The Tempest is a play by
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where
ProsperoProspero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
, the exiled
Duke of MilanThe Duchy of Milan , was created on the 1st of may 1395, when Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Lord of Milan, purchased a diploma for 100,000 Florins from King Wenceslaus. It was this diploma that installed, Gian Galeazzo as Duke of Milan and Count of Pavia...
, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place, using illusion and skillful manipulation. The eponymous tempest brings to the island Prospero's usurping brother Antonio and the complicit Alonso,
King of NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of...
. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's low nature, the redemption of Alonso, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.
There is no obvious single source for the plot of
The Tempest, but researchers have seen parallels in Erasmus's
Naufragium,
Peter Martyr'sPeter Martyr d'Anghiera was an Italian-born historian of Spain and its discoveries during the Age of Exploration...
De orbo novo, and an eyewitness report by
William StracheyWilliam Strachey was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the English colonisation of North America...
of the real-life shipwreck of the
Sea VentureThe Sea Venture was a 17th-century English sailing ship, the wrecking of which in Bermuda is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest...
on the islands of
BermudaBermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
. In addition, one of
Gonzalo'sAn honest and trusted adviser to King Alonso of Naples, Gonzalo is one of the few characters in The Tempest who has a good heart and is described as noble. For example, when Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, were set adrift at sea, Gonzalo took pity on the two of them, supplying them not only...
speeches is derived from Montaigne's
essayEssays is the title given to a collection of 107 essays written by Michel de Montaigne that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of which the book contains a large number...
Of the Canibales; and much of Prospero's renunciative speech is taken word for word from a speech by
MedeaMedea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
in
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's poem
MetamorphosesMetamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature...
. The
masqueThe masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
in Act 4 may have been a later addition, possibly in honour of the wedding of
Princess Elizabeth of BohemiaElizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
and
Frederick V, Elector PalatineFrederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
, in 1613. The play was first published in the
First FolioMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
of 1623.
The story draws the tradition of the
romance genreAs a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
, and it was influenced by
tragicomedyTragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
and the courtly
masqueThe masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
and perhaps by the
commedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
. It differs from Shakespeare's other plays in its observation of a stricter, more organised
neoclassicalNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
style. Critics see
The Tempest as explicitly concerned with its own nature as a play, frequently drawing links between Prospero's "art" and theatrical illusion; and early critics saw Prospero as a representation of Shakespeare, and his renunciation of magic, as signalling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage. The play portrays Prospero as a
rationalIn epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, not an occultist,
magicianMagic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
by providing a contrast to him in Sycorax: her magic is frequently described as destructive and terrible, where Prospero's is said to be wondrous and beautiful. Beginning in about 1950, with the publication of
Psychology of Colonization by
Octave MannoniDominique-Octave Mannoni was a French psychoanalyst and author. After spending more than twenty years in Madagascar, Mannoni returned to France after World War II where he, inspired by Lacan, published several psychoanalytic books and articles...
,
The Tempest was viewed more and more through the lens of postcolonial theory—exemplified in adaptations like
Aimé Césaire'sAimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
Une TempêteUne tempête is a 1969 play by Aimé Césaire. It is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest from a postcolonial perspective: Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. Caliban favors revolution over Ariel's non-violence, and rejects his name as the...
set in
HaitiHaiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
—and there is even a scholarly journal on post-colonial criticism named after Caliban. Miranda is typically viewed as having completely internalised the patriarchal order of things, thinking of herself as subordinate to her father.
The Tempest did not attract a significant amount of attention before the closing of the theatres in 1642, and only attained popularity after the
RestorationThe Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
, and then only in adapted versions, such as that of
DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
and D'Avenant. In the mid-19th century, theatre productions began to reinstate the original Shakespearean text, and in the 20th century, critics and scholars undertook a significant re-appraisal of the play's value, to the extent that it is now considered to be one of Shakespeare's greatest works. It has been adapted numerous times in a variety of styles and formats: in music, at least 46 operas by composers such as
Fromental HalévyJacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
,
Zdeněk FibichZdeněk Fibich was a Czech composer of classical music. Among his compositions are chamber works , symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas , melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia,...
,
Lee HoibyLee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism during a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned and irrelevant to modern society...
, and
Thomas AdèsThomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
; orchestral works by
TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
,
Arthur SullivanSir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
and
Arthur HoneggerArthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
; and songs by such diverse artists as
Ralph Vaughan WilliamsRalph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
,
Michael NymanMichael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
and
Pete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
; in literature,
Percy Bysshe Shelley'sPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
poem
With a Guitar, To Jane and
W. H. Auden'sWystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
The Sea and the Mirror; novels by
Aimé CésaireAimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
and
The DivinersThe Diviners is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974, it was Laurence's final novel, and is considered one of the classics of Canadian literature....
by
Margaret LaurenceJean Margaret Laurence, CC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer, one of the major figures in Canadian literature.- Early years :...
; in paintings by
William HogarthWilliam Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
,
Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
, and
John Everett MillaisSir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
; and on screen, ranging through a hand-tinted version of
Herbert Beerbohm Tree'sSir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
1905 stage performance, the science fiction film
Forbidden PlanetForbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film directed by Fred M. Wilcox, with a screenplay by Cyril Hume. It stars Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. The characters and its setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and its plot contains certain...
in 1956, to
Peter Greenaway'sPeter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
1991
Prospero's Books Prospero's Books , written and directed by Peter Greenaway, is a cinematic adaptation of The Tempest, by William Shakespeare. John Gielgud is Prospero, the protagonist who provides the off-screen narration and the voices to the other story characters...
featuring
John GielgudSir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
as Prospero.
Characters
- Prospero
Prospero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
is the usurped Duke of Milan, a magician and the play's protagonist
- Miranda is Prospero's daughter
- Ariel
Ariel is a spirit who appears in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Ariel is bound to serve the magician Prospero, who rescued him from the tree in which he was imprisoned by Sycorax, the witch who previously inhabited the island. Prospero greets disobedience with a reminder that he saved...
is an airy spirit
- Caliban
Caliban is a character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.Caliban may also refer to:* Caliban , a moon of Uranus* Caliban , a metalcore band from Germany* Caliban , an acoustic Celtic folk duo...
, enslaved by Prospero, is the son of the witch SycoraxSycorax is a character mentioned though not seen in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.Sycorax may also refer to:*Sycorax , a moon of Uranus, named after the fictional character...
- Alonso is the King of Naples
- Sebastian is Alonso's brother
- Antonio, the usurping Duke of Milan, is Prospero's brother
- Ferdinand is Alonso's son
- Gonzalo
An honest and trusted adviser to King Alonso of Naples, Gonzalo is one of the few characters in The Tempest who has a good heart and is described as noble. For example, when Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, were set adrift at sea, Gonzalo took pity on the two of them, supplying them not only...
is a counsellor who gave aid to Prospero and Miranda
- Adrian and Francisco are lords
- Trinculo is a jester
- Stephano is a drunken butler
- Boatswain
- Master of the ship
- Iris
In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. As the sun unites Earth and heaven, Iris links the gods to humanity...
, Ceres and JunoJuno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
are spirits and goddesses
Synopsis
The
magicianMagic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
ProsperoProspero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
, rightful Duke of
MilanMilan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded for twelve years on an island after Prospero's jealous brother Antonio (helped by Alonso, the King of
NaplesNaples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
) deposed him and set him adrift with the then-3-year-old Miranda. Gonzalo, the King's counsellor, had secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the most-prized books from Prospero's library. Possessing magic powers due to his great learning, Prospero is reluctantly served by a spirit,
ArielAriel is a spirit who appears in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Ariel is bound to serve the magician Prospero, who rescued him from the tree in which he was imprisoned by Sycorax, the witch who previously inhabited the island. Prospero greets disobedience with a reminder that he saved...
, whom Prospero had rescued from a tree in which he had been trapped by the witch
SycoraxSycorax is a character mentioned though not seen in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.Sycorax may also refer to:*Sycorax , a moon of Uranus, named after the fictional character...
. Prospero maintains Ariel's loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the "airy spirit" from servitude. Sycorax had been banished to the island, and had died before Prospero's arrival. Her son,
CalibanCaliban is one of the primary antagonists in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.- Character :Caliban is forced into servitude on an island ruled by Prospero. While he is referred to as a calvaluna or mooncalf, a freckled monster, he is the only human inhabitant of the island that is otherwise...
, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion and their own language. Following Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by Prospero to serve as the magician's slave. In slavery, Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his daughter. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with contempt and disgust.
The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother, Antonio, is on a ship passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Antonio's friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso of Naples, Alonso's brother and son (Sebastian and Ferdinand), and Alonso's advisor, Gonzalo. All these passengers are returning from the wedding of Alonso's daughter Claribel with the King of Tunis. Prospero contrives to separate the shipwreck survivors into several groups by his spells, and so Alonso and Ferdinand are separated believing the other to be dead.
Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with
StephanoStephano is a boisterous and often drunk butler of King Alonso in William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. He, Trinculo and Caliban plot against Prospero, the ruler of the island on which the play is set and the former Duke of Milan in Shakespeare's fictional universe. In the play, he wants to...
and Trinculo, two drunkards, whom he believes to have come from the moon. They attempt to raise a rebellion against Prospero, which ultimately fails. In another, Prospero works to establish a romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda; the two fall immediately in love, but Prospero worries that "too light winning [may] make the prize light", and compels Ferdinand to become his servant, pretending that he regards him as a spy. In the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and Gonzalo so that Sebastian can become King. They are thwarted by Ariel, at Prospero's command. Ariel appears to the "three men of sin" (Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian) as a
harpyIn Greek mythology, a harpy was one of the winged spirits best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas...
, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Prospero manipulates the course of his enemies' path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him.
In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Prospero, who forgives Alonso. He also forgives Antonio and Sebastian, but warns them against further betrayal. Ariel is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Alonso and his entourage (including Prospero and Miranda) back to the Royal fleet and then to Naples, where Ferdinand and Miranda will be married. After discharging this task, Ariel will finally be free. Prospero pardons Caliban, who is sent to prepare Prospero's cell, to which Alonso and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Prospero indicates that he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. Prospero has resolved to break and bury his magic staff, and "drown" his book of magic, and in his epilogue, shorn of his magic powers, he invites the audience to set him free from the island with their applause.
Date and sources
Date
The Tempest is thought by most scholars to have been written in 1610–11, and is generally accepted as the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone, although some have questioned either or both assertions. Scholars also note that it is impossible to determine if the play was written before, after, or at the same time as
The Winter's TaleThe Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...
, whose dating has been equally problematic.
Edward BlountEdward Blount was a London publisher of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline eras, noted for his publication, in conjunction with William and Isaac Jaggard, of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays in 1623....
entered
The Tempest into the
Stationers' RegisterThe Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...
on 8 November 1623. It was one of 16 Shakespearean plays that Blount registered on that date.
Contemporary sources
There is no obvious single
sourceA source text is a text from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.-Description:...
for the plot of
The Tempest; it seems to have been created out of an amalgamation of sources. Since source scholarship began in the 18th century, researchers have suggested passages from Erasmus's
Naufragium (1523), (translated into English 1606) and
Richard EdenRichard Eden was an alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographic works of other writers helped foster a spirit of overseas exploration in Tudor England.-Early life:...
's 1555 translation of
Peter Martyr'sPeter Martyr d'Anghiera was an Italian-born historian of Spain and its discoveries during the Age of Exploration...
De orbo novo (1530). In addition,
William StracheyWilliam Strachey was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the English colonisation of North America...
's
A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, KnightTrue Reportory is the short-title of a 24,000 word narrative of early colonial literature, "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; vpon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas: his comming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then, and after, vnder the...
, an eyewitness report of the real-life shipwreck of the
Sea VentureThe Sea Venture was a 17th-century English sailing ship, the wrecking of which in Bermuda is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest...
in 1609 on the island of
BermudaBermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
while sailing towards
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, is considered by most critics to be one of Shakespeare's primary sources because of certain verbal, plot and thematic similarities. Although not published until 1625, Strachey's report, one of several describing the incident, is dated 15 July 1610, and critics say that Shakespeare must have seen it in manuscript sometime during that year.
E.K. ChambersSir Edmund Kerchever Chambers was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. His four-volume history of Elizabethan theater, published in 1923, remains a standard resource for scholars of the period's drama....
identified the
True Reportory as Shakespeare's "main authority" for
The Tempest, and the modern Arden editors say Shakespeare "surely drew" on Strachey and Montaigne for specific passages in the play. There has, however, been some scepticism about the alleged influence of Strachey in the play.
Kenneth MuirKenneth Arthur Muir was a twentieth-century literary scholar and author, prominent in the fields of Shakespeare studies and English Renaissance theatre...
argued that although "[t]here is little doubt that Shakespeare had read ... William Strachey's
True Reportory" and other accounts, "[t]he extent of the verbal echoes of [the Bermuda] pamphlets has, I think, been exaggerated. There is hardly a shipwreck in history or fiction which does not mention splitting, in which the ship is not lightened of its cargo, in which the passengers do not give themselves up for lost, in which north winds are not sharp, and in which no one gets to shore by clinging to wreckage," and goes on to say that "Strachey's account of the shipwreck is blended with memories of Saint Paul's – in which too not a hair perished – and with Erasmus' colloquy."
Both the Victorian antiquarian
Joseph HunterJoseph Hunter was a Unitarian Minister and antiquarian best known for his publications Hallamshire. The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York and the two-volume South Yorkshire , still considered among the best works written on the history of Sheffield and South...
(1839) and
Karl ElzeKarl Friedrich Elze was a German scholar and Shakespearian critic.Having studied classical philology, and modern, but especially English, literature at the university of Leipzig, he was a master for a time in the Gymnasium at Dessau, and in 1875 was appointed extraordinary, and in 1876 ordinary,...
(1874) challenged the 1610–11 dating, and this challenge was revived by Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky in 2007 and 2009, who also argue that sources earlier than Strachey's letter account for Shakespeare's imagery and wording. In their 2009 article, the authors maintain that Richard Eden’s text is the key source, and the
Oxfordian scholarThe Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. While a large majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship, popular...
William Leahy described this paper as a ‘devastating critique’. Mainstream scholars such as Alden T. Vaughan, Gabriel Egan, Michael Neill, and independent researcher Tom Reedy remain unconvinced.
Another
Sea Venture survivor, Sylvester Jourdain, also published an account,
A Discovery of The Barmudas dated 13 October 1610, and
Edmond MaloneEdmond Malone was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he...
argued for the 1610–11 date on the account by Jourdain and the Virginia Council of London's
A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia dated 8 November 1610.
Other sources
Modern researchers have recently added Ariosto's 1516
Orlando FuriosoOrlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...
as a possible source for the play, as it contains many of the storm references also found in
Naufragium.
The Tempest may take its overall structure from traditional Italian
commedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
, which sometimes featured a magus and his daughter, their supernatural attendants, and a number of rustics. The
commedia often featured a clown known as Arlecchino (or his predecessor,
ZanniZanni or Zani is a character type of Commedia dell'arte best known as an astute servant and trickster. The Zanni comes from the countryside. The Zanni is known to be a “dispossessed immigrant worker”. "Immigrant" in Italy at the time of the city-states, did not necessarily mean someone from...
) and his partner
BrighellaBrighella is a comic, masked character from the Commedia dell'arte. His early costume consisted of loosely-fitting, white smock and pants with green trim and was often equipped with a battachio or slapstick, or else with a wooden sword. Later he took to wearing a sort of livery with a matching cape...
, who bear a striking resemblance to Stephano and Trinculo; a lecherous Neapolitan hunchback named
PulcinellaPulcinella, ; often called Punch or Punchinello in English, Polichinelle in French, is a classical character that originated in the commedia dell'arte of the 17th century and became a stock character in Neapolitan puppetry....
, who corresponds to Caliban; and the clever and beautiful Isabella, whose wealthy and manipulative father,
PantalonePantalone, or Pantalone del bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the needy', is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia del arte...
, constantly seeks a suitor for her, thus mirroring the relationship between Miranda and Prospero.
It is traditionally argued that one of Gonzalo's speeches is derived from Montaigne's
essayEssays is the title given to a collection of 107 essays written by Michel de Montaigne that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of which the book contains a large number...
Of the Canibales, translated into English in a version published by John Florio in 1603. Montaigne praises the society of the
CaribbeanThe Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
natives: "It is a nation ... that hath no kinde of traffike, no knowledge of Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike superioritie; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no occupation but idle; no respect of kinred, but common, no apparrell but naturall, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corne, or mettle. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousnes, envie, detraction, and pardon, were never heard of amongst them." However, the ultimate source of Montaigne's passage is an account of Gonzalo Oviedo published in English for the first time in
Richard EdenRichard Eden was an alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographic works of other writers helped foster a spirit of overseas exploration in Tudor England.-Early life:...
's 1555
Decades of the New Worlde, with which Shakespeare was evidently familiar.
In addition, much of Prospero's renunciative speech is taken word for word from a speech by
MedeaMedea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
in
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's poem
MetamorphosesMetamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature...
.
Text
The Tempest presents relatively few textual problems in comparison with many of Shakespeare's other plays. The text in its current form has a simple history: it was first published in the
First FolioMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
in December 1623. In that volume,
The Tempest is the first play in the section of Comedies, and therefore the opening play of the collection. This printing includes more stage directions than any of Shakespeare's other plays, although these directions seem to have been written more for a reader than for an actor. This leads scholars to infer that the editors of the First Folio,
John HemingesJohn Heminges was an English Renaissance actor. Most noted now as one of the editors of William Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio, Heminges served in his time as an actor and financial manager for the King's Men.-Life:Heminges was born in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire in 1556...
and
Henry CondellHenry Condell was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623....
