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The director’s interpretation
The Tempest was by most accounts Shakespeare’s last play (1611) and probably produced for King James I, indoors, at the Blackfriar’s Theatre, rather than outdoors at the Globe, Bankside theatre. Others have considered, before me, that it is Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage, and first of all, I bear in mind the warning in York Notes “…it would be foolish to force such an interpretation on the text”. Foolish or not, that is my interpretation, because it is justified from the text, as I hope to show, and there is some dramatic potential by following that interpretation. I don’t claim it to be original! I don’t intend to impose such a perception on the audience, but I want the following ideas at the heart of the production, for the audience to engage with, as the complicated tensions between appearance and reality are constantly questioned. I also want to place it, as I see it, in the context of Shakespeare’s work as a whole.
I see Prospero presenting as a playwright in “real life”, writing The Tempest, and as he writes it, the play appears simultaneously for the audience. It is not beyond possibility that the part was acted BY Shakespeare originally. We are invited to see his imagination at work. There are points where actors are “frozen” in time as Prospero’s magic works on them – in the script, and there may be further opportunities to demonstrate that by creating further significant “freezes”, as Prospero’s imagination pauses for breath. The deserted island becomes a metaphor for the world of the theatre of which Prospero’s imagination is the prime mover. The “island” is peopled with spirits. Their “reality” is questioned – as Prospero says “These our actors / As I foretold you, were all spirits, and / Are melted into air.” (Air becomes the dominant metaphor for his imagination through Ariel and appears elsewhere in Shakespeare’s expression of “an airy word” – I’ve forgotten where!). The “island” (theatre) becomes a place to act out scenarios of revenge on the people who “usurped” him, as well as love-tales.
Shakespeare, we could conjecture, would have had feelings of being apart from his home of Stratford upon Avon, since his father was cut down from his position as Alderman, under mysterious circumstances, possibly connected with the campaign against Catholicism (explored in the TV series “In Search of Shakespeare”). How much time Shakespeare spent at home in Stratford or in London, is a matter of conjecture, but it is clear he worked hard over the years at re-establishing his family’s position in the town, buying up property, and he returned to spend his last years there ( Bill Bryson’s recent book is helpful in re-stating how much we DON’T know). But to have achieved the extent of his popularity and ascendance in the London theatre must have entailed a considerable absence from home, whether enforced or voluntary. In many ways, London must have been his exile upon a desert, but magical island.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays concern revenge, though that is said of a lot of Jacobean plays – so much so that it could be a genre: eg Hamlet, or Iago in Othello. Banishment is a theme in Romeo and Juliet, being cast out to the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, or Lear and the Fool exposed to the storms, and Viola shipwrecked in Twelfth Night. So the playwright of The Tempest creates a metaphorical character for himself in this play, as a learned, strict, ascetic Duke of Milan, betrayed and usurped of his land, exiled by an ambitious and ruthless younger brother. His downfall had been caused by his abandonment of public life and forgetting to keep attention to his grip on worldly power, in favour of learning, (I,2 ,90) which now, as fortunes turn full circle, enables him to gain first mastery of his supernatural powers, the island, his enemies and finally himself and his own feelings.
Gonzalo had left him (1,2 ,168) with his books which he loves. He delves deeper into them such that they become the source of supernatural power. Caliban recognises this and warns the plotters that they are the source of his strength. “Remember/First to possess his books, for without them/He’s but a sot as I am” (III, 2,52) His art he generates through the pen, rather than a magic staff. The text leads to this conclusion. “I can disarm the with this stick” ( 1,2,472) The stick need not be a big magician-like staff, but a pen, which is clearly mightier than the sword in the theatre. When Prospero gives up his Art, he returns to court dress and a sword ( V,1,86). The Art that he puts on physically, will be a costume made to look as if the collected works of the playwright are written on the cloth, so that he is wearing his art as a cloak, which he can put on or off. He will sit near the stage and compose the scenes which follow there and then, or take part in them himself. The pressing urgency of time in the play could reflect the time pressure of working to deadlines. His circle which he draws represents the Wooden O, and indeed his name itself could wish that it “prosper” when he has gone. It is a fond but troubled farewell to his existence on this island, and perhaps there is more than a hint of wish-fulfilment - that Shakespeare could have had more time bringing up his daughter Susannah, by having Prospero bring up Miranda through childhood to womanhood.
