TEACHER TOOL KIT Tour 66, 2014–15
Table of
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................................4 How to use this guide Who are National Players? A Year on the Road
Chapter 2: Shakespeare’s World Early Modern Theater..................................................................................9 Shakespeare’s Life The Globe Theatre Performance Practices
Shakespeare in Action..........................................................................11 Performing with Distractions Discovering Shakespeare’s Stage Costumes
Shakespeare’s Language............................................................................14 Prose and Verse Scansion
Activities.................................................................................................16 Prose vs. Verse Identifying Your Own Speech Patterns
Chapter 3: The World of the Play Prospero’s Art............................................................................................18 Renaissance Magic Prospero’s Foil: Dr. John Dee Opposition and Decline of Occultism
Further Reading...................................................................................20 Anti-Magic: The Discoverie of Witchcraft Deomonology, by James I Pro-Magic: The History of the World Dr. John Dee’s Defense Companion Scenes: Dr. Faustus The Alchemist The Tempest, Act V, scene i
Shakespeare in Action..........................................................................26 Influencing the Royal Advisor The Magic Decision
The Age of Exploration...............................................................................28 Discovering the New World Shakespeare’s Source: The Wreck of the Sea Venture
Further Reading...................................................................................29 The New World: William Strachey’s account of the Sea Venture A Discovery of the Barmudas... “Of the Cannibals” Companion Scene: The Tempest, Act I, scene i
Shakespeare in Action..........................................................................34 Staging the Storm
Chapter 4: Before the Show Getting to Know Caliban............................................................................35 Further Reading...................................................................................38 Q&A with Ian Geers from National Players Tour 66 Critical Analyses of Caliban: The Missing Link Acting Caliban: David Suchet Colonialism: Prospero and Caliban Companion Scene: The Tempest, Act III, scene ii
Shakespeare in Action..........................................................................44 Discussion Questions Creating Your Own Monster
About the Play...........................................................................................46 Meet the Characters A Brief Synopsis
Chapter 5: During the Show............................................................48 Activity: What to Look For Theater Etiquette Show Encounter Guide
Chapter 6: After the Show...............................................................51 Activities and Prompts Appendix Worksheets P Prose vs. Verse Identifying Your Own Speech Patterns Costume Template Further Resources
HOWto use this guide SUMMARY OF CURRICULUM STANDARDS Facebook (Facebook.com/ NationalPlayers) to view archival photos and share your own work. Twitter @NationalPlayers: Follow the Players across the country and use #Tour66 to engage with other audiences. Tumblr (NationalPlayers. tumblr.com): Check out behind-the-scenes photos and videos of life on the road. YouTube (YouTube.com/ NationalPlayers): Find trailers and video clips from all three shows, as well as videos taken during the rehearsal process. Email: You can contact the Players using their individual email addresses, found at www.NationalPlayers.org. Send general educational questions and share classroom work with us at NationalPlayers@ olneytheatre.org.
ENGAGE WITH THE PLAYERS
1. Introduction
Our materials have been written and designed with the new Common Core Standards for English Language Arts in mind. Built to accommodate a variety of classroom goals and subjects, our Tool Kit includes text excerpts for close reading and thematic analysis, companion texts to compare and contrast with the play, and activities geared toward the speaking and listening skills inherent in theatrical work. We believe that studying the arts, performance in particular, is a necessary part of a balanced education; we also understand, however, that curriculum requirements and time limitations make arts integration a challenge for many classrooms. To that end, many of our materials are presented through a historical and/or ELA-based lens in an effort to make this Tool Kit as flexible and connective as possible. This Tool Kit includes: • Essential background information on Shakespeare in performance as an introduction to how and why Shakespeare is performed. This includes a biography on the playwright, a language guide, and information on Early Modern theater practices. • Historical context, with insight into the political, social, and cultural atmosphere of the world of the play. This section prepares students to thematically engage with the play and make connections between Shakespeare’s world and their own. • Primary resources and critical readings that provide thematic, historical, literary, and social lenses through which the students can engage with the play. • Selected excerpts from the play that relate to primary sources and historical context and guide students through the theatrical process. • A guided, in-depth character study, integrating theater-making, text analysis, and historical context to help students actively engage with the play. • Post-show questions and activities that can be used in conjunction with or separate from National Player workshops. • Additional resources, many of which were referenced in the creation of this guide and production of the show. • Photos, illustrations, and other images that provide nuanced, visual insight into different interpretations of the play. High-resolution versions of these images are also available on the National Players website.
National Players has a 66-year legacy of making classic works relevant and exciting for young audiences. In an effort to foster this educational mission, we are always looking for the latest ways to engage with students and audiences with whom we come in contact. We aim to make our educational and artistic work as accessible and relevant as possible, from the thematic underpinnings of the texts we present to the process of creating and maintaining a national theatrical tour. With this mission as our starting point, we invite you to engage with us in any way you feel best serves your students. You are welcome to interact with National Players using the forums listed above. Your students are welcome to contact the Players before or after their visits; they can track the Players’ travels, share relevant classroom materials, or post questions and comments. We also offer the opportunity to chat with the Players about their performances and life on the road. If you are interested in setting up a time to engage with the Players either before or after their visit via Facebook, Twitter, video or some other method, please contact our Education Coordinator Adam Turcky at Adam.T@ NationalPlayers.org, and he will be happy to discuss some options with you. Please send any general education or workshop questions to NationalPlayers@OlneyTheatre. org.
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WHOare National Players?
1. Introduction
HISTORY “The supreme reward is in the powerful storytelling. Attention to clarity of word and action, as well as passionate characterizations, reaps the benefit of capturing the audience’s imagination and uniting them in story." —Carole Lehan, Glenelg Country School, Ellicott City, MD
TOUR 66
Image 1: Players from Tour 32 in National Players’ first production of The Tempest.
Now celebrating its 66th season, National Players is America’s longest-running touring company, and has earned a distinct place in American theater by bringing innovative and accessible productions to audiences across the country. Founded in 1949 by Father Gilbert Hartke, a prominent arts educator and Catholic priest, National Players has performed in theaters, gymnasiums, opera houses, and outdoor playing spaces all around the country. Hartke’s mission—to stimulate young people’s higher thinking skills and imaginations by presenting classic plays in engaging and accessible ways—is as urgent and vital today as it was more than 60 years ago. Since 1952, Olney Theatre Center has been the artistic home of National Players and has broadened its outreach to engage all learners, regardless of age, background, or location. Through the years, Players has been privileged to perform on 10 USO tours, at five White House visits, in the Arctic Circle, and throughout 42 states and territories. Having performed for over 2.8 million audience members, National Players is proud to continue collaborating with audiences around the world today. Committed to excellence on and off the stage, more than 700 artists have been proud Players, and continue to promote good work in New York, Hollywood, and other communities across the country. National Players offers an exemplary lesson in collaboration and teamwork-inaction: the actors not only play multiple roles onstage, but they also serve as stage managers, teaching artists, and technicians. This year, the Players consist of 10 actors, traveling across the country and visiting schools and art centers. A selfcontained company, National Players carries its own sets, lights, costumes, and sound, meaning that the actors rebuild the set and hang lights for more than 90 performances a year. They also memorize lines for three different plays—this year, The Tempest, As You Like It, and To Kill a Mockingbird—often performing more than one each day. It is a lot of work, but the Players are dedicated to celebrating and teaching literature and performance to as many audiences as possible.
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A year on the
ROAD
1. Introduction
Jacob Mundell and Adam Turck are returning to National Players for Tour 66 after completing a year on the road with Tour 65. In this interview, they reflect on the entire experience of life as a Player—from rehearsals and meeting their fellow company members to taking each show on the road. Along with a general timeline of the production process, this section includes jobs descriptions of each offstage role that the Players fill while on the road.
STAGE MANAGER Runs read-throughs and rehearsals, maintains the script and blocking notes, and calls many of the lighting and sound cues during performance. Tour 66 for The Tempest: Adam Turck
COMPANY MANAGER Communicates with the company’s General Manager, schedules regular company meetings, handles any emergencies on the road, and serves as the point of contact for venues. Tour 66: Jacob Mundell
PROPERTIES COORDINATOR Sets up properties tables at each venue, oversees handling and storage for properties, reports damages to the stage manager. Tour 66: Ian Geers
TREASURER Distributes housing stipends, maintains possession of Players bank card, logs incidental costs, submits weekly petty cash reports Tour 66: Dallas Millholand
AUDITIONS
Auditions for National Players were held January through March. More than 1,000 young actors vyed for a place in the company, auditioning in Maryland, Washington DC, Tennessee, Boston, Georgia, Alabama, and New York City. “Working as an actor for a year and the travel opportunities are great, but what really sold me on National Players was the feel of the audition room. Auditions can be really scary, they can be this terrifying thing where everybody has to prove something to everybody else—but the General Manager and Artistic Director were so friendly, so inviting, so playful and so positive, that all the anxiety just went away the minute they opened their mouths.” — Adam
MEETING THE GROUP
All ten players live in residency at the Olney Theater Center in Maryland for the first part of their contract, where they rehearse, get to know each other, and prepare for life on the road. “It’s really strange, because on day one when you meet everybody, you look at these people and you think, “We are going to spend the next year of our lives together.” And there’s a great weight in that, and there’s a great expectation of having to get along, so everyone is typically very friendly.”—Adam “Olney is preparation for the road, because you’re living more intimately on the road than families do in their houses. So the residency is somewhere in between working to live and living to work.” —Jacob
REHEARSALS
The Players spend approximately three to four weeks with each director, analyzing the text, staging, and incorporating design elements on the Olney stage. “I like to have a working, functional knowledge of all three plays before we start. I walk in with just a functional artistic knowledge of the world of the play, and I read everything I can about it—I read essays, I read different versions of it, I watch adaptations, I just kind of fill my head with this play—and then just kind of see what happens.” — Adam
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1. Introduction
Image 2: The Players’ truck needs to be reloaded after each production; it contains all of their sets, wardrobe pieces, and lighting and sound equipment.
VEHICLES COORDINATOR Organizes a driving schedule throughout the tour and maintains general vehicle upkeep. Tour 66: Ian Geers
WORKSHOP ADMINISTRATOR Prepares curricula, coordinates workshop schedules, communicates with teachers and educators prior to arrival. Tour 66: Adam Turck
WARDROBE MANAGER Builds and maintains a costume inventory, creates a laundry and maintenance schedule, oversees repairs as needed. Tour 66: Adam Donovan & Rosie O’Leary
STRIKE COORDINATOR Conducts the proper order of striking the set and loading the truck, maintains an equipment inventory. Tour 66: Adam Turck
OFFSTAGE ROLES
Along with their acting roles, each Player takes on at least one offstage job in support of the company, based on his or her skill sets and areas of interest. “Work hard. And if you think you’re working hard enough, you’re not; there’s always more work to do.” —Jacob
TRAVELING
The Players take turns driving the company’s three vehicles: a truck for their stage equipment, a van, and a car. Last year, they visited 19 states and 44 cities. In one case, they performed five shows in four days in three different states. “I do audiobooks while driving, specifically radio plays.”—Adam “Sometimes the only thing you can do to pass time is make yourself unconscious for as long as possible.”—Jacob
LIVING ON THE ROAD
Each Player is allowed to bring one large bag and one small bag for their personal belongings. Without regular access to a refrigerator or gym, taking care of themselves on the road is especially challenging. “I love practicing frugality because A) it helps you save money when you’re not buying stuff everywhere, B) it makes you a more efficient Player when can pack up out of the hotel and get into the van with all your stuff in like 10 minutes, compared to someone who needs a half hour to get their life together.”—Jacob “Working out isn’t always easy, but if you have 20 minutes you can spend them doing calisthenics or jumping rope or doing push-ups. It’s the diet, not being able to cook for yourself, that’s really hard. The only way to really be healthy is to buy pretty expensive stuff, so you can’t always be both frugal and healthy.”—Adam
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1. Introduction Image 3: The Players work together to load in the sets and equipment before performances. Here, Dallas Millholland and James Hesse set up the columns for a production of The Tempest.
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR Supervises load-in of scenery at each venue and performs upkeep on the road. Tour 66: James Hesse
SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Maintains the Players’ public presence, through online outlets (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr) as well as promotional materials. Tour 66: MK Smith, Ian Geers, Jacob Mundell
MASTER ELECTRICIAN
Installs and maintains all lighting equipment, determines position for lighting equipment and cables, executes focusing Tour 66: Hannah McKechnie
ACCOMMODATIONS MANAGER Books hotel rooms for the company based on preferred accommodations, optimal pricing, and checkin dates Tour 66: James Hesse
SOUND ENGINEER Ensures proper placement, upkeep, and maintenance of sound equipment, sets and checks sound levels and microphone cues. Tour 66: Anthony Golden Jr.
BEING A TEAM
Working together for an entire year means that, despite long hours and challenging load-ins, all ten Players need to work as a cohesive team. “A Player from Tour 65 once said that ‘Expectations are a really bad thing to have with this job because everything is a curve ball, we’re thrown them every day, so you have to approach everything with a spirit of adventure at all times.’”—Adam
WORKSHOPS
Along with performing, the Players host educational workshops for many of their audiences. Workshops include improvisation, text analysis, stage combat, and more. “Sometimes, if we taught a workshop before a performance, it served as a great warm up, because every workshop had some kind of an exercise to help the students get out of their minds and into their bodies, that would shake us up too.”—Jacob
KEEPING IT “FRESH”
After presenting three plays dozens of times for dozens of audiences, the Players work hard to keep their performances exciting and authentic. “I find it hard not to keep each show fresh, because every space is different and every audience is different. As a company, we have rehearsals on the road, and sometimes when we do read-throughs of the script we’ll put a little bit of a spin on it.” —Adam “I struggle with keeping my performances fresh because after I figure out how I want to tell the story, my choices get old. It’s a mind game of awareness. Breathing is a big part of that. When I breathe, I am able to react honestly, even in a way that I didn’t plan for.”—Jacob
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Early Modern
2. Shakespeare’s World
THEATER
SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE Image 4: A copper engraving
of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout, published on the title page of the First Folio in 1623.
