David Bevington on Shakespeare: The Tempest

when one academic like myself is asked to introduce another academic it usually means that one has been at some point the prized student of the person he's introducing and the two of them are expected to say wonderful things about each other but that's not the way it's going to be tonight I've never actually been a student of David Bevington so I've known him for a number of years and they tell you the truth I'm really not much of an academic I'm not one of those people who pursued as David did an academic career has a doctorate I'm one of those people who kicked around my field theater for so many years that some university finally decided that I had acquired enough understanding of the field maybe to teach some of it to others and that's how I got to be a professor only about four years ago David did it the right way he has himself a doctorate from Harvard University and has been affiliated as professor of humanities and English literature and comparative literature has been affiliated with the University of Chicago for about what is it about 44 or 45 years now I believe he is now professor emeritus which means technically that he's retired but that is not David's style he's not the retiring kind I had the great pleasure of meeting him first many years ago at the University of Chicago when I would attend productions of Court Theatre when Nicholas Ruddell was the artistic director and David was always there in the audience and frequently a consultant and advisor for some of the classics that they would do at Court Theatre and also would prepare program notes and he's continued to do that for Chicago Shakespeare Theatre are very very fine Tony award-winning company down at Navy Pier and over the years I've had the pleasure of having wonderful conversations informal with David writing reading the richness of his writing with its incisive commentary and analysis of plays and I've had the pleasure of getting to know David and his wife of many years on a casual and informal basis as I said David is not the retiring type even though he is officially emeritus he is a specialist in English Renaissance drama he has served as the editor and annotator for a complete believed to complete editions of Shakespeare's work he recently has completed two publications to I don't know whether their books or or merely monographs but one Shakespeare and biographies in effect a history of the biographies of Shakespeare of which there are many and also a study of Hamlet called murder most foul Hamlet through the ages in next year in 2012 he's going to be coming out with as editor with the complete works of Ben Jonson who was of course one of Shakespeare's contemporary and the man who said of Shakespeare frequently quoted that Shakespeare was a man of quote small Latin and less Greek unquote taken out of context people usually think Ben Jonson was insulting his friend and colleague Shakespeare in fact he was not the that phrase is from an ode of tribute that Johnson wrote at Shakespeare's death The Tempest is one of my very very favorite plays one of my desert island plays like Prospero I found myself stranded on a desert island I would hope to have the tempest with me and Shakespeare's King Lear and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest that and a nice supply of chocolate and some good wine and I could be happy for many many years whether Prospero was happy or not he found himself in the situation that all of us do from time to time when we are the person of authority when we have control of a situation as Prospero finds himself the master of his enemies and we have an opportunity to play God and the question is whether we will be a God of justice or a God of mercy and this question which is so central to the issue of our humanity as individuals and our humanity collectively this question is central to the tempest and there's no better person than the great professor of humanities David Bevington to discuss The Tempest I'm honoured deeply to be on the program with Jonathan Barbra Nell a dear friend and colleague as he said and Jonathan is on the the fader side I'm on more the academic side but I love that I love the kind of crossover and collaboration that can go on I teach a course now with a member of the staff over at the our student theatre University theater at Chicago in the history of drama and I love looking plays from the theatrical point of view so his introduction was not only kind and gracious and beautiful but very much to the point I want to talk with you about Shakespeare's Tempest as a kind of theater as a place of the theater and a place of the of the literary imagination but also very particularly of the theatrical imagination and some of the things that Jonathan was just saying lend themselves to that Prospero is indeed very much of a managerial figure he bosses people around he gets to tell when they're going to arrive and when they're going to leave he plans the entrance for example of young Ferdinand on the island at the right time to meet his daughter Miranda he really plots that whole know that holding engagement that goes on between the two lovers they think that they're falling in love and the fact they think that they're doing this in defiance of her father but it's all it's all a show Prospero shows us in clever signs that he's planning the whole thing plotting the whole thing and directing it and he's doing this because he wants them to fall in love but he doesn't want them to go too fast in this play of course Prospero is not outwitted it is his own plot which results in the happy marriage that brings the two together and provides that form that corner of the of the happy ending of The Tempest now those things that that have just said about Prospero that he's