The audience may make those connections, if they have knowledge of Shakespeare’s life, but very possibly will not. The play should appeal to those who know and those who don’t. All they need to know is that they see the magician is a magician of words. What is real or not real is questioned in the play. Prospero will not see a “real” Ariel, for Ariel is his own imaginative effort, and in the scenes, Ariel is invisible to others, except when he appears as a Harpy. That has been done before. John Gielgud never looked directly at Ariel, and in the film adaptation “Prospero’s books” there are four Ariels of different ages (Introduction to Penguin edition). In the 1998 RSC version “Prospero never saw Ariel, and knew of his presence only through an electric shock that he received when they occasionally touched”. (Penguin intro again) Much of what happens in the conclusion are “visions” which, by his art, Prospero has called forth. The audience are told they are not real. The audience will appreciate that the theatre is not “really” a desert island, only a representation. They may go on to see that representation as a metaphor of the theatre, and at the same time “really” a theatre. Or really the Manor Gardens temporarily adapted as a theatre. Confusing games (now called self-reflexive theatre) which Shakespeare was always playing with his audience, for instance in presenting the actors - boys dressed as girls, who then disguise themselves as boys. Ariel confirms the word-ly power of Prospero ; his commands are carried “To every article” ( 1,2,197) and “To th’syllable ( 1,2,500)
Caliban has been interpreted in a myriad of ways – a fish, an ape, a wild man, a werewolf, an albino, a black slave, a thalidomide child, a punk rocker, a football hooligan, a Rastafarian. The Penguin intro says “The role can be played by any marginalized or demonised group.” I see him as the counterpart alter ego to Ariel, the “sot” that, without his books, Prospero would be (II,2,52). In his comic role of Lancelot Gobbo, in Merchant of Venice, he gives us a man torn between an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. In this “tragic-comedy”, the devil-figure of Caliban is the “thing of darkness” which he can “acknowledge mine” ( V,1,276). This is an understandable modern behaviour-management position,that you first have to acknowledge the problem within you, accept ownership of it, in order to deal with it. Like the alcoholic has to stand up at an AA meeting and admit his/her problem.
The attempted overthrow of Prospero by Stephano ( a drunk) and Trinculo ( a jester, whose name in Italian means a drinker) and Caliban, is in this sense a struggle for mastery of Prospero over his own appetites, or the consequences of those appetites - illness. Caliban’s immediate priority is food :“ I must eat my dinner” (1,2,331) and his first words are a reciprocal curse, linked with disease.. “ blister you all oe’er”. I intend the you to be emphasised, as Caliban will be inflicted with blisters by Prospero, every kind of disease. The numerous references to fish could be consistent with a scaly, blistered skin. He wills an identical curse of disease on Prospero in II.2.(1-3). He is “pinch-spotted” (IV,1, 259) . Prospero’s threats, and Caliban’s fears are all based on sickness or disease. ”his mind cankers” (IV,1,192). He is “misshapen” (V,1,268). He is of the earth (I, 2, 314) in contrast to the Air, Fire and Water which I would associate with Ariel, who commands thunderbolts and the sea, on behalf of Prospero. The description by Trinculo tells us Caliban smells, has arms and legs ( II,2,34) but looks as if stricken with a thunderbolt, (perhaps consistent with burns or a skin disease) . He is a “scurvy” monster ( II,2,145). Stephano perceives the two of them have “an ague” (II,2,66 94) or have had a “fit” (75 ) and repeatedly plies him with drink to relieve him. Curing the sinner with sin.
To the medieval mind we may think it appeared that illness or disease was the outward and visible sign of divine punishment, and such as lepers were seen as belonging outside society, or below it, as the repeated references to Caliban as like a beggar tell us. Caliban is impoverished ,as anyone who was sick, or diseased, and outside the protection of a strong family would be. Unlike our welfare-state conditioned understanding, poverty and its blight was the responsibility of the impoverished themselves, and only reluctantly did the parish intervene to alleviate it. But even in our times, such as AIDS victims have suffered the opprobium of the ignorant. Shakespeare’s theatre was, as was16th/17th century London generally, under direct threat from plague. It was the most potent enemy of humanity, to be feared, and with no scientific understanding to counter it. Gestures in our times, such as Princess Diana’s in holding an AIDS sufferer’s hands, have helped to counteract that ‘primitive’ instinct to reject such suffering, and tendency to blame the victim. I would like to work such a gesture into the epilogue. And with Caliban, as Prospero’s ‘dark side’, he could be the poor man Shakespeare might have been ( as Poor Tom in Lear), or if the illness, disease or addiction to drink (that Prospero is I think fighting within himself) had cast him down. It could explain Prospero’s tetchiness, his sudden abandonment of the masque, and the outright cruelty he displays to Caliban during the play. No quarter for the demon that would overthrow him.
