In Conversation with Stephen Greenblatt on The Tempest

[Music] hello ladies and gentlemen I'm Anthony tulino the artistic director of the Stratford Festival of Canada and the director of The Tempest which begins the next in our film series collections these three films will be on the theme of isolation I am very lucky to be back again talking with Stephen Greenblatt internationally renowned Shakespeare scholar and historian and to give us his insights on The Tempest hi Stephen I had any nice to see you it's great to see you Stephen now Stephens written books that you must read from will in the world to tyrant and many others the decline and fall of Adam and Eve sorry Paula jeez to Gibbon okay and but this book especially was an influence for me it's called the swerve you really have to read it it kind of explains the modern world and it was a big help as I began to think about what a Prospero might be like in this film Martha Henry's an extraordinary actress plays there is a duchess so Steven The Tempest is a strange play it's part science fiction arguably the first science fiction piece it is a madness mask elements in it it seems to be a farewell to the theatre it's been looked at many different ways how would you describe the tempest well it's a particularly fraught moment to describe the tempest Anthony the moment that we're in and that many of your viewers will be in because suddenly the whole world is experiencing isolation unwilling isolation being forced into isolation not not taking a vacation and away from it all so the premise of the of the play is what it is to be stranded marooned on a tiny island in a tiny group suddenly to go from a cold vibrant society into a enclosed world with only the most basic of tax and services centered on the most intimate family and in this case mother and in your version of a mother and daughter and then extending to the two servants of the Magus the magician mother so I was thinking about it when I watched your wonderful production which I recommend to any of the viewers who haven't yet seen it and I was thinking about it as what it must have meant even in the early 17th century world when when periodically in moments of plague people found themselves quarantined isolated suddenly shut in and forced to stay in so the play has that kind of extraordinary concentration as if it were imagining what it is to be enclosed as if the people had come for example and locked up the doors of the theatre and made everyone stay in for a period of time and and confront themselves in that moment and it's you've mentioned the theatre it feels like that isolation at concentration is from three equal worlds at least three the theatre with theatre magic and the stage the island with the magic of the that island and then it's sort of the broader world as well isn't it I mean governance comes up in this play a lot it feels like each one of these worlds as a is a kind of tiny world a big world made small even a fourth idea to this the three you you sketch which is the idea of the scientific experiment or the sociological experiment it bacon Francis Bacon who created the our idea of what a scientific experiment looks like is only a little bit ahead in time this bacon was alive then and thinking about what it is to create a scientific experiment and it is as if the play was posing this as what happens to governance what happens to family relations what what if you close it in and eliminate all the extraneous elements and just focus on this experimental space and of course that happened in this period periodically in which suddenly people found themselves not in the confused world that we normally live in but suddenly closed into a tiny space let me review the plot just grossly and then you can which is about a duchess who is deposed by her brother sent on a boat that is intended to actually sink out to sea and miraculously seemingly she finds herself on an island with her daughter and they lived there for years there are spirits on the island Ariel there is a creature that she in some sense the dots Caliban who is a half-human half-animal but then suddenly the stars align her brother and the king who assisted in her to posle but come near the island and she is able to get that boat and bring them to the island where she can then work her magic because she's a powerful magician so it begins with this this shipwreck this this terrifying scene and the practical sailors who have such authority they're like dr. funky in this moment you know just they know what they're doing get out of the way they say to the king these waves don't care about the name of King right away the idea of governance is brought out yes I mean one thing that this astonishing about the beginning of the play in Shakespeare again and again and his career was wonderful at this in the world that was heavily censored in which you couldn't precisely say openly did the authority figure shut up get out of the way you're just you're just assisting the storm but in this moment the lowly bosun is able to say those things to the king into the nobles around the King just get out of the way you don't know what you're doing you have no authority here or if you have some authority over the storm tell it to shut up but the storm doesn't shut up very kindly you invoke my book were at the beginning and the swerve is about a poem by a Roman poet named Lucretius from about fifty before the Common Era and one of the most remarkable moments in the poem is an account of a shipwreck but what we're supposed to do when we see a shipwreck and we're imagining as Lucretia's is imagining I'm not just imagining but observing a world in which if there's a storm at sea II and you see a ship foundering and you see everyone drowning you can't do a thing about it I mean you're you're unsure you're in a safe place the storm is not threatening you but you're seeing people die and that is the opening scene of the tempest this it really is as if Shakespeare head as he may have have encountered this famous passage in Lucretia's and the question is what are we supposed to do when we're on dry land and we're watching this scene of horror well what we see in Shakespeare's version is the daughter of the powerful magician responding with terror and pity with tragic emotions to this and the magician says no be calm I have it completely in control this is not something you need to get worked up about and it's as if Shakespeare were testing this ancient account and in fact in the course of the play you discover that the magician herself has to change her feelings has to be more responsive has to be more has to understand that she is bound up with those people on the ship she's not on such a perfectly safe ground