Harvard ENGL E-129 - Lecture 12: The Tempest

okay so our rebels are going to continue before they're over at the end of these two hours since we are a somewhat smaller group than usual probably because of the holidays I wonder if I can persuade the people who are sitting on this sod to come and join us over here if it's not too much trouble I think it would be more communal if we could and probably easier for Larry and mill to do the 50-yard dash with their good should have done this long ago don't you think thank you all very much so the adjuster reminds you of what our sequence is today we're going to talk about the tempest on the 2nd of January right after the break there will be a plenary discussion where you're supposed to come with questions and protests and suggestions and thoughts and preoccupations and they'll also will that will segue seamlessly into a kind of review for the exam and the exam will be the following week is that right good on the night in this very space so Sterns standard time for folks who coming in late we're going to try to organize ourselves in a smaller space please because we're a smaller group today so I would be grateful Larry maybe I can station you at the door and you can kind of steer people just just so we can get rolling would be great thank you very much so the tempest conventionally regarded as no Shakespeare's last play is farewell to the stage as you know if you have read my chapter which I hope you have it is none of these things we're going to try to sir we're going to try to move everybody to the in the middle here for ya actually to actually really actually into the middle yes yes right if you want an NC whoa careful we can we can put you over here if you read my chapter then you will know that this is not true that Shakespeare and his company produced at least one more single authored play Henry the eighth or all is true that there are other plays that Shakespeare is seems clearly to have collaborated in producing he doesn't retire from the stage at the moment when this play is finished his death comes several years later in 1616 and in fact what we have in this notion that the play itself is Shakespeare's farewell to the stage is a kind of cultural fantasy that we have produced because we cannot bear to lose him and so we would like him to be able to say goodbye to us nonetheless there is some good by saying and some hello saying in this important play this really crucial and extremely powerful play a play that that that is full of recognitions refine dings startings new and confrontations with mortality not only the mortality of protagonist Prospero but also the notion of figures outside the play who have died the fantasy that Ferdinand's father has died the play is full of intimations of both mortality and immortality and it handles these things with extraordinary grace and beauty this is justifiably and consistently one of Shakespeare's most admired plays it's certainly a play that I very greatly admire myself it's a play that has gone through many different strong periods of interpretation and one of the things that I think that we should do in talking about this play is to review for ourselves the modes of interpretation that have seized upon the play and made it their own and I will also want for us to look at some of the particular passages in the play that are so again justifiably moving and beautiful and celebrated and quoted out of context whether it's by TS Eliot the wasteland or in very various other places and we'll also want to look at the major characters in the play because what after the other three romances that we looked at which had a vast landscape the moving from place to place to place a huge time span with two of them having in the middle of the space of 14 years and 16 years many characters armies nationalities personalities flowing through these plays and here I'm speaking again about Pericles Cymbeline at the Winter's Tale here we have a play that's extremely compact in its personnel very compact in its location very compact even in its time span what's happened in this play to the the growing up gap that we noticed in the other romances the necessity for the second generation to grow up what's happened to it here happened before the play begins we saw that in Cymbeline but we read nonetheless Cymbeline was full of losses that took place in real time so to speak here the losses most of them although not Ferdinand suppose laws have already taken place what's the time span 12 years 12 years does that mean that Miranda is 12 how do we know that she was three splendid okay very good so she is in the Juliet young marriage able page she is a young woman who has never really almost never known anything that she is a dim memory of where she came from but she is one of the few as she thinks of it inhabitants of this island let me let's set the persona I first and then we can talk about the effects of the play so there was the the play begins in medius race so to speak something happened 12 years ago that we're going to find out about in retrospect by a conversation who's who was losing the players because he was on the island but who is in the play were the characters whom we will encounter yes now you have Prospero you have his daughter Miranda you have Caliban and you have Ariel right to non-human not only non-human but how to how many of these characters is Ariel directly available whose hero Prospero have Prospero so so that that Ariel is a I mean we see him or her there was a long tradition at the end of the 19th century in which Ariel is played by a woman I've seen productions in which Ariel's played by a male gymnasts it's an acrobatic role it's a dancing part it's a but but but not everybody encounters Ariel directly Prospero does and the audience does and that tells you something about the angle of incidence into the play the degree to which we are you know part of the Prospero world Ariel indeed and so so and these are the the current inhabitants of the island who has lived on the island previously secret reacts and Alicia cracks Caliban smother what did she look like sorry how do you know they tell us that she's ugly but I don't remember the language the foul which sicker acts with age and Envy was bent into a hoop the blue-eyed hag says who prospero so so one thing to me I it's not that I'm telling you that sicker axe was actually you know movie star but but but we this is hearsay this is all reported information and sicker access as as it's important to keep underscoring is outside the boundary of the play she's she is the dispossessed former occupant of the island she's female rather than male she is also which the way Prospero is a witch Ramanujan or a sorcerer but she does not get to speak for herself she's outside the boundaries of the play and the degree to which she is demonized or described in these negative terms is this is the language of dare we say it the Conqueror or the dispossessed or the successor or the winner this is how the people who have replaced her on the island describe her we don't have any contrary information Caliban doesn't say oh but she was beautiful you know it's not it's not that but we do have an interested population that describes her as unfit in various ways a malevolent in in various ways well do we know anything about any actions that she performed while she what we had heard yes she imprisoned Ariel inside a tree uh-huh what kind of tree I don't the pine tree pine tree not that it matters but maybe does but but inside a pine tree why we know what anybody know what we learn what speculations as to why he also was able to do magic and some sense compete with her well they think he's a he's a he's a sprite he's a spirit he she it in pretty so we could say that you know there's a we wanted to allegorize that we could say that this is a life denying or it's a controlling situations hard to say thank you that's okay okay so so cigarettes imprisons Ariel in pine tree is that worse than what Prospero does it's similar in that she imprisoned him and Prospero has enslaved him and it's the same amount of time it's 12 years right now enslaved is a tough word is it used in a play that's who uses it well Ariel uses it several people use it at different times but he Prospero calls Caliban his slave Caliban yes brand so there's there's and then but Ariel's always begging for his freedom so he's enslaved and there's an analogy to be drawn here but I don't remember maybe of the people correctly I don't remember the word slave is used with respect to yes Ariel Ariel repeatedly refers to Prospero as masked as master yes indeed indeed but but there I mean for example there's a master among the shipment there's a you know there was a bosun master you could be the master with a servant rather than a master with a slave you could be a master with a mistress many different ways of being a master without being a slave master percent certainly Prospero controls him employs him he couldn't consistently ask for his freedom there is a tremendous analogy between that and calabasas request for freedom but I don't remember in the text that the play the word slave is you servant yes exactly servant now this you may think that this is distinction without a difference you may think that this is just you know we like Ariel better than we like Caliban or Prospero relax Ariel better thing likes Caliban and so the word is used differentially unless the tasks that that that Ariel gets to perform are different from the tasks that Caliban gets to perform what kinds of tasks says Ariel perform enchantments okay like what he's the one that causes this ship to be tossed at sea or separates all the characters so that none of them know each other is alive right and he also causes the entire crew of the ship to be enchanted for the duration of the story right yes and then at various other points he causes characters to be fall asleep I could fall asleep right that's right to be at one point Ferdinand is frozen in his tracks can't he's in chanted he cannot move the banquet with the several strange shapes entering bringing a banquet the music the island that's full of music that's so remarkable to Caliban one of those beautiful passages in the play this is Ariel's music Ariel is the musician he is playing the music so music what elements do we associate with with with Ariel what Elliott air what are the four elements remind me earth water fire and air so air fire Ariel earth water Caliban too simple yes but this is a very elemental play this is a play that that that is so sophisticated and so sure of itself that it can mobilize all of these great Renaissance cliches and all these great Renaissance set texts and set pieces and make them do something very special it's a remarkable play though the economy this play the brilliance of this play the way in which it boils things down to things that are very elemental is what has given rise