Education

What Kind of Play is
The Tempest?

Caliban 1993.jpg [thumb]

We know that The Tempest was performed at court in November 1611 and it was probably written shortly before that date. To the best of our knowledge, however, it wasn't published until 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, when John Heminges and Henry Condell, two actors and managers in Shakespeare's company, compiled the First Folio (that's the first edition of Shakespeare's collected works). Although the play is one of the last that Shakespeare wrote, Heminges and Condell, who divided the plays into three groups headed 'Comedies', 'Histories' and 'Tragedies' and organised the volume in that order, placed the play as the first in the 'Comedy' section, and thus the first in the book. This may reflect its contemporary importance or popularity, or may have been for commercial or practical reasons.

Plays that were labelled 'Comedies' had a number of conventions in Shakespeare's time. They retained the Aristotelian distinction of being about 'ordinary' people in everyday settings (cities, fairs) while tragedy was the reverse - 'extraordinary' people in unusual situations - and you can see this simple distinction by looking at the titles of Shakespeare's plays. Tragedies have named characters in their titles and they are far from ordinary - they are kings, queens, princes, or successful soldiers. There are no named characters in the titles of comedies. These plays are always about more than one individual. A further characteristic that had survived from the classics was Elizabethan/Jacobean comedy's concern with coupling and sex, a relic of fertility rites and the cult of Dionysus. Yet another distinction concerned the plot and structure of the narrative. Comedy frequently began with misfortune (a storm, an argument, an impediment to love) and the plot then worked towards a happy ending (most frequently marriage) while tragedy took the reverse route and ended in death.
In addition comedies were considered to have a moral or corrective function, an inheritance - in part - from the didactic tradition of the medieval morality play. This is clearly evident in extracts from the two pieces of contemporary writing which follow (and note, too, how other comedic conventions are evident in these pieces).

"The Poets devised to have many parts played at once by two or three or foure persons, that debated the matters of the world, sometimes of their owne private affaires, sometimes of their neighbours, but never medling with any Princes matters nor such high personages, but commonly of merchants, souldiers, artificers, good honest householders, and also of unthrifty youthes, yong damsels, old nurses, bawds, brokers, ruffians and parasites, with such like, in whose behaviors, lyeth in effect the whole course and trade of mans life, and therefore tended altogither to the good amendment of man by discipline and example. It was also much for the solace & recreation of the common people by reason of the pageants and the shewes. And this kind of poeme was called Comedy..."
(George Puttenham, The Art of Poesie, 1589)

"the Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous & scornfull sort that may be: so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now as in Geometrie, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in Arithmetick, the odde as well as the even, so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evill, wanteth a great foile to perceive the bewtie of vertue. This doth the Comaedie handle so in our private and domesticall matters, as with hearing it, wee get as it were an experience what is to be looked for... "
(Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesie, 1595)

The Tempest follows some but not all of these conventions of comedy and has some marked differences from the other plays that Heminges and Condell put in their Comedy category. The differences have led critics to consider whether another generic title is better suited to the play than 'comedy' and to attach different labels to it. It has, after all, elements of adventure, masque, fantasy, the supernatural, fairy tale, and love story. It has been described or labelled as romance, morality tale, an initiation ritual, autobiography, a topical response to New World voyages, myth, a hymenal celebration, and a late play, as well as being tagged with the more conventional descriptors of comedy, tragedy or tragi-comedy.

Does Labelling Matter?