, added the directions to the folio to aid the reader, and that they were not necessarily what Shakespeare originally intended. Scholars have also wondered about the
masqueThe masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
in Act 4, which seems to have been added as an afterthought, possibly in honour of the wedding of
Princess ElizabethElizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
and
Frederick VFrederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
in 1613. However, other scholars see this as unlikely, arguing that to take the masque out of the play creates more problems than it solves.
Themes and motifs
The theatre
The Tempest is explicitly concerned with its own nature as a play, frequently drawing links between Prospero's
Art and theatrical illusion; the shipwreck was a
spectacle that Ariel
performed, while Antonio and Sebastian are
cast in a
troop to
act. Prospero may even refer to the
Globe TheatreThe Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
when he describes the whole world as an illusion: "the great globe ... shall dissolve ... like this insubstantial pageant". Ariel frequently disguises himself as figures from
Classical mythologyClassical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
, for example a
nymphA nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...
, a
harpyIn Greek mythology, a harpy was one of the winged spirits best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas...
and Ceres, acting as the latter in a
masqueThe masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
and
anti-masqueAn anti-masque is a comic or grotesque dance presented before or between the acts of a masque, a type of dramatic composition. The anti-masque is a spectacle of disorder which usually starts or precedes the masque itself...
that Prospero creates.
Early critics, such as Thomas Campbell in 1838, saw this constant allusion to the theatre as an indication that Prospero was meant to represent Shakespeare; the character's renunciation of magic thus signalling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage. This theory persists among later critics, and remains solidly within the critical canon.
Magic
Magic was a controversial subject in Shakespeare's day. In Italy in 1600,
Giordano BrunoGiordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited...
was burnt at the stake for his occult studies. Outside the Catholic world, in Protestant England where Shakespeare wrote
The Tempest, magic was also taboo; not all "magic", however, was considered evil. Several thinkers took a more rational approach to the study of the supernatural, with the determination to discover the workings of unusual phenomena. The German Henricus Cornelius Agrippa was one such thinker, who published in
De Occulta Philosophia (1531, 1533) his observations of "divine" magic. Agrippa's work influenced Dr.
John DeeJohn Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy....
, an Englishman and student of supernatural phenomena. Both Agrippa and Dee describe a kind of magic similar to Prospero's: one that is based on 16th-century science, rationality, and divinity, rather than the occult. When King James took the throne, Dee found himself under attack for his beliefs, but was able to defend himself successfully by explaining the divine nature of his profession. However, he died in disgrace in 1608.
Shakespeare is also careful to make the distinction that Prospero is a rational, and not an occultist, magician. He does this by providing a contrast to him in Sycorax. Sycorax is said to have worshipped the devil and been full of "earthy and abhored commands". She was unable to control Ariel, who was "too delicate" for such dark tasks. Prospero's rational goodness enables him to control Ariel where Sycorax can only trap him in a tree. Sycorax's magic is frequently described as destructive and terrible, where Prospero's is said to be wondrous and beautiful. Prospero seeks to set things right in his world through his magic, and once that is done, he renounces it, setting Ariel free.
Genre
The story draws heavily on the tradition of the
romanceAs a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
, a fictitious narrative set far away from ordinary life. Romances were typically based around themes such as the supernatural, wandering, exploration and discovery. They were often set in coastal regions, and typically featured exotic, fantastical locations and themes of transgression and redemption, loss and retrieval, exile and reunion. As a result, while
The Tempest was originally listed as a comedy in the
First FolioMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
of Shakespeare's plays, subsequent editors have chosen to give it the more specific label of
Shakespearean romanceThe late romances, often simply called the romances, are a grouping of what many scholars believe to be William Shakespeare's later plays, including Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest. The Two Noble Kinsmen is sometimes included in this grouping...
. Like the other romances, the play was influenced by the then-new genre of
tragicomedyTragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
, introduced by
John FletcherJohn Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...
in the first decade of the 17th century and developed in the
Beaumont and FletcherBeaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I ....
collaborations, as well as by the explosion of development of the courtly
masqueThe masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
form by such as
Ben JonsonBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
and
Inigo JonesInigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
at the same time.
Dramatic structure
The Tempest differs from Shakespeare's other plays in its observation of a stricter, more organised
neoclassicalNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
style. The clearest indication of this is Shakespeare's respect for the
three unitiesThe classical unities, Aristotelian unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics. In their neoclassical form they are as follows:...
in the play: the Unities of Time, Place, and Action. Shakespeare's other plays rarely respected the three unities, taking place in separate locations miles apart and over several days or even years. The play's events unfold in real time before the audience, Prospero even declaring in the last act that everything has happened in, more or less, three hours. All action is unified into one basic plot: Prospero's struggle to regain his dukedom; it is also confined to one place, a fictional island, which many scholars agree is meant to be located in the Mediterranean Sea. Another reading suggests that it takes place in the
New WorldThe New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
, as some parts read like records of English and Spanish conquest in the Americas. Still others argue that the Island can represent any land that has been colonised.
Postcolonial
In Shakespeare's day, most of the planet was still being "discovered", and stories were coming back from distant islands, with myths about the Cannibals of the Caribbean, faraway
EdenThe Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
s, and distant tropical
UtopiaUtopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
s. With the character Caliban (whose name is almost an
anagramAn anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
of Cannibal and also resembles "Cariban", the term then used for natives in the West Indies), Shakespeare may be offering an in-depth discussion into the morality of colonialism. Different views of this are found in the play, with examples including
GonzaloAn honest and trusted adviser to King Alonso of Naples, Gonzalo is one of the few characters in The Tempest who has a good heart and is described as noble. For example, when Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, were set adrift at sea, Gonzalo took pity on the two of them, supplying them not only...
's Utopia,
ProsperoProspero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
's enslavement of Caliban, and Caliban's subsequent resentment. Caliban is also shown as one of the most natural characters in the play, being very much in touch with the natural world (and modern audiences have come to view him as far nobler than his two
Old WorldThe Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
friends, Stephano and Trinculo, although the original intent of the author may have been different). There is evidence that Shakespeare drew on Montaigne's essay
Of CannibalsEssays is the title given to a collection of 107 essays written by Michel de Montaigne that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of which the book contains a large number...
—which discusses the values of societies insulated from European influences—while writing
The Tempest.
Beginning in about 1950, with the publication of
Psychology of Colonization by
Octave MannoniDominique-Octave Mannoni was a French psychoanalyst and author. After spending more than twenty years in Madagascar, Mannoni returned to France after World War II where he, inspired by Lacan, published several psychoanalytic books and articles...
,
The Tempest was viewed more and more through the lens of postcolonial theory. This new way of looking at the text explored the effect of the coloniser (Prospero) on the colonised (Ariel and Caliban). Though Ariel is often overlooked in these debates in favour of the more intriguing Caliban, he is nonetheless an essential component of them. The French writer
Aimé CésaireAimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
, in his play
Une TempêteUne tempête is a 1969 play by Aimé Césaire. It is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest from a postcolonial perspective: Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. Caliban favors revolution over Ariel's non-violence, and rejects his name as the...
sets
The Tempest in
HaitiHaiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, portraying Ariel as a
mulattoMulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
who, unlike the more rebellious Caliban, feels that negotiation and partnership is the way to freedom from the colonisers. Fernandez Retamar sets his version of the play in
CubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, and portrays Ariel as a wealthy Cuban (in comparison to the lower-class Caliban) who also must choose between rebellion or negotiation. Although scholars have suggested that his dialogue with Caliban in Act two, Scene one, contains hints of a future alliance between the two when Prospero leaves, Ariel is generally viewed by scholars as the good servant, in comparison with the conniving Caliban—a view which Shakespeare's audience may well have shared. Ariel is used by some postcolonial writers as a symbol of their efforts to overcome the effects of colonisation on their culture.
Michelle CliffMichelle Cliff is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism...
, for example, a Jamaican author, has said that she tries to combine Caliban and Ariel within herself to create a way of writing that represents her culture better. Such use of Ariel in postcolonial thought is far from uncommon; the spirit is even the namesake of a scholarly journal covering post-colonial criticism.
Feminist
The Tempest has only one female character, Miranda. Other women, such as Caliban's mother
SycoraxSycorax is a character mentioned though not seen in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.Sycorax may also refer to:*Sycorax , a moon of Uranus, named after the fictional character...
, Miranda's mother and Alonso's daughter Claribel, are only mentioned. Because of the small role women play in the story in comparison to other Shakespeare plays,
The Tempest has not attracted much feminist criticism. Miranda is typically viewed as being completely deprived of freedom by her father. Her only duty in his eyes is to remain chaste. Ann Thompson argues that Miranda, in a manner typical of women in a colonial atmosphere, has completely internalised the patriarchal order of things, thinking of herself as subordinate to her father.