managerial that he plots were people common where people go it's a it's a problem for people reading The Tempest often they think Prospero is really rather awful a lot of people really don't like him at all it comes across today as a very patriarchal male and that's that's not a good thing but the thing in his defense it seems to me to most of all is to say this is what theater managers do this is what directors do they have characters they they plot things they work out a story they decide when people are going to come on stage and when they go offstage in fact if you combine the theatre director with with the author you could say that the Prospero was a kind of composite of all of those things and that fits very nicely with what we know about Shakespeare this is the this is the last play that he officially wrote at least that appears to be the case he did in retirement thank you for your kind words about retirement he seems to have enjoyed retirement too by keeping his hand in he collaborated with his successor at the King's company John Fletcher in writing Henry the eighth and of the two noble kinsmen but that's that's the kind of work one can do in retirement presumably training your successor to come on and learn the ropes and so on and do some part-time work and have some leisure to play golf or whatever it was that Shakespeare did in Stratford after he did retire of course I don't mean that he did play golf that's just a metaphor yeah he did retire to Stratford and may have come down to London from time to time we don't really know to help with the Kings man but he the The Tempest really reads beautifully as the last play that he put on the stage and he wanted people to read it this way he didn't say this we have to infer that from reading The Tempest or seeing productions of it but it reads very beautifully that way that Prospero is a combination of theatre manager director and author and if in the process he comes across as rather awesome bossy managerial impossible and so on well that's often true its effect often whether a company feels about a director that he's really he's directing too much but isn't that what's a director is supposed to do so let's look for some of the evidence about about this idea of the play as the theatre he would make a lot of sense for Shakespeare to be doing if it's his swan song it does seem to sum up his career as a writer especially a writer of romantic comedies at which he'd excelled earlier of course with Twelfth Night as you like it much ado about nothing.the the love plot of The Tempest has many in it doesn't have a common source that's interesting there is no single source for The Tempest the way there is for most of his plays so in a sense it's one of his most original of productions but it contains in it elements of romantic plotting and comedy and so on that are very much the soul and substance of the kinds of plays that he'd written it has his trademark signature on it I think well let's look for some some evidences about this I'd like to start with a a quotation which is often read in the context of the theatre this is an act for after Prospero has devised a mask for the betrothal of his daughter with young Ferdinand this is after the two have overcome the seeming obstacle the father he's agreed to their engagement and blesses their wedding to be they can't be wedded yet because they're on the island there's no priest there anything but they are ineffective bonded for life he puts his blessing on this by having Ariel his servant - and her and Ariel's assistance to put on a splendid splendid mask I was reminded just now they were we're going to have a production at Chicago Shakespeare in the spring of The Tempest and I hope that that will do a beautiful job of this they should they did the play about four or five years ago and I thought it was really quite remarkable Prospero is on the island this is his big show this is the this is the play within the play as it were of The Tempest this is when he pulls out all his stops as the kinds of beautiful theatre he can perform and he does so as a gift to his as a tribute to his daughter and her husband-to-be and it is quite lovely one interesting thing to say about this it's a mask the mask is a very interesting genre isn't it it's that's it's a genre that was very big at just about this time and in London too long about 16 10 16 11 after James had come to the throne in 16/3 and was with his wife Queen Anne from Denmark they she especially loved masks and they the court started spending a great deal of money on these entertainments which were one night Affairs you had to be belong to the royal purple practically to be invited it didn't include regular audience of London it was for people who are around the the king and the Queen and we're fighting for place to be on on stage at were in these masks the closer you were standing to the king and queen in the performance that obviously the more important you were and you bought very expensive costumes for it was enormous Lee elaborately expensive and indeed ruined the royal treasury as well as long as the personal Treasuries of a number of people who were belong to the court during that period but they it was quite spectacular one interesting thing Ben Jonson wrote a lot of these Jonathan referred to Ben Jonson Shakespeare's great contemporary he became the major writer of masks in fact for the Jacobean court but others also wrote masks at Fletcher for example George Chapman the odd question is why Shakespeare never wrote a mask he surely must have been asked by this time he was clearly recognized including as Jonathan said by Ben Jonson himself who gave a tribute to him as the greatest writer of comedy that the world has ever seen up to that point a really a magnificent tribute this is after