among other things to the sets of interpretations that we'll talk about in a second so so Ariel Caliban there's an analogy and a disjunction between them Caliban also enslaved AB horrid slave always this is history on the island no why yes please nurtured by Prospero until he tried to rape Miranda how do we know they tell us okay again again no reason to doubt it oh ho ho would it have been done would I people the Isle with caliban's there's certainly a sense that he you know he doesn't deny it but but again the accusation or rather the description of what took place this is like date rape you know he said she said they mean it they the description of this as a violent act as an unwanted act as an as a as a enacted deserved punishment and that deserved to move him from the state of Playmate and favored second child into this enslaved state in which what is what kind of work is he doing now menial work he's can't there's wouldwould enough within he's carrying the wood he's what else does he do brings the water yeah he is he he is supplying the necessities of life he helps on them survive yes but it's almost as if his act was a moral um it when you hear him talk about it it's he's not even apologetic it's almost as if he was meant to do that and he didn't know what else how else to be well Nicky we hear something about his education don't we that man who has his prints been his principal source of Education Prospero Prospero what does Prospero I taught him through his books to be second astronomy to how to name the bigger light and how the less taught him language taught here and and and but but Caliban himself did a little teaching he's The Naturalist here are the berries or the fresh aisles and the fertile water and so forth there's a kind of exchange that goes on and but but well Prospero is busy doing you know big science so to speak he's not doing the sex ed lecture he's not there is no sense in which he is training Caliban up to be himself to be a suitor our age for theater a gentleman a gentleman exactly think about about the winter's tale and about that wonderful moment when they decide they they're the shepherd and the clown are given titles and money and the clown says see I'm now a gentleman born because the phrase gentleman born is one phrase to him he doesn't understand that gentleman and gentleman born or to different things so the Taliban who actually is a Queen's son is not brought up as the inheritor of the aisle but rather as somebody who is taught certain sets of things but not other kinds of things but he is taught language and that becomes crucial and what is in his own estimation what's the effect of his having been taught language you taught me language and my profit on it is I know how to curse I know how to curse why is that because of his nature that's what Prospero says or and Miranda too one on whose nature nurture could never stick is he just bad it's just bad bad seed figure of evil please from his perspective wouldn't it be that he's been put to hard labor and doing all this menial work and being treated as a slave which is enough reason to curse those who impose those conditions on him was it yes also love was withdrawn from him he was loved at first and then no longer right right this is partly a sort of tailed adolescence to their many many ways of allegorize in this play in many ways of appropriating it into our own time as allegorize ation you ask historians of the Renaissance they will tell you there's no such thing as adolescence in the Renaissance indeed if you remember again the very wise Shepherd in Winter's Tale who says I wish there were no time in life between you know a certain age and 23 because all the time in between is just fighting and and and disputation and so but that's the sort of little adolescent moment described that if you think of the shepherdess or the dr. Phil of The Winter's Tale that that that in this case we have a Caliban who again offstage and we don't quite see it because when we don't have that sense that they're in that same moment has has reached this point of rebellious adolescence and behaves against the father surrogate yes please it's also I think worth noting it's a stage of adolescence that begins with his awakening sexuality wait you first right I'm struck right and indeed this is often the case in the place that we have looked at in plays that that are in the first half of the Shakespeare's career as well that what causes a son during between parent and child is the awakening of desire whether it's Juliet's preference for Romeo over the county Paris or Rosalind falling in love with Orlando and as you like it in all of these plays of adolescents and there are many of them or or indeed Ferdinand that's not Frigg Ferdinand Florizel and Perdita falling in love with one another and as they think going against the wishes of the father the father Pollux and is who only you know comes back into the fall when he discovers this is actually in princess and not as shepherdess but these these rebellions are almost always moments of Sun during from the parental bond and going out into the world at the beginning of another kind of narrative and indeed in this case it is very unvarnished it clearly is sexual desire it's not Caliban doesn't I mean again the figure probably we should compare him to his claudin in in simile where where again it's a kind of a desire mechanism that cotton causes beautiful music to be sung Caliban is a consumer of beautiful music he likes the twangling of instruments that sound he can't identify because he can't see aerial but in fact the story that we are told of the offstage again- event that took place between or upon with Caliban and Miranda is a violent event not a courtship it's not that he brought her flowers it's not that he wrote poems to her that he did you know attempt the chastity to violate the honor of my child is what Prospero says again he's an interested father he I so I know something I want to sow doubt in your minds about what actually happened I just want to remind you that these are all staged events that the story of seeker acts is an offstage event the story of the attempted rape of Kalat by Caliban of Miranda is an offstage event what else is an offstage event in this play who excuse me what else happens offstage either before the play begins or around the in the surround nation of prosperous Kingdom by his brother indeed indeed and and this this happens before the time space time time who doesn't then the play begins and often HAP also happens a different place where in Milan yes which which is pronounced millon in this play just because of the scansion in milan yes the yes Belle's marriage ah but yes well I want to talk about that but let's let's let's stay with the mr. patient - you know that's crucial and that was actually what I was thinking of but let's just hang on to that for a second and go back to the usurpation of the Dukedom just to flesh it out a little bit why does who user of Sudoku from Prospero Antonio and Antonio is his brother right um is he wrong to do so magic into the magic right is his he prefers his books he neglects the governance of the state that he is in his study instead the opportunity presents itself for usurpation again it's not as if everybody says oh it's great you know really much better to have an Antonio ruling but Prospero is like King Lear unburden calling toward death like that he is ignoring the issue of state and he's wrapped in secret studies he's in raptured by the study of magic and magic in in this period encompasses a very wide range of things it is not only doing tricks or playing tricks it magic science and religion are terms that are very much imbricated in one another in this period the evolution of the notion of science develops from the notion of magic of natural theology of understanding how the world works of commanding by because again if you don't understand how the wind works you could think that a sailboat is magic that that so that it's partly a matter of who understands and doesn't understand how natural forces work and who understands and doesn't understand how math works and how language works out of this period will come a practice that will come to be called science a word that literally means knowledge or knowing and out this and will Comicon rationalization of science and a certain kind of notion of science as a set of practices but in this period these categories are very fluid it is until quite a long time after this for example that alchemy is thought of as distinct from chemistry alchemy is the immediate parent of chemistry and in this period not distinct from it so that when we hear that Prospero is a magician I think we need to have that or that he deals with secret studies I think that we need to have the broadest possible picture of what that means that this is not merely the kind of thing that we see Ariel performing on the island with the disappearing banquet and so forth that the the study is really the study of how to control the universe and how to understand the universe and this is both noble and dangerous and it's and and it's also extremely preoccupied it's preoccupying to the extent that he neglects then the affairs of state and his brother Antonio use herbs the Dukedom how does he get rid of Prospero set some adrift in a leaky boat with a leaky little daughter right ok so so we do that a cherubim thou wast that did preserve me that's why I think what the Texas because she says of course that now again remember the completely artificial exposition at the beginning of this play they have been together on his island for 12 years now maybe he never told her this story before because why should you need to know it before because something's about to change we again the play begins in medias Reyes the there's there the shipwreck and again have many things seen is playing the theatre it's fabulous the way this play begins because we get you're in the middle of this storm and the shipwreck and you hear the clang and it's the people are shouting and things are very distinct i indistinct sorry and hierarch he is gone I mean this whole remember that again the scene in the in The Winter's Tale when the clown is on the shore watching the shipwreck and he's talking about the shipwreck in the poor souls and so forth and he's also watching the chicken is being torn apart by the bear and how the Antigonus cried out that his name was Antigonus a nobleman but the bear paid no attention to the fact that he's a nobleman and ate him anyway this now in the middle of that shipwreck so to speak and again there's no distinction of class or rank everybody is in the same boat literally and everybody is in the same storm and who in fact is in that storm that is coming towards the island who has been ensnared in this storm that Ariel has made happen at Prospero is command sorry who no it's it's it's all these Neapolitan and Melanesian