THE GLOBE THEATRE
Despite being history’s most produced and studied English playwright, little is known of William Shakespeare’s life. One of six siblings, Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on or about April 23, 1564. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and had three children. For the seven years after, Shakespeare fell off all record. Eventually, he arose in London and joined The Lord Chamberlain’s Men acting troupe. When James I took over the throne following Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1604, the troupe officially became The King’s Men. Shakespeare’s professional days are a mixture of fact and legend. In 1601, he and his business partners purchased property on the south bank of London’s Thames River, where they established The Globe Theatre. There, the acting company performed many of Shakespeare’s 37 plays. Famed for using the iambic pentameter writing style, Shakespeare’s works are deep in metaphor, illusion, and character; sometimes even taking precedence over plot. He began his career writing historical plays, bawdy comedies, and the occasional tragedy. Later in life, his plays became more structurally complex, featuring his iconic Hamlet and Macbeth and the curious tragicomedies Cymbeline and The Tempest. William Shakespeare died on or about April 23, 1616, and is interred at a chapel in Stratford-upon-Avon. Most early modern playwrights did not publish their work, but 18 of Shakespeare’s plays were printed before he died. Luckily, his plays survived because friends and colleagues commemorated his life in a publication known as the First Folio. A century after his death, questions began to arise; his birthdate, deathdate, and even the spelling of his name are in question. No definitive portrait exists of the man, and no government record lists his theatric profession. Many scholars have questioned the ability of a minimally educated man to create such challenging writing. Some theorists have long held that “Shakespeare” was a nom de plume for another playwright, nobleman, or even collection of writers. However, the vast majority of scholars believe that unofficial documentation provides proof of Shakespeare’s existence and prolific abilities. Regardless, Shakespeare’s plays have been translated to 118 languages and are in constant production around the world. Live theater was an integral part of popular culture in 16th and 17th century England, drawing citizens from every social and economic level together in an otherwise strictly hierarchal world. The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s company produced many of their famous plays, was constructed around 1599 alongside the Thames River on the Bankside of London. Separated by this river, the Bankside provided an escape from the strict, regulated life by which so many Londoners abided; along with patronizing any of several theaters, Londoners could participate in bear-baiting, cock fighting, bowling, and many other forms of entertainment. The Globe Theatre was a circular wooden structure constructed of three stories of galleries (seats) surrounding an open courtyard. It was an open-air building, and a rectangular platform projecting into the middle of the courtyard served as a stage. The performance space had no front curtain, but was backed by a large wall with one to
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 10)
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2. Shakespeare’s World
CONTINUED— THE GLOBE THEATRE Image 5: Although there are no surviving illustrations of the original Globe Theatre, historians think it looked something like the Swan Theatre. The Swan was right down the road from the Globe, and some of Shakespeare’s early plays were performed there.
PERFORMANCE PRACTICES
three doors out of which actors entered and exited. In front of the wall stood a roofed house-like structure supported by two large pillars, designed to provide a place for actors to “hide” when not in a scene. The roof of this structure was referred to as the “Heavens” and could be used for actor entrances. The theater itself housed up to 3,000 spectators, mainly because a great number had to stand. The seats in the galleries were reserved for people from the upper social classes who primarily attended the theater to be prominently seen. Sometimes, wealthy patrons were even allowed to sit on or above the stage itself. These seats, known as the “Lord’s Rooms,” were considered the best in the house despite the poor view of the backs of the actors. The lower-class spectators stood in the open courtyard and watched the play on their feet. These audience members became known as groundlings and gained admission to the playhouse for prices as low as one penny. The groundlings were often very loud and rambunctious during the performances and would eat, drink, shout at the actors, and socialize during the performance. Playwrights were therefore forced to incorporate lots of action and bawdy humor in their plays in order to keep the audience’s attention. In Early Modern England, new plays were written and performed continuously. Each week, a company of actors might receive, prepare, and perform a new play. Because of this, each actor in the company had a specific type of role that he normally played and could perform with little rehearsal. This role was known as a stock character. Such characters might include romantic lovers, tragic soldiers, fools and clowns, and women characters. Because women were not allowed to perform, young boys whose voices had yet to change played the female characters in the shows. Other than a few pieces of stock scenery, like forest and palace backdrops, set pieces were very minimal. There was no artificial lighting to convey time and place, so it was the audience’s responsibility to imagine the full scene. Because of this, the playwright described the setting in greater detail than would normally be heard today. For example, in order to establish weather after the opening storm scene in The Tempest, Miranda says, “The sky it seems would pour down stinking pitch,/ But that the Sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek,/ Dashes the fire out.” The costumes of this period, by contrast, were far from minimal. Rich and luxurious, Elizabethan costumes were a source of great pride for the performers who personally provided them. However, they were rarely historically accurate, which again forced the audience to use its imagination to envision the play’s time and place.
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Shakespeare in ACTION
2. Shakespeare’s World
PERFORMING WITH DISTRACTIONS OBJECTIVE: Students will understand audience etiquette for live performance. Students will be able to examine the influences inspiring Shakespeare’s choices. Students will be able to make adjustments to scene work to better connect with an audience. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 5 - 8 SUPPLIES NEEDED: Performance space 1. Talk with students about different audiences (groundlings and members of the upper class) and the performance style of Shakespeare’s day (see “Performances Practices” and “The Globe Theatre” on pages 9 and 10). Ask students what they think has changed about seeing performances since that time. 2. Select a few student performers, and as a class come up with a short dialogue of three exchanges. A basic “Hello,” “How are you?” or “I am well” is perfectly acceptable, as the content of the scenes is not important for the rest of the activity. The scene should, however, incorporate some movement and should not involve the students standing in place. 3. After students have rehearsed their scenes, tell them that they will be performing them as if at an Early Modern theater, and the rest of the class will be groundlings. 4. Have the group perform their short exchanges and encourage the rest of the class to talk to each other, interact with the performers, and be generally obnoxious audience members (to a point). 5. After the group performs for the first time, ask them how it felt and encourage them to think of better ways to hold the audience’s attention. Should they alter the scene to include things that would hold everyone’s attention better? How might they alter their performance style? What do they think the audience wants to see? 6. After soliciting the suggestions, workshop a new version of the scene that the audience would respond to in a less distracting manner. Ask both performers and audience how the performances differed. 7. Ask students what effect they think Shakespeare’s audience had on his play’s content. What might they expect while seeing a Shakespeare play that they had not before? How should they behave while actually seeing the show?
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Shakespeare in ACTION
2. Shakespeare’s World
DISCOVERING SHAKESPEARE’S STAGE OBJECTIVE: Students will understand Shakespearian theatrical practices. Students will explore acting techniques. Students will be able to describe different theater spaces. Students will relate theater-going to social class. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 5 - 8 SUPPLIES NEEDED: One line from The Tempest, ample space to speak and perform 1. Ask students where and when they have seen live performances before. What did those spaces look and sound like? What strategies did the performers employ to make sure they were seen and heard? 2. Pick a line from The Tempest. Some recommendations: “Our revels now have ended” (IV.i), “O brave new world, that has such people in’t!” (V.i), or “Do you love me?” (III.i). Have the students all say their line in unison with no emphasis or inflection, as if they were just saying it to a friend. Have them note natural emphasis on word and syllables and which moments are most clearly heard. 3. Ask students to imagine they are in a theater or performance space. Have them pretend they are standing on stage to deliver this line to a sold-out crowd. Have them close their eyes and picture the space. Which direction do they have to face, and how do they have to talk to make sure they are heard? 4. Talk about the theater structure in which Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed (see The Globe Theatre on page 10). What might Shakespeare’s company have considered while performing? How were the actors heard? How were they seen? 5. Have students picture The Globe Theatre and its various audience members in different locations. Picture the open air theater and the acoustics. Now have them say the line again, communicating its meaning (i.e. not just shouting it) to as many audience members as possible. 6. Ask students what has changed since their first time saying the line. Do they hold their head differently? Do they use their voice in a different way? Do they stand differently? 7. After this conversation, arrange students throughout the space similarly to The Globe, with some students (the upper class) at a higher level and others (the groundlings and lower class) down below and in the middle of the space. Ask one student at a time to deliver the line to everyone and note the different techniques seen amongst the students. 8. Ask students to think about the theater in which they will be seeing The Tempest (show pictures or visit the theater, if possible). How do they think the Players will have to adapt to this new space? What do they think their performance style will be like?
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Shakespeare in ACTION
2. Shakespeare’s World
ANACRHONISTIC COSTUMES OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to differentiate between period-specific and non-period-specific costumes. Students will be able to think critically about the costume designing process. Students will be able to make connections between different time periods. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 6 - 12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: Photos of various Shakespeare productions or ability to research said photos, costume templates (see Appendix, page 56) 1. Talk with students about costuming practices of Shakespeare’s theater (See Performance Practices on page 10). The most important thing to call attention to is that costumes were not true to the period they were portraying. 2. Have students research various past Shakespearian productions (focusing on The Tempest, but also any other Shakespeare plays with which they are familiar; there are many Tempest pictures throughout this Tool Kit), calling attention to the costumes. What place and time do these costumes seem to be evoking? What costume elements are similar? Different? 3. Have students identify a few costume pieces they see in their research, and have them answer the following questions. a. Does this costume match the time period in which the play is set? b. Does this costume match the time period in which the play was originally produced? c. What would the equivalent of this costume piece be if we were doing this show today? 4. Have students pick a character and figure out modern equivalents of the costumes they have seen, and make a sketch. Share these sketches with the rest of the class. You may use the templates in the Tool Kit Appendix on page 56. 5. Ask students what they expect out of the costumes for a production they know to be touring the country. Would they expect a lot of costume changes? Do they expect it to be traditional Shakespearian? What relationships and character traits could be established with costume pieces? Be sure to revisit these questions the day of the show, before and after.
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Shakespeare’s
2. Shakespeare’s World
LANGUAGE
PROSE AND VERSE Image 6: The title page of
The Tempest in the First Folio, published in 1623. Although it was Shakespeare’s last independently-written play, it was published first in the Folio collection of his works.
SCANSION
A poet as well as storyteller, Shakespeare had an astute grasp of language and sound, and along with writing 154 sonnets, he moved interchangeably between verse and prose in each of his plays. Prose, the unmetered and unrhymed language of everyday speech, is employed more heavily in Shakespeare’s comedies; it is often used to distinguish class, indicate a character’s disconnect from reality, or identify moments of comedic relief. In The Tempest, for instance, Stephano and Trinculo speak almost entirely in prose, while their noblemen counterparts speak mostly in verse. This second style of writing usually comprises the majority of the texts—The Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s most verse-heavy comedies, is about 66 percent verse and 34 percent prose—and it is used to indicate members of the higher class and moments of deep emotion or wisdom that require elevated language. Pronouns were also used to distinguish class and status. “Thou” and “thee” indicated a special intimacy among characters, and were used when addressing God, between close friends and relations, and among the lower class. “You,” on the other hand, was more formal. It was used to address superiors—children to parents, servants to masters, members of the upper class. Shakespeare took advantage of these words’ connotations in his plays to establish character and status. When a form of address shifts in dialogue, therefore, it conveys a contrast in meaning, an altered attitude or relationship. Blank verse is the standard poetic form Shakespeare uses in his plays. It can also be defined as unrhymed iambic pentameter—that is, a line of poetry containing five (“penta” from the Greek prefix meaning five) iambic feet; a foot, in turn, is comprised of two syllables, unstressed and stressed, making each line ten syllables long. The most common meter in English poetry, iambic pentameter follows the same pattern as the human heartbeat. A complete line can be written as the following: de DUM | de DUM | de DUM | de DUM| de DUM The following is an example of how Miranda uses iambic pentameter in Act V, Scene i: How MAN - | y GOOD - | ly CREA -| tures ARE | there HERE Shakespeare often breaks from perfect iambic pentameter, however; changes in rhythmic patterns and the number of feet are used to mark variations in tone and structure. Actors use scansion to trace these metrical patterns throughout the text as they search for clues about meaning and character.
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2. Shakespeare’s World
CONTINUED— SCANSION
Some of the most common pattern rhythmic and metrical variations include: SHARED AND SPLIT LINES Shakespeare sometimes splits a line of verse, so that two characters share the ten syllables. This is called a shared line or a split line, and it marks quick thinking or strong emotion, and also creates a sense of movement and speed. Have a look at these lines shared by Prospero and his daughter Miranda just after she witnesses the shipwreck that he has caused: PROSPERO
Shakespeare was very deliberate when he named his characters; in many cases, names reveal clues about characters’ personalities or histories. A few notable examples of hidden meanings behind names in The Tempest include: Prospero: Prosperous Miranda: Wonder Caliban: Cannibal Ferdinand: Brave journey Ariel: God’s lion Trinculo: To drink greedily
There’s no harm done.
MIRANDA PROSPERO
O, woe the day!
No harm.
Together, these lines scan as: there’s NO | harm DONE | o WOE | the DAY | no HARM FEMININE ENDINGS A feminine ending is a line of verse that ends with an extra unstressed syllable. The result is that the rhythm of the verse is thrown off just enough to indicate that the characters feel unsettled about something. Almost one third of the verse in The Tempest follows this pattern. The following is an example, spoken by Caliban as he describes the eerie yet beautiful qualities of the island: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Scanned, it looks like this: be NOT | a FEARD | the ISLE | is FULL | of NOISE | ES sounds AND | sweet AIRS | that GIVE | de LIGHT | and HURT | not
Stephano: Belly or stomach
TROCHAIC VERSE A trochee is another type of poetic foot. Its pattern of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable is the exact opposite of an iamb: DUM de. Compared to an iamb, this feels surprisingly unnatural to speakers of the English language, so Shakespeare often uses trochees for his supernatural characters. Many of Ariel’s songs in The Tempest incorporate trochees and other types of poetic feet. The below example is two trochees followed by a cretic foot (three-syllables, where the first and last syllables are stressed and the middle is unstressed: DUM de DUM). But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Scanned, it looks like this: BUT does | SUFF er | a sea CHANGE IN to | SOME thing | RICH and STRANGE
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Shakespeare in ACTION
2. Shakespeare’s World
PROSE VS. VERSE OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to understand some of the stylistic variations within Shakespeare’s writing. Students will be able to connect Shakespearian writing with the present day. Students will be able to articulate Shakespeare’s writing style. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 6 - 12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: “Prose vs. Verse” worksheet (see appendix), writing utensils, extra paper (optional) 1. Ask students what differences between poetry and other kinds of writing are. Elicit many responses. 2. Explain the difference between prose and verse in Shakespeare’s writing, noting that both are used throughout all of his plays and can provide insight into what is happening on a structural and character-based level. 3. Distribute “Prose vs. Verse” worksheet handout and have students work independently or in small groups to decide what type of writing each scenario calls for. a. Students will likely choose prose for the first scenario because of the informal setting and abundance of friends, as well as the antics suggested by the phrase “life of the party” that echoes some of the storylines of Shakespeare’s clowns. Those who choose verse for this scenario will likely center on the fact that there are people with whom they are unfamiliar at the party, so they want to make a good impression. b. Students will likely select verse for the second scenario, because attempting to make a good impression with “higher class” people like teachers and new students is when one wants to be on one’s “best behavior.” Students who choose prose will likely emphasize the “fish out of water” elements of the new location. c. The third scenario will likely be more evenly split, possibly with a shift between the more formal first section (which would be likely chosen as verse because of the formal religious aspects) and the more informal second section (prose for the easygoing conversation). 4. Have students share and explain their self-designed answers. If there is time, have them come up with some rough dialogue that falls under the category they have chosen and expresses their intended style. 5. Follow up questions: a. Do you hear differences between the prose and the verse in the Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano scene on page 42? b. Can you think of any similar differences in style within contemporary TV, movies, books, or theater? c. If you were performing Shakespeare, do you think you would prefer to work with verse or prose? Why?