The less-prominent women mentioned in the play are subordinated as well, as they are only described through the men of the play. Most of what is said about Sycorax, for example, is said by Prospero. Further, Stephen Orgel notes that Prospero has never met Sycorax – all he learned about her he learned from Ariel. According to Orgel, Prospero's suspicion of women makes him an unreliable source of information. Orgel suggests that he is sceptical of female virtue in general, citing his ambiguous remark about his wife's fidelity.
However, certain goddesses such as Juno, Ceres, Iris, and sea nymphs are in one scene of the play.
Shakespeare's day
A record exists of a performance of The Tempest
on 1 November 1611 by the King's MenThe King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
before James I and the English royal court at Whitehall Palace on HallowmasAll Saints' Day , often shortened to All Saints, is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown...
night. Harold BloomHarold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
wrote in Shakespeare: Invention of the Human that this record "is known to be a forgery" but confirmed 1611 as the accepted year of publication. The play was one of the eight Shakespearean plays acted at court during the winter of 1612–13 as part of the festivities surrounding the marriage of Princess
ElizabethElizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia...
with
Frederick VFrederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. There is no further public performance recorded prior to the
RestorationThe Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
; but in his preface to the 1667 Dryden/Davenant version, Sir
William DavenantSir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil...
states that The Tempest
had been performed at the Blackfriars TheatreBlackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...
. Careful consideration of stage directions within the play supports this, strongly suggesting that the play was written with Blackfriars TheatreBlackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...
rather than the Globe TheatreThe Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
in mind.
Restoration and 18th century
Adaptations of the play, not Shakespeare's original, dominated the performance history of The Tempest
from the English RestorationThe Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
until the mid-19th century. All theatres were closed down by the puritanThe Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
government during the CommonwealthThe English Interregnum was the period of parliamentary and military rule by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell under the Commonwealth of England after the English Civil War...
. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies—the King's CompanyThe King's Company was one of two enterprises granted the rights to mount theatrical productions in London at the start of the English Restoration. It existed from 1660 to 1682.-History:...
and the Duke's CompanyThe Duke's Company was one of the two theatre companies that were chartered by King Charles II at the start of the English Restoration era, when the London theatres re-opened after their eighteen-year closure during the English Civil War and the Interregnum.The Duke's Company had the patronage of...
—were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them. Sir William DavenantSir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil...
's Duke's Company
had the rights to perform The Tempest
. In 1667 Davenant and John DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
made heavy cuts and adapted it as The Tempest or, The Enchanted IslandThe Tempest, or The Enchanted Island is a comedy adapted by John Dryden and William D'Avenant from Shakespeare's comedy The Tempest. The musical setting, previously attributed to Henry Purcell, and probably for the London revival of 1712, was very probably by John Weldon.The Dryden/Davenant...
. They tried to appeal to upper-class audiences by emphasising royalist political and social ideals: monarchy is the natural form of government; patriarchal authority decisive in education and marriage; and patrilineality preeminent in inheritance and ownership of property. They also added characters and plotlines: Miranda has a sister, named Dorinda; and Caliban a sister, also named Sycorax. As a parallel to Shakespeare's Miranda/Ferdinand plot, Prospero has a foster-son, Hippolito, who has never set eyes on a woman. Hippolito was a popular
breeches roleA breeches role is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing .In opera it also refers to any male character that is sung and acted by a female singer...
, a man played by a woman, popular with Restoration theatre management for the opportunity to reveal actresses' legs. Scholar Michael Dobson has described Enchanted Island
as "the most frequently revived play of the entire Restoration" and as establishing the importance of enhanced and additional roles for women.
In 1674, Thomas ShadwellThomas Shadwell was an English poet and playwright who was appointed poet laureate in 1689.-Life:Shadwell was born at Stanton Hall, Norfolk, and educated at Bury St Edmunds School, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1656. He left the university without a degree, and...
re-adapted Dryden and Davenant's Enchanted Island as an opera (although in Restoration theatre "opera" did not have its modern meaning, instead referring to a play with added songs, closer in style to a modern
musical comedyMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
). Restoration playgoers appear to have regarded the Dryden/Davenant/Shadwell version as Shakespeare's:
Samuel PepysSamuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
, for example, described it as "an old play of Shakespeares" in his diary. The opera was extremely popular, and "full of so good variety, that I cannot be more pleased almost in a comedy" according to Pepys. The Prospero in this version is very different from Shakespeare's: Eckhard Auberlen describes him as "... reduced to the status of a
PoloniusPolonius is a character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. He is King Claudius's chief counsellor, and the father of Ophelia and Laertes. Polonius connives with Claudius to spy on Hamlet...
-like overbusy father, intent on protecting the chastity of his two sexually naive daughters while planning advantageous dynastic marriages for them." Enchanted Island
was successful enough to provoke a parody, The Mock TempestThe Mock Tempest, or the Enchanted Castle is a Restoration era stage play, a parody by Thomas Duffet; it premiered in 1674, and was first printed in 1675 by the bookseller William Cademan...
, written by Thomas Duffett for the King's Company in 1675. It opened with what appeared to be a tempest, but turns out to be a riot in a brothel.
In the early 18th century, the Dryden/Davenant/Shadwell version dominated the stage. Ariel was—with two exceptions—played by a woman, and invariably by a graceful dancer and superb singer. Caliban was a comedian's role, played by actors "known for their awkward figures". In 1756,
David GarrickDavid Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
staged another operatic version, a "three-act extravaganza" with music by
John Christopher SmithJohn Christopher Smith [Johann Christoph Schmidt] was an English composer who, following in his father's footsteps, became George Frederic Handel's secretary and amanuensis.-Life:...
.
The Tempest was one of the staples of the repertoire of
Romantic EraRomanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
theatres.
John Philip KembleJohn Philip Kemble was an English actor. He was born into a theatrical family as the eldest son of Roger Kemble, actor-manager of a touring troupe. His elder sister Sarah Siddons achieved fame with him on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane...
produced an acting version which was closer to Shakespeare's original, but nevertheless retained Dorinda and Hippolito. Kemble was much-mocked for his insistence on archaic pronunciation of Shakespeare's texts, including "aitches" for "aches". It was said that spectators "packed the pit, just to enjoy hissing Kemble's delivery of 'I'll rack thee with old cramps, / Fill all they bones with aches'." The actor-managers of the Romantic Era established the fashion for opulence in sets and costumes which would dominate Shakespeare performances until the late 19th century: Kemble's Dorinda and Miranda, for example, were played "in white ornamented with spotted furs".
In 1757, a year after the debut of his operatic version,
David GarrickDavid Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
produced a heavily cut performance of Shakespeare's script at
Drury LaneThe Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
, and it was revived, profitably, throughout the century.
19th century
It was not until
William Charles Macready-Life:He was born in London, and educated at Rugby.It was his intention to go up to Oxford, but in 1809 the embarrassed affairs of his father, the lessee of several provincial theatres, called him to share the responsibilities of theatrical management. On 7 June 1810 he made a successful first...
's influential production in 1838 that Shakespeare's text established its primacy over the adapted and operatic versions which had been popular for most of the previous two centuries. The performance was particularly admired for
George BennettGeorge John Bennett was for nearly 40 years a Shakespearian actor on the London stage, notably Covent Garden and Drury Lane. He was the son of the eminent popular comedian George Bennett and , the daughter of an ancient family in Westmorland...
's performance as Caliban; it was described by Patrick MacDonnell—in his An Essay on the Play of The Tempest published in 1840—as "maintaining in his mind, a strong resistance to that tyranny, which held him in the thraldom of slavery".
The
Victorian EraThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
marked the height of the movement which would later be described as "pictorial": based on lavish sets and visual spectacle, heavily cut texts making room for lengthy scene-changes, and elaborate stage effects. In
Charles KeanCharles John Kean , was born at Waterford, Ireland, the son of the actor Edmund Kean.After preparatory education at Worplesdon and at Greenford, near Harrow, he was sent to Eton College, where he remained three years...
's 1857 production of The Tempest
, Ariel was several times seen to descend in a ball of fire. The hundred and forty stagehands supposedly employed on this production were described by the Literary Gazette as "unseen ... but alas never unheard".
Hans Christian AndersenHans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...
also saw this production and described Ariel as "isolated by the electric ray", referring to the effect of a carbon arc lamp directed at the actress playing the role. The next generation of producers, which included
William PoelWilliam Poel was an English actor, theatrical manager and dramatist best known for his presentations of Shakespeare.-Life and career:...
and
Harley Granville-BarkerHarley Granville-Barker was an English actor-manager, director, producer, critic and playwright....
, returned to a leaner and more text-based style.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became Caliban, not Prospero, who was perceived as the star act of The Tempest, and was the role which the actor-managers chose for themselves. Frank Benson researched the role by viewing monkeys and baboons at the zoo; on stage, he hung upside-down from a tree and gibbered.
20th century and beyond
Continuing the late-19th-century tradition, in 1904
Herbert Beerbohm TreeSir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
wore
furFur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
and
seaweedSeaweed is a loose, colloquial term encompassing macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae. The term includes some members of the red, brown and green algae...
to play
CalibanCaliban is a character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.Caliban may also refer to:* Caliban , a moon of Uranus* Caliban , a metalcore band from Germany* Caliban , an acoustic Celtic folk duo...