Why try to categorize a play? Initially, perhaps, labels and categories are significant because they affect the expectations and responses of readers or audience. A viewer may anticipate being frightened by a play or a film billed as a 'chiller' or a thriller and expect a number of twists in the plot and moments of suspense and feel let down if he/she doesn't have that experience. An audience may feel cheated or consider a film is a failure if, promoted as a romantic comedy, it doesn't elicit laughter or tears.
In a complex play like The Tempest choices about its label or generic classification will determine, in part, the focus, setting or style that a director chooses to emphasise. Deciding that the play is a fantasy, for example, may lead to a non-realistic representation of the island and its inhabitants; reading the play as autobiography (the playwright's farewell to the stage) may prompt a Prospero who resembles Shakespeare; determining that it is about exploration may suggest colonialism and slavery and trigger a Caliban who is an indigenous inhabitant of the New World.
Clearly, however, there are other ways to respond to this challenging play, not least as an exploration and celebration of stagecraft. From the opening stage direction - 'A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard' - there are strong indications that The Tempest may have required a playing space that offered more than a bare wooden stage open to the sky. Scenes of storm and shipwreck, a flying Ariel, a vanishing banquet, spirits who 'descend' or 'appear in the air', a specificity of costume - some but not all of these effects can be created by words alone and the power of the imagination, but others suggest that Shakespeare is revelling in the potential of an indoor playing space. The earliest records of the play are of performances at court, and the King's Palace of Whitehall for example (as is known from surviving designs for court masques), had the capacity to utilise stage machinery and special effects. Away from the court, the theatre at Blackfriars, which Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, occupied from 1608, was an indoor playing space that may have afforded opportunities for complex staging.
The illustrations that follow, which are presented in chronological order, demonstrate how The Tempest, perhaps more than any other Shakespeare play, has generated a range of responses reflecting its hybrid nature. In each case you might consider which moment from the plot you are seeing and find a quotation from the play that you can use as a caption for the picture.

Illustration 1

This first illustration is the product of a fruitful collaboration between editor and artist, combining their talents to present the play to eighteenth-century readers.
When Sir Thomas Hanmer was preparing his edition of Shakespeare in 1744 he commissioned the artist Francis Hayman to provide thirty-one illustrations which were engraved by Hubert Gravelot. Hanmer gave detailed instructions to the artist describing the setting and the composition of the scene he wanted illustrating. For The Tempest picture he wrote:

A Landskip the most pleasing that can be design'd, varied with woods and plains and Rocks and vallies, and falls of water and all the wild beauties of nature. Into one of the rocks the Entrance of a Cave must appear, not far from which Prospero and Miranda are to stand as in conference together. He is an elderly man but not decrepid or broken with Age, cloathed in a long garment and his head cover'd with a cap lined with Ermyn, holding a wand in his right hand. The daughter in the bloom of youth and beauty, and habited after the Italian or Spanish manner. At some distance from them Ferdinand must appear as coming out of the woods with folded arms looking with curiosity round him: His Air and Mien to be that of a fine gracefull youthfull Prince and his dress after the Italian manner with a sword by his side and his hat button'd up with a diamond. Prospero pointing towards him with his wand shews him to Miranda who discovers wonder and surprize at the sight. The spirit Ariel to be sitting in the clouds with a pipe or flute in his hand. The Grotesque figure of Caliban to be coming from behind the Cave towards the mouth of it with a burthen of wood upon his Shoulders. Towards the back ground there must be a distant prospect of the Sea with a Ship lying upon her side as wreck'd upon the coast.

The illustration is captioned 'Act 1. Sc. 6'. Hanmer divided the opening act into six scenes, the sixth beginning at Prospero's line 'The fringed curtains of thine eye advance' (l. 411). It is worth considering how much of his detailed description Hanmer has taken from this part of the play, how much comes from elsewhere in the text and how much is supplied by his imagination. Whichever, he is clearly at ease with the eclectic range of the play and has commissioned a baroque portrait that combines beautiful landscape with specificity and verisimilitude of costume and a cherub-like Ariel.
The representation of Caliban is interesting. He is wearing more clothes than is common in illustrations but has a discernible disfigurement in his spine and an unusually long foot that resembles the hind leg of an animal. Is this Caliban human? What does the text say about his appearance?

Illustration 2

The information on the title page of this edition of the play, published by John Bell in 1774, suggests that the printed text is closely connected to the performance of the play in the theatre. Bell's edition is the first to make such a claim and it is possible that the illustrations, too, have a connection with the play as it was staged:
The TEMPEST
A COMEDY, by SHAKESPEARE
AS PERFORMED AT
THE THEATRE-ROYAL, DRURY-LANE
Regulated from the PROMPT-BOOK
With PERMISSION of the MANAGERS
By Mr. HOPKINS, Prompter.
The picture as printed in the book is identified as 'Act II' (top left hand corner above the frame) and has a quotation, 'Come on - down and swear' (a slight contraction of Stephano's line) beneath the illustration that freezes the moment as Scene Two, line 152. The background recreates Trinculo's description from earlier in the scene:

Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing. I hear it sing i'th' wind. Yon same black cloud, yon huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head.