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Shakespeare in ACTION
2. Shakespeare’s World
IDENTIFYING YOUR OWN SPEECH PATTERNS OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to identify patterns in Shakespeare’s verse. Students will be able to recognize formal versus informal writing styles. Students will be able to connect Shakespearian dialogue to their own style of speech. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 7 - 12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: “Identifying Your Own Speech Patterns” worksheet (see appendix), writing utensils, sound recorder (optional) 1. Explain the difference between stressed and unstressed when it comes to Shakespearian language, identifying the different patterns of speech, emphasizing that Shakespeare’s verse was meant to imitate real speech patterns. 2. One of the tools many actors use when preparing to perform Shakespeare scansion, or analyzing the text using symbols to identify stressed and unstressed syllables. One pair of symbols that can be used are a slash (\) for stressed and a u (U) for unstressed. Demonstrate these marks on a simple two-syllable word, like “Hello,” “Skylight,” or “Complete,” and indicate what that word would sound like if the markings were reversed. 3. Distribute the “ID-’ing Your Own Speech Patterns” worksheet to students. Read the sentence at the top of the page naturally, and have students mark the syllable-divided version with which are stressed and which are unstressed. 4. Either distribute recording devices to students or divide them into pairs. Have them answer one of the four suggested questions (or another one of your choosing), either into the recording device or with the partner transcribing their answer. 5. Have students mark up the transcript with their pattern of speech, noting where they stress syllables and where they do not. 6. Students can trade transcriptions and attempt to mimic each other’s speech patterns, noting where individual idiosyncrasies differ from what comes naturally to them. 7. Repeat with other questions, if desired. Introduce other elements, such as speaking with an accent, speaking to someone far away or over the phone, or in a whisper. Identify where the stresses fall throughout these speeches. 8. Ask if any student’s speech is falling into more formalized patterns. Do any of them have a lot of iambs or trochees? Who is the most rhythmic in their speaking? Who is the most erratic? 9. Ask students what effect they think writing in a formal style with rules for stressed and unstressed would do to the style of dialogue. What does that do to the sound of the lines? How would it affect the actors’ process?
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Prospero’s
ART
RENAISSANCE MAGIC “Magic comprises the most profound contemplation of the most secret things, their nature, power, quality, substance, and virtues, as well as the knowledge of their whole nature.” — Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, 1533
Image 7: This woodcut from late (1620) edition of Marlowe’s famous play depicts Dr. Faustus summoning the Devil from his magic circle, wearing common symbols of Renaissance magic: a hat, cloak, and staff.
OPPOSITION AND DECLINE
3. The World of the Play
Although The Renaissance (the late 15th to early 17th century in England; it began about 100 years earlier elsewhere) is most famously remembered as an artistic and scholarly movement, magic was an equally significant component. The line between science and magic was blurred, almost interchangeable during this time. A magus was an expert on any number of subjects alongside magic, including all the tenants of the liberal arts (the trivium—grammar, logic and rhetoric—and the quadrivium—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). There were two main categories of “high magic—that is, occultism practiced by men who were capable of engaging in serious multidisciplinary study, as opposed to street magicians who did not have access to magic books: • “White magic,” or theurgy, a rigorous system of philosophy and scholarship that aimed to unlock the secrets of God’s universe; • “Black magic,” or theurgy, in which witches, demonologists, and necromancers produced magic by disordering the natural order of the universe and employing the powers of evil spirits. Magic was also a popular form of entertainment, and The Tempest was part of a long tradition of depicting mysticism onstage. Immense public interest in occultism inspired dramatists to weave their own perceptions of the craft into their plays. Shakespeare would have been especially familiar with the works of contemporary playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1592) was a German legend retold as an English tragedy, a battle between good and evil in which the titular Faustus sells his soul to the devil to acquire magical powers. Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610) was a satirical commentary on occultism, depicting a fraud magician and the comedic effects of his selfish enterprise. These works, while very different in tone and style, both condemned magi as elitist and self-centered, and were reflective of the skeptical perception of occultism that many held at the time. Although magicians claimed they were working within the Christian doctrine, they faced opposition on the grounds that they were committing blasphemy. Some of the major characteristics of prominent magi worked against them, including: • Isolationism: Magi often secluded themselves from the general population, pursuing their work in lavish personal libraries and workshops. • Elitism: Antique magical manuscripts were rare, as were books in general. Only the elite few who were literate had access to these texts could pursue magic—by extension, successful magi were typically members of the aristocracy.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 19
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3. The World of the Play
CONTINUED— OPPOSITION AND DECLINE
• Pride: The entire philosophy of occultism—that man could unlock God’s secrets by studying his creations—earned magi the reputation of being prideful and vain, even to the point of challenging God’s natural order of the universe. Despite support from Elizabeth I, herself a scholar and deeply curious mind, many members of the church criticized occultists for defying God’s natural order of and usurping Christian divinity. Before James I ascended the throne in 1603, he had already begun actively persecuting against witchcraft and sorcery—in his eyes, there was no difference between white and black magic (see Demonology on Page 20). James’ persecution of witches and magi resulted in the near eradication of occultism in the mid 16th century. Most magi denounced their practice or denied any connection to it—with the notable exception of Dr. John Dee.
DOCTOR JOHN DEE
Like Prospero, Dr. John Dee (1527–1609) was a self-proclaimed “white” magus, and even his physical characteristics—“tall and slender [with] a gown like an artist’s gown, hanging sleeves, and a slit... a long beard as white as milk”—conformed with Early Modern depictions of such figures. Born of Welsh ancestry and said to be a descendant of the ancient kings of Britain, Dee rose quickly to prominence because of his early and wholehearted pursuit of knowledge. A brilliant mathematician, he was appointed astrologer to Queen Mary and later became a trusted advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, but in 1555 he was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of plotting sorcery against the monarchy. Although he proved his innocence and was released, he spent the rest of his life warding off accusations of sorcery, claiming that he sought the truth by “The true philosophical method and harmony: proceeding and ascending…from thinges visible to consider of thinges invisible: from thinges bodily, to conceive of thinges spirituall: from thinges transitory, & momentanie, to meditate of things permanent.” As well as being an occultist, Dee was an expert in mathematics, astrology, and most famously, navigation and cartography. He even drew a map of the coastline of North America, which was used by Sir Walter Raleigh for his expedition to found Virginia. He was also famous for his enormous library, the largest in England, which consisted of more than 4,000 manuscripts and books, compared to the University of Cambridge library, which had only 451 books at the time. After James’ ascension to the throne, Dee fell out of favor with the royal court. His library was largely destroyed by a mob, and public opinion quickly shifted after James denounced magic of all kinds. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Dee refused to renounce his connections with magic, and he spent the final years of his life in exile and poverty.
“Alchemists grow old and die in the embraces of their illusion…the achievements of the magicians are unsure and fruitless. Those practices are openly convicted of vanity, and the secret and remotest loft tower’ of the magician’s pride must be abandoned if he is to come ‘close to things.’” – Frances Bacon
Image 8: A depiction of Dr.
John Dee demonstrating his sorcery in Queen Elizabeth’s court; oil painting by Henry Gillard Glindoni.
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, 1584 Reginald Scot (1538–99) published the first strong argument against the entire existence of witchcraft and sorcery. His unpopular position forced him to publish independently, and when King James I ascended the throne, he insisted that all copies of The Discoverie of Witchcraft be destroyed. The fables of Witchcraft have taken so fast hold and deep root in the heart of man, that few or none can nowadays with patience endure the hand and correction of God. For if any adversity, grief, sickness, loss of children, corn, cattle, or liberty happen unto them; by and by they exclaim upon witches. As though there were no God that ordereth all things according to his will; punishing both just and unjust with griefs, plagues, and afflictions in manner and form as he thinketh good: but that certain old women here on earth, called witches, must needs be the contrivers of all men’s calamities, and as though they themselves were innocents, and had deserved no such punishments. ...Such faithless people (I say) are also persuaded, that neither hail nor thunder nor lightening, rain nor tempestuous winds come from the heavens at the commandement of God: but are raised by the cunning and power of witches and conjurers; insomuch as a clap of thunder, or a gale of wind is no sooner heard, but either they run to ring bells, or cry out to burn witches; or else burn consecrated things, hoping by the smoke thereof, to drive the devil out of the air, as though spirits could be afraid away with such external toys.
But certainly, it is neither a witch, nor devil, but a glorious God that maketh the thunder. I have read in the scriptures, that God maketh the blustering tempests and whirlwinds: and I find that it is the Lord that altogether dealeth with them, and that they blow according to his will. But let me see any of them all rebuke and still the sea in time of tempest, as Christ did; or raise the stormy wind, as God did with his word; and I will believe in them. But little think our witchmongers, that the Lord commandeth the clouds above, or openeth the doors of heaven; or that the Lord goeth forth in the tempests and storms, but rather that witches and conjurers are then about their business. But if all the devils were dead, and all the witches in England burnt or hanged; I warrant you we should not fail to have rain, hail and tempests, as now we have: according to the appointment and will of God, and according to the constitution of the elements, and the course of the planets, wherein God hath set a perfect and perpetual order. I am also well assured, that if all the old women in the world were witches; and all the priests, conjurers: we should not have a drop of rain, nor a blast of wind the more or the less for them. For the Lord hath bound the waters in the clouds, and hath set bounds about the waters, untill the day and night come to an end: yea it is God that raiseth the winds and stilleth them: and he saith to the raine and snow; Be upon the earth, and it falleth. The wind of the Lord, and not the wind of witches, shall destroy the treasures of their plesant vessels and dry up the fountaine.
Deomonology by King James I, 1597 King James composed his treatise against witchcraft before his ascension to the English throne. A selfproclaimed scholar and writer, and devoutly opposed to magic of any kind, James led a widespread persecution against witchcraft while Scotland’s monarch. After coming to England in 1603, a country where opposition to witchcraft and demonic behavior was less of an issue, James remained a staunch critic of sorcery, but with a more subdued approach. At the first face appearing lawful unto them, in respect the ground thereof seemeth to proceed of natural causes only; they are so allured thereby, finding their practice to prove true in sundry things, they study to know the cause thereof: and so mounting from degree to degree, upon the slippery and uncertain scale of curiosity; they are at last entised, that
where lawful arts or sciences fails, to satisfiy their restless minds, even to seek that black and unlawful science of Magic. Where, finding at the first, that such diverse forms of circles and conjurations rightly joined thereunto, will raise such diverse forms of spirits, to resolve them of their doubts: and attributing the doing thereof, to the power inseparably tied...they blindly glory of themselves, as if they had by quickness of engine were become emperors. Where, in the meantime (miserable wretches), they are become in very deed, bond-slaves to their mortal enemy: and their knowledge for all that they presume thereof, is nothing increased, in knowing evil, as Adam was by the eating of the forbidden tree....The means whereby the Devil allures persons in these snares are within ourselves: Curiosity in great engines: thirst of revenge: or greedy appetite of gear, caused through great poverty.
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
The History of the World by Walter Raleigh,1614 Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) was an English courtier, explorer, historian, and poet. He was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, who granted him titles, lands, and permission to colonize in Ireland and the Americas. When James I became England’s monarch, however, Raleigh’s fortune changed; James despised him and soon charged him with a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy. Raleigh spent a subsequent 13 years imprisoned in the Tower, where he wrote most of his works, including The History of the World. This excerpt is part of Raleigh’s defense of magic. Now for Magic itself; which Art few understand, and many reprehend, as dogs bark at those they know not: so they condemn and hate the things they understand not: I think it not amiss to speak somewhat thereof. Magic is a Persian
word primitively; whereby is expressed such a one as is altogether conversant in things divine. And the art of Magic is the art of worshiping God. To which effect, Magus is a name sometime of him that is a God by nature; sometimes of him that is in the service of God. A Magician is no other than a studious observer and expounder of divine things: and the art itself (I mean the Art of natural Magic) no other than the absolute perfection of natural Philosophy. If we condemn natural Magic, or the wisdom of nature, because the Devil (who knoweth more than any man) doth also teach Witches and Poisoners the harmful parts of herbs, drugs, minerals, and excrements: then may we by the same rule condemn the Physician, and the Art of healing. For the Devil also taught men in dreams what herbs and drugs were proper for such and such diseases…but the abuses of the thing takes not away the Art; considering that heavenly bodies have and exercise their operation upon the inferior.
John Dee’s defense of his magical arts 1595 This document is a letter that John Dee wrote and addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, defending his “studious exercises” in philosophy against all the attacks he received. The letter was written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I but was published in 1604, early in James’ reign when Dee likely felt that the mood of intolerance was on the rise. Most humbly and heartily I crave your Grace’s pardon, if I offend anything, to send, or present unto your Grace’s hand, so simple a discourse as this is…to be first known and discovered unto your Grace, and other the Right honorable my good Lords, of her Majesty’s Privy Counsel: And, Secondly, afterwards, the same to permitted to come to public view: Not so much, to stop the mouths; and, at length to stay the impudent attempts, of the rash, and malicious divisors and contrivers of most untrue, foolish, and wicked reports, and fables, of, and concerning my foresail studious exercises, passed over, with my great (yea incredible) pains, travels, cares, and costs, in the search, and learning of true Philosophy; As, therein, So, to certify, and satisfy the godly and unpartial Christian hearer, or reader hereof: That, by his own judgment, He will, or may, be sufficiently informed, and persuaded that I have wonderfully labored, to find, follow, use, and haunt the true, straight, and most narrow path, leading all true, devout, zealous, faithful, and constant Christian students…All thanks, are most due, therefore unto the Almighty: Seeing, it so pleased him (even from my youth, by his divine favor, grace, and help) to insinuate into my heart,
an insatiable zeal, and desire, to know his truth: And in him, and by him, incessantly to seek, and listen after the same: by the true philosophical method and harmony; proceeding and ascending, (as it were) from things visible, to consider things invisible; from things bodily, to conceive of things spiritual; from things transitory, and momentary, to meditate of things permanent; by things moral to have some perseverance of immorality. And to conclude, most briefly; by the most marvelous farm of the whole World, philosophically viewed, and circumspectly weighted, numbered, and measured (according to the talent, and gift of God, from above allotted, for his divine purposes effecting) most faithfully to love, honor, and glorify always, the Framer, and Creator thereof. In whose workmanship, his infinite goodness, unsearchable wisdom, and Almighty power, may be manifested an demonstrated. But the great losses and damages which in sundry sorts I have sustained, do not so much grieve my heart, as the rash, lewd, fond, and most untrue fables and reports of me and my studies philosophical, have done, and yet do. …I have used, and still use, good, lawful, honest, Christian, and divinely prescribed means, to attain to the knowledge of those truths, which are meet, and necessary for me to know; and wherewith to do his divine Majesty such service, as he hath, doth, and will call me unto, during this my life: for his honor and glory advancing, and for the benefit and commodity public of this kingdom; as a true faithful, and most dutiful servant, to our most gracious and incomparable Queen Elizabeth, and as a very comfortable fellow-member of the body politic, governed under the Scepter Royal of our Supreme Head (Queen Elizabeth).
