthur Quiller-Couch, lavishly bound and illustrated with 40 watercolour illustrations. The illustrations highlight the fairy-tale quality of the play, avoiding its dark side. Of the 40, only 12 are direct depictions of the action of the play: the others are based on action before the play begins, or on images such as "full fathom five thy father lies" or "sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not".^[123]

[edit] Literature

Shelley was one of the earliest poets to be influenced by The Tempest. His With a Guitar, To Jane identifies Ariel with 'the Poet', personified.^[124] Following the publication of Darwin's ideas on evolution, writers began to question mankind's place in the world and its relationship with God. One writer who explored these ideas was Robert Browning, whose poem Caliban upon Setebos (1864) sets Shakespeare's character pondering theological and philosophical questions.^[125] The French philosopher Ernest Renan wrote a closet drama, Caliban: Suite de La Tempête, in 1878. A sequel to The Tempest, it features a female Ariel who follows Prospero back to Milan, and a Caliban who leads a coup against Propspero, after the success of which he actively imitates his former master's virtues.^[126] W. H. Auden's poem The Sea and the Mirror takes the form of a reflection by each of the supporting characters of The Tempest on their experiences. The poem takes a Freudian viewpoint, seeing Caliban as Prospero's libido.^[127] Caliban influenced numerous works of African literature in the 1970s, including pieces by Taban Lo Liyong in Uganda, Lemuel Johnson in Sierra Leone, Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Kenya, and David Wallace of Zambia's Do You Love Me, Master?.^[128] A similar phemonenon occurred in late 20th-century Canada, where several writers produced works inspired by Miranda, including The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Prospero's Daughter by Constance Beresford-Howe and The Measure of Miranda by Sarah Murphy.^[129] Other writers have feminised Ariel (as in Marina Warner's novel Indigo) or Caliban (as in Suniti Namjoshi's sequence of poems Snaphots of Caliban).^[130]

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Editions of The Tempest

[edit] Secondary sources

[edit] Further reading

• Gerald Graff and James Phelan, The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy, London, MacMillan, 2000
• Frances A. Yates, Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975
• Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
• Shakespeare's The Tempest: The Wise Man as Hero
• The Theme of Natural Order in "The Tempest"
• Form and Disorder in The Tempest
• The Magic of Charity: A Background to Prospero

[edit] External links

Find more about The Tempest on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Dictionary definitions
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	Learning resources

• The Tempest - plain vanilla text from Project Gutenberg
• The Tempest - scene indexed, online version of the play.
• The Tempest - HTML version of this title.
• The Tempest - Searchable, scene-indexed version of the play.
• Bermoothes in E. Cobham Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898).
• Lesson plans for The Tempest at Web English Teacher
• William Strachey's "True Reportory" original-spelling version at Virtual Jamestown.

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