The jagged flashes of lightning may be prompted by Trinculo's observation on Caliban, 'This is no fish, but an islander that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.' Like Hayman's illustration this Caliban has distorted, animal-like feet, creating a sense of the reptilian that is reinforced by the webbed fingers.

Illustration 3

This engraving, by C. Grignion after Dighton, and published in The Universal Magazine, records the production of The Tempest at Covent Garden in 1776. It is not an accurate representation of what happened on stage and some aspects of the composition have clearly been borrowed from Hayman's illustration for Hanmer (see illustration 1 above). Miss Brown (later Mrs Ann Cargill) was a singer as well as an actress and the events of her short, sensational life (c.1759-84) invite comparison with drama and even, perhaps, The Tempest. She played Miranda early in her career when she was better known for the two attempts her father made to kidnap her, disapproving of her life on the stage. The second attempt was foiled by her fellow actors and a vast crowd that gathered outside the theatre and closed the street, preventing the abduction. Later she acted with great success in India (where she may have eloped) and drowned on the journey home when her ship sank off the Scilly Isles. George Mattocks (1735-1804) was considered a better singer than an actor:

Mattocks, for gentle trip and shuffle famed,
Ought as an actor scarcely to be named,
But as a singer merits much applause,
There truth with candour justifies his cause.
(The Rational Rosciad, 1767)

For much of the eighteenth century The Tempest was performed in adaptation and sometimes in an operatic version so Brown and Mattocks' singing skills would have been important. John Dryden and William Davenant's 1667 version of the play cut over two thirds of Shakespeare's lines, replacing them with new material and adding new characters that gave a fashionable symmetry to the plot: Miranda acquired a sister, Dorinda, Ferdinand a rival, Hippolito, Caliban a sister, Sycorax, and Ariel a female companion, Milcha. The spectacular and hugely popular 1673 operatic version, attributed to Thomas Shadwell, retained the altered text, as did David Garrick's musical adaptation of 1756.
In addition to the songs and music in the play (whether in the Shakespearian original or in adaptation) sound is an important element of The Tempest suggesting, again, an exploitation of special effects. How many references to sound can you find in the text and stage directions? The portion of text printed under this illustration tells us that this is not quite The Tempest that Shakespeare wrote. Note that the quotation is attributed to Act Two while in the full version of the play this moment occurs in Act Three, Scene One. What is more, in this version Miranda speaks in verse:

If you'll sit down, I'll bear your logs the while.
Pray, give me that; I'll carry it to the Pile.
Shakespeare's original has Miranda saying:
If you'll sit down, I'll bear you logs the while.
Pray, give me that; I'll carry it to the pile.

The picture provides useful evidence about eighteenth-century theatre costume and suggests perceptions of the status of Ferdinand and Miranda. You might consider the period in which the play has been set and whether the choice of costume that you see here can be supported by the text.

Illustration 4

The original painting, which Henry Fuseli executed for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, has not survived but this engraving of the work by Jean Pierre Simon, published in September 1797, enables one to see Fuseli's emphases on the natural and supernatural worlds of The Tempest. Gestures are important in this composition and the outstretched arms of not only Prospero, Caliban and Ariel but also the supplicating limbs arising from the ground by Prospero's right heel reveal the superior strength of his magic. Gesturing, too, from top right is an ape, perhaps 'the nimble marmoset' snared by Caliban (2.2.169). A shaft of sunlight illuminates this grotesque Caliban, arrested in an aggressive moment by Prospero's sentence:

For this be sure tonight thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up. Urchins
Shall, for that at vast of night that they may work.
All exercise on thee. Thou shalt be pinched
As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.
(1.2. 327-332)

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Illustration 5

tempest8.jpg [thumb]
Illustration 6

You may find these two pictures surprising as they show Ariel being played by a woman. The tradition of female Ariels that had begun fitfully in the Restoration became the norm in the eighteenth century. While Ariel has a gender specific line at his first entrance:

All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure. Be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds, To thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality
(1.2.190-4)

it is not difficult, textually, to present the character as either female or genderless. The casting choice has the potential, however, to create (and perhaps distort) the relationship between Ariel and Prospero and a female Ariel may shift the focus of the important strand of the plot that presents Miranda as the sole female. Ariel may become - as Priscilla Horton certainly did - the female lead.
The top image shows Julia St. George as she played the role at Sadler's Wells in a heavily cut production by Samuel French that is chiefly remembered for its elaborate scenery that included burning rocks and magic fire for Prospero. St. George has angel-like wings suggesting an innocent and benign Ariel and her appearance and pose shows the influence of the increasingly popular ballet. The lower picture, an illustration by Stephenson, which has no connection with a specific performance, suggests an interpretation of Ariel that goes beyond the benign and becomes saint-like as she ascends, with raised eyes, to heaven. If Ariel (whether male or female) is presented as an angel or saint then what does this suggest about Prospero? Has he acquired the status of a god? Is he omnipotent?