Shakespeare had died he said that but with that kind of reputation would would Shakespeare not have been invited if he wished to do so to write a mask for the court I feel sure that he would have I'm speculating but there's no evidence about this but it seems to be a pretty clear case so why then did we not have any masks by Shakespeare and I take it down I'm speculating but he decided he had better things to do with it he didn't wish to do it that way it was what was rather fuss and feathers and huge amount of expense and so on and very snobbish very very very much for only the 1% not for the 99% for the 1% of the of the London population but what Shakespeare does instead I like to think of it in some ways a kind of a great Democrat he put a mask on in his in this tempest of his last great show showing off what I do kind of thing play and and it's very good it's very short you did the ordinary mask would run all evening and they invited the the royal spectators taking part of the dance and so on so it was a very elaborate affair this tempest only runs about five or six minutes I suppose but it would give the audience's in London who would not be invited to court to attend a regular mask it gives them a chance to see what the what the shouting would be all about and see how beautiful such a thing could be it's quite an exquisite mask now after Prospero through aerial has done these things and has really amazed his audience including young Ferdinand with his gift his skill as a theatre theatre person the as the actors are going offstage in fact they're going off rather suddenly because he's heard that there's about a plot against him by Caliban and Tufano is Trinculo and so he says they've they must be gone avoid no more he shouts and off the the actors of the mask go leaving him alone with his a few courtiers including his son-in-law and his daughter and it gives them a chance to say this you probably know the speech one of the famous ones but I want to read it in this context of of The Tempest as about theatre you do look my son in a moved sort as if you were dismayed be cheerful sir 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 yay all of which it inherit shall dissolve and like this insubstantial pageant faded leave not a rack behind we are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little sleeve our little life is rounded with a sleep now that's obviously about theater it's about and it's making theatre comparing theater to to life into a dream this is an idea that runs throughout Shakespeare very early on and Midsummer Night's Dream it's a prominent idea in that five when Theseus talks about how the lunatic that lover and the poet or imagination all compact the one sees more Devils than vast hell can hold that's the madman the lover with a sigh to his mistress eyebrow and so on and then finally the poet with a fine frenzied rolling with his looking to heaven and from heaven to earth embodies forth the things on things unknown that we cannot see but he brings down visions to earth and brings them before us as spectators it's a it's a wonderful invocation of the idea of theater especially a theater of imagination theater of presenting things on stake not as drawing room comedy not Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde but but a theater of dream the idea of life is a dream he loves that metaphor and it's runs through his work and it's not surprising to me that he picks this up and his it what is it is one song to the theater with this idea that that metaphor it's so like theater isn't it one of the great things about theater we've all had experience if we've been involved at all backstage is that when the last performance is over you have this ritual of taking down the set because it's not going to be there anymore and of course even day by day a performance takes place we know the actors get up and go home and have supper and come back the next day and act again it's not going to be the same each night the performance in the theater is is beautifully perishable and that's part of its preciousness as part of its delight it's interesting to me that these today that we we still don't have films film records of the great theatrical performances this is partly a matter of unions and costs and so on but it's I think it's partly also because the theater really doesn't want to become permanent it it really cherishes that sense of the fragile and the evanescent a kind of a dream now you see it now you don't quote from Thomas Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead right of course he's quoting also from that common place now you see it now you don't but I want wonderful metaphor for the theater but as in stop art and exit from the theater is like dying or entering onto the theatres like entering into life life becomes an imagined thing that takes place on the stage and it's it's kind of a perfected vision of what our life might be isn't that right now The Tempest of course in that regard is a very remarkable vision isn't it it's at set an island Jonathan mentioned taking of this play to read on a desert island has a good wonderful of a play within play metaphor about it doesn't it because the the play itself is about an island and a Hawaiian Islands because it's not a part of the court or ordinary life at all in fact Prospero and his daughter have been banished from Italy from NAIP from Milan and everything we learn about Milan 12 years ago when he was Duke of Milan he still was the Duke of Milan but he's not in power of course he's been ousted by his brother the story about Naples is a very discouraging depressing one politics of ingratitude of being knifed in the back by your own brother and dog-eat-dog and indeed life threatening and the story as it goes when we hear from Prospero what