Staging a comeback

Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” choosing an artistic life, a room of one's own

The shipwreck in the first act, directed by Prospero

I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “The Tempest.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week, “Henry VIII.”

In the documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, a film brimming with memorable stories, none was more affecting than Darlene Love’s. After having recorded multiple top hits for Phil Spector, who controlled their copyrights, Love was forced to work outside the music industry to make money to raise her children. One day she was cleaning a Beverly Hills bathroom when she heard one of her songs playing on the radio. Presumably, the radio station paid the royalty to Spector; the song’s creator didn’t receive a cent. That moment galvanized her to reclaim her artistic career. With that decision, Darlene Love became a legend in her own right.

Not every female artist portrayed in the documentary is as well known. What would the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter be without the gospel-infused ‘backup’ singer’s voice punching through the lyrics, sidelining Mick Jagger’s lead vocal? How many people know that artist’s name, which is Merry Clayton?

The documentary showcases that, with the mic and camera trained on them, these female artists deserve to stand in the spotlight. They had the drive, the talent, the skill. Some also had children to raise. And they were trying to break into an industry made of and for men.

Consider Darlene Love as you see Propsero, in The Tempest, plot his triumphal comeback.

Summary

Much of the plot occurs in backstory, having occurred before the play opens. Prospero, Duke of Milan, is a scholar who spends most of his time studying the art of sorcery. His brother Antonio, aided by Alonso the king of Naples, uses Prospero’s distraction with his studies to engineer a takeover, in which Prospero and his infant daughter Miranda are sent to sea in a boat. With the Duke of Milan presumed to be dead, Antonio assumes his brother’s title and wealth. The only bright spot for Prospero is that his friend Gonzalo took care to fit out the boat with Prospero’s beloved books and magic staff before the boat was launched.

Prospero and Miranda end up on a seemingly deserted island. Once ruled by an evil witch named Sycorax, the only survivors are her son Caliban and a fairy named Ariel. Caliban is half-man, half-monster, a man crafted from earth. Prospero discovers Ariel imprisoned in a tree, where Sycorax had trapped him years earlier as a punishment.  Prospero frees Ariel to work for him.

Prospero brings Caliban into his home, tries to educate him and be kind to him. Once Miranda becomes an adolescent, Caliban attempts to ravish her. From that moment, Prospero forces Caliban to do his will, tormenting him to keep him in line. As the play opens, Miranda is 15 years old and Ariel and Caliban are enslaved to do Prospero’s bidding. Prospero has promised to free Ariel once he’s concluded his last, greatest, scheme.

The play opens with a ship being torn asunder during a powerful storm. We soon learn that Prospero has arranged this spectacle, using Ariel to perform the hallucinatory special effects and to bring King Alonso and his men (Antonio, Gonzalo, Sebastian [Alonso’s brother and Antonio’s co-conspirator], and Ferdinand [Alonso’s eligible young son]) to the island. The king and his men find themselves beached on one section of the island, Ferdinand on another, and the ship and its mariners just off the coast of the island, miraculously fresh and unharmed.

Miranda has watched the spectacle of the shipwreck and is distressed by it. Prospero uses this opportunity to tell her their origin story, which he’s long promised and never delivered. Miranda and Ferdinand meet and, predictably, fall in love.

Antonio, Alonso, Sebastian, and Gonzalo think that they alone have survived the shipwreck—that Ferdinand perished along with the mariners. With Ariel’s intervention, Alonso and Gonzalo fall asleep. Antonio and Sebastian, assuming Ferdinand is no longer an obstacle to Sebastian’s succession, decide to kill Alonso in his sleep. At the last moment, Alonso and Gonzalo stir awake and the assassination is foiled.

Trinculo, a jester, and Stefano, Alonso’s drunken butler, also discover themselves on the island. They meet up with Caliban, whom Sebastian promptly offers drink. Never having drunk alcohol before, Caliban quickly becomes drunk. Thinking alcohol is a new kind of magic, Caliban presumes Sebastian is a god and swears his loyalty to him. Together they cook up a drunken scheme to kill Prospero and take over the island.

Ariel brings Alonso, Sebastian, Gonzalo, and Antonio into a magic circle. There, fairy apparitions lay a table for them, groaning with the weight of a feast. Once they’re tantalized, the vision dissipates, leaving them with nothing.