dignitaries who are part of the Prospero story the Prospero story of the past and also the Prospero story of the future because we get not only Antonio the brother but Alonso the King of Naples and his son Ferdinand the Prince of Naples and there's a plot in view this is the good suitor as opposed to the bad suitor and pretty soon we'll find a third suitor arrives on the island to make this even more explicit so so the the the off stage is this this action which precipitates where we are right now that it I mean there's a sense in which this island that Prospero is on is just or entirely his own light that that's that's where he was drew that's where he went he went into his study the place with his books he went into the his mind and into the notion of the elements and how he could control them and so forth there's a sense in which he he has journeyed or been shipwrecked on a place that is the equivalent of that psychic space that he was in before it's a place of possibility it's a place of elemental distinctions in which those elements that he might in his magic place be playing with our personal law is to buy Ariel and buy Caliban it's we could say that it's a laboratory we could say that it's a place of experimentation we could say that it's a place in which both human and material or elemental experiments will take place but historically it's an island where where is this island why do you laugh because it's variously attributed to lots of different islands even Jamaica but it's most likely an island that's just north of Africa in the Mediterranean and when you say most likely far as a far the story for ya tur in terms of what we know about where they're coming from and yes okay good over here please well they're coming back from the from the wedding in Algiers yes which is referred to as Angie r-right argit arts art here but it's not presumably they're going back to Italy so there's somewhere in the Mediterranean right it seems seems as if this is a Mediterranean island but there this is a perpetual question for shakespeareans who have you know these large concepts to worry about is the play a new world play or an old role play is this island because some of the flora and the fauna the business about the still vexed movie is the Bermuda Triangle this is the Bermuda Triangle play the play about sort of the ship that gets lost the people that get lost the things that are never heard of again because of this kind of magical set of vectors in the atmosphere there's a sense in which this apparently perfectly clear location is also perfectly unclear that they're enough confusing clues thrown in here just to make you say wait a second wait a second why are there Bermuda winds here near Algiers and you could say well Shakespeare is not a naturalist he doesn't write now to read maps he's using to mix sources or so forth or you could say this is inadvertent genius this works spectacularly well to make this the quintessential island in the quintessential body of water having to do with the quintessential set of enslaved or incarcerated populations certainly people Europeans have often read this play as a play about Algeria or about about the European African relations on the other hand as you probably know the play has been rewritten by Latin American South America Haitian martyr mark Nikken writers new world playwrights and and poets and essayists in the 20th century in the late 19th century - as their story as the story of their enslavement or their hopes or their their necessity of them separating from North America or from white colonization or from from from England or from whatever or from France whatever the colonizing power was thought to be so that the the it seems to be clear only it's not quite clear and the not quite clear miss this was a topic that affected Shakespeare Association in America which is the annual conference of shakespeareans always takes place in a kind of nice and interesting place several years ago did you go to this meeting took place in Bermuda and so on a completely horrible rainy weekend in Bermuda in February and I kept saying to the President to the Shakespeare Association it was a friend of mine that year I said to her you know rains in Bermuda oh no it'll be great it'll be great and for me so there we all were in a hotel room unit raining like that and though it did clear the next day but but the so that one of the topics of this particular meeting of the Shakespeare Association was is the tempest a new world play or an old world play to which the answer is yes and their their vigorous proponents of both and for the reasons that you guys have mentioned absolutely that's one kind of argument there's another depends upon what you want it to mean kind of it depends upon what you want to use it for depends upon what what the what story you think it's ultimately telling or what story your audience is is receiving but but Sir so indeed okay twelve years ago in another place there was the usurpation in other words Prospero for all that he is deeply aggrieved and has been used ill there's some as with King Lear shouldn't give away your kingdom shouldn't you know shouldn't stop being king before you have to so also Prospero here again shouldn't neglect the affairs of state if you want to stay do which maybe you don't and again if you know the whole wide scope of Shakespeare plays you'll know that they're often two brothers Hamlet old Hamlet and Claudius that as you like yet Duke senior and Duke Frederick think of some others but some other cases in which their their two fathers so to speak rather than one any more of these there are lots of them and and and here too we have is it's a it's as if the character splits in half it's as if you have the the Dooku who deals only with affairs of state and is rather not yelling about it and the Duke who is of higher mind but also not paying a lot of attention to affairs of state and that's the that's the part of Prospero so to speak that comes to the island so now sorry did you warn us sorry please I thought more of measure for measure than King Lear as a reference for the abdication of yes it's a very good example it's a very good example that the old fantastical Duke of dark corners that this that the Duke begins by saying something is rotten in the state of Vienna and I can't fix it because it's partly my fault I have let the laws grow lacks and so I can't myself enforce them I'm going to have my substitute Angelo do so now whether that turned out just to be a ruse in order to test Angelo we're not hard to say but precisely something some some basically virtuous person in a very similar that there's some sense in which what was his set of preoccupations what was he doing instead of any instinct about this at all yes please well he would the the Duke was sort of running around and manipulating things behind the scenes and moving the characters around which is kind of similar to look Prospero lines up doing that's what he does yes in the play absolutely that that this notion that this Duke is a play writer that Prospero is a playwright that he's that's actually absolutely what happens in the course of the play if any instinct about why what before before the play begins so to speak what he was doing instead of running the government well partying you think he says you know the dribbling dart of love ribbing dart of love will never pierce this complete bosom he's not interested in love and sex even though he actually is interested in loving sex we don't have I think the sense that he's a party boy particularly anything else I think it's it wasn't he just preoccupied with being too kind and things got out of hand because he couldn't bring himself to enforce the laws there is 2-mile it's not it's nothing actually did it well into this datings go hard to say he's more I mean if you imagine the the hamlet of the early scenes of Hamlet as the king rather than did that there's some sense which he thinks too much whatever it he's not obeying the laws and and one of the things that Dukes often do in the Shakespeare plays that have Dukes in them is to first lay down the law and later mitigate the log they call often come out at the end of the play as happens in measure for measure as happens in comedy bearers and says well you know don't worry I partied on the law and so forth it said that the Duke is often in that position of first being the person who has to enforce and lay down the law and impersonate the law mortality and mercy in Vienna and also the one who can change it that's certainly exactly what happens in measure for measure here - we have a Duke who has some choices to make Clarabel tell me about Clara Belle please Clara Belle Alonzo's daughter and she she is forced into an arranged marriage that she really doesn't want to why and why doesn't she want to marry whoever it is she's marrying well I think though he was black he's in Africa Africa yeah and she didn't want to go there and I think that I don't know whether I'm just intuiting this she didn't want to give up the power in Naples as well I don't know that we know that this only comes in in this question of who is that you know the king is the king is dead so who is the next heir of Naples Clara Belle but she no she'll never hear that her father's dead miles and miles in law's away so if Ferdinand is dead you know it's postulated I fantasized at one point by lon so theoretically she could not take over the power and that it would go to Antonio oh just Sebastian so there Sebastian a big again the wicked brother of the king of the King Alonso so so so we have this family of Alonso the king and his daughter claribel his son Ferdinand Clarabel as you say arranged marriage again remember dynastic marriage very common in this period father chooses though the husband all the women we have come to know who are that who resist this mainly some of Shakespearean heroines II sorry Desdemona good choice here since since she actually chooses the the black husband rather than the darling of the city whom he might've no father Brabantio might prefer who else Imogen Imogen great choice good okay even the Cordelia they won't marry burgundy King of France instead and so forth it doesn't turn on the choice of husband but the choice of husband is related a little bit to this question of obeying the father and of the father's edict where the Burgundy changes his mind you know election makes not up on these conditions I won't marry her if the dowry isn't there but also I won't marry her if she her prices fallen the father doesn't adore her any longer King of France has a different set of values let us say so he marries her but so so this this business about the daughter submitting to the marriage Edict of the father or the daughter choosing for herself again we we're told this we're told this in a very vivid way about her resistance to this marriage and I think you mentioned both reasons that the