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Doctor Faustus, Act I, scene i by Christopher Marlowe, 1592 In Christopher Marlowe’s famous play, the titular character is a German scholar who believes he has mastered all forms of learning except for magic. He conjures up a devil and offers to sell his soul in exchange for 24 years of rich living and obedience. In this scene, Faustus debates selling his soul, and two angels, one good and one evil, attempt to influence his opinion. FAUSTUS: These necromantic books are heavenly, Lines, circles, scenes, letters and characters: Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires. Oh, what a world of profit and delight, Of power, of honour of, omnipotence, Is promised to the studious artisan! GOOD ANGEL: Oh Faustus, lay that damned book aside, And gaze not on it lest it tempt they soul And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head. Read, read the scriptures: that is blasphemy. EVIL ANGEL: Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art Wherein all nature’s treasure is contained. Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, Lord and commander of these elements.
LEARN MORE:
Explore an annotated version of this text at the following link:
www.gutenberg.org files/779/779h/779-h.htm#note-20
Exuent ANGELS. FAUSTUS: How am I glutted with the conceit of this! Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities, Perform what desperate enterprise I will? I’ll have them fly to India for gold. Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, And search all corners of the new-found world For pleasant fruits and pricely delicates. I’ll have them read me strange philosophy, And tell the secrest of all foreign kings. I’ll have them wall all Germany in brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg. I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk, Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad. I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, And chase the prince of Parma from our land, And reign sold king of all the provinces. (I.i.49-93)
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
The Alchemist, Act II, scene iii by Ben Jonson, 1610
A satiric comedy on alchemy and the underlying motivation of human greed, Jonson’s play was performed by Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, one year before the first recorded performance of The Tempest. In the play, Doctor Subtle, a self-proclaimed alchemist who is actually a cheat and a fraud, sets up his alchemical laboratory in a nobleman’s house and tricks council-seeking aristocrats out of their wealth. In this scene, he describes the alchemical process of creating gold out of elemental substances to Mammon, a gullible knight seeking gold and riches. He is confronted, however, but Mammon’s skeptical companion, Surley. SUBTLE: It is, of the one part, A humid exhalation, which we call Material liquida, or the unctuous water; On the other part, a certain crass and vicious Portion of earth; both which, concorporate, Do make the elementary matter of gold; Which is not yet propria materia, But common to all metals and all stones; For, where it is forsaken of that moisture, And hath more driness, it becomes a stone: Where it retains more of the humid fatness, It turns to sulphur, or to quicksilver, Who are the parents of all other metals. Nor can this remote matter suddenly Progress so from extreme unto extreme, As to grow gold, and leap o’er all the means. Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then Proceeds she to the perfect. Of that airy And oily water, mercury is engender’d; Sulphur of the fat and earthy part; the one, Which is the last, supplying the place of male, The other of the female, in all metals. Some do believe hermaphrodeity, That both do act and suffer. But these two Make the rest ductile, malleable, extensive. And even in gold they are; for we do find Seeds of them, by our fire, and gold in them; And can produce the species of each metal More perfect thence, than nature doth in earth. Beside, who doth not see in daily practice Art can beget bees, hornets, beetles, wasps, Out of the carcases and dung of creatures; Yea, scorpions of an herb, being rightly placed? And these are living creatures, far more perfect And excellent than metals.
LEARN MORE:
Explore an annotated version of this text at the following link:
http://www.bartleby.com/47/2
MAMMON: Well said, father! Nay, if he take you in hand, sir, with an argument, He’ll bray you in a mortar. SURLY: ...Pray you, sir, stay. Rather than I’ll be brayed, sir, I’ll believe That Alchemy is a pretty kind of game, Somewhat like tricks o’ the cards, to cheat a man With charming.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 24
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3. The World of the Play
THE ALCHEMIST CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23 SUBTLE:
Sir?
SURLEY: What else are all your terms, Whereon no one of your writers ‘grees with other? Of your elixir, your lac virginis, Your stone, your med’cine... Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And worlds of other strange ingredients, Would burst a man to name? SUBTLE. And all these named, Intending but one thing; which art our writers Used to obscure their art. MAMMON: Sir, so I told him— Because the simple idiot should not learn it, And make it vulgar. SUBTLE: Was not all the knowledge Of the Aegyptians writ in mystic symbols? Speak not the scriptures oft in parables? Are not the choicest fables of the poets, That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom, Wrapp’d in perplexed allegories?
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3. The World of the Play
The Tempest Act V, scene i PROSPERO: How fares the King, and’s followers? ARIEL. Confined together In the same fashion, as you gave in charge, Just as you left them; all prisoners Sir In the Line-grove which weather-fends your Cell, They cannot budge till your release: The King, His Brother, and yours, abide all three distracted, And the remainder mourning over them, Brimful of sorrow, and dismay: but chiefly Him that you term’d Sir, the good old Lord Gonzalo, His tears runs down his beard like winter’s drops From eaves of reeds: your charm so strongly works ’em That, if you now beheld them, your affections Would become tender. PROSPERO.
Dost thou think so, Spirit?
ARIEL. Mine would, Sir, were I human. PROSPERO. And mine shall. Hast thou (which art but air) a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, One of their kind, that relish all as sharply, Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art? Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, Yet, with my nobler reason, ’gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer Action is In virtue, than in vengeance: they, being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further: Go, release them Ariel, My Charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore, And they shall be themselves. ARIEL.
SEE MORE: Watch a recording of National Players performing this scene at the following YouTube link: http://youtu.be/yWh4Sr8K-kQ
I’ll fetch them, Sir. [Exit]
PROSPERO. Ye Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, And ye, that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back: you demi-Puppets, that By Moonshine do the green sour Ringlets make, Whereof the Ewe not bites: and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight-Mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn Curfew, by whose aid (Weak Masters though ye be) I have bedimm’d The Noontide Sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And twixt the green Sea and the azur’d vault Set roaring war: To the dread rattling Thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout Oak With his own Bolt: The strong-based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up The Pine and Cedar. Graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth By my so potent Art. But this rough Magic I here abjure: and when I have requir’d Some heavenly Music (which even now I do) To work mine end upon their Senses, that This Airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever Plummet sound I’ll drown my book.
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Shakespeare in ACTION
3. The World of the Play
INFLUENCING THE ROYAL ADVISOR OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to analyze primary source documents. Students will be able to form arguments and rebuttals based on existing writing. Students will be able to understand English cultural understanding of magic in the 1500–1600s. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 9 - 12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: Primary sources, writing utensils, separate paper for notes, access to other resources (optional) 1. Distribute the four primary source documents from “Shakespeare’s Sources” having to do with magic (The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, Demonology by King James I are anti-magic; The History of the World by Walter Raleigh and “John Dee’s defense of his magical arts” are pro-magic). 2. Tell students that we will be using a debate to model the public discourse that was taking place over the issue of magic in the late 1500s/early 1600s. They will be arguing before a member of the Royal Court to try to influence them into adopting an official state policy on magic. Divide students into two groups: one pro- and one anti-magic. 3. Have each group read and break down their primary sources, looking to formulate three or four basic points on which they will rely to defend their position in debate. They should look for the thrust of their arguments and try to summarize them in ways that make sense to them. They can also look at the opposing side’s source materials to find what they think their arguments might be and how they might counter those arguments. If desired, they can search for further resources available to them. 4. Have groups determine the order in which they want to present their arguments and the primary speaker for each. As many students as possible should have a chance to speak, but some may work as scribes to try to write things down for those arguing, or as researchers to pull things from the primary sources (or other sources, if they have been allowed to do further research) as the arguments develop. 5. Flip a coin, or determine who goes first through some other method. The opening group has two minutes to frame their first opinion, and can talk about magic through whatever lens they think appropriate to make their point about magic’s place in society. The next group has one minute to respond, and then the initial group can respond to the rebuttal for one minute. Then the next group makes their first argument, and the debate carries on until the time allotted has run out or the groups feel they have exhausted their arguments. 6. The teacher, in character as Royal Advisor, can decide what she is going to recommend to the government for the policy in the future and share that decision with the class. 7. Dissolve groups and have discussion about what the process was like. What did it feel like to argue from the perspective of the 14th and 15th centuries? Did students feel they had adequate material to fully make their point? Do they think the the Advisor made a fair decision? What does today’s activity indicate about the understanding of how the world worked in Shakespeare’s time?
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Shakespeare in ACTION
3. The World of the Play
THE MAGIC DECISION OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to differentiate between attitudes towards magic from Shakespearian times. Students will be able to analyze text for motivation. Students will be able to understand writing from a character’s perspective. Students will be able to identify elements of dramatic structure. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 9 - 12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: Selected scenes from The Tempest and Doctor Faustus, writing utensils, separate paper 1. Provide students with background information on magic and popular opinion surrounding the subject during Shakespeare’s time (See “Prospero’s Art” on Page 18). 2. Ask students to brainstorm (individually, in pairs, in small groups, or as a class) some reasons that they think people would be attracted to the idea of magic in the 1500 and 1600s. Why would other people be especially against it? 3. After discussing those reasons, present students with the scenes from Doctor Faustus and The Tempest. Explain that we are going to examine two specific attitudes presented towards magic in plays that are roughly contemporary. 4. Have students analyze the passages by giving them sections to paraphrase or highlight. For online resources that include helpful footnotes and annotations, visit Doctor Faustus on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/779/779h/779-h.htm#note-20) and The Tempest on Shakespeare-Navigators (http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/tempest/ TempestText51.html#sd215). 5. Ask students to come up with a one-to-three-sentence summary of each of the characters’ point of view. Share these with each other and see what common themes emerge. 6. Pose the question: What would Faustus and Prospero have to say to each other if they were to meet and talk about magic? How are their attitudes different? Do they share any common ground? Do you think it is possible that one held the other’s view at any point in time? 7. Point out to students that the Doctor Faustus scene is from very early in the play and the Tempest scene is from very late in the play. Ask students: What does this suggest about the opposite ends of the plays? Do you think if the Prospero of the beginning of The Tempest met with the Faustus of the beginning of Doctor Faustus they would have closer viewpoints? Have students use what they know about the characters already to make a timeline of what they think the main characters each believe about magic throughout their respective plays. 8. Have each student (or groups) pick out a point on their timeline for each of the characters, and then draft a short (~1 page) scene where they interact with each other and share their perspectives on magic. They can incorporate the world’s point of view (see “Influencing the Royal Advisor” on Page 26) or more information from the plays if they go more in-depth with those, as well. 9. Read a few scenes aloud and discuss what elements emerge and how the scenes differ.
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The Age of
3. The World of the Play
EXPLORATION
THE NEW WORLD “A dreadful storm and hideous began to blow, which swelling, and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence then others, at length did beat all light from heaven; which like an hell of darkness turned black upon us... as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled, and overmastered senses of all.” —William Strachey, 1625
THE SEA VENTURE Image 9: A print from Dr. John Dee’s 1577 book, Perfect Art of Navigation, depicting Queen Elizabeth I at the helm of a ship as it ventures toward the New World.
Identifying Prospero’s island on a geographical map has been a point of debate for centuries. According to the text, it is located in the Mediterranean, somewhere between Tunis in Africa and Naples in Italy. Prospero also mentions the “stillvexed bermooths,” to Ariel, alluding to the island of Bermuda. Still another reference in the text, Miranda’s remark, “Oh brave new world/ That has such people in it” (V.i.183) leads some to believe that the play is set in the New World, or North and South America. Regardless of what Shakespeare imagined when he invented Prospero’s world, however, it is clear that he was influenced, at least to some degree, by England’s expanding global empire, a period that is now called the Age of Exploration. England was relatively late to colonize the New World. From the late 15th to mid 16th century, Portugal and Spain dominated this period of expansion, laying claim to large portions of North and South America and the West Indies. England first reached the New World in 1497, when John Cabot journeyed to North America, but it was not until the 1570s and ‘80s that Queen Elizabeth I sent explorers to stifle further Spanish colonization and discover territories in England’s name. Official English stakes in the New World began when King James I took the throne in 1603, and in 1606, the first British colony was established in Virginia. Despite England’s growing reputation as a global powerhouse, news from the New World had the British people uneasy; reports of hostility from natives, disease, starvation, and Spanish resistance circulated throughout England, sparking a heated debate about the value of further colonization. Shakespeare would have read and heard about this issue, and was likely influenced by firsthand accounts of voyages to the New World—most directly by the infamous wreck of the Sea Venture.
In May 1609, nine ships carrying 500 hopeful colonists for John Smith’s colony in Virginia set sail for England. While most of the ships arrived safely in America, the ship carrying Sir Thomas Gates (meant to be the new governor of Virginia) and Admiral Sir George Somers, called the Sea Venture, was caught in a fierce sea storm on July 25 and landed on a Bermuda island. The ship was destroyed and everyone who reached Virginia assumed that the travelers on the Sea Venture had been drowned at sea. Miraculously, not only had everyone survived, but they found themselves comfortable and safe. Prior to this shipwreck, Bermuda had been considered an island of devils, so the British travelers were delighted and surprised to find themselves on an island that provided them with ample fresh fish, fowl, and water. They began making preparations to continue their journey to Virginia, building two new cedar boats in which they set sail, arriving in Virginia in May, 2010, a year after they left England. News about the survivors traveled to London, and three documents, known as the Bermuda pamphlets, recorded their adventures.