, with waist-length
hairHair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....
and
apeApes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea. The apes are native to Africa and South-east Asia, although in relatively recent times humans have spread all over the world...
like bearing, suggestive of a primitive part-
animalAnimals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
part-
humanHumans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
stage of
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. This "
missing linkMissing link is a nonscientific term for any transitional fossil, especially one connected with human evolution; see Transitional fossil - Missing links and List of transitonal fossils - Human evolution.Missing Link may refer to:...
" portrayal of Caliban became the norm in productions until
Roger LiveseyRoger Livesey was a British stage and film actor. He is most often remembered for the three Powell & Pressburger films in which he starred: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I'm Going! and A Matter of Life and Death...
, in 1934, was the first
actorAn actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
to play the role with black makeup. In 1945
Canada LeeCanada Lee was an American actor who pioneered roles for African Americans. A champion of civil rights in the 1930s and 1940s, he died shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He became an actor after careers as a jockey, boxer, and musician...
played the role at the
Theatre GuildThe Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players.Its original purpose was to...
in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, establishing a tradition of black actors taking the role, including
Earle HymanEarle Hyman is an American stage, television, and film actor. Hyman is known for his recurring role on The Cosby Show as Cliff's father, Russell Huxtable.-Career:...
in 1960 and
James Earl JonesJames Earl Jones is an American actor. He is well-known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership...
in 1962.
In 1916,
Percy MacKayePercy MacKaye was an American dramatist and poet.-Biography:MacKaye was born in New York City, New York. After graduating from Harvard in 1897, he traveled in Europe for three years, residing in Rome, Switzerland and London, studying at the University of Leipzig in 1899–1900...
presented a community
masqueThe masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
, Caliban by the Yellow Sands, at the
Lewisohn StadiumLewisohn Stadium was an amphitheater and athletic facility built on the campus of the City College of New York. It opened in 1915 and was demolished in 1973.-History:...
in New York. Amidst a huge cast of dancers and masquers, the pageant centres on the rebellious nature of Caliban but ends with his plea for more knowledge ("I yearn to build, to be thine Artist / And 'stablish this thine Earth among the stars- / Beautiful!") followed by Shakespeare, as a character, reciting Prospero's "Our revels now are ended" speech.
John GielgudSir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
played
ProsperoProspero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
numerous times, and called it his favourite role. Douglas Brode describes him as "universally heralded as ... [the 20th] century's greatest stage Prospero". His first appearance in the role was in 1930: he wore a
turbanIn English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
, later confessing that he intended to look like
DanteDurante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
. He played the role in three more stage productions, lastly at the
Royal National TheatreThe Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
in 1974.
Peter BrookPeter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
directed an experimental production at the Round House in 1968, in which the text was "almost wholly abandoned" in favour of
mimeThe word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
. According to Margaret Croydon's
reviewA review is an evaluation of a publication, a product or a service, such as a movie , video game, musical composition , book ; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert, a play, musical theater show or dance show...
,
SycoraxSycorax is a character mentioned though not seen in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.Sycorax may also refer to:*Sycorax , a moon of Uranus, named after the fictional character...
was "portrayed by an enormous woman able to expand her face and body to still larger proportions – a fantastic emblem of the
grotesqueThe word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
... [who] suddenly ... gives a horrendous yell, and Caliban, with black
sweaterA sweater, jumper, pullover, sweatshirt, jersey or guernsey is a garment intended to cover the torso and arms. It is often worn over a shirt, blouse, T-shirt, or other top, but may also be worn alone as a top...
over his
headIn anatomy, the head of an animal is the rostral part that usually comprises the brain, eyes, ears, nose and mouth . Some very simple animals may not have a head, but many bilaterally symmetric forms do....
, emerges from between her legs: Evil is born."
In spite of the existing tradition of a black actor playing Caliban opposite a white Prospero,
colonialPost-colonialism is a specifically post-modern intellectual discourse that consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism...
interpretations of the play did not find their way onto the stage until the 1970s. Performances in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
directed by
Jonathan MillerSir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...
and by Clifford Williams explicitly portrayed Prospero as coloniser. Miller's production was described, by David Hirst, as depicting "the tragic and inevitable disintegration of a more primitive culture as the result of European invasion and colonisation." Miller developed this approach in his 1988 production at the
Old VicThe Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
in London, starring
Max von SydowMax von Sydow is a Swedish actor. He has also held French citizenship since 2002. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more...
as Prospero. This used a mixed cast made up of white actors as the humans and black actors playing the spirits and creatures of the island. According to
Michael BillingtonMichael Keith Billington is a British author and arts critic. Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised...
, "von Sydow's Prospero became a white overlord manipulating a mutinous black Caliban and a collaborative Ariel keenly mimicking the gestures of the island's invaders. The colonial metaphor was pushed through to its logical conclusion so that finally Ariel gathered up the pieces of Prospero's abandoned staff and, watched by awe-struck tribesmen, fitted them back together to hold his wand of office aloft before an immobilised Caliban. The Tempest suddenly acquired a new political dimension unforeseen by Shakespeare."
Psychoanalytic interpretations have proved more difficult to depict on stage.
Gerald FreedmanGerald Freedman is an American theatre director, librettist, and lyricist, and a college dean.Born in Lorain, Ohio, Freedman was educated at Northwestern University, where he received both BA and MA degrees. He began his career as assistant director of such projects as Bells Are Ringing, West Side...
's production at the
American Shakespeare TheatreThe American Shakespeare Theatre was a theater company based in Stratford, Connecticut, United States. It was formed in 1955 by Lawrence Langner, Lincoln Kirstein, and Joseph Verner Reed. Plays were produced at the Festival Theatre in Stratford from 1955 until the company ceased operations in...
in 1979 and Ron Daniels'
Royal Shakespeare CompanyThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
production in 1982 both attempted to depict Ariel and Caliban as opposing aspects of Prospero's psyche. However neither was regarded as wholly successful:
Shakespeare QuarterlyShakespeare Quarterly is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1950 by the . It is now under the auspices of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Along with book and performance criticism, Shakespeare Quarterly incorporates scholarly research and essays on Shakespeare and the age in which he...
, reviewing Freedman's production, commented that "Mr. Freedman did nothing on stage to make such a notion clear to any audience that had not heard of it before."
In 1988, John WoodJohn Wood, CBE was an English actor.-Biography:Wood was born in Derbyshire and studied law at Jesus College, Oxford where he was president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Changing to drama, Wood became known as a stage actor, appearing in numerous West End productions as well as on...
played Prospero for the RSCThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
, emphasising the character's human complexity. The Financial TimesThe Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
reviewer described him as "a demented stage manager on a theatrical island suspended between smouldering rage at his usurpation and unbridled glee at his alternative ethereal power".
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese theatreTheatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
styles have been applied to The Tempest
. In 1988 and again in 1992 Yukio Ninagawais a Japanese theatre director, particularly known for his Japanese language productions of Shakespeare plays and Greek tragedies. He has directed Hamlet differently six times....
brought his version of The Tempest to the UK. It was staged as a rehearsal of a
Noh, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...
drama, with a traditional Noh theatre at the back of the stage, but also using elements which were at odds with Noh conventions. In 1992, Minoru Fujita presented a
Bunraku, also known as Ningyō jōruri , is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theater, founded in Osaka in 1684.Three kinds of performers take part in a bunraku performance:* Ningyōtsukai or Ningyōzukai—puppeteers* Tayū—the chanters* Shamisen players...
(Japanese puppet) version in
Osakais a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
and at the Tokyo Globe.
Sam MendesSamuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He's currently working on the 23rd James Bond...
directed a 1993
RSCThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
production in which
Simon Russell BealeSimon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...
's Ariel was openly resentful of the control exercised by
Alec McCowenAlexander Duncan "Alec" McCowen CBE is an English actor. He is known for his work in numerous film and stage productions. He was awarded the CBE in the 1985 New Year's Honours List.-Personal:...
's Prospero. Controversially, in the early performances of the run, Ariel spat at Prospero, once granted his freedom. An entirely different effect was achieved by
George C. WolfeGeorge Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical, Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk.-Early life and...
in the outdoor
New York Shakespeare FestivalNew York Shakespeare Festival is the previous name of the New York City theatrical producing organization now known as the Public Theater. The Festival produced shows at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, as part of its free Shakespeare in the Park series, at the Public Theatre near Astor Place...
production of 1995, where the casting of
Aunjanue EllisAunjanue L. Ellis is an American actress known for her roles in Ray, in Undercover Brother, and on The Mentalist....
as Ariel opposite
Patrick StewartSir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...
's Prospero charged the production with erotic tensions. Productions in the late 20th-century have gradually increased the focus placed on sexual (and sometimes homosexual) tensions between the characters, including Prospero/Miranda, Prospero/Ariel, Miranda/Caliban, Miranda/Ferdinand and even Caliban/Trinculo.