play gives us for it one that he's an African and he's other than she and other also that it's very very far away it's she's leaving you in order to make this marriage and nonetheless they've all been to the wedding so it's not as if they've hidden her away it's not as if they mean they they this is a kind of a Hello arranged marriage but it's one that's obviously sanctioned but and this is where they're coming from so we could say you know part of their problem is that the ship is burdened with you know bad vibes because of the this forced marriage but Clarabelle D is way out of the edge of the play so Clarabelle and sicker acts again are are different kinds of women from the woman that miranda is and Miranda is the only woman whom we see how would you contrast Miranda with cigarettes how would you contrast Miranda with Clarabelle for cigarettes anybody compare them in the play Oh differences I mean everything that cigarettes is described as being Miranda is the opposite right she judges over here she's innocent she's you know she's Oh brave new world whereas I would think if you were contrasting a require a bell you don't have the physical description but you have the experiential kind of difference because Miranda has none of this experience of dynasty I mean she's about to be made a dynastic marriage she doesn't realize it yet but she's that total that totally innocent of not even having seen human beings before except for her father and well a band a few right but you you very well show both the the disjunction and the conjunction here that in a way very same things about to happen in red her father has arranged a suitable marriage for her he has brought her together with the suitor he's going to make sure they get married but we see this production of full of feigned resistance the father pretends to not wish this in order to test or to create the climate for healthy disobedience or whatever it might be that they have we seen this before in the romances have we seen a father pretend to resist the daughter's choice disinherit this yes tie is his father great great will you remember his name semana DS which is also the name of a great Greek poet that semana DS pretends to be angry at the daughters choice and tells us that he's happy with this but that he tests her by pretending to be displeased we get very much more fully fleshed-out version of that in the process and parent apparent way in which Prospero feels or seems to feel toward Fernet but but Miranda as you say is braving the world innocent it's not not brought up the court doesn't have this sense either of parental constraint or of what the you know but both of the dangers and the beauties of the court world there's a sense in which she is a kind of natural innocent at the same time that she's a natural sophistica and when we first see her the beginning of the play what is her role what is her role visa vie her father what is her role visa vie the shipwreck absolutely.i if by your art my dearest father you have put the wild waves in this roar allay them she again think about the scene that we saw last week with the clown standing on the shore and watching the shipwreck and having this kind of distanced account of it's not that Hina's father that the shepherd don't feel compassion but it's way out of their control chipwrecked is one of those things that happens in nature and all you can do is grieve and pray and move on to the next thing in this case however what's the real story about this shipwreck it's not a shipwreck it's a piece of magic everybody's clothes are dry everybody's alive everybody there's there's a it's a it is so much like the real thing that we first encounter it as the real thing we're in the dark it's noisy it's we hear people shouting and so forth we we don't begin on the shore saying watch this magic false storm I'm going to create we wind up in the middle of it and then we are disabused of its danger as she is that we are part of that speck to toriel moment with Miranda whose name means what wonder mean one Miranda to be wondered at and to wonder at its own a wonder again a major major category in the medieval period in the Renaissance people collected wonder objects in wonder cabinets it's a it's a the idea of the natural world and what it can do is full of these objects of wonder and sometimes they're they're they're amulets and wrought things and sometimes they're things in nature like crystals but the IO and and and aberrant sin nature - you could say that that Caliban is himself a kind of natural wonder in that he looks like a fish as well as like a man and so forth it that there's this there isn't an attraction repulsion difference here these are all wonders in a way they're all kind of creations of nature but Miranda is both herself oh you wonder says Fernan to her and admired Miranda once he learns her name so that we it's underscored for us that he understands both that she is a wonder and that she is a wonderer she's a great audience but she's not a wimp she's not merely a good girl and the fact that she's not merely the good girl is is brought home to us by the fact that she is allowed to rebel against her father that again she keeps secrets from him that the capacity for subterfuge which is a kind of Juliette like skill and an image and like skill is also one that she is able to use so that she's not entirely passive that her femininity is not entirely a negation of action or power she has her own mode of action and power but she begins in the play as this wandering personage someone who is somehow conflated with the baby that she's described as having been and with the cherub or cherubim that he describes the the the infant angel that he describes her as being who lifted his spirits when he was set adrift into the boat but she is and again this is characteristic of the way this play is set up that you've got one example rather than many of a certain type of thing with the other examples offstage or not immediately available to us so that Miranda's occupies the only onstage female role but leads us to ask certain questions about the women who are around the edges of the play and what happens to them what about Prospero himself we have held him a little bit at arm's length here in our description of the rest of the cast of characters how would you characterize him history doesn't Prospero in fact control everything and everyone like a chess master and then there's that chess game whatever it's almost as though as the magician chess P is the master he controls everybody from the beginning you it seemed to be a plan from the beginning it seemed to be a plan absolutely and it turns out that even for example the courtship is a plan that that that you you know what seems to be accidental or a fortuitous circumstance turns out to have been very carefully crafted is there any point at which yes God please looks it was is that we meant to eat he went into some different place which allowed him then to control reality is there a limit to his power would you say that there is a limit and that is why he takes the point of view at this point with his daughter's emancipation coming that he's being freed and he goes on to to grow himself in the new way what's he going toward he's going toward forgiveness of his brother and okay of himself okay is it this his own idea who suggested forgiveness to him in the play yes please Mario describes how he is moved I think to pity yes and Prospero replies it is almost a shame that he doesn't have a stronger reaction right dust thou who are quite spirit etc and a my immediate gift for lunch right where Ariel says you know mine would sir were I human and heir and Prospero says and I mine shag but I will in fact release this is when there he's describing the people in his thinking higher and the Ariel begins to have a sense of pity about this that there's there's this kind of transformation from because the the this play has the shape of a revenge drama this is this a familiar genre in this period the long nurtured sense of hurt and injury finally the culprit comes within your grasp and you're going to do everything you can to disconcert him and have revenge upon him and to bring him low and even to kill him and it's a revenge tragedy which in a different way different way from Hamlet but in a related way averts itself here it becomes something else yes please curious about where prospers wife was uh-huh and the question earlier about what the limits of his power he can't make people love or not love and I was just wondering about for him the meaning of the wife not being mentioned I don't think in the play and Miranda's not curious about her mother right how is the wife ever mentioned um if it was I missed it there's a is a right sir were you're not my father and he replies my mother was a piece of virtue and she said that was to my daughter right this is very characteristic really just came out of Winter's Tale where this is this issue of the undecidability of fraternity here it's often a kind of unpleasant witticism of this kind the very same joke is made by Leonato in much ado about nothing this very same joke about this sort of the mother said and so in there and kind of a boys and boys joke about this this is it so it's a proverbial kind of thing to say it's it's coming to the common language but here's the place in which the mother is mentioned in relation to dynastic succession in an offensive anticipation Emma C then there's the moment quite late on in the play when Ferdinand is watching the mask and he and this is a disputed crux about which there'd been interesting things written where he says either so rare a wondered father and a wise makes this place paradise or so rare a wondered father and a wife makes this place paradise the question is whether it's the long F the long s which is that the in Elizabethan printing or in Jacobean printing an S in the middle of a line often has this long tail or whether it's an F and you can't really tell me but it's been some dispute about but but in this case he's talking about his own wife of course not about prosperous wife but it did give rise to a very interesting article by Steven Oracle called Prospero his wife about this very question of the absent mother and of course absent mothers as we've noticed how are pretty present in these plays that most people except for for Coriolanus has an absent have an absent mother and it is there's almost always this sort of glance toward it I what you want to make of this do you want to interpret this I'm not ready to okay but but what one thing it does do is to make her rather like Perdita in the little domestic world of the shepherd in the clown the or indeed like Imogen in among bellarius and good arias and our very goes the only woman playing the role both of mother and a daughter or a mother and a brother or whatever role that they think they're playing that the the the daughter mother