life was like back then in Milan he understand that he and his daughter were put aboard a boat which was so leaky that it was expected to not to be able to sail even out of the harbour the very rats have quitted since Prospero it's it was it was an attempted murder of Mert of Miranda and Prospero by her uncle and it didn't succeed but that's Prospero seized this is partly Providence that has protected him this way they've in some indeterminate place they've arrived in an island and that is place apart we move then in the play from an imagined location Italy which is cutthroat and dog-eat-dog to an island where all is under the control of the theatre magician right now one metaphor that's very nice about this is pursued by Northrop Frye in his book well actually it's in a special essay he wrote just about called Shakespeare's green world a vision Shakespeare that runs from start to finish in which you see that vision of contrasting girls between a kind of grim reality and an artistic dreamlike vision take the Merchant of Venice said in Venice a hot city on the coast it's seen mostly in the daytime it's a place of it where the death of Antonio from Shylock's hands seems and then seems a certainty for a best part of the play where people steal other out of other people's houses and so on there are lots of things to worry about in Venice off we go to Belmont which is on a mountain scene mostly at night is presided over by women and it's a place clearly of magic and you go back and forth Midsummer Night Dream the same thing we have the city of Athens the court where the young Hermia is threatened with death if she doesn't obey her father's ridiculous insistence that she marry the young man of his choice instead of one of her own choice the lovers escape to a forest at the forest where strange and wonderful things happen doesn't it where they're fairies of course that are presiding over the goings-on in the forest it's all ultimately blind and protected but it's very worse than to the people as they make their way through the forest in the dark of night as you like it begins whether were the court of the Duke Frederick who is user from his own brother a motif that Shakespeare loves throughout his drama doesn't he throughout his career it's another user purring younger brother who's taken away the dictum from Duke senior who has gone into banishment in the Forest of Arden the Forest of Arden where our den could be in France because the source story suggests it's in France but in fact Arden of course is also very close to where Shakespeare grew up work sure and it's a place of imagination once again where the remarkable things happen and where you have a kind of a literary critique of the real world from the point of view of the artists imaginative escape into this other world so the world of art exists in Shakespeare throughout as an other place is a place of vision of dream of imagination of strangeness of unexpected events of things that never happen in the real world and you go to that world for a time being and then you come back that's the regular style of this procession and when you come back something has changed it may be that the real world will go on its way in fact I think that's clear that that's true but it's it's something has changed and our in our vision at least and that's very much I think - in Shakespeare's presenting of this about the theatrical experience when we go to see a play a good play we're lifted out of our ordinary selves to experience something that is transforming something that is meta theatricals above the world of theatre and it's metaphysical also at the same time we come back to our and the actors again are they are temporarily putting on a show it's all done by smoke and mirrors as Prospero says here about this idle dream and so on we come back to our daily lives having had this vision and has anything changed well of course an important sense no you think of and of Keats's ode fled it that is that vision do I do i week or dream when you like waking up from a dream it seems so real and then it isn't and it was it there was it not there dreaming is a wonderful thing isn't it it's no wonder that Shakespeare loves it so much he compares it again to get with the theatrical experience is like our visit to the theatre is in one sense seems to change everything and and the important other sense it doesn't change anything crime is take this play at the end of this tempest the bad brother Antonio who took away the Dukes from from from Prospero and his now ended up on the island owing to a shipwreck which of course is a shipwreck that was planned by Prospero by the playwright of this play right but he's subjected to a series of transformative experiences the island but it doesn't seem to have done much for him he ends up being pretty hard-hearted the very end of the play he talks about how wonderful be to take Caliban and put him on in a freak show and make money out of him and so on and when Prospero pardons him at the end of The Tempest says pardon the villain though thou art it's interesting kind of pardon isn't it Shakespeare doesn't acknowledge doesn't it doesn't blink the fact that he still thinks that his brother Antonio is a villain and he is hard hard he's unreformed but he pardons him anyway which I think that's what forgiving means in this case that he's pardoned he will not be prosecuted right but that's the suggesting in the way in which the real world is going to go on back in Italy when they despite the marriage at the end which puts things together at the end of the tempest between Burford and Miranda that will bring together the kingdoms of Milan and Naples the political infighting of of 12 years ago seems to be remedied by this marriage which is at once a highly romantic marriage for the