and we're in going to speak about her and her journey from an anger and revenge through to forgiveness the place is about forgiveness on some level um but she sets up different experiments on this island as you said she divides up the different people and one brings together Caliban that creature along with Stefano and Trinculo sort of a lower-class rebellion where they become very drunk and wanted to put a nail in her head and burn her books and then there's an upper-class rebellion which is really internal so her who'd opposed her is now suggesting to the brother of the king that he killed the king and so there seems to be different kind of strata as well as different or all of them are revolts however you and your essay talk about Jamestown and a shipwreck on Bermuda about these different kinds of revolts that took place in a time around when Shakespeare was writing this play can you talk to us a bit about that yes and The Tempest is a is a again perfect representation of this crisis which in the case of the English and we know from reading the play carefully from thinking about it sources that Shakespeare knew very well this story that was circulating about what happened when there was a shipwreck in Bermuda of a group of ships that was sent to relieve the colony at Jamestown that was in trouble and what happened was that the people began to say why should we go on to Jamestown let's stay in Bermuda Bermuda is a very nice place we don't have to take orders from the person in charge why should we do what we can live here comfortably and maybe eventually we'll get back to England but we certainly don't have to listen to what our commander is telling us to do there was a rebellion very much like the Stefano Trinculo rebellion or also from some people slightly higher in the scale of that and it had to be crushed in order to get the ship to be ships to be rebuilt and go on to Jamestown and Shakespeare's fantastically alert to the questions that are raised by a moment of crisis as we're all experiencing with the pandemic what's the nature of authority why should you obey who can tell you what to do and why should you listen if someone tells you what to do and the play is a deep brilliant and very I think uncomfortable at least for me very uncomfortable exploration of these questions on this theme of colonization the Prospero lands on the island encounters the spirits in the form of Ariel that free freethought spirit and also the creature Caliban who is not native to the island has been brought there by his mother cigarettes a witch but what does Prospero then go but to do in terms of controlling that island in relation to what you're just saying about colonization that was happening at the time yes well then and a kind of suitably distorted and suddenly fantastical way but you can feel the presence again of what happened after 1492 a native population indigenous to the islands a large population of slaves brought in from Africa to do the most miserable labor on those islands act particularly after large numbers of the native population that died off and then the question of how to control and what to do with this so you said that the spirit Ariel is freed well yes freed from some situation of enclosure or enslavement in the tree but then made to work as a kind of indentured servant with a promise eventually that area would be released as for the slave Caliban he's forced to do all of the miserable things and punished when he doesn't do it tortured when he doesn't do it constantly it's represented as pinching and physical punishments and one of the things that makes me very uncomfortable about the play and that your own play grapples with is if the authority figure needs this kind of labor to survive if we can't do without people risking their own lives serving us how are we supposed to feel about our own power how do we justify what we've done in our own position governance suggests that there's justice and that there's willing subjects but in fact what we're seeing here is either political power and to the extent of murder and deposition or magic used that tortures Prospero is blessed in a way that Ariel exists because Ariel is not human able to sort of serve as a mirror and is the one person who can actually you know reflect to Prospero what exactly is happening prospero is very angry wanting to get revenge and is using dark magic to be able to do that there's a moment when in describing as as Prospero tortures the royal court ariel describes to Prospero tears of pity that fall from Gonzales eyes about what's been done to Alonso and his son and and suggests that if they were human if Ariel were human they would feel pity can you tell us a little bit about that how that things change yes it's a wonderful moment wonderful moment in your production is a wonderful moment in the play everyone in certainly in Shakespeare's time in the early 17th century understood that if you fall into the hands of if an enemy falls into the hands of a powerful ruler very unpleasant things are certainly going to follow Prospero has 12 years of Rage built that has built up inside of her in your production and everyone understood whether it was Queen Elizabeth or enemy the 8th or King James that once you fell into the hands of such a ruler with rage you are going to be tortured and torn to pieces and that is the threat that hangs over the enemies of Prospero through the play and one of the things that happens that's as you say most remarkable is that what appears to be an non-human force Ariel is able to reach Prospero and say look if I were human which I'm not I would feel pity I would mitigate my rage and that is actually what Prospero does which is maybe less astonishing for ourselves so we don't live in the very forgiving society either but certainly in terms of the early 17th century must have been in some ways one of the most remarkable things about the play what it is for an enemy to fall into the rulers hands and be forgiven and in fact Prospero brother is not a repentant person at all as it remains a kind of nasty figure throughout the play and yet is not broken on the rack as what have actually normally happened in this situation but as isn't thinking again about our own situation Anthony right now we have technological means if robots in effect whether it's a washing machine or the dishwasher or whatever if we're fortunate enough that we use to do that kind of service for us and then we have a number of human agents who also serve us the the driver of the UPS truck or the FedEx truck who are or the person in the in the grocery store who are in much more danger than any of us who are in isolation and since if the play divides those two between area and Caliban and