Prospero engineers all characters to come together by the end of the play. Rejecting retribution, Prospero decides to be merciful to his brother who usurped him. Alonso restores Prospero’s title. Prospero brings forward Ferdinand and Miranda, restoring the king and son. The king blesses the young couple’s engagement. Prospero frees Ariel and throws his books and staff into the sea. Leaving Caliban to the island, Prospero departs the island with the others to return to Italy.

Thoughts

This summary is the briefest I’ve written over 35 plays. The play never flags for its entire running time—there’s nothing lightweight about it. But, most of the drama occurs outside the play’s timeline. What’s left is the story’s resolution, which usually occurs in the fifth, final act of a play, and the beauty of its language and imagery.

The brave new world

In 1610 (the year before this play was first performed), accounts of a ship bound for Jamestown, Virginia reached England. The ship, the Sea-Adventure, had foundered off Bermuda. Thought at first to have been lost entirely, the ship’s survivors were able to repair the ship and complete the journey. This stunning tale of loss and resurrection captivated the English that year.¹

This play gives us the celebrated phrase that Aldous Huxley repurposed for his dystopian future world.

MIRANDA (coming forward)         O wonder!
    How many goodly creatures are there here!
    How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
    That has such people in’t!
-Act 5 Scene 1

What moves Miranda in this speech is her first sight of Antonio, Alonso, Sebastian, and Gonzalo. Earlier, when she first saw Ferdinand, she’d declared he was the third man she had ever seen (after her father and Caliban). Ferdinand was a wonder, but the sight of these four men expands her awareness of a world outside the small and isolated island she’s inhabited. Unexpectedly, it’s the native’s wonder at European visitors. and not the opposite, that elicits the shock of the new. Even the meanest of men can appear magnificent in their novelty.

In the play’s treatment of Caliban, many critics draw attention to England’s sordid colonialist history, and therefore to Prospero’s role as a colonialist who enslaves the locals. To read this as an anti-colonial morality tale, however, stretches the plot.

The island on which the play takes place is literally another world, one filled with magic and the unknown. When the known world is displayed to someone who’s never seen it, the everyday world appears miraculous.

Prospero and the art of theatre

The Tempest is the last play that’s written solely by Shakespeare (he co-wrote the final two existing plays—Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen—with John Fletcher), and I see in it a reflection over his career as a playwright and poet.

The play was first performed in 1611, five years before Shakespeare’s death at the age of 52. He wouldn’t have known how many years remained, but it was a time in which he was winding down his professional work. I don’t know what was on his mind; I only have the text that remains. That text is noteworthy in its interests.

Shakespearean drama and comedy usually explore character flaws and emotional motivators for tragic or comedic purpose. This play dispenses with that. The characters are who they are from Act 1 to Act 5; they travel no arc. The plot’s drama is all back story and its elements are familiar in the extreme: betrayal, usurpation of power, succession conspiracies, loved ones lost at sea and recovered.

Prospero designs and orchestrates the play’s scenes, each presented as a spectacle for others to watch. Miranda observes the magical storm and subsequent shipwreck, and describes it as if it were a play she’d just watched:

MIRANDA
    If by your art, my dearest father, you have
    Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
    The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch;
    But  that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek,
    Dashes the fire out. O, I have sufferèd 
    With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,
    Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
    Dashed all to pieces! O, the cry did knock
    Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.
    Had I been any god of power, I would
    Have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere
    It should the good ship so have swallowed and
    The fraughting souls within her.
PROSPERO                                              Be collected,
     No more amazement. Tell your piteous heart
    There’s no harm done.
-Act 1 Scene 2

To celebrate the engagement of Miranda and Ferdinand, Prospero devises a masque played by spirits in the guise of Roman goddesses.

PROSPERO
    Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
    As I foretold you, were all spirits and
    Are melted into air, into thin air;
    And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
    The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
    Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
    And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
    Leave not a rack behind. [....]
-Act 4 Scene 1 

Using his arts and with the help of Ariel, Prospero brings the king and his men to shore, arranging a scene to prompt the co-conspirators Antonio and Sebastian to display their villainy. He entices them later with visions to trigger their appetites, then promptly whisks the vision away. Scene after scene, Prospero acts as playwright and stage manager.

Decades earlier in Milan, Prospero faced a choice between a civil life and one of art. He chose his art. On his island, he prospered in the path he chose. He raised his daughter to be loving and inquisitive, and they made a life together on the island.

Prospero also learned the limits of his art. He attempted to turn a base creature into something it wasn’t made to be, and failed. He tried to exert complete control over his artistic expression, the fairy Ariel, but discovered it yearned to be free.