young people they think they're doing it themselves but we can see the Prospero is also staging a political marriage which will unite the two kingdoms and the political strife that led to his banishment this brilliant stroke of work on his part and on the part of Shakespeare's so so the kingdom will be in better hands presumably than it was before but Antonio is still going to be there that I think that's can emblematic the way in which art cannot change much that's wrong with the real world but we wouldn't want to do without that vision would we of course that's what art can do is remind us of a better world if we could only somehow find it so Prospero is in these senses a a magician and a magician in this case means a theatre magician another speech that I think is worth citing in this regard is in act 5 another speech by Prospero in which he bids farewell to his art this is often quoted unjustly so and Shakespeare's borrowing here from Ovid from a passage in Ovid devoted to Medea interestingly this is what Prospero says as he traces a charm circle with his staff and prepares to lay aside his art his magic he says ye elves of hills brooks standing lakes and groves and ye that on the sands with printless foot do chase the ebbing neptune and do fly him when he comes back udemy puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make whereof the ewe not bites and you whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms that rejoice to hear the solemn curfew by whose aid week must as though he be I have been deemed the moon teen son called forth a mutinous winds and Sun twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war to the dread rattling Thunder have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak with his own bolt the strong based promontory have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up the pine and Sivir graves at my command have waked their sleepers oped and left them forth at this rough magic i hear of juror and when I have required some heavenly music which even now I do to work mine end upon this their senses that this air each arm is for I'll break my staff burry at certain fathoms in the earth and deeper than did ever plummet sound I will drown my book another point he leaves a scientists book the book from which he learned how to perform his magical things much the way Doctor Faustus learns to perform magical things with books and play about by Marlowe called Doctor Faustus but there it is black magic this is not but it's a little close to black magic there's something very awesome Lea daring and worrisome about the things that Prospero claims to have been able to do the things that he's accomplished he's called forth the mutinous winds where we see that the begin of the play he has caused a storm now by the way it's worth noting in this regard isn't it that the storm is something he can create only on or near the islands of Tempest as though they has about a six-mile limit around the island of The Tempest and he's control of everything through Ariel that happens within that purview he the the the Italian people allow the rest have gone to from Italy to Carthage and for a wedding of Lanza's daughter and on their way back home when they happen to come near enough to die under the tempest that they are blown off-course and there's this great shipwreck that Prospero brings about but he couldn't he makes that clear talking to his Oda he couldn't do that until that fort bountiful fortune her providence brought them within his grasp it's only within the purview of the theatre that this magic can work its will but when he when that happens the things he can do are astonishing such as the storm but to see even more he can move the the Sun out of its sphere that sounds rather daring doesn't it and perhaps the most awesome of all graves at my command have waked their sleepers oped and let them forth by my so magic art he has brought back the dead to life now that conventionally and I think understandably so is very close to being blasphemous this is what Jesus did when he raised Lazarus from the dead and it makes it clear in the New Testament that this is something heck Speer does that that the author of the scriptures allows Jesus to do only this once because and he does it to show that he really is God but Jesus doesn't pull out his magical tricks all that often he changes water and wine but that's a little easier a little easier and bringing back the dead bring back the dead somehow smacks of blasphemy doesn't it or something transgressive of the very order of nature but the interesting thing is regarding if this turns up in the temp in the dr. Faustus - of Marlowe's play what a dramatist can do which is very much like that is bring back figures from the past and bring them on stage of course they're not the real people they are race their spirits their imitations their actors like the earlier speech so the ight when he says that earlier speech in act 4 when he said these are actors as I foretold you were all spirits and are melted into air into thin air like the baseless fabric of this vision so actors what their performance is is their spirits now in the play they're literally aerial and aerial cohorts but as as applied to the idea of magical art of theater that's what a dramatist does he in Doctor Faustus by Marlowe one of magic Marlowe's tricks that impresses the rulers of ink of Europe is to bring back Alexander in his paramour and when he does that at the the member who's seeing this is that perhaps and he says gosh that looks absolutely can I can I touch and faster you can't really because they're not actually real here's these are spirits that are doing this but I know they look so much alike that you would be hard-put to be able to tell the difference from looking at or hearing them