wife role is this is the other woman to Prospero and you there have been arguments not long but they've been arguments that part of his resistance to other suitors is a kind of incest there kind of a desire to keep her for himself before we laugh at that too much we can remember the incest moment that fleeting in sense moment in Act five of the winter's tale in which Leontes mistakes his daughter for somebody that he could marry yes please the the I did the limits of Prospero's power it seems to me that that it's his power is is conditional on this on the island yes that you know if he if he would unlimited power he could just take off a go take my land back anytime he wanted to I mean he has to make everybody come to him right it just seems very interesting that kind of movement that everything has to come right to him again the question will I mean for my kind of reading of the play since the island and Prospero are versions of the saying that the spaces to kind of imagine it the space of his mind in which all these things are happening there's a certain kind of logic to that but but in any case he was certainly powerless in Milan somebody took his power right away from him magic or no magic his magic was not helpful in trying to keep his position in the world so he was exiled he didn't choose this this was not a pleasure trip this was not a toon hardliner that he was taking to this island where he then decided to stay this was a a place of exile place of rejection that he then made into something and indeed when he's going to go back to Europe it is going to be at some cost what's it going to cost him sorry giving up his magic giving up drowns his books breaks his staff every third thought will be my grave that that he's going back into the world it's as if he's had this moment of eternal life that is now turning back into the you know suddenly he's going to be an old man and it's clear that his time is almost over that he's going back into time that he's choosing death it's not me it's not me it's pathos but it's not pathos he's he's going forward but going forward means going into death rattling away from it at this inopportune time we'll have to stop and take a break to come back to these yellow sands after these five minutes or ten minute break okay so let's let's now take a moment to sort of look at the big picture issues that have marked various strong interpretations of this play before we then come down to look at some of its textural moments and I mention this in part because as I say the if the island is a kind of laboratory for Prospero so also the play has become a kind of laboratory where various kinds of criticism it has has called forth very different very compelling very persuasive modes of criticism maybe we can just name some of them to begin with what would be various critical approaches to this play that you're familiar with okay great let's just list these to begin with and we'll come back and talk about them okay anything else yes metafictional metafictional school engine okay all right more that's it okay fine let's talk about that it's crucial well there's the the Prospero with Shakespeare des cailloux family autobiographical okay okay anything else Neels I would say that there is both so to speak a psychological and a psychoanalytic way of reading this play and that they are different from one another okay and I think also a probably under colonial we can put issues like the master-slave dialectic but discourses of power I think and enslavement are are things that we might might want to talk about slightly adjacent to rather than completely identified with the colonial discourse because the colonial discourse to a certain extent a historical reading and the the phenoms argument about this play for example or manie's argument about this play would be an argument that combines the psychological of a psychoanalytic and the power argument to talk about how it is that people get themselves into these relationships of master and slave or how it is that this is a kind of consent agenda so to speak and what kind of a relationship this is so alright this is a good start we'll get rid of these ifs and asses that are confusing us here though sorry but this reminds me that there are also quite good feminist readings FCSS remember were part of the prosperous wife discourse that they're quite good feminist readings of this play and and many others that the places say is because it's so perfect it really lends itself to many readings of this kind pick one out and let's talk about it for a second psychological okay so how would we distinguish the psychological from the psychoanalytic just in very very broad brush terms here I feel I must refer to the expert in the room anybody have a view about this stroke would be one would be psychoanalytic would be more unconscious forces as opposed to conscious sure okay so bear in mind that these are not absolutes but that psychoanalytic would have to do with with with unconscious motivations or the motivations that were somehow not perfectly understood by or even maybe aggressively misunderstood by the people who were performing them there are psychoanalytic ways of reading texts and psychoanalytic ways of reading characters psychology again this isn't very no psychologists will agree with me about this but we talk about psychological readings of plays where a certain extent talking about character and motivation and the relationships among characters and the family clusters and and and things like that in a psychological reading of this play then would participate in the conversation that we had a little while ago about the father/daughter tensions about the sexuality causing a imperfect conversation between them and deceit or dissimulation the competition between the father and the suitor the the absent mother and what this might suggest about the extra roles that are heaped upon Miranda Luke and and and the discussion that we had about Caliban - and whether whether you can talked about Caliban having a psychology whether he has a persona that where he has motivations he has desires he has relationships so that for example a very very famous beautiful passage in which he talks about music which would be not a fear of the olives full noises sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not that this this is a kind of childlike utterance of the kind of that gives you an insight into an aspect of Caliban that seems quite different from the the figure of Caliban that you see in front of you and this figure Caliban is itself persuade performed in many different ways sometimes there's a kind of hybrid monsters sometimes as a native resident of an island in woven clothing but the question is sort of what it was the interior of Caliban like what is the interior T of Prospero like what are the motivations of these characters and what's the extent to which if there is one that there are more than one father more than one child in this play that there's there's a kind of splitting out of the typical roles of typical 20th 21st century roles of generational relationships the let's the colonial story here is as the problem of reading the footnotes in whatever text you're using embedded a little bit in the history of the time in which the play was written remember again they were always going to pay attention to the time which it's written the time which it sets how much is performed and in this case you know it's not a history play per se those three things have coincided in the late 20th century to remind people that D colonialization that colonization were preoccupations in the Elizabethan and early jacobi in period and also of course in the last half of the 20th century in the beginning of the 21st century and that that the the journeys of Columbus the journeys of Strachey the journeys of various Captain John Smith that very various of these journeys of exploration seemed to find a paradise and then that may be a disease came and destroyed the the sailor population or they were marooned and they they either found that it was magical and then found their way back to - to England that these stories that are that seemed to be part of the subtextual history of this play our stories that new historicist critics were very interested to find actually reflected and rewritten or and in some kind of conversation with what was going on in these reports of exploration and conquest in the period exploration and conquest which remember is part of a kind of nationalist project as part of its the rising capitalism it's the beginning of a kind of triangular trade in goods and slaves and in which so-called civilization is exported and so-called nature is imported and people are part of what's brought back and so forth but it's also nation-building I mean all these terms that came back to haunt us ourselves in recent history it's also a notion of sort of that whether this place belongs to us or to the people who live on it but don't deserve to have it because they don't understand it the way we do or whatever it is said that the allegorize ation of the colonial moment is multiplied written into this play and the degree to which the play is so to speak about Caliban has been at the center of this question about the degree which the play is colonial I had a colleague when I first came to Harvard when I was I came here as a tenured professor but I was quite young and I had a very senior colleague who had been teaching his play for years and who was very startled by the then rising tide of colonialist readings of the play which they again then for 15 years became the most common way to read the play and he said to me one day he said if Caliban were the hero of the play I don't know what the play would mean and for him this was completely destabilizing to imagine re-centering the play around Caliban and what he had lost and what he might get back I also saw a production of this play that I believe was directed by Mark Alaimo as the same guy who did the Cymbeline in New York at the Hartford Stage company theater in which Caliban at the end of the play I remember that there's a much staged business about Prospero's magic garment lie there my art the art of what thou art the question of the the the magic garment that that is his a part of his his magician's apparatus that he will abandon at the end as he drowns his book and breaks his staff and so forth and in this production the magic garment laid on stage on the island and Caliban picked it up and wrapped himself in it and began to dance around and you could see that the whole cycle might be about to repeat itself again but what Caliban had learned was how to be a colonizer that what he had learned was how to be a master how to seek revenge how to be a figure of power that in this particular production what had happened to Caliban was not I'll be wise hereafter and seek for grace not this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine not this notion of the somehow conversion of Caliban along the way but in fact a Caliban who stood apart from any reunion at the end of the play much as Autolycus stands apart from such a reunion at the end of The Winter's Tale and decided he's going to be himself but now he's learned how and that he picked up the magic garment and put it on was in this production a sign of repetition rather than at the end of that repetition it was things had not been redeemed they may be there all the rest of them going back but here was Caliban about to to to show what he had learned that he learned language he learned how to curse he learned astronomy and so forth now he learned politics now he'd learned learn colonial politics he learned dictatorship people in mastery so this would be one one way of making your way through the material of the play the humanists I'm so glad you mentioned the notion of a humanist reading of the play what would a humanist reading of the play be first of all what is humanism yes go ahead please if you've got an answer to question one we don't need question two um I might be simplifying it a little but it's sort of Prospero learns the true meaning of Christmas I guess you know yeah ah I see I see yeah well that's that No that that's that's an applied notion of humanism that he becomes humanized the humanism in this period is among other things a kind of educational movement in the Elizabethan Jacobean period it's something that is fueled by Italian philosophy and basically what it does is to put man rather than God at the center of the universe that the hamlets famous speech about what a piece of work of math is man and so forth which is an echo of Pico della Mirandola Zoar raishin on the dignity of man one of the great humanist documents is it is a text that wants something they forget about God but there you know when you hear people shaking their hands and their fingers these days and saying secular humanism this is what they mean that they the idea is that that man supersedes God or religion in this case it's a restructuring of this image there's still the idea of Matt of God and of the Beast and so forth but that man a little lower than the Angels here assumes a more powerful role and this this role was often emblem Atty z'd on the theater on the stage by the figure of the actor who again was in in the the Globe Theatre situation between the heavens above and the Hell below as the names of these parts of the theatre were described and so forth that that this is a very man centered human centered art form and there's this there's a way in which Prospero precisely because he doesn't know everything he doesn't have infinite power only in this one space he is going to die he does lose things he does need to be corrected by Ariel he does need Miranda's support as a cherubim and so forth that he is mad in the old-fashioned sense of mankind he's also a man and this this split now we're going to take us very short but important little little detour into deconstruction you'll give you five minutes of deconstruction that that men as the substantive that means all human beings is a word that stands by itself when you break man into man woman or animal or any other binary in which man is only half of something so we say man woman man animal god beast then then man becomes not the whole thing but something in relationship to either the the primary partner or the secondary partner god man man woman you can tell who's who's in charge here so to speak but but Prospero at various points of this play is man and it Prospero at various point he is men in a binary relation and this is structuralism not deconstruction but but what deconstruction will do is to sort of talk about how that word man then gets emptied out of meaning once it once it gets broken so to speak once it wants it you see it in tension with itself it ik that it can mean at the same time all humankind and it can mean a man or even that man and once it does that you see you can't put the pump T Dumpty you can't put the pieces back together again without remembering that there's this tension within the notion of Matt and this the play is very good at performing precisely that tension within the notion of man that there are times when he seems that seems to be a play about men kindness and there are times when when when you put Prospero in the frame with Ariel with Caliban with Miranda with Fernet you see his partial 'no sand you see his lack of him partiality you see his interested miss you see his desires you see his blindnesses and so forth and so that again the play is brilliant in the way it emblem entices for us both the wish to have a notion of man empowered man man proud man dressed in his little brief authority that's Isabella again in measure for measure and the idea that man is a actually one of a variety of ways of being a man or a version of mankind and so so the humanist reading of the play so to speak really begins with this notion of Prospero is all in all and what that means and also looks at his limitations before the plate after the play and also his limitations within the play and those limitations far from being a flaw in the character or what make the character an interesting character rather than just a an allegorical cut board a cardboard figure cutout figure the we've talked a little bit about the feminist reading in that we have talked about about what would happen if you focused on the women in the play and the autobiographical reading again I mentioned a while ago because it's so persistent this is the fence there's so many fantasies that attach thee to the notion of Shakespeare including the fact that we can know something about him that we can know him that he knows us that he's scripted us and the desire to actually have some kind of relationship to Shakespeare and even if I can go back to the master/slave for just a second to have some control over this figure who seems to have some control over us does play into the way in which this persistent recurrent notion that this play is about Shakespeare's biography that he had a daughter married that he lost a son that he was getting old that he left London that he went back to Stratford that he shortly died and so forth it they that that there that the events of the play foreshadow the events in shakespeare's life or retell the events at Jasper's life this is again our our cultural desire I think to have some some intimate connection with Shakespeare and even to be his heirs even to be the survivors of Shakespeare and the inheritors of Shakespeare in this way it's nothing wrong with these desires there's nothing wrong even with this kind of reading the fact that it's not historically accurate isn't the end of the story because the the theater is a magic space and we get out of it partly what we put into it and so the very persistence of this fantasy or wish or reading or miss reading is itself a kind of reading is it tells us a kind of story about the power of the play and again about and I want really to keep insisting on this about the simplicity of the architecture of the play about the way it is reduced to elementals the island the man the half man half something else the one daughter the King I mean every there's there and and this mention of the chessboard reminds us that there are other places in which these kind of allegorical roles are mentioned even within the play but the immense simplicity and therefore monumentality of this play is partly what makes it so very great and so very powerful I asked Larry and Mel if they would would be so kind as to introduce a topic into the mix since we could talk about this play forever and I think they've been so fabulous within the course that I would like for them to sort of conduct us in a direction Larry could you point toward something that you think would be good for us to talk about yeah well something that I think about in terms of the production history of this play is that it's sort of his it is that it is that it's been a occasion for spectacle and particularly its sensuous elements its translation for instance into opera or into ballet we've been incredibly suggestive so I think will be great for instance if we would look at some of the songs in it or perhaps that married the marriage mask but all these various theatrical forms it seemed to have kind of landed an incredible durability in production absolutely right now this goes along with this issue that I mentioned very briefly the beginning to play but whether Ariel is male or female whether whether he she flies or not there seems to be a really desire to an aerial is associated with almost all of these things he is the entrepreneur of the mask he is the singer of the songs maybe let's look at the songs to begin with because they're so wonderful the in act 1 scene 2 we have 2 songs from Ferdinand and this is the moment that TS Eliot was remembering and rewriting in the wasteland can we impose upon you Larry - ok you're thinking you've come unto these yellow sands yeah starting with that yeah alright well I won't sing it but um come on to these yellow sands and then take hands curtsied one you haven't kissed the wild waves whist food it feet lee here and there and sweet sprites the burden bear hark hark bow-wow the watch dogs bark bow-wow hark hark I hear the strain of strutting Chanticleer cry cockadoodledoo so this is the first song that Ferdinand hears enter Ferdinand and Ariel invisible playing and singing now this this kind of stage direction which sounds like science fiction is actually fairly common in the period that if a character is is meant to be ended could be wearing a cloak of invisibility visible to us not to Fernet can can you interpret this saw what does it seem to be talking about was it addressed to coming to these yellow sands and then take hands the audience okay good anybody else maybe there is nobody else but the audience to Ferdinand to all the party that came with him coming to these yellow sands and then take hands this is it because it's a song it's a song and it's an invitation to dance eight years and it's like a revels moment you know the moment at the end of a court mask when the actors in the audience danced together this is possible in a court mask because the actors on stage rather than being ordinary people are themselves noble men and indeed noble women so it's not a scandal to touch them or to dance with them because they're social equals so this is in a way yes Larry see a few words about the court mask as a form you know what it was historically what it means how its conducted I'll try okay so you'll remember that the Public Theater emerges as an entertainment which is relatively speaking Democratic in its interests that apprentices go to the theater that noblemen go to the theater that Queen Elizabeth went to the theatre King James went to the theatre but that it was open access that there