The Tempest was performed at the
Globe TheatreThe Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
in 2000 with
Vanessa RedgraveVanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
as Prospero, playing the role as neither male nor female, but with "authority, humanity and humour ... a watchful
parentA parent is a caretaker of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is of a child . Children can have one or more parents, but they must have two biological parents. Biological parents consist of the male who sired the child and the female who gave birth to the child...
to both Miranda and Ariel." While the audience respected Prospero,
Jasper BrittonJasper Britton, in is an actor.Britton is the son of veteran actor Tony Britton, and Danish sculptor and member of the World War II Danish Resistance Eva Castle Britton...
's Caliban "was their man" (in Peter Thomson's words), in spite of the fact that he spat
fishFish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
at the
groundlingA groundling was a person that frequented the Globe Theatre in the early 17th century who was too poor to pay to be able to sit on one of the three levels of the theatre. By paying one penny, they could stand in "the Pit", also called "the Yard", just below the stage to watch the play. Standing in...
s, and singled some of them out for humiliating encounters. By the end of 2005,
BBC RadioBBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
had aired 21 productions of The Tempest
, more than any other play by Shakespeare.
Music
The Tempest
has proved more popular as a subject for composers than most of Shakespeare's plays. Scholar Julie Sanders ascribes this to the "perceived 'musicality' or lyricism" of the play.
Two settings of songs from The Tempest
which may have been used in performances during Shakespeare's lifetime have survived. These are "Full Fathom Five" and "Where The Bee Sucks There Suck I" in the 1659 publication Cheerful Ayres or Ballads
, in which they are attributed to Robert Johnson, who regularly composed for the King's Men. It has been common throughout the history of the play for the producers to commission contemporary settings of these two songs, and also of "Come Unto These Yellow Sands".
"Full Fathom Five" and "The Cloud-Capp'd Towers" are two of the Three Shakespeare SongsThree Shakespeare Songs is a piece of classical choral music written for an a cappella SATB choir. It was written in 1951 by the British classical composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work comprises three short pieces which are settings of text from two plays by the English playwright William...
set to music by Ralph Vaughan WilliamsRalph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
. These were written for a cappellaA cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
SATBIn music, SATB is an initialism for soprano, alto, tenor, bass, defining the voices required by a chorus or choir to perform a particular musical work...
choir in 1951 for the British Federation of Music Festivals, and they remain a popular part of British choral repertoire today. Michael NymanMichael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
's Ariel Songs
are taken from his score for the film Prospero's Books Prospero's Books , written and directed by Peter Greenaway, is a cinematic adaptation of The Tempest, by William Shakespeare. John Gielgud is Prospero, the protagonist who provides the off-screen narration and the voices to the other story characters...
.
The Tempest
has also influenced songs written in the folkFolk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and hippieThe hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
traditions: for example, versions of "Full Fathom Five" were recorded by Marianne FaithfullMarianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
for Come My Way
in 1965 and by Pete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
for Dangerous Songs!?
in 1966. The DecemberistsThe Decemberists are an indie folk rock band from Portland, Oregon, United States, fronted by singer/songwriter Colin Meloy. The other members of the band are Chris Funk , Jenny Conlee , Nate Query , and John Moen .The band's...
' song "The Island: Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning" is thought by many to be based on the story of Caliban and Miranda.
The Tempest
was a direct thematic inspiration for the progressive power metalPower metal is a style of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a...
concept albumIn music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
Aqua- Standard version :- Disc 1 :- Disc 2 :- Side one :- Side two :- Side three :- Side four :- Personnel :* Eduardo Falaschi - Vocals* Kiko Loureiro - Guitar* Rafael Bittencourt - Guitar...
(2010) by AngraAngra is a Brazilian metal band from São Paulo, Brazil known for its symphonic interludes, highly technical instrumental playing and Brazilian regional elements.- Biography :...
.
Among those who wrote incidental music to The Tempest
were:
- Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
: His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a set of incidental musicIncidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to "The TempestThe Tempest incidental music, Op. 1, is a set of movements for Shakespeare's play composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1861 and expanded in 1862. This was Sullivan's first major piece of composition, and its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in...
". Revised and expanded, it was performed at The Crystal PalaceThe Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
in 1862, a year after his return to London, and was an immediate sensation.
- Ernest Chausson
Amédée-Ernest Chausson was a French romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.-Life:Ernest Chausson was born in Paris into a prosperous bourgeois family...
: in 1888 he wrote incidental music for
La tempête, a French translation by
Maurice BouchorMaurice Bouchor was a French poet and sculptor.He was born in Paris. He published in succession Chansons joyeuses , Poèmes de l'amour et de la mer , Le Faust moderne in prose and verse, and Les Contes parisiens in verse...
. This is believed to be the first orchestral work that made use of the
celestaThe celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
.
Jean SibeliusJean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
: his 1926 incidental musicIncidental Music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Op. 109, was written by Jean Sibelius in 1925-26, at about the same time as he wrote his tone poem Tapiola. The music is said to display an astounding richness of imagination and inventive capacity, and is one of Sibelius's greatest achievements...
was written for a lavish production at the Royal TheatreThe Royal Danish Theatre is both the national Danish performing arts institution and a name used to refer to its old purpose-built venue from 1874 located on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. The theatre was founded in 1748, first serving as the theatre of the king, and then as the theatre of the...
in Copenhagen. An epilogue was added for a 1927 performance in Helsinki. He represented individual characters through instrumentation choices: particularly admired was his use of harps and percussion to represent Prospero, said to capture the "resonant ambiguity of the character".
Malcolm ArnoldSir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...
, Lennox BerkeleySir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.- Biography :He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford...
, Arthur BlissSir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
, Engelbert HumperdinckEngelbert Humperdinck was a German composer, best known for his opera, Hänsel und Gretel. Humperdinck was born at Siegburg in the Rhine Province; at the age of 67 he died in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.-Life:After receiving piano lessons, Humperdinck produced his first composition...
, Hector BerliozHector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
, Willem PijperWillem Pijper ; Zeist, 8 September 1894 - Utrecht, 18 March 1947) was a Dutch composer, music critic and music teacher.-Life:Pijper was born at Zeist, near Utrecht, on 8 September 1894 of strict Calvinist working-class parents. His father, who sometimes played psalm accompaniments on the harmonium,...
and Henry PurcellHenry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
.
At least forty-six
operas or
semi-operaThe terms Semi-opera, dramatic[k] opera and English opera were all applied to Restoration entertainments that combined spoken plays with masque-like episodes employing singing and dancing characters. They usually included machines in the manner of the restoration spectacular...
s based on The Tempest
exist. In addition to the Dryden/Davenant and Garrick versions mentioned in the "Restoration and 18th century" section above, Frederic ReynoldsFrederic Reynolds was a British playwright and theatrical producer in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries....
produced an operatic version in 1821, with music by Sir Henry Bishop. Other pre-20th-century operas based on The Tempest
include Fromental HalévyJacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
's La Tempesta
(1850) and Zdeněk FibichZdeněk Fibich was a Czech composer of classical music. Among his compositions are chamber works , symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas , melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia,...
's Bouře
(1894).
In the 20th century, Kurt AtterbergKurt Magnus Atterberg was a Swedish composer. He is best known for his symphonies, operas and ballets. Atterberg once said that: "The Russians, Brahms, Reger were my ideals." His music combines their influences with Swedish folk tunes.-Biography:Atterberg was born in Gothenburg as the son of the...
's Stormen
premiered in 1948 and Frank MartinFrank Martin was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands.-Childhood and youth:...
's Der Sturm
in 1955. Michael TippettSir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...
's 1971 opera The Knot GardenThe Knot Garden is the third opera by composer Michael Tippett for which he wrote the original English libretto. The work had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 December 1970 conducted by Sir Colin Davis and produced by Sir Peter Hall...
,
contains various allusions to The Tempest
. In Act 3, a psychoanalyst, Mangus, pretends to be Prospero and uses situations from Shakespeare's play in his therapy sessions. John EatonJohn Charles Eaton is an American composer , MacArthur Fellow, is professor emeritus of composition at the University of Chicago John Charles Eaton (born 30 March 1935 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) is an American composer (Anon. [n.d.]; Morgan 2001), MacArthur Fellow, is professor emeritus of...
, in 1985, produced a fusion of live jazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
with pre-recorded electronic music, with a libretto by Andrew Porter. Michael NymanMichael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
's 1991 opera Noises, Sounds & Sweet AirsNoises, Sounds & Sweet Airs is a 1991 opera by Michael Nyman that began as an opera-ballet titled La Princesse de Milan choreographed by Karine Saporta. The libretto is William Shakespeare's The Tempest, as abridged by the composer...
was first performed as an
opera-balletOpéra-ballet was a popular genre of French Baroque opera, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeeth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways...
by
Karine SaportaKarine Saporta is a French choreographer, dancer, photographer, and short film director. She is one of the most prominent figures in French dance....