speak that's exactly what a drama duster an artist does in the theater or playwright right you want them neck as realist but they can you can bring up henry v and have him speak some wonderful lines probably more beautiful lines than the real henry v ever managed to speak at the Battle of Agincourt you can go back to the assassination of Julius Caesar and show your audience with that was just like and what Brutus said is he plotted to the assassination for this great man and so on Shakespeare loves bringing back the dead and is that hubristic at least if not blasphemous yes it's certainly hubristic I think that's what Prospero is used to go back to the speech I was just reading about elves and so on why is he drowning his book well one answer is and it's a very important answer is that Prospero was mortal and he knows he's not going to live forever probably indeed not very much longer he's an older man by this time his daughter is about to marry and enter a new generation but when he gets back to Milan as he makes plain to us and to his spectators on stage he's not going back to be the Duke anymore he's going to retire and let them run the show and he says and every third thought will be my grave this is a proper thing for a Christian to do to think about that imminence of approaching death and to be prepared to meet your maker and Prospero seems to be taking that seriously as something he needs to do now this is the play that was written as far as we know when Shakespeare was on the point of retiring and going to Stratford and in fact although he did keep his hand in the last year's in Stratford he was not very old by the way he was in his late 40s while this was happening seems amazing but he he seems to have been a very good help toward the end and if this is consistent with the idea that he's not going to go on forever but another reason which are closely related that that Shakespeare is looking back presumably on his career through this metaphor of Prospero in the theatre and saying that the things he's done have been really quite mighty quite astonishing awesome also somewhat hubristic somewhat playing God Jonathan was saying that the introduction Prospero is playing God in a way but of course he's not God he's in some ways playing the role of God but he knows that he's not God because he is mortal and the things that he's done are so close to being blasphemous that he almost apologizes for part of what he's done and sees at any rate that is time for him not just to stop working and start and collecting his old-age pension but to drown his book right as though there's something threatening about that this is actually a kind of a type which I thought one finds in earlier literature it's in Chaucer for example the kind of confessional statement at the end of a career that preparing to meet meet your maker at the last moment that may be the some some of the things that I've written were a little bit worldly and I should have paid more attention to spiritual matters chaucer talking about he should written more Parsons tale instead of the Millers take less oh so on and I was seriously he meant that is hard to know but it's a it's a nice idea isn't it or there's the famous story about Bach which if it isn't true at least it ought to be that as he was his last work but she didn't finish it's called the art of the fugue and he was composing it on the motif of be ACH HP and B flat and it's a theme in various in stated son arguably the most wonderful thing he ever wrote and he stops right in the middle of one of the pieces which is the viola gets to have the last word I love because I play the viola they play very nicely for string quartet he seems to that according to this story that he rate why is it so unfinished he's the story is that he then he was bad and he was blind and he was obviously close to the end he asked to be for assistance in dictating a coral corral of gret of praise to God and thanks a kind of a prayer as though at the end of his life was better to stop writing this humanistic work on ba CH and say something about his wanting to be hope he can be worthy to kneel before the throne of the Almighty as he prepares to meet his maker it's a lovely idea of artists of feeling some sense of recantation about their more secular achievements because it suggests - it's certainly true of Marlowe but there's there is something dangerously blasphemous even about writing beautiful language writing beautiful poems Milton felt that way and so what are we going to do with with Shakespeare it seems to me that that's very much what we have now what I would like to say I've got to stop shortly this raises my last question will be what does this suggest about Shakespeare's relationship to Ariel Ariel is a slave to him you know the story is that Ariel is imprisoned in a cloven pine for 12 years because cigarettes who is the witch that's the real black magic in the tempest in a previous story as imprisoned Ariel for not obeying her up her aboard commands whatever they were Errol is freed by Prospero on the grounds that he will then he'll have 24 or 48 hours more to work deal with and then Prospero is to be freed and he agrees to that in the meantime it appears that though Ariel is a lowest slave if you like is in fact quite pleased with the things that Prospero asks him to do and these are these are devices of deception which is what a dramatist often does he leaves characters misunderstanding the situation old Alonso is someone who believes throughout the play that his son is dead has drowned Prospero knows that this is not true why leave Alonso in suspense about this and Medellin suspense but in something close to despair because the process of contrition and atonement for one sins and so on is very important thing for people that are