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
William Strachey’s account of the Sea Venture shipwreck in Bermuda, 1610 After he survived the 1609 storm that destroyed the Sea Venture, William Strachey (1572-1621) wrote a long letter about the voyage, including his subsequent arrival in Jamestown. He addressed his report to a woman he referred to only as “Noble Lady”—probably Dame Sara Smith, who was married to Sir Thomas Smith of the Virginia Company. The letter circulated as a manuscript in England, where Shakespeare is thought to have seen it. A true repertory of the wrake, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; upon, and from the Islands of the Bermudas: his coming to Virginia, and the state of that Colony then, and after, under the government of the Lord La Warre, July 15, 1610. Written by William Strachy, Esq. A most dreadful Tempest (the manifold deaths whereof are here to the life described) their wracke on Bermuda; and the description of those Islands Excellent Lady, know that upon Friday late in the evening, we broke ground out of the Sound of Plymouth, our whole Fleet then consisting of seven good Ships, and two Pinnaces, all which from the said second of June, unto the twenty three of July, kept in friendly consort together, not a whole watch at any time, losing the sight each of other. ...When on St. James his day, July 24, being Monday (preparing for no less all the black night before) the clouds gathering thick upon us, and the winds singing, and whistling most unusually, which made us to cast off our Pinnace, towing the same until then astern, a dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the Northeast, which swelling, and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence then others, at length did beat all light from heaven; which like an hell of darkness turned black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror, as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled, and overmastered senses of all, which (taken up with amazement) the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds, and distraction of our Company, as who was most armed, and best prepared, was not a little shaken. For surely (Noble Lady) as death comes not so sudden nor apparent, so he comes not so elvish and painful (to men especially even then in health and perfect habitudes of body) as at Sea; who comes at no time so welcome, but our frailty (so weak is the hold of hope in miserable demonstrations of danger) it makes guilty of many contrary changes, and conflicts: For indeed death is accompanied at no time, nor place with circumstances every way so uncapable of particularities of goodness and inward comforts, as at Sea. For it is most true, there ariseth commonly no such unmerciful tempest, compound of so many contrary and diverse Nations, but that it worketh upon the whole frame of the body,
and most loathsomely affecteth all the powers thereof: and the manner of the sickness it lays upon the body, being so unsufferable, give not the mind any free and quiet time, to use her judgment and Empire… For four and twenty hours the storm in a restless tumult, had blown so exceedingly, as we could not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater violence, yet did we still find it, not only more terrible, but more constant, fury added to fury, and one storm urging a second more outrageous then the former; whether it so wrought upon our fears, or indeed met with new forces: Sometimes strikes in our Ship amongst women, and passengers, not used to such hurly and discomforts, made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts, and panting bosoms: our clamors drowned in the winds, and the winds in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the Officers: nothing heard that could give comfort, nothing seen that might encourage hope. It is impossible for me, had I the voice of Stentor, and expression of as many tongues, as his throat of voices, to express the outcries and miseries, not languishing, but wasting his spirits, and art constant to his own principles, but not prevailing. Our sails wound up lay without their use, and if at any time we bore but a Hollock, or half forecourse, to guide her before the Sea, six and sometimes eight men were not enough to hold the whipstaff in the steerage, and the tiller below in the Gunner room, by which may be imagined the strength of the storm: In which, the Sea swelled above the Clouds, and gave battle unto Heaven. It could not be said to rain, the waters like whole Rivers did flood in the air. And this I did still observe, that whereas upon the Land, when a storm hath powered itself forth once in drifts of rain, the wind as beaten down, and vanquished therewith, not long after endureth: here the glut of water (as if throttling the wind ere while) was no sooner a little emptied and qualified, but instantly the winds (as having gotten their mouths now free, and at liberty) spoke more loud, and grew more tumultuous, and malignant: What shall I say? Winds and Seas were as mad, as fury and rage could make them; for mine own part, I had been in some storms before, as well upon the coast of Barbary and Algere, in the Levant, and once more distressful in the Adriatic gulf, in a bottom of Candy.... Yet all that I had ever suffered gathered together, might not hold comparison with this: there was not a moment in which the sudden splitting, or instant over-setting of the Ship was not expected. Howbeit this was not all; It pleased God to bring a greater affliction yet upon us; for in the beginning of the storm we had received likewise a mighty leak. And the Ship in every joint almost, having spewed out her Ocam, before we were aware (a casualty
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 29 Mate, Boatswain, Quarter Master, Coopers, Carpenters, and more desperate than any other that a Voyage by Sea draweth with it) was grown five foot suddenly deep with water above her ballast, and we almost drowned within, whilst we sat looking when to perish from above. This imparting no less terror then danger, ran through the whole Ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned the blood, and took down the braves of the most hardy Mariner of them all, insomuch as he that before happily felt not the sorrow of others, now began to sorrow for himself, when he saw such a pond of water so suddenly broken in, and which he knew could not (without present avoiding) but instantly sink him. So as joining (only for his own sake, not yet worth the saving) in the public safety; there might be seen Master, Masters
who not, with candles in their hands, creeping along the ribs viewing the sides, searching every corner, and listening in every place, if they could hear the water run. Many a weeping leak was this way found and hastily stopped, and at length one in the Gunner room made up with I know not how many pieces of Beef: but all was to no purpose, the Leak (if it were but one) which drunk in our greatest Seas, and took in our destruction fastest, could not then be found, nor ever was, by any labor, council, or search. The waters still increasing, and the Pumps going, which at length choked with bringing up whole and continual Biscuit (and indeed all we had, ten thousand weight) it was conceived, as most likely, that the Leak might be sprung in the Bread room, whereupon the Carpenter went down, and ripped up all the room, but could not find it so.
A Discovery of the Barmudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of the Seas, by Sylvester Jourdain, 1610 Sylvester Jourdain (?–1650), like William Strachey, was a passenger on the Sea Venture, and also wrote an account of the wreck, one that presents a slightly more jovial image of the survivors’ encounter with the Bermudas. ...All our men, being utterly spent, tired, and disabled for longer labor, were even resolved, without any hope of their lives, to shut up the hatches and to have committed themselves to the mercy of the sea (which is said to be merciless) or rather to the mercy of their mighty God and redeemer.... So that some of them, having some good and comfortable waters in the ship, fetched them and drunk the one to the other, taking their last leave one of the other, until their more joyful and happy meeting in a more blessed world; when it pleased God out of His most gracious and merciful providence, so to direct and guide our ship (being left to the mercy of the sea) for her most advantage; that Sir George Somers... most comfortably encouraged the company to follow their pumping, and by no means to cease bailing out of the water.... Through which weak means it pleased God to work so strongly as the water was stayed for that little time (which, as we all much feared, was the last period of our breathing) and the ship kept from present sinking, when it pleased God to send her within half an English mile of that land that Sir George Somers had not long before descried as the islands of the Barmudas. And there neither did our ship sink, but more fortunately in so great a misfortune fell in between two rocks, where she was fast lodged and locked for further budging. But our delivery was not more strange in falling so oppor-
tunely and happily upon the land, as our feeding and preservation was beyond our hopes and all men’s expectations most admirable. For the islands of the Barmudas, as every man knoweth that hath heard or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen people, but ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and enchanted place affording nothing but gusts, storms, and foul weather; which made every navigator and mariner to avoid them, as Scylla and Charybdis, or as they would shun the Devil himself; and no man was ever heard to make for the place, but as against their wills, they have by storms and dangerousness of the rocks, lying seven leagues into the sea, suffered shipwrack. Yet did we find there the air so temperate and the country so abundantly fruitful of all fit necessaries for the sustenation and preservation of man’s life, that most in a manner of all our provisions of bread, beer, and victual being quite spoiled in lying long drowned in salt water, notwithstanding we were there for the space of nine months (few days over or under) not only well refreshed, comforted, and with good satiety contented but, out of the abundance thereof, provided us some reasonable quantity and proportion of provision to carry us for Virginia and to maintain ourselves and that company we found there, to the great relief of them, as it fell out in their so great extremities ... until it pleased God ... that their store was better supplied. And greater and better provisions we might have had, if we had had better means for the storing and transportation thereof. Wherefore my opinion sincerely of this island is, that whereas it hath been and is full accounted the most dangerous, unfortunate, and most forlorn place of the world, it is in truth the richest, healthfulest, and pleasing land (the quantity and bigness thereof considered) and merely natural, as ever man set foot upon.
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
“Of the Cannibals” by Michael De Montaigne from The Essays of Montaigne, 1603 French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) wrote, among many other topics, about cannibals discovered in the New World. Much of his information came from a servant who had spent some years in America. Scholars believe the Shakespeare read and was influenced by John Florio’s translation, specifically in regards to Gonzolo’s description of an ideal commonwealth. . . . I do not find that there is anything barbaric or savage about this nation, according to what I’ve been told, unless we are to call barbarism whatever differs from our own customs. Indeed, we seem to have no other standard of truth and reason than the opinions and customs of our own country. There at home is always the perfect religion, the perfect legal system—the perfect and most accomplished way of doing everything. These people are wild in the same sense that fruits are, produced by nature, alone, in her ordinary way. Indeed, in that land, it is we who refuse to alter our artificial ways and reject the common order that ought rather to be called wild, or savage. In them the most natural virtues and abilities are alive and vigorous, whereas we have bastardized them and adopted them solely to our corrupt taste. Even so, the flavor and delicacy of some of the wild fruits from those countries is excellent, even to our taste, better than our cultivated ones. After all, it would hardly be reasonable that artificial breeding should be able to outdo our great and powerful mother, Nature. We have so burdened the beauty and richness of her works by our innovations that we have entirely stifled her. Yet whenever she shines forth in her purity she puts our vain and frivolous enterprises amazingly to shame. . . . All our efforts cannot create the nest of the tiniest bird: its structure, its beauty, or the usefulness of its form; nor can we create the web of the lowly spider. All things, said Plato are produced by nature, chance, or human skill, the greatest and most beautiful things by one of the first two, the lesser and most imperfect, by the latter. . . . These nations seem to me, then, barbaric in that they have been little refashioned by the human mind and are still quite close to their original naiveté. They are still ruled by natural laws, only slightly corrupted by ours. They are in such a state of purity that I am sometimes saddened by the thought that we did not discover them earlier, when there were people who would have known how to judge them better than we. It displeases me that Lycurgus or Plato didn’t know them, for it seems to me that these peoples surpass not only the portraits which poetry has made of the Golden Age and all the invented, imaginary notions of the ideal state of humanity, but even the conceptions and the very aims of philosophers themselves. They could not imagine such a pure and simple naiveté as we encounter in them; nor would they have been able to believe that our society might be maintained with so
little artifice and social structure. This is a people, I would say to Plato, among whom there is no commerce at all, no knowledge of letters, no knowledge of numbers, nor any judges, or political superiority, no habit of service, riches, or poverty, no contracts, no inheritance, no divisions of property, no occupations but easy ones, no respect for any relationship except ordinary family ones, no clothes, no agriculture, no metal, no use of wine or wheat. The very words which mean “lie,” “treason,” “deception,” “greed,” “envy,” “slander” and “forgiveness” are unknown. How far his imaginary Republic would be from such perfection. . . . They have their wars against peoples who live beyond their mountains, further inland, to which they go entirely naked, bearing no other arms that bows and sharpened stakes like our hunting spears. The courage with which they fight is amazing: their battles never end except through death of bloodshed, for they do not even understand what fear is. Each one carries back as a trophy the head of the enemy that he has killed, and hangs it up at the entrance to his home. After having treated their prisoners well for a long time, giving them all the provisions that they could one, he who is the chief calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner and on the other end, several feet away, out of harm’s way, and gives to his best friend the arm to hold; and the two of them, in the presence of the assembled group, slash him to death with their swords. That done, they roast him and eat him together, sending portions to their absent friends. They do this, not as is supposed, for nourishment as did the ancient Scythians; it represents instead an extreme form of vengeance. The proof of this is that when they saw that the Portuguese, who had allied themselves with their adversaries, when they executed their captives differently, burying them up to the waist and firing numerous arrows into the remainder of the body, hanging them afterward, they viewed these people from another world, who had spread the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors, and who were much more masterly than they in every sort of evil, must have chosen this sort of revenge for a reason. Thinking that it must be more bitter than their own, they abandoned their ancient way to imitate this one. I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own. I think it is more barbaric to eat a man alive than to eat him dead, to tear apart through torture and pain a living body which can still feel, or to burn it alive by bits, to let it be gnawed and chewed by dogs or pigs (as we have no only read, but seen, in recent times, not against old enemies but among neighbors and fellow-citizens, and—what is worse—under the pretext of piety and religion. Better to roast and eat him after he is dead.
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
The Tempest Act I, scene i
(adapted for Tour 66 by Jason King Jones) On a ship at sea. A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard. BOATSWAIN. Heigh my hearts, cheerly, cheerly, my hearts: yare, yare: Take in the topsail: Tend to th’ Master’s whistle: Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough. Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, and GONZALO ALONSO. Good Boatswain have care: where’s the Master? Play the men.
SEE MORE:
Watch a recording of National Players performing this scene at the following YouTube link: youtu.be/lhdAAUgv4Jg
BOATSWAIN. I pray now keep below. ANTONIO. Where is the Master, Boatswain? BOATSWAIN. Do you not hear him? you mar our labor, Keep your cabins: you do assist the storm. GONZALO. Nay, good be patient. BOATSWAIN. When the Sea is: hence, what cares these roarers for the name of King? to Cabin; silence: trouble us not. GONZALO. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. BOATSWAIN. None that I more love than myself. You are a Councilor, if you can command these Elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more, use your authority: If you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your Cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. Cheerly good hearts: out of our way I say. GONZALO. I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him, his complexion is perfect Gallows: If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable. BOATSWAIN. Down with the top-Mast: yare, lower, lower, bring her to Try with Main-course. [A cry within.] Yet again? What do you here? Shall we give o’er and drown? SEBASTIAN. A pox o’your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable Dog. BOATSWAIN. Work you then. ANTONIO. Hang cur, hang, you whoreson, insolent Noise-maker, we are less afraid to be drowned, than thou art. GONZALO. I’ll warrant him for drowning, though the Ship were no stronger than a Nutshell.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 33
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Further READING
3. The World of the Play
Act I, scene i CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32 BOATSWAIN. A plague upon this howling: Lay her a hold, a hold, set her two courses off to Sea again, lay her off. MARINERS. All lost, to prayers, to prayers, all lost. BOATSWAIN. What must our mouths be cold? ANTONIO. Let’s all sink with’ King. SEBASTIAN. Let’s take leave of him. GONZALO. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of Sea, for an acre of barren ground. MARINERS. Farewell brother: We split, we split, we split.
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Shakespeare in ACTION
3. The World of the Play
STAGING THE STORM OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to understand technical elements that contribute to theater. Students will be able to explore ways that theater represents concrete elements abstractly. Students will be able to think creatively about the use of limited resources. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 5 - 12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: Primary sources, Act I, scene i of The Tempest, elements to help with staging (potential scenic elements, potential light elements, potential sound elements, etc.) 1. Explain that a storm ignites the plot of The Tempest, and this opening scene is thought to be based on the account of a shipwreck that has real historical documentation. 2. Distribute “William Strachey’s account of the Sea Venture Shipwreck in Bermuda, 1625” and “A Discovery of the Barmudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of the Seas, by Sylvester Jourdain, 1610” as documents that are from eye witnesses of the original shipwreck. Have them look for descriptive elements, descriptions of space, sound, visuals, people, anything that might influence how we want to depict this storm onstage. Collaborate and share findings in a large list of inspirational items for the creation of the staging of the storm. 4. Distribute Act I, scene i of The Tempest and analyze for similar elements. What descriptions are present in the dialogue? Distribute lines amongst the students (feel free to split up lines and characters). 5. Work element by element with the students to develop their approach to staging. What lighting options are available to them? Do they have any flashlights or control of a lighting grid, or is there just a standard overhead to flip on and off? What sound elements? Can they use computers, etc. to contribute to these elements? What scenic elements are there to use? Chairs and desks, or something more? What about costume choices? As the class works through these, see if there is an overall concept developing, or if there is one that might guide the direction of the work. 6. Begin staging the scene. What needs to happen when? What feeling do the students want to impart on audiences? What do they think Shakespeare intended? Are they going to remain true to that? How can they accomplish their goals with what’s available to them. Work through the scene and rehearse with all the elements before presenting it together. 7. Visit National Players on YouTube (youtu.be/lhdAAUgv4Jg) to see some of their process in staging this scene. What do you expect from a group that travels the country performing this play when it comes to theatrical elements? If interested, students can research other depictions of this scene to see other things that have been attempted. Be sure to notice and talk about when and why expectations are met or subverted.