Importantly, he discovered that the revenge he thought he wanted for his brother’s betrayal wasn’t at all what he desired. In the end, he wanted his daughter to live a full life, which required their return to civic life. He would cast off his art for a social life for his remaining years. He would leave the island to its unclaimed state. He would set his art free.

In the epilogue, Prospero’s character takes the stage to beg applause.

PROSPERO
    Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
    And what strength I have’s mine own,
    Which is most faint. Now ‘tis true
    I must be here confined by you
    Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
    Since I have my dukedom got,
    And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
    In this bare island by your spell; 
    But release me from my bands
    With the help of your good hands.
    Gentle breath of yours my sails
    Must fill, or else my project fails,
    Which was to please. Now I want
    Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; 
    And my ending is despair 
    Unless I be relieved by prayer,
    Which pierces so, that it assaults
    Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
    As you from crimes would pardoned be,
    Let your indulgence set me free.
-Epilogue     

This charming appeal presents the just-finished play as the spectacle it is, with its creator alone on the stage, exposed as simply a man, dependent on others.

Self-portrait?

Self-portrait 1659, Rembrandt van Rijn. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

I read this play as a personal work of art, a self-portrait painted from a lifetime of looking out from the eyes that confront the viewer. To view Rembrandt’s self-portrait at age 53 is not to know the artist as he knew himself or even as his familiars knew him, but instead to explore his perspective.

Similarly, I have no idea how Shakespeare thought of this play, but it contemplates a life spent in art, a life well aware of its essential transience.

PROSPERO
    […]                               We are such stuff 
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded by a sleep.
-Act 4 Scene 1

Each scene of the play presents a spectacle, imagined by Prospero, in which unwitting actors demonstrate their true natures, only to dissipate as the scene concludes. It is the life of a theatre, in which successsive stories are told daily by the actors treading its boards. It was the life of the playwright.

Shakespeare retired from the theatre to a quiet life in Stratford before his death. He had managed to profit handsomely from his art and investments. Not much is known of the cause of his death. It could have been from an infectious disease (his sister Joan’s husband died a week earlier), or it might have been the result of declining health.

Since Shakespeare and his wife Anne (or Agnes) had three children, none of whom produced children who yielded another generation, Shakespeare has no descendants. His sister Joan was more fortunate: her descendants live on today. Virginia Woolf imagines Joan (a fictional ‘Judith’) in A Room of One’s Own as a woman emblematic of artistic women through the ages who were denied the opportunity to work in their art. Poverty of education, time, and money rendered women unable to write, a fact that misogynists used as reason why women couldn’t be successful in the world of men.

For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; […] then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born.

-Virginia Woolf, ”A Room of One’s Own”

“Shakespeare’s sister”: women in arts

More than a century after Woolf wrote these lines, women continue to live in poverty of time, money, and education at a higher rate than men. Most don’t have the luxury to choose between their art and working to survive and raise children. Today’s ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ may have to wait until her children are grown to pick up the pen or paintbrush. She may never have the words if she’s not allowed to go to school.

Whatever an artist’s medium, exercising the artistic impulse never feels like a choice. It’s a compulsion, one that can no more be ignored than breathing or eating. Still, one must make choices to allocate time to art, and those choices come with trade-offs. To do one thing requires denying something else. It’s a daily calculation: what will I gain and lose?

The single mother may rise before dawn each day to write for a few hours before her children wake and she starts the daily tasks of work at home and beyond. She must make a calculation that the hours stolen from her rest will produce value for herself and children. What unpublished author dares to imagine commercial success? Weighing duty and art, duty usually wins.

Two female artists dominate the pop music industry today. They share characteristics beyond their musical talents: Amazonian beauty, relentless work ethic, generosity, vision. Success being the best revenge, they each have rebounded from attempts by others to suppress them and subsequently created wildly successful albums. They’ve risen to the top of an industry in which power is held by men much like Alonso and Antonio. The facts of their success don’t diminish the extraordinary obstacles in the gap of 20 feet to stardom. If anything, they highlight it.

 The Tempest showcases the mastery acquired over decades of producing art at the highest level imaginable. It is the swoop of a cape before leaving the stage. It’s a breathtaking performance, one that Julie Taymor re-imagined as a woman’s tale in her 2010 film starring Helen Mirren as Prospera. What brave new world it would be, if every person born with Ariel’s enchantment were able to make the choice she made.

Thanks for reading,

1. "The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works”, 2nd edition, 2005