
The Woman in White
In advance of the new BBC adaptation beginning on Sunday, David Stuart Davies looks at the history
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Apr
20
Apr
23
Shakespeare's
Tempest is called a "romance,"
a "miracle" play, or a "fantasy" by categorists. I don't have a name for it, except the one
Shakespeare gave it. It is--to
me--either a very serious, moral double-play, or it is perverse. And it ends with a scene not unlike the final
scene in Hamlet--but with the
addition of an epilogue for its stage-manager, puppet-master, god-figure,
Prospero. It is this which brought me to
think about the two plays together.
From the beginning
of his play, Hamlet is on his own.
Whether he has seen his father's ghost or not is irrelevant. Marcellus is right: "Something is rotten in the state of
Denmark." What? Hamlet suspects that the king his father was
poisoned. And that suspicion puts a very
serious burden on his mind. We are often
reminded that Hamlet is a student. And
though he is home from university, his first role is still learning--but not
from books, not at university. He is in what he must learn: at home. And--unlike Prospero--he has no magic to
control the evil that he suspects. What
Hamlet learns won't save him, or Denmark.
Rather, it will kill him--and give Denmark to Norway.
Hamlet himself is
an honorable young man, unwilling to enact revenge though his murdered father
requires it of him. His father's
murderer--Claudius--plots with Laertes to murder Hamlet. A poisoned cup, a sharpened, poisoned rapier.
But having "touched" Hamlet with that rapier, Laertes--in an
accidental change of foils-- is himself "touched." Gertrude drinks--unknowingly--from the
poisoned cup which Claudius had prepared for Hamlet. Laertes dies of the poison
he intended for Hamlet--but dying, tells Hamlet of the plot. Hamlet then "hurts" Claudius with
the poisoned rapier.
Hamlet is the last
to die. He tries to explain what has
happened--"Had I but time. . . O. I could tell you." But he doesn't have time: "The rest is silence." He asks
Horatio to "tell [his] story"--which is the cue for Fortinbras and
the English ambassador to come on stage.
They will be the audience for Horatio who--seemingly with something like
glee--assumes the responsibility for explaining what has happened:
. . . let me speak to th' yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural
acts;
Of accidental judgments, casual
slaughters;
Of death put on by cunning and
forc'd cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes
mistook
Fall'n on th' inventors' heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
Fortinbras
and the others leave the stage with Horatio.
From the preview Horatio has just given,
we know that what they hear will be an Elizabethan version of tabloid sensationalism. We--the audience--are left with the obligation to understand Hamlet's "story"--and his heroism.
The end of The Tempest--ten years later--is formally
the same. The plays are very different, of course. There is no murder in The Tempest, and in the end the evil previously done--to Prospero-- is forgiven by him. Act five opens with Ariel's report to
Prospero: Alonso and his followers are
all "confined," off-stage. They
are brought before Prospero--costumed now in his "magic robes"--and
accused of their crimes. His accusation
takes but eight short lines, and then he says:
"I do forgive thee, / Unnatural though thou art."
Prospero frees the
villains. Another ten lines, and he
promises Ariel that he, too, "shalt ere long be free." Ariel's
servitude--and his desire for freedom--are part of the focus of The Tempest from the second scene of act
one until the the play's final line, and as they frame the play deserve our
serious attention.
In act one Ariel reminds Prospero that he has
promised Ariel his "liberty." .And again, "Ariel, I shall miss
thee, / But yet thou shalt have freedom."
Ariel, however, has committed no crime; he has simply been Prospero's
slave.
In act five, Alonso
gives up his claim to Prospero's dukedom, and asks that Prospero "pardon .
. . [his] wrongs." Prospero agrees, and also forgives Sebastian, his
"most wicked . . . brother."
And as an after-thought, a hundred and twenty lines on, he tells Ariel
to "set Caliban and his companions free." He then accuses them--to Alonso and
Sebastian--of having "robb'd" him--and of having "plotted"
together to "take [his] life." We must remember, here, that Alonso
and Sebastian have also robbed him, and plotted to take his life. With a few pinches and stings as punishment, Prospero
sends Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo to clean his "cell": to "trim it handsomely."
Why? So that his noble guests but forgiven criminal guests--"your Highness and your train," he says--may go there, to "take [their]rest." And while they rest, he will tell them
the
story of my life,
And the particular accidents gone by
Since I came to this isle.
But Prospero isn't the fool that Horatio is. Horatio doesn't understand the story he has to tell. His summary would fit any number of the bloody "tragedies" Shakespeare's audience could have seen in London at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Horatio will make a mess of the story he tells. He doesn't understand it at all. Ten years later it is Prospero's turn--and, unlike poor, stupid Horatio, Prospero understands his play. Has understood it, all along. He has been in control of it--as though he were Shakespeare, not Shakespeare's creation. And Prospero's control produces a very sour selective justice.
Both plays are in
some sense about governance and
order. But the perspectives are very different. Hamlet
comes out of the Elizabethan tradition of what were called "revenge
tragedies"--but Hamlet is not
such, despite what Horatio thinks. Hamlet is a play about its central
character's moral heroism. The Tempest, however, is very much a "revenge"
play--not a "romance" or a fantastic dream of civilization restored
by magic. At its end, Prospero abuses
his black slave, Caliban, along with his jester and butler. Since the play began, Ariel has been asking
for his freedom, but Prospero has refused.
Only when Prospero has completed his revenge--with Ariel's aid--does
Prospero set his fairy slave "free."
Prospero forgives Alonso, however,
for stealing his dukedom and exiling him--and calls Alonso
"Highness." He also pardons
Alonso's treacherous brother Sebastian, and his own usurping brother
Antonio. He invites them to "his
poor cell"--Caliban and the other two were sent to clean it for these
gentlemen--and proposes to entertain his noble but erstwhile murderous guests
for the night. Come morning, Ariel will be
used one last time by his master, to conduct them safely home--and then Ariel
will be freed. From slavery
Tonight, the three forgiven villains
all disappear--into Prospero's "cell." The scene reminds me of Fortinbras and the
British Ambassador at the end of Hamlet, following
Horatio off-stage to hear his gory, sensationalist version of the
"story" Hamlet wanted told. The
promise of that scene--Horatio's story of "carnal, bloody, and unnatural
acts; / Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters" made a very quick, and
rancid end to Hamlet. But we know Hamlet's story--can
"tell" it as he asked, can "report[him] and [his] cause
aright." At the end of The Tempest, we know both parts of
Prospero's story: how his dukedom was
stolen from him and himself exiled, and his tyrannical rule of his island. But
this, surely, is not "the story of [his] life" with which he will
entertain his generously forgiven noble guests before he produces their lost
ship to send them home.
Prospero ushers
these magically repentant but formerly villainous "guests" into his
cell, gives Ariel one last charge before setting him "free"--and
himself remains on stage, to speak to us.
"Since I have
my dukedom got," he says--prosperously--he wants to go home. And, coyly, he asks for our help in getting
there:
. . . release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Do I want to applaud for Prospero, as
he asks? I don't. Reading Hamlet--and
then reading The Tempest--I think I
will resist Prospero's appeal for applause.
I will maybe sit on my hands.