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Getting to Know
CALIBAN
THE RESTORATION
1660–1800
ROMANTICISM
Early to mid 19th century
Images 10, 11, and 12: Pictured below
“Scene from Shakespeare’s The Tempest” William Hogarth, 1735
4. Before the Show
The Restoration theater knew Shakespeare’s play only in the adapted form given it in 1667 by William Davenant, with some additions by Dryden. The Tempest, or The Enchanted Isle, retained less than a third of Shakespeare’s text, introducing new characters to provide enough sentimental love interest to satisfy contemporary taste. Miranda and Caliban now have sisters and there is also a young man, Hippolito (always played by an actress in breeches), who has never seen a woman. The comic subplot is a parody of the main plot Trincalo (here the boatswain instead of jester) and Stephano (the ship’s master) seek to possess Sycorax (Caliban’s twin sister). The rewrite courted upper-class Restoration audiences by emphasizing royalist political and social ideals: monarchy was presented as a natural form of government, patriarchal authority prevailed in matters of education and marriage, and patrilineality ruled the ownership and inheritance of property. Ultimately, the trio cannot govern because they were not born to it, and their drunken discourse exposes the futility of democratic impulses. This rewrite highlighted Ariel’s role but reduced Caliban’s to that of a buffoonish monster— combined with his lustful sister, he represented humanity’s bestial side. The 19th century saw a renewed interest in Caliban. Romantic poets turned away from notions of strict social hierarchies and instead found inspiration in the simplicity of nature. Caliban, a creature of his native land and under the overwhelming control of an aristocratic outsider, evoked newfound sympathy and interest from the romantics. As the poet William Taylor Coleridge, observed, “Caliban is in some respects a noble being...a man in the sense of the imagination: all the images he uses are drawn from nature, and are highly poetical.” Caliban was returned to his former stage prominence with William Macready’s 1838 production, which restored most of Shakespeare’s original text for the first time in decades. Caliban, played by George Bennett, was portrayed as a morally complex character as opposed to a thoughtless animalistic villain. As Trevor R. Griffiths explains in a 1983 article: “Part of Bennett’s success [was] his close attention to the text, which is exemplified in his adopting long nails and high foreheads in response to Caliban’s offer to dig for pignuts with his long nails and his fear of being turned into a low-browed ape.”
“Caliban” John Mortimer, 1775
“The Enchanted Island: Before the Cell of Prospero” Henry Fuseli, 1797 35
Getting to Know
4. Before the Show
CALIBAN
DARWINISM Early 20th century
Images 13, 14, and 15: Pictured below
The burlesque, bestial Caliban of the previous two centuries underwent a transformation as social and scientific ideologies shifted. The radical theories proposed in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871) saw races as distinctive according to evolutionary development, with “lower” or more primitive races having lower mental and moral development. Artists responded to this theory by questioning Caliban’s relationship to Prospero and humankind, and in 1873, Daniel Wilson made the first explicit comparison between Caliban and mankind with his book Caliban: The Missing Link. Wilson tied Caliban’s amphibious nature to the theory that humans evolved from aquatic creatures, laying the claim that he was an more human than animal: “We feel for the poor monster, so helplessly in the power of stern Prospero, as for some caged wild beast pining in cruel captivity, and rejoice to think of him at last free to range in harmless mastery over his island solitude.” Stage interpretations highlighted Caliban’s role, often physicalizing his role as the missing link through costume and performance choices. Frank Benson researched monkeys and baboons at the zoo, then imitated them onstage, climbing trees, hanging upside down from branches, and gibbering at Prospero. Herbert Beerbohm Tree was also famous for his primitive Caliban; covered in fur and seaweed, he was his production’s final image, standing alone with his arms outstretched to the empty horizon as Prospero’s ship departed. “We feel that from the conception of sorrow in solitude may spring the birth of a higher civilization,” Tree explained. Percy MacKaye reimagined the story from Caliban’s perspective with his 1916 performance piece Caliban by the Yellow Sands. The goal, Mackaye said, was “to lead Caliban step by step from his aboriginal path of brute force and ignorance to the realm of love, reason, and self-discipline.” A loose adaptation of the original play, the other characters served as stand-ins for civilization at large, and Caliban’s story was presented as more of a musical pageant than narrative.
Frank Benson Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 1900
Herbert Beerbohm Tree Her Majesty’s Theatre, 1904
Program for Caliban by the Yellow Sands by Percy MacKaye, 1916
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Getting to Know
4. Before the Show
CALIBAN
FREUDIAN AND COLONIAL INFLUENCES
20th century and beyond
Images 16, 17, and 18: Pictured below
National Players production Tour 46
Although some scholars had drawn parallels between The Tempest and colonial expansion, the idea did not gain a popular foothold until the 20th century. In 1903, for example, Walter Alexander Raleigh declared that the play was “a fantasy of the New World,” in which “the portrait of Caliban...is a composition wrought from fragments of travelers’ tales, and shows a wonderfully accurate and sympathetic understanding of uncivilized man.” The most influential argument, however, was posed by Octave Mannoni in his 1950 book, Prospero and Caliban. Although he primarily compared Prospero’s island to Madagascar, he also drew parallels between the characters and colonial personality types: domineering, callous colonizers on one side, with submissive yet resentful natives on the other. This argument sparked a surge of new interpretations from scholars and critics, but it was not until 1970 that the concept was fully realized onstage. Director Jonathan Miller studied Mannoni’s book in preparation for his production at the Mermaid Theatre in London; Prospero was the island’s colonial governor, Ariel his mulatto house servant, and Caliban his darker field hand, representing “the tragic and inevitable disintegration of a more primitive culture.” The Royal Shakespeare Company took a similar approach in 1978; David Suchet’s Caliban had West Indian and sub-Saharan African characteristics, and was described by one critic as “noble” and “sympathetic.” The turn of the century also signified a major turning point in human psychology, sparking another wave of Caliban stagings. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the Austrian physician who invented psychoanalysis and promoted the idea of the human unconscious, reshaped interpretations of the play: Ariel and Caliban came to be seen as personifications of Prospero’s subconscious mind, with Ariel as his moral superego and Caliban as his animalistic id. One of the first direct psychoanalytic adaptations was the 1956 science-fiction film Forbidden Planet, which portrayed Prospero as Dr. Morbius, Ariel as his robotic companion, and Caliban the electromagnetic projection of the doctor’s inner psyche. Stage adaptations took a psychological approach as well. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1982 production color-coded Ariel and Caliban, with the former in a vibrant body suit and the latter clad a loincloth and charcoal body paint. Many contemporary stagings take a hybrid approach to the play, referencing imperialistic influences if not emphasizing them, while integrating Caliban and Ariel as extensions of Prospero as well as their own entities.
Bob Peck Royal Shakespeare Company, 1982
Dion Johnstone Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 2010
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An Actor’s
4. Before the Show
PERSPECTIVE Ian Geers received his BFA in acting from Boston University. His onstage roles for Tour 66 include Caliban in The Tempest, Oliver and William in As You Like It, and Judge Taylor, Mr. Cunningham, and Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Offstage, he serves as properties master and vehicles manager.
Image 19: Ian Geers portraying Caliban during a dress rehearsal of The Tempest.
“Everything bad that has happened to him, he blames on other people. That constantly gives me the image of him having the mindset of a child, maybe the strength of some sort of creature, and the intelligence of a learned person, but the attention span and desire of a three-year-old kid. —Ian Geers, Tour 66
Tell us about the first time that you read/encountered The Tempest and your first impressions of Caliban. I saw The Tempest when I was a freshman in high school. I remember not really liking the play that much, but I think that was more because of the production. Caliban was in a full lizard costume with a mask and a long tail, but I was really struck with him because of how much he stands out against everything else. I remember thinking, “This guy is probably having a blast on stage.” But I also remember being really intrigued by the character too, because he stood out so much to me. I think a lot of that had to do with the costume elements that they had the actor in, but I think he stands out so much against the world. He’s part of the island, but in every scene he’s in, he’s the outcast. He doesn’t fit in. I remember that really striking me. What about when you read the text and started doing that research? He speaks almost entirely in verse. He’s one of the only characters in the play to do that. The royalty of the island do it—Prospero, Ariel, Miranda—and Caliban, I think he only slips into prose once, when he first encounters Stephano, then he automatically snaps back into verse. Almost all of his lines are irregular, they’re nine or 11 syllables with feminine endings. His rhythms are very off and constantly fluctuating, but he has such a vast vocabulary and such amazing ways of describing the world around him, in such a different way then Ariel. A lot of Ariel’s text comes from a more intellectual place, with softer consonants, but Caliban’s consonants are all hard plosives. A lot of his language lives at the gut and below. One of the few times he breaks from that and goes into eloquent speech is when he has this beautiful monologue about the island in Act III; the language is very soft and the imagery is beautiful, and it’s one of the few times that he has perfect, ten-syllable lines. He’s in all these scenes with the clowns, where they’re in prose and Caliban is in verse. Once again he’s the outsider. Did you do any specific research before you jumped into the role? I watched a lot of YouTube videos of monkeys at first, because I really like their movements, but then there’s a line at the end of the play where Caliban says, “He will turn us into apes with low foreheads,” which insinuates that he is not an ape. So I did a lot of research for naught. But it’s kind of a cool jumping off point. There are so many more references in the script to him being a devil or a demi-devil than there are to him being a monster, so I’ve been looking at a lot of pictures of occult imagery, like those goat creatures that are half-goat, half-man that have this wide stance. I’ve looked at some of the creature work from movies like Pan’s Labyrinth.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 39 38
4. Before the Show
CONTINUED— AN ACTOR’S PERSPECTIVE
Image 20: The Faun from the film Pan’s Labyrinth, a half-goat, half-human creature that served as inspiration for Geers’ physicalization of Caliban.
How did you physically discover him? I got low. The very first day. I was really kind of trying to fight [that instinct], because I’ve seen that so much before, but it felt right. So much of the show he’s playing below, he’s playing lower status than everyone on stage. He’s either being put in that role or he’s putting himself in that role in the case of Stephano, so spatial relationship was something that I really took into account. So much of his great want is to be the leader of the island, to own the island. There’s something about constantly being close to the earth that is interesting. It’s yielding a lot of really cool different types of movements, a lot of rolling and tumbling, contorting your body seeing what that does to your voice, to make him something not exactly human. There are a couple of instances in the show we’ve picked out where, because I’m the tallest member of the cast, where I assume my full height, either as a threat to somebody else or at the end when he is released into more of freedom. Do you think of Caliban as being a separate species? I get the image of this devil goat creature, called a baphomet—I really hope that nobody looks at my Google history after I’ve researched this play, because it’s all about 16th-century occultism. He’s referenced as having the form of a man, and Trinculo says he smells like a fish, which makes sense because he’s near the water all the time and he lives in a rock. He picks things up, he fetches wood, which in my mind means he has opposable thumbs, so I definitely think in that sense he has the form of a man. But Prospero calls him “a born devil on whose nature nurture can never stick,” and says that “as his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers.” There’s something about how the older he gets, his physical habits solidify. Is there one relationship in particular that you find particularly compelling? The relationship with Prospero is really interesting. Prospero was kind of a father to Caliban for years. Sycorax was a witch, meaning that she was human or in the human form, but because Caliban is so disfigured, in my mind, his father very well could be the devil or some animal. When Sycorax died, Caliban ruled the island for only a couple of years, but he was so young, maybe not even ten years old, that when Prospero came and showed him his power, Caliban immediately took to him as a father. And since Prospero and Miranda have been there for 12 years, that’s been nine or ten years of being an adopted son, and then being suddenly thrust into the position of slave. And now he’s getting older and reclaiming his birthright, the island. What do you think he would be like if he had power? I think he’d be like a kid in a candy store. He never takes responsibility for anything. Everything bad that has happened to him, he blames on other people. That constantly gives me the image of him having the mindset of a child, maybe the strength of some sort of creature, and the intelligence of a learned person, but the attention span and desire of a three-year-old kid. He’s very impulsive, he’s very ignorant to planning. [I’ve read about] him being the Id to Ariel’s Superego. The Id constantly wants instant gratification and instant satisfaction, even if it’s not realistic. So has he had a master plan or is he constantly coming up with everything on the fly? Does he see Stephano and think, “This is my chance!” or does he genuinely believe that he is a god? What do you think happens to Caliban after the play is over? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I read once that one of the rules of screenwriting is “Give your characters what they want, but not in the way that they wanted it.” I think that Caliban gets the freedom and the ownership of the island that he wanted, but he has no one to rule and he has no one to rule with. Who does he have as his scapegoat to blame things on? Eventually, I think, he’s going to have to realize that he may be the cause of some of his biggest problems, and that’s where the ultimate maturation 39 begins. Probably not until years after the show ends.
Further READING
4. Before the Show
Caliban: The Missing Link by Daniel Wilson, 1873 French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1816–92) drew upon Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to provide a reading of Shakespeare’s Caliban as the “missing link” between humans and apes. While the ship’s crew and Stephano and Trinculo are simply coarse or debased humans, Wilson sees Caliban as a creature all his own. He does not have human reasoning powers but does have an affinity with nature and its creatures, making him less of a savage native than a pitiable caged animal.