were different levels of of payment and that it was a kind of a route the public theater was kind of rowdy place plays put on the daytime different places where you could add food sold in probably in the in the halls and so forth and that there were all these kind of anti theatrical tracks and writings that sort of talked about the dangers of theater the theater was danger because it impersonated real life because it made you fall in love with the actors or actresses because it made you dissatisfied with your own without your own lot because it was unreligious in that it did you know pretend to be images you do what God supposed to do to make images of man but also because it was so seductive and it was seductive even in a material way that is to say that apprentices would cut work in order to go to the theater and that and that it was also a place and we're still talking here about the Public Theater where when there was plague in the city it was rampant because a lot of people are stuffed together in this small space and so forth so so this is a kind of performance which is very popular but but also very demotic very interested in the general populace and also a place in which you know rebellion and revolt might take place in Contra distinction to this they're developed private theaters indoor theaters in which for example play like this might be performed this one is also a play that is performing in a public space and also court masks which were extremely popular especially during the time of King James and James's son Charles so we have the Jacobean mask and the Carolina mask and what would and and this is a case in which there's a collaboration between a poet and a and a scene designer the most famous of these collaborations is between Ben Johnson and Inigo Jones was a great scene designer in which Johnson finally writes a poem called an expostulation upon Inigo Jones in which he complains that the stage effects are taking over that painting in Carpinteria the soul of masks he's extremely unhappy about his words being eclipsed but the general structure of the court mask is that there is an anti mask ent eye mask which is also an anti mask and TE mask e then he happens before the mask of something monstrous of that's a mask of blackness as a mask of witches that begins with with we begin to wit with witches and turns into queens there's a mask of pygmies there some spectacular you can imagine a mask of Caliban get a plural calabaza that some spectacular image of negativity then gets transformed or converted by a theatrical exfoliation it's literal changing of the stage that wonderful devices in which what looks like a cave turns into a mountain what looks like a a a a an enclosed space opens up and so forth and the characters also the negative characters disappear replaced by positive characters who assigns of virtue and and the often easement asks a very allegorical and their figures of harmony of of political success of pleasure reconcile to virtue is the most famous mask that that Johnson writes and it's about Daedalus in the mat and and the maze and the idea that in the choice of Hercules and the idea that pleasure and virtue can indeed be reconciled so in this play we have a mask at which is performed the wedding mask and indeed this the play The Tempest and the play The Winter's Tale we're almost surely performed at the weddings at the wedding of James's daughter Elizabeth so here we have a wedding with a wedding a wedding mask within a play this is self performed at a wedding and itself allegorize is the eternal happiness of the wedded pair which turned out not to be so happy but that's another story and and in this mask the mask of Juno and series Juno the the the goddess of marriage series the goddess of the harvest here combined noticed that it was not with who's the major goddess is not present in his mask sorry Venus yes no no Venus no Aphrodite no lust no lust instead we have the marriage and fertility we have the fruits of marriage rather than the run-up to marriage taking place and and nymphs and Reapers happening here so again it's fertility its nature and it's a mask that's interrupted you may remember by what but by probably what why does he drunk it why does he interrupt it yeah he forgot about the plot that's going on outside there the plot to murder him Caliban and the lo conspirators Stefano and frankie'll oh my God we're never going to finish talking about this play Steph Stefano and Trinculo who have become who who are the the low usurpers these are the the butler and the court jester who also came off the ship who used to be servants in the old world now in the new world they're going to be masters and Stefano is going to be the new suitor to Miranda and bring the fourth brave brood says Caliban speaking in this wonder wonderful illiterate language that associates him again with an older English tradition the Caliban having failed himself to become the suitor of Miranda going to hand her over to this God figure Stefano the butler with his magic potion which is what alcohol again you know if you know anything about how what happened to native populations this is a kind of poignant moment here but Caliban basically gets drunk ban-ban to Caliban Liberty Liberty and so forth because this is the opposite kind of song from the transformative songs of Ariel sings - deferred Annette and so again not on the stage with us but kind of off stage is this conspiracy against the life of Prospero the very conspiracy that we talked about when we said that Ariel has them stuck in the stinking liar but Prospero erupts the mask right in the middle and everything disappears and we have that most beautiful speech in all Shakespeare our revels now are ended which is about the rebels it's about the masks the word rebels here is a technical word that has to do with I mean we have you know revel the Christmas revels and so forth with the end which is not unrelated to the notion of Revelation incidentally but this but we have this notion that rebel means general playing around and having a festivity and so it does but the rebels where it was a technical term for what happens at the end of the mask when there's the image of earthly and godly harmony by the act is who are often the family of the audience because it's a noble audience a private audience dancing with the audience so that that and again the image of dancing here from the Elizabethan times to the present and very poignant ly in this play is the image of earthly and godly harmony that the music of the spheres again why can't we hear Ariel because we are fallen Ferdinand can hear him but it still seems a little bit strange to him so this the the dance here at the end of the route of the the marriage a mask is meant to be again and an image of earthly harmony modeled on heavenly harmony and it's the best possible omen for a marriage but of course it's interrupted as it always will be interrupted because the message of Shakespearean drama is interruption it's not conclusion is we never get to harmony you get instead to some kind of realization or revelation or perception and it's often a memory it's often something you forgot that then comes back as Hamlet's father will come to him and say you know this is to whet thy almost blunted purpose remember me so that is the the forgotten memory comes back again and that memory is the human trait we know this from Nietzsche we know this from everybody the memory is the thing that that actually makes these characters human so the mask at the end which is an entertainment and would have it would have occupied a lot of stage time and stage space and every time I've seen it it's very spicy 'none derful versions of this would have three foot high characters that was fabulous production of the chicago stage company a couple years ago was just amazing and I had never been in raptured by this mask before I always thought of it as Paige's I had to get past her to get back to the text but but it can be fabulous absolutely fabulous and then you feel as Ferdinand and Miranda tits or what happened to it you know I would disagree we're we're in the middle of this how come we're back in the revenge plot how come we're back precisely in an older mode of drama an older mode of drama I had forgot the filed conspiracy against my life and we're back in that moment of Prospero wanting revenge and so we rolled back not only in terms of atavistic human behavior but also in terms of the sort of stage history of how certain kinds of plays came to the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage so the mask is is always an image of harmony and slightly an image of timeless Ness and it's always again going to be interrupted by time let's just before we that we're going to backtrack to the second song Ferdinand because I don't want to leave us with only the one just to read you this one again very shortly after the one that Larry read us full fathom five thy father lies of his bones are coral made those are pearls that were his eyes nothing of him that doth fade but to suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange sea nymphs hourly ring his now dingdong hark now I hear them dingdong Bell so what's this an image of its transformation yes that's step two to information of what of death of death yes we're looking at a dead body under water this is an image we're going to see a lot in Shakespeare you see it in Clarence's dream and Richard the third you see it there are many places in which this fact is fantasy or this is imagination of what it's like to be a ground person surfaces here but here again immediately you're quite right it turns into transformation see change that to suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange and is this notion of the sea change could be again take lifted from this play and talked about as the way in which Shakespeare makes metaphor the shape way in which Shakespeare makes characters the way in which he makes makes make stronger that it seems to be natural but also it's kind of magical bear in mind that this is a fiction that his father is not dead that the that we are relieved to find the transformation the dead body is already turning into natural life again and pearls so that we have both jewels coral and pearls and also you know new creatures but also we have ultimately the sense that this is a fictive event that he has got to Ferdinand comes to terms with death imaginatively and in the bounded space of a song so that he can begin to think of himself as fatherless and therefore as man as the King of Naples as a figure with a future and it's he needs to go through this death of the father this would be to go back to the psychological recycle analytic readings go through the death of father imaginatively so as to be able to reencounter his father alive again at the end of the play as a different person and in the meantime to have conducted as he does in an