There is a problem of what happens to Caliban at the end of the play, having been dismissed to clean up Prospero’s cell. Caliban is left the island to himself as Prospero leaves, and Caliban is variously presented as bereft, or triumphant at regaining the island to himself. I envisage neither, but in the very last lines, Caliban being lifted to full stature by Prospero ; “ As you from crimes would pardoned be/ Let your indulgence set me free” - asking forgiveness of the audience yes, but as I’dlike it to be played, the forgiveness of Caliban - victim, offender and enemy. The epilogue makes mentions “good hands” – naturally taken as the audience’s applause, to release him from the “bands”. But the granting of Caliban’s humanity through a warm touch of the hands for the first time is something which is consistent with the theme of forgiveness and reconciliation, a major theme of the play. Love thy enemy. A very simple Christian message at the end.
Scene II, 2 is based on the corruption of Caliban by drink, of how “ridiculous” a thing it is to “make a wonder of a poor drunkard” ( II,2, 156) Caliban’s worship of the false god of drink, represents the temptation which would have erstwhile overthrown Prospero from achieving his art, or wasted his opportunity to return successfully to ‘real life’. Or maybe Prospero is now sick, and hiding that from everyone and needs to make peace with the world, and drink is a self-medication. Either way, we can’t ignore the campaign against drink which appears to be the official moral of the tale. As Bryson points out, earnings from the Theatre were significant, but nothing like a nobleman’s bankroll, and Shakespeare appears, on Bryson’s account to have been ‘frugal’ - a word Shakespeare himself coined. I would like Prospero to be seen, as he writes the play, battling with his “demon drink” or an illness, as he repeatedly is tempted and puts down the bottle at the side of his desk, or feels a “side-stitch” or two. The battle with drink must have been a difficult uphill struggle in those times when drinking large quantities was more common because of the inability to drink the insanitary water in London, and pretty much so in any town. Shakespeare’s greatest comic characters are drunkards – Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the Puritan Malvolio in 12th Night does not encourage us to assume that ascetic values are best, so that Shakespeare’s attitude, perhaps like all other drinkers, is ambivalent towards his poison. Caliban has likeable qualities, is sensitive to music, describes the island beautifully, and is loyal to those who treat him kindly, but he is also bestial in his appetites, libidinous, rancorous and a prompter of violence. But if Caliban is Prospero’s alter ego, can it be so dark a side to Prospero that it could encompass the rape of his own daughter? That would be a step too far.