Caliban is...to all appearance in his 25th year, as we catch a first glimpse of this pre-Darwinian realisation of the intermediate link between brute and man. It seems moreover to be implied that he has already passed his maturity. At an earlier age than that at which man is capable of self-support, the creature had been abandoned to the solitude of his island-home, and learned with his long claws to dig for pig-nuts; and now, says Prospero, ‘as with age his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers.’ We may conceive of the huge canine teeth and prognathous jaws which in old age assume such prominence in the higher quadrumana. Darwin claims for the bonnet-monkey‘ the forehead which gives to man his noble and intellectual appearance; ‘and it is obvious that it was not wanting in Caliban: for when he discovers the true quality of the drunken fools he has mistaken for gods, his remonstrance is, ‘we shall all be turned to apes with foreheads villainous low.’ Here then is the highest development of ‘the beast that wants discourse of reason.’ He has attained to all the maturity his nature admits of, and so is perfect as the study of a living creature distinct from, yet next in order below the level of humanity.... If we can conceive of a baboon endowed with speech, and moved by gratitude, have we not here the very ideas to which its nature would prompt it. It is a creature native to the rocks and the woods, at home in the haunts of the jay and marmoset: a fellow-creature of like nature and sympathies with themselves. The talk of the ship’s crew is not only
coarse, but even what it is customary to call brutal; while that of Stephano and Trinculo accords with their debased and besotted humanity. Their language never assumes a rhythmical structure, or rises to poetic thought. But Caliban is in perfect harmony with the rhythm of the breezes and the tides. His thoughts are essentially poetical, within the range of his lower nature; and so his speech is, for the most part, in verse. He has that poetry of the senses which seems natural to his companionship with the creatures of the forest and the seashore. Even his growl, as he retorts impotent curses on the power that has enslaved him, is rhythmical. Bogs, fens, and the infectious exhalations that the sun sucks up, embody his ideas of evil; and his acute senses are chiefly at home with the dew, and the fresh springs, the clustering filberts, the jay in his leafy nest, or the blind mole in its burrow. No being of all that people the Shakespearean drama more thoroughly suggests the idea of a pure creation of the poetic fancy than Caliban. He has a nature of his own essentially distinct from the human beings with whom he is brought in contact. He seems indeed the half-human link between the brute and man; and realizes, as no degraded Bushman or Australian savage can do, a conceivable intermediate stage of the anthropomorphous existence, as far above the most highly organized ape as it falls short of rational humanity. He excites a sympathy such as no degraded savage could. We feel for the poor monster, so helplessly in the power of the stern Prospero, as for some caged wild beast pining in cruel captivity, and rejoice to think of him at last free to range in harmless mastery over his island solitude. He provokes no more jealousy as the inheritor of Prospero’s usurped lordship over his island home than the caged bird which has escaped to the free forest again. His is a type of development essentially non-human,—though, for the purposes of the drama, endued to an extent altogether beyond the highest attainments of the civilized, domesticated animal, with the exercise of reason and the use of language;—a conceivable civilization such as would, to a certain extent, run parallel to that of man, but could never converge to a common center.
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Further READING
4. Before the Show
Acting Caliban: David Suchet The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1978 production of The Tempest was one of the first to enact a colonial interpretation of the play. Clifford Williams directed David Suchet in the role of Caliban, with Michael Hordern as Prospero. After reading over the text and discussing the part with the director, Clifford Williams, Suchet had no clear idea of what Caliban looked like, though he had some ideas of what his motivations were. Williams told Suchet that Caliban might be “half-fish, half-man (presumably I would wear fins) or possibly something deformed, like a thalidomide child.” He went to the Stratford Centre Library to do research, and was dissatisfied with former interpretations of the role, which had depicted Caliban as a fish, dog, lizard, monkey, even tortoise. After exploring the text further, Suchet determined that Shakespeare intended Caliban to be a human. In Act I scene i, for instance, Prospero declares that the Island, not Caliban, is “not honored with/ A human shape,” and Mi-
randa tells Ferdinand that he is “the third man that e’er I saw.” Suchet then determined that “Shakespeare had obviously gone to great pains (not without tongue-in-cheek) to describe the popular concept of the ‘native.’” Realizing that Caliban fears Prospero might change him into an ape with a villainous low forehead, and that Caliban also “carries logs, makes fires, builds dams for catching fish, and is Prospero’s slave,” Suchet concluded that Shakespeare provided deliberate clues so that everyone would see beyond their confused perceptions: “The ‘monster’ was in the eyes of the beholder,” Suchet said. In appearance, Suchet’s Caliban was a generic third-world “primitive,” with characteristics of both West Indian and sub-Saharan Africans. Prospero, in contrast, wore an academic gown and assumed a school-masterly attitude toward his companions. In a later interview, Suchet said that Caliban was his “most formative role...I knew I had a lot of emotional restrictions in me, and unless I really unzipped, I would never play that weird, raw islander.”
From Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization By Octave Mannoni, 1950 Octave Mannoni (1899–1989) was an anthropologist who used the relationship between Caliban and Prospero as a political symbol to explore the interrelationship between colonizer and colonized in 20th-century Africa. Madagascar, a tribal culture, was colonized by France; then, in 1947, the Malagasy people organized a revolt. Mannoni identified a French inferiority complex as the source of Malagasy dependence. The following excerpt from Mannoni’s widely influential book relies on Caliban’s accusations against Prospero to suggest that the colonial predicament is one in which the colonized is first made dependent and then abandoned before being taught or allowed to become equal. It is worthy of note that disturbances broke out at the very time when a number of Europeanied Malagasies were returning to Madagascar. Some of them—those who had been truly assimilated—broke with their compatriots, and thereafter had no influence in them. Others, whose assimilation had been incomplete, fomented and led the revolts, for they are the people most likely to develop a real hatred of Europeans. Caliban’s dictum: You taught me language; and my profit on’t Is, I know how to curse.
Though [it] oversimplifies the situation, is true in essence. It is not that Caliban has savage and uneducable instincts or that he is such [sic] poor so that even good seed would bring forth bad plants, as Prospero believes. The real reason is given by Caliban himself: ...When thou camest first, Thou strok’dst me, and mad’st much of me... and then I lov’d thee —and then you abandoned me before I had time to become your equal...In other words: you taught me to be independent, and I was happy; then you betrayed me and plunged me into inferiority. It is indeed in some such situation as this that we must look for the origin of the fierce hatred sometimes shown by “evolved” natives; in them the process of civilization has come to a halt and has been left incomplete. ...Caliban has fallen prey to the resentment with succeeds the breakdown of dependence. Prospero seeks to justify himself: did Caliban not attempt to violate the honor of his child?...There is no logic in this argument. Prospero could have removed Caliban to a safe distance or he could have continued to civilize and correct him. But the argument: you tried to violate Miranda, therefore you shall chop wood, belongs to a non-rational mode of thinking.
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Further READING
4. Before the Show
The Tempest Act III, scene ii
(adapted for Tour 66 by Jason King Jones) STEPHANO. Tell not me, when the butt is out, we will drink water, not a drop before; therefore bear up and board ’em Servant monster, drink to me. TRINCULO. Servant monster? The folly of this Island, they say there’s but five upon this Isle; we are three of them, if th’ other two be brained like us, the State totters. STEPHANO. Drink servant Monster, when I bid thee, thy eyes are almost set in thy head. TRINCULO. Where should they be set else? he were a brave Monster indeed if they were set in his tail. STEPHANO. My man-Monster hath drowned his tongue in sack: for my part, the Sea cannot drown me, I swam, ere I could recover the shore, five and thirty Leagues off and on, By this light, thou shalt be my Lieutenant Monster, or my Standard. TRINCULO. Your lieutenant if you list; he’s no standard. STEPHANO. We’ll not run Monsieur Monster. TRINCULO. Nor go neither: but you’ll lie like dogs, and yet say nothing neither.
SEE MORE:
Watch a recording of National Players performing this scene at the following YouTube link: youtu.be/BXsu5zVmTy0
STEPHANO. Moon-calf, speak once in thy life, if thou be’st a good mooncalf. CALIBAN. How does thy honor? Let me lick thy shoe: I’ll not serve him, he is not valiant. TRINCULO. Thou liest most ignorant Monster. I am in case to jostle a Constable: why, thou debauch’d Fish thou, was there ever man a Coward that hath drunk so much Sack as I do today? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but half a Fish and half a Monster? CALIBAN. Lo, how he mocks me, wilt thou let him my Lord? TRINCULO. Lord, quoth he? that a monster should be such a natural? CALIBAN. Lo, lo again: Bite him to death I prithee. STEPHANO. Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head: If you prove a mutineer: the next Tree: the poor Monster’s my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity. CALIBAN. I thank my noble Lord. Wilt thou be pleas’d to hearken once again to the suit I made to thee? STEPHANO. Marry, will I: kneel, and repeat it, I will stand, and so shall Trinculo. [Enter ARIEL, invisible]
CALIBAN. As I told thee before, I am subject to a Tyrant, A Sorcerer, that by his cunning hath Cheated me of the island. ARIEL. Thou liest. CONTINUED ON PAGE 43
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Further READING
4. Before the Show
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 42 CALIBAN. Thou liest, thou jesting Monkey, thou: I would my valiant Master would destroy thee. I do not lie. STEPHANO. Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in’s tale, by this hand, I will supplant some of your teeth. TRINCULO. Why, I said nothing. STEPHANO. Mum then, and no more: proceed. CALIBAN. I say by Sorcery he got this isle From me, he got it. If thy Greatness will Revenge it on him, (for I know thou dar’st) But this Thing dare not. STEPHANO. That’s most certain. CALIBAN. Thou shalt be Lord of it, and I’ll serve thee. STEPHANO. How now shall this be compassed? Canst thou bring me to the party? CALIBAN. Yea, yea my Lord, I’ll yield him thee asleep, Where thou mayst knock a nail into his head. ARIEL. Thou liest; thou canst not. CALIBAN. Thou scurvy patch: I do beseech thy Greatness give him blows, And take his bottle from him: When that’s gone, He shall drink naught but brine, for I’ll not show him Where the quick Freshes are. STEPHANO. Trinculo, run into no further danger: Interrupt the Monster one word further and, by this hand, I’ll turn my mercy out o’doors, and make a Stockfish of thee. TRINCULO. Why, what did I? I did nothing. I’ll go farther off. STEPHANO. Didst thou not say he lied? ARIEL. Thou liest. STEPHANO. Do I so? Take thou that! As you like this, give me the lie another time. TRINCULO. I did not give the lie: Out o’ your wits, and hearing too? A pox o’ your bottle, this can Sack and drinking do: A murrain on your Monster, and the devil take your fingers. CALIBAN. Ha, ha, ha! STEPHANO. Now forward with your Tale: prithee stand farther off. CALIBAN. Beat him enough: After a little time I’ll beat him too.
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Shakespeare in ACTION
4. Before the Show
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS RESTORATION 1. Why do you think Restoration theater-makers wanted to deemphasize the role of Caliban? 2. What does Caliban lose and gain by having someone related to him depicted on stage?
ROMANTICISM 1. What does the relationship between natural imagery and Caliban suggest? 2. How would you use added complexity to portray someone who has long been thought of as a villain? What sorts of actions could you take to increase that complexity?
DARWINISM 1. Do you think Caliban becomes more or less interesting when he is treated as non-human? 2. What challenges do you think a performer faces when having to portray a “Missing Link” Caliban? 3. When Caliban is portrayed with Darwinist influences, what does the idea of him being left behind suggest?
FREUDIAN AND COLONIAL INFLUENCES 1. Identify the advantages and disadvantages of imposing a racial element on The Tempest. 2. How do you think reading Caliban from a colonial point of view influences the depiction of Prospero? 3. What characters from other stories (think of film, literature, TV) remind you of Caliban?
CALIBAN: THE MISSING LINK 1. What do you think is important about the fact that Caliban has not seen humans apart from Prospero and Miranda before? 2. Where do you think Caliban’s “otherness” comes from? Is it natural or learned? 3. Do you think Caliban’s speech being mostly verse suggests a connection with nature? Or does it indicate something else?
AN ACTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: IAN GEERS 1. What do you think it is like to present a totally new version of a part that has seen many interpretations? 2. How would you imagine the collaboration between a director and an actor works for a part like Caliban?
PROSPERO AND CALIBAN: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLONIZATION 1. How well do you think Caliban stands in for the mindset of colonized peoples? 2. Can you think of other characters you have read or seen who seem to mirror large ways of human interaction? Why?
DESCRIBING CALIBAN 1. Based on these textual descriptions alone, what do you imagine Caliban looks like? Is his form more human or creature? What color is he? How does he move, sound, and interact with others? 2. Compare these descriptions to the images on pages 36 through 38. Which specific textual descriptions do you think these costume designers were referencing when they created their Caliban? How well did they succeed?
ACT III, SCENE II 1. What are Trinculo and Stephano’s opinions of Caliban? What does their attitude toward him suggest about their characters? 2. Why do you think Caliban casts himself as a victim? Is this justified? Why or why not?
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Shakespeare in ACTION
4. Before the Show
CREATING YOUR OWN MONSTER OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to create differing interpretations of a character. Students will be able to understand part of the costume design process. Students will be able to think and talk about the physical elements of acting. SUGGESTED GRADE LEVEL: 5-12 SUPPLIES NEEDED: Body outlines, coloring supplies, Caliban information, Caliban quotes/scenes 1. Work through history of Caliban and talk about the nature of the role with students, explaining that he is very widely open to interpretation. 2. Have students either: a. Search through the text of The Tempest for descriptions of Caliban. Have them identify the act, scene, and line number of each description, as well as the character who provides the description. b. Read the following descriptions of Caliban from the play. Ask them if any of these descriptions are contradictory. Which descriptions are meant to be taken literally and might be used as insults? “A freckled whelp, hag-born not honored with a human shape” (Prospero, I.ii) “Poisonous slave got by the devil himself” (Prospero, I.ii) “A dull thing” (Prospero, I.ii) “Tis a villain... I do not wish to look on.” (Miranda, I.ii) “Savage” (Miranda, I.ii) “A man or a fish?... He smells like a fish” (Trinculo, II.ii) “Legged like a man; and his Fins like Arms.” (Trinculo, II.ii) “A very shallow monster.... a very weak monster.” (Trinculo, II.ii) “Cat” (Stephano, II.ii) “Puppy-headed monster” (Trinculo, II.ii)
“Moon-calf” (Stephano, II.ii) “Half a fish and half a monster” (Trinculo, III.ii) “Beast” (Prospero, IV.i) “A devil, a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick” (Prospero, IV.i) “Lost monster.” (Trinculo, IV.i) “...as with age, his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers” (Prospero, IV.i) “This misshapen knave” (Prospero, V.i) “...as disproportioned in his manner as in his shape” (Prospero, V.i) “This demi-devil” (Prospero, V.i) “As strange a thing as e’er I looked on” (Alonso, V.i)
3. Have students work individually or in groups to come up with their own design concept for Caliban, in terms of action and costume execution. 4. Distribute blank body outlines and have students fill it in with their costume design concept. They can create their own if the body type does not work for their vision. Surrounding the drawing, have them write in the quotes that most influenced them in the forming of their design. 5. Share these designs with each other. Note similarities and differences. Are there broad groupings they tend to fall under? Or are they all fairly unique? What do they expect to see in National Players’ depiction of Caliban?