then astonishingly the washing machine or dishwasher says look if I were human I would be kinder than your beam and it changes everything it reaches you you are astonished at your own lack of empathy and you come to terms at least a little bit with the fact that you haven't given any thought to who's serving you and in that realization that was beautifully but Prospero realizes that the rare action is in forgiveness and she should forgive but also realizes perhaps that she herself needs forgiveness and then begins that beautiful yells where she calls together all the spirits that she has misused in her dark arts to open graves do horrible things and she's a bit like dr. Faustus who doesn't know whether he can still be forgiven by God that they've gone too far to be forgiven and she in asking for heavenly music seems to be saying will I be accepted back and are you still am I still part of the human race and then at the end she actually asks the audience for forgiveness what do you think Shakespeare is trying to say in huh well she says at the end telling lead to the audience she looks out at us and says as you from crimes would pardon'd be let your indulgence set me free you from crimes would pardon'd be we are also people who have committed crimes it's one thing in fact as I watch the play again I was thinking how disagreeable in many ways the plays attitude toward colonialism how much of the accepts or colonial presumptions in a way that was uncomfortable and then when Prospero looks out and says is you from crimes would pardon'd be let your indulgence set me free it turns out on that's the fact that we're not free from these stories we're implicated in them we ourselves need forgiveness and we have to grapple with our relationship to the past as a way of grappling with our relationship to ourselves and what we've done yeah it seems to be an underlying thing I'm working on school for scandal I remember thinking everything that is good in this society from coffee to Coco to rum to his cotton is the product of a slave system that that we just took for granted and and that's right in the fiber of the tempest I'm in looking to the future Ferdinand the king's son and Miranda fall deeply in love for their last entrances playing chess he's cheating she catches him and she then sees humanity beyond her mother for the first time what are we to make that ending for this brave new world well I think that the play has tantalized us throughout they they they have fallen in love but they fall in love actually it's a peculiar arranged marriage it's been cunningly arranged by Prospero though they're not fully aware that that is what's happening this is a in fact a dynastic marriage that's been made but it's been made in a way that makes them feel like it's both a wonderful accident that they encountered each other and that they're doing a little bit against the will even of Prospero so they have some sense of agency and freedom in a way that particularly in this period if there was a situation of a dynasty there would be no freedom whatsoever in the marriage and there are two aspects of this that I think in many aspects that are quite interesting one is that it's I think important in the play maybe we lose a little of a sense we get some very specific information about how old Miranda was when she came to the island and how old she is now she was three years old when she came to the island she has that scene where she remembers being served by the women and now twelve years have passed so she's 15 and she's at she's reached reproductive age she is puberty and she's ready to be in this context to be married that also means that Prospero is finished in terms of the cycle of life the daughter is ready to begin her own life and Prospero has to come to terms with that as well at the very end of the play because they're moving out back into the world and Prospero says every third thought shall be migrate every third thought shall be my grave not every thought but every third thought but to recognize that your story is coming to an end your narrative is finished their narrative is beginning and what you see in that scene when they're playing chess is the beginning of their narrative it's not gonna be a perfect marriage she's not going to have an entirely idealized account of this miraculous man that she's seen and he's not gonna think forever that she's a goddess as he thinks they're going to have to come to terms with their human reality they're going to play chess in the way that we all play chess as it were with each other making moves trying to figure out where we are on the board and that's the beginning of their story Stephen a great work of art becomes a classic you could argue because its meaning is not fixed it means something new every few years as we live in a different time we look at it and see new things you raised isolation when we're looking at this film at this play what are some of the things that strike you that we can gain or reflect upon from The Tempest I think that we should think about who's making our lives possible what's what are the structures of power and what are the psychic structures inwardly that enable us to organize our lives in ways that we survive when when we are imagining or when we're experiencing life reduced to a certain number of very basic elements where are we getting our food what about our shelter how are we staying alive and who's making that possible not only who's making that possible what kind of knowledge makes that possible what books have we read and that have we've absorbed the magic from that that is making our lives possible this play asks us to think about that it asks us to give up those aspects of our technological skill that are the most destructive at the end of the play we have you staged it wonderfully where she finally kisses and then throws the magic book plummeting down into the Seas it's a figured in the plate but into that trap door and she's giving up something extraordinarily important and powerful but also catastrophic ly destructive and the play is asking us to think about what we should retain and what we should give up in order to live a more decent life that's wonderful Steven it's a huge pleasure thank you for taking this time to give this play new dimensions for all of us as we will look at it again in 2020 Stephen Greenblatt thank you thank you

Channel: Stratford Festival

Views: 5,839

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Stephen Greenblatt, Politics, Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, Scholar, Author, Interview, Antoni Cimolino, Stratford, Stratford Festival, Stratford Festival on Film

Id: gcfPvsB_LqU

Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020