capable of that and it's arguable the Alonso does manage to achieve that now Ariel is the instrument through which Prospero accomplishes these remarkable magics have shows delusions suspension of plot the shaping of the whole thing as a play what is Ariel what the this is a large topic and I can only so approximate an answer but to me the most beautiful ideas that he since prosper we understand the area is immortal has existed before the play began and will exist throughout eternity and has come from somewhere else but he becomes then the kind of property of Prospero but for a time and so to think of this is like for or poetic as that is to say inspiration divine inspiration which an artist receives as that's a very common idea that artists think that Milton certainly felt that way I'm not writing this God is writing this through me and they have the sense here that with a great dramatist does these things he's doing so by the gift of some sort of a gift which is not entirely his own it came to him some serve divine acquiescence and encouragement and support and inspiration and so Ariel is that beautiful idea out of which the island finally does emerge and have becomes a temporary reality through the collaboration of these to prosper will die Ariel will live on forever will the play will live on forever of course we're still talking about this play 400 years later which is perfectly amazing isn't it the play Shakespeare died Prospero died in the play presumably but the tempest goes on forever because this great art goes on forever and I think that this magnificent play this last official play by Shakespeare is finally a tribute to that idea of the mortality of art as temporarily the prosper the the property and achievement of the other great artists thank you very much those of you who studied foreign language have heard that sometimes students can be fluent in French for German professor Barrington is fluent in English I am amazed every time I listen to him I was privileged to be a student and I love being in the audience so this is your opportunity don't be shy if you have a question I don't judge it in advance just ask a question and he'll mind answering just for a little while I'd love to okay is there any question that you have anybody and I ask you to repeat it correctly good I will all right yes please Jonathan that's right yeah inspired in part by the exploration yes I think that's absolutely true and is something we didn't have time I didn't have time of this lecture to talk about one things about the island the temperature which is amazing it appears geographically in terms of the plot it has to be somewhere in the Mediterranean would it be Malta could it be Corsica that's too large it there's no island that fits very well it's really like trying to find the right Island for Calypso and in the in it in the Odyssey also but none of them fit Braille because of course the artist is imagining these things with Homer but also then you know Plato and the Republic has a kind of floating island where does it exist where does it locate well it exists of course the artists imagination and our imagination when we think about these things The Tempest is seems to be according to plot somewhere in the Mediterranean but it's also of course in the new world there were there references to the still vexed Bermudas we know that Shakespeare was reading accounts of a shipwreck by whim Strachey just about the time when he wrote this play he needn't have written that probably to tell the storm the tempest but the idea that this tempest in that the Bahamas are along the coast of the new world and so on place that's very dangerous and very magical also very extremely beautiful Thomas More had written utopia of quite some just effect about a century earlier than this and he too in Utopia imagine spinning utopia off the coast of South America someplace Trinidad I suppose but again it doesn't you can't pin it down it's in a place of the imagination so this is this is an island which is so someplace in no place and very beautifully they are the were the place of the mansions but that that that would be appropriate to this imagining one famous line of course from The Tempest when Prospero sees I'm sorry when Miranda see so many people suddenly she says oh strange brave new world that has such creatures in it and that was picked up doleful II as a title about her brave new world that in a more modern context of seeing is quite ironically but as far as we can tell and now it there's something ironic about it because Prospero says when she says that he says tis due to thee okay he knows that there's more to to worry about in terms of the corrupt nature of the world then she is prepared to understand because she's lived on this island ever since she was capable of talking she's had no experience back with in Milan or Naples but brave new world captures the sense that was such a such a prevalent idea wasn't it in Europe at this dominant in England that somewhere across the Atlantic there was a there was a magical place where it was called India because they thought perhaps you could get to India that way that's the reason we have this confusion about the names of India and Indian isn't it but American Indians and people from India if you kept going west long enough you would come to India and be able to pick up gems off the ground so but that isn't of course the case but it drove people into many remarkable exploits during this period so the sense of discovery the sense of newness that's really lovely isn't it but this is a retirement plate also was a play which he he celebrates for younger people a sense in which this is about brave new world a place of new discovery lovely other questions we haven't talked about yes please sir yes good good was Ireland