. This opera is unique in that the three vocalists, a
sopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
,
contraltoContralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
, and
tenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
, are voices rather than individual characters, with the tenor just as likely as the soprano to sing Miranda, or all three sing as one character.
The soprano who sings the part of Ariel in
Thomas AdèsThomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
' 21st-century opera is stretched at the lower end of the register, highlighting the
androgynyAndrogyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
of the role.
Orchestral works for concert presentation include
Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's fantasy
The TempestThe Tempest , Symphonic Fantasia after Shakespeare, Op. 18, is a symphonic poem in F minor by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed in 1873. It was premiered in December 1873, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein....
(1873), Fibich's symphonic poem Bouře
(1880), John Knowles PaineJohn Knowles Paine , was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music.-Life:He studied organ, orchestration, and composition in Germany and toured in Europe for three years...
's symphonic poem The Tempest
(1876), Benjamin DaleBenjamin James Dale was an English composer and academic who had a long association with the Royal Academy of Music. Dale showed compositional talent from an early age and went on to write a small but notable corpus of works...
's overture (1902), Arthur HoneggerArthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
's orchestral prelude (1923), and Egon WelleszEgon Joseph Wellesz was an Austrian-born British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.- Life :...
's Prosperos Beschwörungen (five works 1934–36).
Ballet sequences have been used in many performances of the play since Restoration times.
Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's 1802
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minorThe Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, was composed in 1801/02 by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is usually referred to as "The Tempest" , but this title was not given by him, or indeed referred to as such during his lifetime; instead, it comes from a claim by his associate Anton Schindler...
, Op. 31, No. 2, was given the subtitle "The Tempest" some time after Beethoven's death because, when asked about the meaning of the sonata, Beethoven was alleged to have said "Read The Tempest
". But this story comes from his associate Anton SchindlerAnton Felix Schindler was an associate, secretary, and early biographer of Ludwig van Beethoven.His Life of Beethoven was first published in 1840 and, in its subsequently expanded form , had a great deal of influence on later Beethoven biography...
, who is often not trustworthy.
Literature and art
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
was one of the earliest poets to be influenced by The Tempest. His "With a Guitar, To Jane" identifies Ariel with the poet and his songs with poetry. The poem uses simple diction to convey Ariel's closeness to nature and "imitates the straightforward beauty of Shakespeare's original songs." Following the publication of
DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's ideas on
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, writers began to question mankind's place in the world and its relationship with God. One writer who explored these ideas was
Robert BrowningRobert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
, whose poem "
Caliban upon SetebosCaliban upon Setebos is an 1864 poem written by the British poet Robert Browning. It deals with Caliban, a character from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and his reflections on Setebos, the brutal god he believes in. Some scholars see Browning as being of the belief that God is in the eye of the...
" (1864) sets Shakespeare's character pondering theological and philosophical questions. The French philosopher
Ernest RenanErnest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...
wrote a closet drama, Caliban: Suite de La Tempête
(Caliban: Sequel to The Tempest
), in 1878. This features a female Ariel who follows Prospero back to Milan, and a Caliban who leads a coup against Prospero, after the success of which he actively imitates his former master's virtues. W. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
's "long poem" The Sea and the MirrorThe Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest, is a long poem by W. H. Auden, written 1942-44, and first published in 1944....
takes the form of a reflection by each of the supporting characters of The Tempest
on their experiences. The poem takes a FreudianSigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
viewpoint, seeing Caliban (whose lengthy contribution is a prose poemProse poetry is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.-Characteristics:Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetry or prose, or a separate genre altogether...
) as Prospero's libidoLibido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
.
In 1968 Franco-Caribbean writer Aimé CésaireAimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
published Une TempêteUne tempête is a 1969 play by Aimé Césaire. It is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest from a postcolonial perspective: Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. Caliban favors revolution over Ariel's non-violence, and rejects his name as the...
, a radical adaptation of the play for a black audience, in which Caliban is a black rebel and Ariel is mixed-race. The figure of Caliban influenced numerous works of African literature in the 1970s, including pieces by Taban Lo LiyongTaban Lo Liyong is one of Africa's well-known poets and writers of fiction and literary criticism. His political views, as well as his on-going denigration of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired criticism and controversy since the late 1960s.His real name is...
in Uganda, Lemuel Johnson in Sierra Leone, Ngugi wa Thiong'oNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature...
in Kenya, and David Wallace of Zambia's Do You Love Me, Master?
. A similar phenomenon occurred in late 20th-century Canada, where several writers produced works inspired by Miranda, including The DivinersThe Diviners is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974, it was Laurence's final novel, and is considered one of the classics of Canadian literature....
by Margaret LaurenceJean Margaret Laurence, CC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer, one of the major figures in Canadian literature.- Early years :...
, Prospero's Daughter
by Constance Beresford-Howe and The Measure of Miranda
by Sarah Murphy. Other writers have feminised Ariel (as in Marina Warner's novel IndigoIndigo is a novel written by Marina Warner, published by Simon & Schuster in 1992 . It is a modernized and altered retelling of William Shakespeare's, The Tempest...
) or Caliban (as in Suniti NamjoshiSuniti Namjoshi is an Indian writer and poet, many of whose works explore issues of gender and sexual orientation. She has written several collections of fables, poetry and fantasy fiction. She has also written some children's fiction.-Biography:...
's sequence of poems Snaphots of Caliban
).
From the mid-18th century, Shakespeare's plays, including The Tempest
, began to appear as the subject of paintings. In around 1735, William HogarthWilliam Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
produced his painting A Scene from The Tempest
Scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest is a painting by William Hogarth, an 18th century English painter. Hogarth painted this work as a special project for one of his devoted band of patrons - The Earl of Macclesfield...
: "a baroque, sentimental fantasy costumed in the style of Van Dyck and Rembrandt". The painting is based upon Shakespeare's text, containing no representation of the stage, nor of the (Davenant-Dryden centred) stage tradition of the time.
Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
, in a painting commissioned for the
Boydell Shakespeare GalleryThe Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting...
(1789) modelled his Prospero on
Leonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
. These two 18th-century depictions of the play indicate that Prospero was regarded as its moral centre: viewers of Hogarth's and Fuseli's paintings would have accepted Prospero's wisdom and authority.
John Everett MillaisSir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
's
Ferdinand Lured by ArielFerdinand Lured by Ariel is a painting by John Everett Millais which depicts an episode from Act I, Scene II of Shakespeare's play The Tempest. It illustrates Ferdinand's lines "Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?". He is listening to Ariel singing the lyric "Full fathom five thy...
(1851) is among the Pre-RaphaeliteThe Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
paintings based on the play. In the late 19th century, artists tended to depict Caliban as a DarwinianCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
"missing-link", with fish-like or ape-like features, as evidenced in Noel Paton's Caliban
.
Charles KnightCharles Knight was an English publisher and author.-Early life:The son of a bookseller and printer at Windsor, he was apprenticed to his father...
produced the Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakespeare
in eight volumes (1838–43). The work attempted to translate the contents of the plays into pictorial form. This extended not just to the action, but also to images and metaphors: Gonzalo's line about "mountaineers dewlapped like bulls" is illustrated with a picture of a Swiss peasant with a goitreA goitre or goiter , is a swelling in the thyroid gland, which can lead to a swelling of the neck or larynx...
. In 1908, Edmund DulacEdmund Dulac was a French book illustrator.-Early life and career:Born in Toulouse, France, he began his career by studying law at the University of Toulouse. He also studied art, switching to it full time after he became bored with law, and having won prizes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts...
produced an edition of Shakespeare's Comedy of The Tempest with a scholarly plot summary and commentary by
Arthur Quiller-CouchSir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He is primarily remembered for the monumental Oxford Book Of English Verse 1250–1900 , and for his literary criticism...
, lavishly bound and illustrated with 40 watercolour illustrations. The illustrations highlight the fairy-tale quality of the play, avoiding its dark side. Of the 40, only 12 are direct depictions of the action of the play: the others are based on action before the play begins, or on images such as "full fathom five thy father lies" or "sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not".
Screen
The Tempest
first appeared on the screen in 1905. Charles UrbanCharles Urban was an Anglo-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in British cinema before the First World War...
filmed the opening storm sequence of Herbert Beerbohm TreeSir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
's version at Her Majesty's TheatreHer Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
for a 2½-minute flicker
, on which individual frames were hand-tinted, long before the invention of colour film. In 1908, Percy Stowe directed a Tempest
running a little over ten minutes, which is now a part of the British Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
's compilation Silent Shakespeare
. Much of its action takes place on Prospero's island before the storm which opens Shakespeare's play. At least two further silent versions, one of themThe Tempest is an American silent film adaptation of the William Shakespeare play The Tempest. It was directed by Edwin Thanhouser, and starred Ed Genung and Florence La Badie, and released by Thanhouser Film Corporation...
by Edwin ThanhouserEdwin Thanhouser was an actor, businessman, and film producer, most notable as a founder of the Thanhouser Company, along with his wife Gertrude Thanhouser and brother-in-law Lloyd Lonergan.-Biography:...