Illustration 7 Illustration 8

William Haviland played Prospero at His Majesty's Theatre in London in 1904 (illustration 7) in an extravagant and lavish production by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Tree himself played Caliban and he cut and rearranged the text so that the focus of the play shifted from Prospero to Caliban who was presented as an ape-like savage. The epilogue was cut so that the last lines of the play became Prospero's 'Ye elves of hills' speech (5.1.33ff) and the last scene the audience saw was a silent tableau as Caliban sat on a rock at sunset watching despairingly as the ship sailed back to Naples. Tree made great claims for this moment of staging and for Caliban's potential:

... in his love of music and his affinity with the unseen world, we discern in the soul which inhabits the brutish body of this elemental man the germs of a sense of beauty, the dawn of art. And as he stretches out his arms towards the empty horizon, we feel that from the conception of sorrow in solitude may spring the birth of a higher civilisation.
('The Tempest in a Teacup' in his Thoughts and Afterthoughts (London: Cassell, 1913) 211-24, p.221)

Despite Tree's shift of focus the status of Prospero, if not his importance in this interpretation, was evident in his costume. His robe, resembling a vestment worn by a high ranking churchman, and his staff which looks like a bishop's crozier, invest him with religious or spiritual significance and there is little doubt that he is a powerful figure.
A similar effect is evident in the illustrations of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of the play in 1982, directed by Ron Daniels and designed by Maria Bjornson. Despite the magic symbols on Derek Jacobi's cloak its similarity to a bishop's cope coupled with the staff and his book, resembling a bible, reinforce the religious image.

tempest11.jpg [thumb] tempest12.jpg [thumb]
Illustration 9 Illustration 10

From the same production, the appearance of Bob Peck's Caliban and Mark Rylance's Ariel is very distinctive. Both characters seem removed from the human domain, Caliban with a reptilian upper body and Ariel with a transparent skin that reveals veins and arteries. Hair styles reinforce their difference from Prospero, Ariel with a mane bleached of colour and Caliban with matted locks hung with pebbles and shells.

In 1993 the Sam Mendes production for the Royal Shakespeare Company featured Alec McCowen as Prospero, played as a late Victorian antiquarian. His cell on the island resembled a study with piles of books, and a librarian's ladder suggested that he was in the middle of re-shelving his collection. In fact the ladder allowed him to observe the action or address characters from a higher level and was a simple way of extending the playing space. The set, designed by Anthony Ward, was overtly theatrical. The props basket that you can see on the right was the place of Caliban's confinement, and for the masque scene Prospero conjured a toy theatre. Miranda and Ferdinand were an avid audience, sitting on the stage, backs to the audience, until the child-like magic of the moment was broken as the dancing 'sunburned sicklemen' (4.1.134) burst through the proscenium and revealed themselves to be the errant, threatening Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban.

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Illustration 11

Caliban, played by David Troughton, was subtly differentiated from the other characters. The physical differences were conveyed through his shaved head and through his posture which was stooped and lumbering, suggesting a long and cramped confinement. If you look carefully at his left hand in the next illustration you will see the long nails that enable him to 'dig... pig-nuts' (2.2.167). Yet he was undoubtedly human rather than animal or monster and wore breeches rather than animal skins. When David Suchet played the part in 1978 he decided that Caliban, presumably naked until Prospero and Miranda came to the island, would wear Prospero's cast off clothes. The 1993 production made a similar decision.

Illustration 12

Modern stage technology assists the creation of lavish effects and spectacle and the final illustration from Adrian Noble's 1998 RSC production of the play shows Scott Handy as Ariel. The false body covers the harness that secures him to the flying mechanism and takes the weight of the massive pair of outstretched wings that dominate the stage. Presented like this Ariel can also dominate the play.

Dr Catherine M.S. Alexander

Dr Catherine Alexander is Acedemic Manager of the Shakespeare Institure, University of Birmingham.