I think that if not Shakespeare, then the playwright- Prospero ( as a composite/archetypal playwright of the period – perhaps a Christopher Marlowe – who dabbled in the occult - if he had survived?) , is portrayable as in the final stages of his battle in overcoming such an addiction to temptation or a supervening illness, which he acknowledges his, and by overcoming it can return to ‘normal’ life, or an ill-health retirement. To assume that the world of London and the theatre must have been riddled with the temptation, licentiousness and disease is one thing, but to suggest that the bard had a major, dark problem with it is another. But we know he had an intimate understanding of the wasters such as Sir Toby Belch, and Falstaff. And it is significant that he puts Falstaff in Henry IV part 1 at first alongside the young wastrel Hal, who is thenceforth on a redemptive quest for the attainment of self-mastery - the key to kingly virtue in Henry IV Part I. Ferdinand’s abasement to log-carrier, immediately after Caliban’s exit, speaks words which could apply to a redeemed Caliban : “Some kinds of baseness/ Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters/Point to rich ends.” II.1,2)
Prospero’s disenchantment is with the “trash” and “frippery” of the theatre (IV 1,224,226) , the outward shows of costume, the “trumpery” (IV ,1, 187) which the “rabble” ( IV 1 37) are seduced by. Caliban sees how little it is worth, and thereby recognises how he has been fooled into worshipping a drunkard. Prospero’s sudden and inexplicable abandonment of his visions he has called forth in the forms of the gods for the masque (IV, 1 138), is his throwing away of the high as well as the low forms of trumpery. It is all a “vanity” (IV, 1, 41) and may perhaps explain his indulgence of the ornate, “majestic” (IV,1,118) verse and dance, only to cast it off instantly, in favour of dealing with the rabble. His disenchantment could be out of this sense of futility, but may stem from a debilitating weakness only he knows he has, and does not want others to see. Good potential for dramatic irony there, as the audience sees his problem, but the other actors don’t. The dependence of all these spirits, visions, actors, is entirely on his “old brain” ( IV,1, 159) and is total. It is a psychological drama. There is no “reality” outside his mind. “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on”. Life and this play is an “insubstantial pageant”. There is no substance in real life, whose meaning lies in airy words, and whose achievements are only so far as they point towards the abstract ends of virtue and forgiveness. Are we talking here of Prospero the existentialist? Or Prospero on a moral Christian pilgrimage as he casts away his beloved gods of the classics, drowns his book, breaks his staff (his pen), and quits the sorcery of words – for a final, simple Christian prayer.
None of these points above are beyond challenge. They do have support in the text. A director has to take some sort of line, and this is the avenue I would like to explore. The consequences and problems it creates may mean they have to change, and the actors’ own interpretation will, I hope, adapt it too. But as a director, I hope this provides actors and crew a basis and a starting point on ways to explore. And something has to keep individual contributions from taking the whole play off in a different direction. I hope this provides the structure on which actors and crew can experiment without deviating too widely that it loses coherence.
Staging :
As bare as possible – for reasons of economy, but also the desertedness of the island. Just a raised plinth in the centre, overlaid with a rocky textured/painted cloth.
Raised areas where actors will observe will be behind the wall overlooking the stage. The rock, which imprisoned Caliban, will be the screen near the prompt desk, painted to look rock-like.
The discovery space will be the lych-gate entrance, capable of being masked by fishing nets draped.
A desk and chair at the side of the stage, for Prospero’s books, pen and ink, and a bottle.
Music :
I am In favour of live music and am in process of investigating this - there is great potential for incidental music, such as in Matthew Locke’s composition for a 1667 version.
Dance :
There are opportunities for a dance group to play the nymphs and reapers in the masque, and double as spirits in the banquet scene, and sailors in the storm scene. I am investigating this.
Goddesses :
Not the easiest of scenes or the most attractive or apparently rewarding of parts for female actresses. I am hoping that casting Ariel as female and possibly other parts cross-gendered may even the balance.
Visions :
The disappearing banquet is a problem which may be overcome with a reversible table, but getting that on/off stage isn’t going to be easy. I thought about screen projection of art work for that and the pursuit by wolves, but am guided by concerns over cost, and the additional set for a screen, as well as the probability that technology will tend to let us down.
The storm :
I would like some suggestions of ship props, such as a ship’s helm, and sailing gear, maybe ropes on pulleys for smooth running. A pulley system might help later move the costumes on stage when Ariel tempts the plotters with fine costumes on a line. The storm scene has to be as attention-grabbing as possible. Choreographed dancers with blue sheets could raise and lower them in pairs to create the effect of waves. A thunder sheet for sound effects back stage. However, the imagination might work better!
How much does all this interpretation matter to the production? Probably very little in terms of audience perception, but a lot for my own engagement and I hope also the actors and crew, which might then rub off on the audience as we become confident about what we’re doing. If the audience picks up biographical interpretation, so much the better, but if others are content to see it as a fairy-tale, that is their interpretation and just as valid, if they want to suspend their disbelief. I will be happy if some of the audience perceive it as an ALLEGORY, a moral journey for Prospero, like a Pilgrim’s Progress. They won’t be forced into seeing it that way. I would ask that the acting is consistent with the points I have made, which I summarise :
These are ideas in progress… Lawry Rhodes 19 January 2009
Director’s contact details : 17 Pembury Road Eastbourne East Sussex BN23 7HJ Tel 01323 460091 Mobile 0793 2718781 E-mail : lawryrhodes@yahoo.co.uk
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