, are known to have existed, but have been lost. The plot was adapted for the Western Yellow SkyYellow Sky is an American western film directed by William A. Wellman. The story is believed to be loosely adapted from William Shakespeare's The Tempest. A band of outlaws flee after a bank robbery and encounter an old man and his granddaughter in a ghost town.-Plot:In 1867, a gang led by James...
, directed by William A. WellmanWilliam Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation...
, in 1946.
The 1956 science fiction film Forbidden PlanetForbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film directed by Fred M. Wilcox, with a screenplay by Cyril Hume. It stars Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. The characters and its setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and its plot contains certain...
set the story on the planet Altair IV. Professor Morbius (
Walter PidgeonWalter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...
) and his daughter Altaira (
Anne FrancisAnne Lloyd Francis was an American actress, best known for her role in the science fiction film classic Forbidden Planet , and as the female private detective in the television series Honey West . She won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy award for her role in Honey West...
) are the Prospero and Miranda figures. Ariel is represented by the helpful Robbie the Robot, but Caliban is represented by the dangerous and invisible "monster from the id": a projection of Morbius' psyche.
In the opinion of Douglas Brode, there has only been one screen "performance" of The Tempest since the silent era: he describes all other versions as "variations". That one performance is the
Hallmark Hall of FameHallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
version from 1960, directed by George Schaefer, and starring
Maurice EvansMaurice Herbert Evans was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr...
,
Richard BurtonRichard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
,
Lee RemickLee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...
and
Roddy McDowallRoderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...
. Critic Virginia Vaughan praised it as "light as a
souffléA soufflé is a light baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert...
, but ... substantial enough for the main course."
In 1979, animator
George DunningGeorge Garnett Dunning was a Canadian film maker and animator. He is best known for animating and directing the 1968 Beatles' film Yellow Submarine.-Biography:...
, director of Yellow Submarine
, planned an animated version of The Tempest
; but died while working on it.
Also in 1979, Derek JarmanMichael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...
produced a homoerotic Tempest
which used Shakespeare's language, but was most notable for its deviations from Shakespeare. One scene shows a corpulent and naked Sycorax (Claire DavenportClaire Davenport was an English actress well-known for her "junoesque" form and who was often cast in character roles which highlighted her large physique....
) breastfeeding her adult son Caliban (Jack BirkettJack Birkett was a British dancer, mime artist, actor and singer, best known for his work on stage as a member of Lindsay Kemp's theatre company, and in the films of Derek Jarman. He was often billed as Orlando or The Incredible Orlando. Most of his best-known work was done when he was totally...
). The film reaches its climax with Elisabeth Welchthumb|right|200pxElisabeth Welch was an American born singer, actress, and entertainer whose career spanned seven decades, many years of which she was based in Britain....
belting out Stormy Weather
. The central performances were Toyah WillcoxToyah Ann Willcox is an English actress and singer. In a career spanning more than thirty years Toyah has had 13 top 40 singles, released 22 studio albums, written two books, appeared in over forty stage plays and ten feature films, as well as voicing and presenting numerous television shows...
' Miranda and Heathcote WilliamsHeathcote Williams is an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror...
' Prospero, a "dark brooding figure who takes pleasure in exploiting both his servants"
Paul MazurskyPaul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
's 1982 modern-language adaptation of The TempestTempest is an American comedy-drama film directed by Paul Mazursky. It is a very loose adaptation of the William Shakespeare play, The Tempest....
, with Philip (Prospero) as a disillusioned New York architect who retreats to a lonely Greek island with his daughter Miranda, dealt frankly with the sexual tensions of the characters' isolated existence. The Caliban character, the goatherd Kalibanos, asks Philip which of them is going to have sex with Miranda.
John CassavetesJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
played Philip,
Raul JuliaRaúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay was a Puerto Rican actor.Born in San Juan, he gained interest in acting while still in school. Upon completing his studies, Juliá decided to pursue a career in acting. After performing in the local scene for some time, he was convinced by entertainment personality Orson...
Kalibanos, and
Molly RingwaldMolly Kathleen Ringwald is an American actress, singer and dancer. Having appeared in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles , The Breakfast Club , and Pretty in Pink , Ringwald has been frequently named the greatest teen star of all time...
Miranda.
Susan SarandonSusan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...
plays the Ariel character, Philip's frequently bored girlfriend Aretha. The film has been criticised as "overlong and rambling", but also praised for its good humour, especially in a sequence in which Kalibanos' and his goats dance to
Kander and EbbKander and Ebb were a highly successful songwriting team consisting of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb . Known primarily for their stage musicals, Kander and Ebb also scored several movies including their most famous song, the theme song from Martin Scorsese's New York, New York...
's
New York, New York"Theme from New York, New York" is the theme song from the Martin Scorsese film New York, New York , composed by John Kander, with lyrics by Fred Ebb. It was written for and performed in the film by Liza Minnelli...
.
John GielgudSir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
has written that playing Prospero in a film of The Tempest
was his life's ambition. Over the years, he approached Alain ResnaisAlain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Ingmar BergmanErnst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
, Akira Kurosawawas a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
, and Orson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
to direct. Eventually, the project was taken on by Peter GreenawayPeter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
, who directed Prospero's Books Prospero's Books , written and directed by Peter Greenaway, is a cinematic adaptation of The Tempest, by William Shakespeare. John Gielgud is Prospero, the protagonist who provides the off-screen narration and the voices to the other story characters...
(1991) featuring "an 87-year-old John Gielgud and an impressive amount of nudity". Prospero is reimagined as the author of The Tempest, speaking the lines of the other characters, as well as his own. Although the film was acknowledged as innovative in its use of
Quantel PaintboxThe Quantel Paintbox was a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Its design emphasizes the studio workflow efficiency required for live news production...
to create visual tableaux, resulting in "unprecedented visual complexity", critical responses to the film were frequently negative:
John SimonJohn Ivan Simon is an American author and literary, theater, and film critic.-Personal life:Simon was born in Subotica, Bačka, County of Bačka, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later, known as Yugoslavia . He is of Hungarian descent...
called it "contemptible and pretentious".
Closer to the spirit of Shakespeare's original, in the view of critics such as Brode, is
Leon GarfieldLeon Garfield was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for his historical novels for children, though he also wrote for adults...
's abridgement of the play for
S4CS4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
's 1992
Shakespeare: The Animated Talesthumb|right|[[Banquo]] and [[Fleance]] from the "Macbeth" episode. Shakespeare: The Animated Tales comprised two six-part television series, first broadcast in 1992 and 1994...
series. The 29-minute production, directed by Stanislav SokolovStanislav Mihaylovich Sokolov is a Russian stop-motion animation director. He graduated from VGIK in 1971 and has since then worked with Studios Soyuzmultfilm, DEFA, Christmasfilms and S4C. He was awarded a number of prizes for his films, most notably an Emmy in 1992 for his contribution to The...
and featuring Timothy WestTimothy Lancaster West, CBE is an English film, stage and television actor.-Career:West's craggy looks ensured a career as a character actor rather than a leading man. He began his career as an Assistant Stage Manager at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1956, and followed this with several seasons of...
as the voice of Prospero, used stop-motion puppetsStop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
to capture the fairy-tale quality of the play. Disney's animated feature PocahontasPocahontas is the 33rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and was originally released to selected theaters on June 16, 1995 by Walt Disney Pictures...
has been described as a "politically corrected" Tempest
. Another "offbeat variation" (in Brode's words) was produced for NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
in 1998: Jack BenderJack Bender is an American television and film director, actor, television producer and also a screenwriter. Bender was an executive producer and lead director on the ABC television series, Lost. He directed the series finale of Lost. Bender has also directed on other popular shows such as The...
's The Tempest featured
Peter FondaPeter Henry Fonda is an American actor. He is the son of Henry Fonda, brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget and Justin Fonda...
as Gideon Prosper, a Southern slave-owner forced off his plantation by his brother shortly before the
Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. A magician who has learned his art from one of his slaves, Prosper uses his magic to protect his teenage daughter and to assist the Union Army.
The
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series
WishboneWishbone is a television show which aired from 1995 to 1998 and reruns from 1998 to 2001 in the United States featuring a Jack Russell Terrier of the same name. The main character, the talking dog Wishbone, lives with his owner Joe Talbot in the fictional modern town of Oakdale, Texas...
featured a television adaptation of "The Tempest" in its episode "Shakespaw" with Wishbone as Ariel.
In
Julie TaymorJulie Taymor is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song...
's 2010 film version of The Tempest, Prospero is a woman named Prospera, played by Dame Helen Mirren.
Further reading
- G. Wilson Knight, Shakespearean Dimensions, Harvester, 1984.
- Gerald Graff and James Phelan, The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy, London, MacMillan, 2000
- Keith Sagar, "The Crime Against Caliban" in Literature and the Crime Against Nature, London, Chaucer Press, 2005.
- Frances A. Yates, Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975
- Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
External links