is it no here the question about that mistake England's an island to and as Shakespeare as and as an Islander as it were I think that works very well there's a wonderful passage from richard ii where John of Gaunt as he's about to die and is distressed about the way his nephew Richard ii is miss handling the kingdom he launches into a magnificent speech about the this world of england this gem said in the golden in the sea and so on this the image of jewelry is often seen in that speech and so on that there's no place like england and and he also describes how it is a has a ocean run it like a moat defensive to see that one of england's blessings was that it was close to the continent but also separate so that it was protected against invasion and of course you only had to go back very few years to 1588 that when the spanish had spent years attempting at a philip was playing invasion of England and fails and the English saw this as an act of God and and pretty but then worthy of them as dwellers on an island so did Shakespeare think of himself as an Islander I think so very much that's a lovely addition to this whole point Bob that the tempest perhaps is England also as well as the theatre that's lovely there's another question back here yes please Garden of Eden that's certainly a metaphor that runs through all Shakespeare at Richard ii sorry paradise in general absolutely yes I think that I think that's very true one of the things that's so incisive about that common indeed is that he's knew he'd the property paradise he presents for us as a place at his place of great natural beauty and magical events and some of its also it has an Islander named Caliban whose name is an anagram for the word cannibal and he's brought there as the son of seeker acts it was a witch and a practitioner of black magic she's dead but he's left there and he's spoken of as a devil a kind of born devil and he's educated and nurtured by Prospero and Miranda but he is in fact sort of natural man in a way so that it's almost some nice anticipations of some of the later visions of the idea of what to make of as in Rousseau for example what to make of the idea of the natural world of the older of earlier creation and so on is that that was very much of a dwelling imagination so I think that is again the way in which is placed one thing we could say about this to your question about Ariel another construction play lends itself to schematic interpretations to a remarkable extent I don't know any other play quite like it you can do interesting things we're thinking about Ariel as the super-ego in Freud's terms and Caliban is the it it worked quite well between the divine idea of the the mind is containing thought rationality in dream insight and so on opposed to natural appetite the Shakespeare is very kind to the natural appetite Caliban is a delightful creature in the play despite all this description of it was at Evelyn selling in the son of cigarettes he he speaks some of the most beautiful poetry in the play he knows where all the springs are and there how to live on this island in a place with nature if it really is Edina can that sense that he does not spoiling the wilderness this is from an ecological point of view this is really going back to the kind of world one would like to to dream about that is completely unspoiled but he is someone on whom nurture doesn't stick very easily his idea about procreation is very easy he wants to seduce Miranda or raper in fact and that's the reason in fact he's confined under a rock because he attempts a rape once once he reaches pubescence and realizes that the me Tarzan you Jane and Moran doesn't does one day of that of course and he's confined but his idea about procreation is really quite a beautiful natural one said you I would said I would I would have done this he's quite in unrepentant as you thought would have people all the island with little Calla bands if you'd allow me to do it he thinks of sex is related to procreation it's just a perfectly natural and defensible and even a beautiful idea but it doesn't sit well with the demands of advanced civilization so as in Thomas More's utopia you get this play back and forth between what civilization it's a it's demands and its requirements and it also its flaws on the one hand and this vision of the natural world which we keep going back to as to the Garden of Eden as if we could get back somehow to a world before we spoiled it that works very well too absolutely right to see Caliban is the it is I think really bricks very nicely and as I say it's a kindly view of of the of the natural man within all of us it's so that the play and since Caliban is ultimately accommodated forgiven by Prospero remains on the island well they go back to Italy but that's suggest that he's a part of us in fact that that's a nice line for The Tempest Prospero says in the fifth act this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine now the thing of Darkness is an unfortunate sort of metaphor blackness isn't it but and I think there is hidden in there kind of a cultural bias that Shakespeare no doubt shares in but to see that that the more enlightened presumably more enlightened civilized part of us must accommodate itself to the natural person as well two physical demands two sexual demands and so on the human the whole human being needs all these things together of course it's strife written that there's the contest goes on endlessly but it's a very it's a very important part of what makes us so complex as people good thing thank you all good

Channel: David Grier

Views: 31,332

Rating: 4.8754325 out of 5

Keywords: Shakespeare: The Tempest, William Shakespeare (Poet)

Id: EoZClxzMjr4

Length: 52min 54sec (3174 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 10 2012