extremely elegant as well as arduous way his courtship of Miranda because again what what he does is of course to take over all the jobs that Caliban had the carrying of the would being the slave and so forth but he is not the slave he is the servant and he animates that word servant out of the Petrarchan discourse in which the lover is the servant of the beloved in which everything he does is at her servant in which this language of servant and mistress is the completely common language and the completely common practice and he talks about the fact that the mistress that he serves makes all his trials pleasures that that so that did he the purposelessness so to speak of the enslavement of Caliban here becomes purposeful and the notion of slavery is set aside again in favor of this notion of the servant so you're more Larry that you want us to talk about about the about the mask and legs great alright Mel please really because you know what I'm going to want to talk about but I want to offer the students a chance to chime in to the because in all seriousness my voice has been pretty forward on the discussion board this week I've kind of been still stuck back on Antony and Cleopatra her hanging on that so so what should we open it up for recording questions or okay um because otherwise I'm gonna want to about despair and everyone will leave here all jure rien we we certainly don't want to leave a tempest right you do you should we should we talked a little bit about it as long as we just don't leave it on that no and I don't want that right well then everyone out he said we got 10 minutes and I think we probably need to talk about Prospero's various farewells because I would not want to say farewell to you without taking note of the fact that this is a guy who says goodbye for half the play that that you know it's like an OLE actor you cannot really get him off the stage and he begins rehearsing his departure quite early on our revels now are ended again a magnificent speech and we can read it together what are his other farewells what sorry there is an epilogue absolutely there's the epilogue and between that there's the moment that we talked about before in which he abandons his magic the ye elves speech in which he drowns his book in which he he abandons his magic that this is another kind of farewell he it's important I think that he keeps leaving and not leaving that he keeps articulating his losses that he and that that in each of these spheres he says goodbye to art he says goodbye to magic he says goodbye to his daughter he says goodbye to the island he says goodbye to life what doesn't he say goodbye too he says goodbye the Ariel go chick farewell Caliban is the one thing it doesn't say goodbye to this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine that there you know whether or not you see them going off into the ether together there's a sense in which the the release is also an act of claiming that and this is and the I acknowledge mine is different from but also importantly similar to that moment that we looked about before at before in which the we hear that the mother said that you were my child and I believe her that that's a kind of mine I acknowledge mine moment this is a very different I acknowledge mine moment I think we don't fantasize that this is his actual physical child so how do we understand that moment of Caliban being acknowledged acknowledged such an important word yes in what sense Prospero molded Calvin's character he taught him things that he chose to teach him right and so if he is very much a creature of Prospero and he's responsible he is responsible that that that the deformation of Caliban is not a physical deformation though he's described at some points in this way but that he is formed and then he is deformed by by the paternal law by the first the teaching of of language the humanization and then the dehumanization by the refusal of the courtship and by the enslavement and so yeah the withdrawal of love yes yes exactly but but first he gives it and then he takes it away so that the the ILA fold music speech is really a speech about love I mean it's a speech about the access to to identification and to going outside yourself and so forth and then then the because Caliban feels loss and he doesn't only feel loss of Miranda he feels a more profound kind of loss exactly you just heartbreaking heartbreaking it's absolutely heartbreaking absolutely and I mean all of these figures encounter loss but Caliban in a way incarnated he he is both one who has lost and one who allegorize his loss and one who cannot be lost because he is indissoluble from the Prospero who is going forward yes can I jump in a little on this point now I to me it's a very powerful thing as well because I'm reading it through the lens of Prospero setting himself up a good death and it's not that that is what the play is trying to function but it's appropriating all the forms that people used to use in order to itemize their existence and say goodbye to it and bequeath certain things so that there's a stock taking you know as he says every third thought will be on death that some of you may be familiar with the idea that in the Renaissance ah if death took people by surprise this was a very this was a terrible thing and it was not indicative that you were headed toward a good place so that they were very obsessed with the idea of getting everything in order conscious conscience wise conscious wise material wise and this is this is sort of the form of what he's doing at the end and so therefore it's all the more tragic and heartbreaking that Caliban seems to have no place in his thoughts as he's ordering what's most important to him as he's getting ready to go to the next realm whether that's on earth through death whatever next imaginative realm is coming for him Caliban doesn't have any any place in right his sense of leave this is why this production that I saw that left Caliban on the stage is like the famous Peter Arno cartoon about the Noah's Ark and the unicorn remember anybody see this is old New Yorker cartoon in which there's a heart completely heartbreaking cartoon you'll understand what I need in a second a huge storm going on and over in the distance you can see on the horizon is this arc just disappearing and here you are on the edge of a piece of Island landscape and there's a unicorn looking at know exactly exactly looking out at the disappearing arc and you know Wow so so it's but it's that is that image of the unn partnered unique fabulous and unsaved figure and its respective from that look I mean again these meant to view cartoon but actually you know philosophy so alright let's go by the epilogue for second just one second that just to say that it I mean like all epilogues it it is epiha it comes after the play epilogue speech after something and that it is a much less powerful piece of poetry in some ways than some of the speeches that Prospero is given within the text I'm going to read it and then I'm going to read the rebel speech and then I'll let you go till after Christmas here's the epilogue spoken by Prospero after he has left Ariel go remember the struggle that he has to let Ariel gone if Ariel is imagination and invisibility and creativity and so forth he drowns his book he breaks his staff he and this is of course an echo of Medea the witch in Ovid he lets Ariel go and then he is alone on stage eggs and illness everybody else leaves now my charms are all or thrown and what strength I have mine own which is most faint notice that this the surgery in the middle of the line emphasizes that the line stops in the middle now it is true I must be here confined by you who are you audience ok confined as Caliban was confined here on the stage by you or sent to Naples let me not since I have my dukedom God and pardon the deceiver dwell in this bear island by your spells it was the magician now audience but release me from my bands with the help of your good hand so what's being asked for here thank you gentle breath of yours my sails must feel or else my project fails which was to please again watch the seizure is here watch that the halts in the middle of the sentence now I want want in what sense lack might be desire but it's also lack lacking desire at this point in this play are the same 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 we pardon be let your indulgence let set me free and here again a kind of echo of the notion of a religious indulgences both a high and a low notion so this is Prospero to the audience now I take you back to act 4 scene 1 which is Prospero only to Ferdinand really and again it's the speech so often taken out of context that we forget that it's actually spoken just to his putative son-in-law you do look my son this is act 4 scene 1 line for 146 you do look my son in a movie fort as if you were dismayed be cheerful sir our revels now are ended so be cheerful our revels now are ended how often do we quote those two lies together these are 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 which it inherit shall dissolve and like this insubstantial pageant we just seem faded leave not a rack behind not a wisp of cloud we are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep so the classic passage it's the middle of the speech sir I am vexed bear with my weakness my old brain is troubled be not disturbed with my infirmity if you be pleased retire into my cell and there repose a turn or two I'll walk to still my beating mind so here we have sublimity returning in - drama we have this passage that speaks more wisely than it knows about endings and about the the artifice of drama and the way dreams are reality speaks about the ambitions of the theatre and about what it can do for us and then the speech draws right back into the humanity and frailty of the actor and the character and his beating mind and that beating mind that we saw in Lear on the heath that beating mind in which there's a kind of pulse in the mind that is so painful that he's aware of himself thinking and that's what makes it so intolerable for him the play will always return always return into the human from the sublime they're these glimpses of dream this what happens in his speech for us is what happened to the mask and fernette and we're in the position of speaking to the dismayed and discomforted Prospero and perceiving that what is temporarily at bay here is just an aspect of the same kind of theatre that is here represented by the figure with the dismay and the walking into the cell and the beating mind and it's that frailty in him that is finally the most recognizable aspect of the play our little life is ended asleep I'll see you on the 2nd of January have a great holiday

Channel: CosmoLearning

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Id: xryT4B4sOY0

Length: 110min 41sec (6641 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 18 2015