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Meet the
4. Before the Show
CHARACTERS
Brother of
Alonso
Sebastian Only son of
King of Naples
Duke of Milan
In love with
Court Jester Companion of
Antonio
Ferdinand
Boatswain
Trinculo
Brother of
Ally to
Gonzalo
Counselor to the King
Servants of Only daughter of
Stephano The King’s Butler
Follower of
Prospero
Miranda
Rightful Duke of Milan
Unseen Characters Sycorax: Caliban’s deceased mother, imprisoner of Ariel; a practicer of black magic Claribel: Alonso’s daughter, recently married to the King of Tunis in Africa
Ariel
Spirit of the Island
Caliban
Native of the Island 46
A Brief
SYNOPSIS
Image 21: Miranda comforting Ferdinand, illustrated by Walter Crane, 1894
4. Before the Show
As the play opens, a ship bearing the king of Naples and his retinue is caught in a storm. The ship wrecks on a rocky coast, where Prospero assures his dismayed daughter that the tempest was of his creation, and none aboard were harmed. He then tells Miranda of his past life: formerly duke of Milan, Prospero allowed his affairs of state to lapse and instead devoted his time to studying magic and the liberal arts. Eventually, his dukedom was usurped by his wicked brother, Antonio, with the help of Alonso, the King of Naples. The conspirators set Prospero and Miranda adrift in a “rotten carcass of a boat,” where they would have perished except for the good counselor Gonzalo, who provisioned their craft with food, water, and Prospero’s beloved books. During their 12 years of exile, Prospero has perfected his magical arts, gained control of the various spirits and creatures that inhabit the island, and educated Miranda. Ariel, a native spirit of the island, has been indentured to Prospero since he rescued her from years of imprisonment by the witch Sycorax. Prospero promises that he will release her if she helps him complete his plot against the Alonso and Antonio. Prospero then calls Caliban, another native of the island, whom Prospero raised and loved until he betrayed him. Prospero brings the voyagers safely ashore and scatters them in groups about the island. Ariel leads Ferdinand to Prospero’s cell—and Miranda, who has never seen a man other than Caliban and her father, is immediately smitten. Prospero intended that the two fall in love to secure a political connection with Naples; to allay Miranda and Ferdinand’s instant passion for each other, he pretends to frown upon Ferdinand and sets him to work. On another part of the island, Alonso, his brother Sebastian, Antonio, and others wander sadly, convinced that the young Prince Ferdinand is dead. Ariel charms them with music, and all but Sebastian and Antonio are lulled to sleep. Antonio tries to convince Sebastian to kill Alonso, but Ariel wakes their intended victim just in time. On a third part of the island, Trinculo, the King’s jester, stumbles upon Caliban; he hides under the monster’s gabardine to escape the elements until the two are discovered by Stephano, the drunken butler. Caliban, delighted by Stephano’s “moon-liquor,” begs to be his slave and worshiper, and entreats him to overthrow Prospero and rule the island. Ariel, ever watchful, warns Prospero of their plot. Meanwhile Miranda and Ferdinand exchange vows of love, and Prospero blesses their engagement. Ariel then presents the King and his court with a lavish banquet which vanishes as soon as they try to eat, rebuking them for their crimes. Miranda and Ferdinand are treated to a prenuptial masque enacted by the spirits of Iris, Ceres, and Juno, until Prospero remembers Caliban’s plot against his life. Spellbound, everyone is drawn to Prospero’s cell, where he reveals himself as the wronged duke of Milan, forgives his persecutors, and bestows his blessings upon Gonzalo and the betrothed couple. Finally, he frees Ariel, promises to return to Milan, and renounces his magical powers.
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What to
LOOK for
5. During the Show
National Players tours all of the country, performing its three productions on dozens of stages. How does this photograph (Image 22) of Tour 66’s first venue compare with your performance space?
Take notice of the lighting and sound equipment on stage. What does their arrangement suggest? How do you think they will be implemented? Why do you think they are visible to the audience?
What do you notice on the middle of the stage? What do you think it represents, and how do you predict it will be utilized?
What do you observe about the set’s design elements? What do they make you think of? What do they suggest about the world that the Players are going to create?
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BEFOREyou watch THEATER ETIQUETTE
5. During the Show
Coming to the theater involves a more active form of participation than do other types of entertainment, such as film or television. Theater is a two-way art form: the performers and audience feed off each other, so the more energy coming from the spectators, the greater the experience will be for everyone. That said, a certain degree of respect and decorum is necessary for the actors to perform their very best. This list of etiquette rules is designed to help you enjoy this artistic experience as much as possible, whether you are a regular theater-goer or this is your first time watching a live performance: DO respond to the onstage action with applause and laughter. Performers feed off your energy, so feel free to engage with them as much as possible. DON’T speak aloud or whisper to your neighbor during the show; there will be plenty of time for discussion after the performance, and you run the risk of distracting the actors from their work. DO turn off your cell phone and similar devices before the performance begins. DON’T check your phone during the performance. Even if you have your device on silent, the bright light can be a distraction for the performers and other audience members. DO use to the restroom before the performance. If you must leave the theater in the middle of the show, be as quiet and respectful as possible. DO take notes. Jot down ideas, connections, and opinions that come to you during the performance. If you are attending a talkback, brainstorm some questions you have for the actors, either about the play itself or about the experience of being a National Player.
HEARING SHAKESPEARE
Although Shakespeare’s language can sometimes seem difficult to understand, a bit of practice and preparation can help you follow the story as easily as possible. Here are some tips to help you enjoy and appreciate the onstage action: • Relax. You do not have to understand every word in Shakespeare’s lexicon to understand his plays. Instead, just try to grasp the gist of what each character is saying, and before long, the rhythm and sound of the language will feel second-nature. • Watch the performers’ body language, gestures, and facial expressions. In terms of storytelling, body language is just as important as the text, and actors employ a variety of performance techniques to make their dialogue as clear as possible. • Although he uses prose as well, Shakespeare often uses verse in his plays, a metrical form of poetry called iambic pentameter. This rhythm, which uses stressed and unstressed syllables, makes it easier to both understand and to learn Shakespeare. The rhythm guides the ear to the important parts of each phrase. • Remember, the plays are not meant to scare or confuse you. Shakespeare wrote to entertain, and he was pretty good at it (he was one of the most popular playwrights of his time, after all). Even his tragedies have comedic moments, so feel free to laugh and react to the actors’ jokes and antics.
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Show Encounter Guide Name:
5. During the Show
Date:
1. What do you notice about (circle the elements that your teacher wants you to focus on, and explain in the space provided): The story The set (scenery, how the stage looks without actors) Transitions (how the scenes and playing space change)
Language (the dialogue and the characters’ style of speech)
Physical acting (how the actors move/embody their characters)
Lighting
Sound and music
Blocking/staging (where the actors stand and navigate the space)
Vocal acting (how the actors sound/speak like their characters)
2. What questions would you like to ask the performers?
Show Encounter Survey (please return to the Players) Show: The Tempest Date:
Grade:
School:
1. I enjoyed the performance: VERY MUCH
SOMEWHAT
A LITTLE
NOT AT ALL
2. The play makes me think about: 3. How did this production connect with themes/subjects you are learning in school? 4. Is this the first live theater production you have seen?
YES
NO 50
Shakespeare in ACTION
6. After the Show
ACTIVITIES AND PROMPTS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Summarize The Tempest in three sentences. 2. What elements from the show stood out to you? 3. Why do you think Prospero decides to relinquish his magical abilities? 4. What do you think will happen to Caliban after Prospero and his companions leave the island? 5. Who, if anyone, would you call a “hero” from this play? Would you call anyone a “villain?” 6. What was the most interesting relationship in the play? How would you characterize that relationship? 7. Was there a specific moment when you identified with one of the characters? What was it that made you feel that way? 8. Who do you think had the most power in the play? Can you name a specific moment when they used their power? What about when they lost it? 9. How would you describe Miranda and Ferdinand’s relationship? 10. What do you think about the setting of the play? What does the idea of an island mean to you?
WRITE A REVIEW Critical analysis is an important part of the theater world; it gives artists insight into how well their work comes across to patrons, and it allows audiences to respond to their experiences in a professional manner. Most shows are reviewed in some form, whether by professionals in newspapers or amateurs posting on Facebook. We encourage students to write their own reviews of their experience seeing our show. You can even share these reviews by emailing them to nationalplayers@ olneytheatre.org or posting them online and then sharing them with us on Facebook (Facebook.com/NationalPlayers) or Twitter (@NationalPlayers). Some guidelines on how to approach writing a review: • The best reviews first identify what the production was attempting to achieve. Consider the director’s intended vision and what you think the production wanted to portray, as well as the intended effect of individual elements. From there, base your review on how well the show achieved those goals. • “I didn’t like it” or “It was cool” is not a useful critique. Be sure to go into specifics, identifying why things did or did not work. • Remember your intended reader: other prospective audience members. Think about who would the ideal audience member for this show might be, and think about what that person would or would not like. • Do not forget that there are many separate elements within the show, and many different people contributed to the final product. Try to attribute elements to the different people who worked on the show whenever possible (reference the program for a full list of the artists who contributed to the production, from acting and directing to lighting and sound design). • Some plot summary is useful for providing context, but a review is not meant simply to describe what happens. If there are things that are particularly surprising and work best that way, avoid revealing them in your review.
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Shakespeare in ACTION
6. After the Show
ACTIVITIES AND PROMPTS STAGE YOUR OWN One of the best things about theater is that there are an enormous number of valid and interesting interpretations of great works. Have students pick a favorite scene from The Tempest, like the shipwreck opening (Page 32) or the Masque scene with Juno, Iris and Ceres (IV.i) and have them come up with their own interpretation of the scene. What is happening at this moment? How do you want to present it in a theatrical way? What resources are available to you? Assign different roles throughout the class and work together to make a version that is your own. Take a video of your work and share it with National Players online; we’d love to see what you do.
GET INSPIRED Oftentimes, when directors are preparing for a show, they look for outside inspiration to guide them. Find another work of art (painting, picture, song, poem, novel, TV show/episode, movie) or person, place, or theme that you think represents this play well. Write about the connections you see between your inspiration piece and the play. If you were directing your own production, how would you use this inspiration piece to guide your team toward your own vision of the final product?
WRITE YOUR OWN EPILOGUE Think about where the show leaves all of the characters at the end. What do you think would happen to them in the future? Write a speculative scene featuring some of the characters down the road. What are they doing? How do they feel about it? How have they changed? With whom do they still interact? How have their relationships with other characters changed? You do not have to write in dramatic format; this can be a short story or even a comic book style telling. Alternatively, can you think of any scenes within the play that are referenced or described that you did not get to see? Create a “fill in the gaps” scene in the same way, filling in things before or during the play that are not depicted in the script.
THEMATIC ESSAY Think about some of the themes of the play (listed below) and write an exploration of how you see the play treat that topic. Think of other works you’ve read in school, or other movies or TV shows you’ve seen, that deal with this topic, and compare what you saw in the play with what those other works have. Adventure Forgiveness Power Class/Social Hierarchy Love (Familial vs. Romantic) Revenge
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APPENDIX
6. After the Show
The following pages include companion worksheets for Tool Kit activities, as well as a comprehensive list of further print and online resources. You are welcome to make copies of these pages and use them in your classroom, either alongside other Tool Kit resources or in other capacities.
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IDENTIFYING YOUR OWN SPEECH PATTERNS Good Morning, everybody! Please take a seat and take out a pen or pencil.
Good pen
Morn or
pen
ing,
eve
ry
bo
dy!
Please
take
a
seat
and
take
out
a
cil.
Question A: What is your ideal morning ritual? Question B: How do you get to your favorite restaurant from here? Question C: Where does your name come from? Question D: Describe the plot of the most recent book you read.
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PROSE VS. VERSE What if Shakespeare were to script your life? What sort of scenes would he depict? Where would you have the most dramatic confrontations? What would your soliloquies be about? All interesting to consider, but a question we can also play around with is: Where would you speak in verse and where would you speak in prose? Below are several scenarios. Read the scenario and consider whether you think each character would speak in the more formal and heightened verse style, or the more relaxed and familiar prose style. Give your reasoning in each instance. SCENARIO 1: You are at a backyard barbecue to kick off the beginning of summer. You and your friends don’t know everybody there, but you are all sure to be the life of the party and make a huge scene. Your parents are in charge of the food, but you are in charge of the good times. PROSE OR VERSE? WHY? SCENARIO 2: You’re in a new school for the first time. You have just moved to a new city and don’t know many people, and you are slightly uncomfortable in your brand-new school uniform and don’t recognize many faces. You run into your new English teacher in the hallway and introduce yourself and ask for directions to your social studies class. PROSE OR VERSE? WHY? SCENARIO 3: You are with the family of a friend at the service for a religious denomination to which you do not subscribe. After the service you greet the leader of the services and thank them for allowing you to observe. Then you and your friend go out to get something to eat and talk about some of your favorite memories together. PROSE OR VERSE? WHY? SCENARIO 4: Create your own. PROSE OR VERSE? WHY?
COSTUME DESIGN TEMPLATE
Further
RESOURCES
READING COMPANIONS
Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare After All. A unique guide through all of Shakespeare’s plays, this is an accessible and comprehensive text for both beginners and scholars. Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. A descriptive, engaging biography of William Shakespeare, Greenblatt includes information on Elizabethan life and culture, entertaining anecdotes, and clever storytelling to paint an entertaining and education picture of the playwright’s life. Holzknecht, Karl J. and Raymond Ross. Outlines of Shakespeare’s Plays. Act-by-act synopses of each play with helpful character descriptions and relationship information, this collection also includes relevant background material. Kott, Jan. Shakespeare our Contemporary. One of the most influential Shakespeare criticism works of modern time, Kott’s selection of essays includes provocative analyses on all of Shakespeare’s plays. Nostbakken, Faith. Understanding The Tempest: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. A comprehensive exploration of Shakespeare’s play, with chapters on significant historical and thematic relevance and an array of primary sources. Sarrazin, George and Alexander Schmidt. Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary. A comprehensive collection of definitions, phrases, terms, and locations, as well as more than 50,000 exact quotations. Vaughan, lden T. and Virginia Mason. The Arden Shakespeare Edition of The Tempest. Along with an extensive introduction to the play’s cultural, stage, and textual history, the Arden edition of the text also includes pages of footnotes and additional information. Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare: A Life in Drama. Along with a concise biography of the playwright, Wells provides an intriguing portrayal of Shakespeare’s character.
ONLINE RESOURCES
shakespeare-literature.com and absoluteshakespeare.com The complete texts of Shakespeare’s plays as well as links to study resources. shakespeare-online.com An excellent, regularly updated repository of information on Shakespeare. folger.edu/Home_02B.html The website of the Folger Shakespeare Library, with study guides and primary resources. globelink.org A website maintained by Shakespeare’s Globe in London with links to resources, archives, and information about the Globe’s current season. opensourceshakespeare.org An online library of Shakespeare’s texts, including advanced search options and a concordance. ShakespeareinAmericanLife.org A project of the Folger Shakespare Library, with visual, textual, and video companions to Shakespeare’s plays. pbs.org/wnet/shakespeare-uncovered A series of films and educational companions to the historical and artistic impact of Shakespeare’s plays.