"The Changeling" by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley

 This play was probably first performed in 1622 and is often regarded as Middleton's best play (Rowley is thought to have written the first and last scenes and the 'madhouse' subplot). Middleton may have collaborated with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens.

Spoiler alert: the paragraph below describes the whole plot

Alsemero, visiting Vermandero's castle in Valencia, Alicante, Spain, falls in love with the daughter of the house, Beatrice (also sometimes called Joanna). She falls for him which is awkward since her father has engaged her to marry another man, Alonzo de Piracquo. So B-J commissions Vermandero's servant Deflores, a man she cannot otherwise stand, to murder her betrothed. Because he is in love with her, he agrees to do this. But afterwards he is offended when she seeks to pay him. He doesn't want her money, he wants her maidenhead. Reluctantly, she agrees. Deflores deflowers her. Then, realising that Alsemero might discover she isn't a virgin on their wedding night, B-J persuades her maid Diaphanta (also a maid) to sleep with Alsemero in her place - a version of the 'bed-trick' - which Diaphanta eagerly agrees to do because she fancies Alsemero. Afterwards, B-J is jealous and persuades Deflores to murder Diaphanta. In the showdown, the AdP's brother demands to know what has happened to AdP (who has disappeared). Initial investigations offer up two servants who have been hiding in a local madhouse (because they want to have sex with the madhouse keeper's wife - this is the comedy subplot) but then Deflores confesses, implicating Diaphanta. They are locked in a closet from which are heard groans. Are they having sex? No, they are stabbing one another to death.

Production:

I saw this play performed by the Lazarus company at the Southwark Playhouse on Saturday (matinee) 7th October 2023. It was a tremendous production, in the round, with superb performances from Alex Bird playing Alonzo, Jamie O'Neill playing Deflores, Henrietta Rhodes playing a superbly sexy and saucy Diaphanta, and Colette O'Rourke playing Beatrice Joanna. The lighting, sound and effects worked perfectly. It included three songs (Mikko Juan had a brilliant voice) which replaced the sub-plot of the lunatics; otherwise (except for some necessary alterations consequent upon the gender swap of Vermandero to Vermandera and the addition of one or two modern words) the text was fully respected. My full review is here.

The dating of the play:

• It refers to the Battle of Gibraltar between the Spanish and the "rebellious Hollanders" (1.1) which was in 1607; it therefore post-dates this. 
• The testing of Beatrice-Joanna's virginity probably refers to the scandal involving Frances Howard (whose virginity was examined prior to her being allowed to annul her marriage to her first husband on the grounds of non-consummation) and Robert Carr; they were 'in the news' when they were imprisoned in 1616 (for murdering Sir Thomas Overbury) and again when they were released from imprisonment in 1622.
• Middleton was buried in 1627, so the play must pre-date that.

Selected quotes:

"We have but two sorts of people in the house ... that's fools and madmen - the one has not wit enough to be knaves, and the other not knavery enough to be fools." (1.2)

"Every part has his hour: we wake at six and look about us, that's eye-hour; at seven we should pray, that's knee-hour; at eight walk, that's leg-hour; at nine gather flowers and pluck a rose, that's nose-hour; at ten we drink, that's mouth-hour; at eleven lay about us for victuals, that's hand-hour; at twelve go to dinner' that's belly-hour." (1.2)

"A capcase for one's conscience." (3.3)

"Do you place me in the rank of verminous fellows

To destroy things for wages?" (3.3)

"You forget yourself:

A woman dipped in blood and talk of modesty?" (3.3)

"Look but into your conscience, read me there -

'Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.

Push! Fly not to your birth, but settle you

Into what the act has made you, you're no more now;

You must forget your parentage to me -

You're the deed's creature." (3.3)

"Can you weep Fate from its determined purpose?" (3.3)

"Murder, I see, is followed by more sins." (3.3)

It's certainly easier to understand on a first reading than a typical Shakespeare: the language is less convoluted, perhaps. The scansion of the iambic pentameters may have worked with the pronunciation of the day but there are many occasions when it doesn't work today; the verse seems more blank than free.

October 2023

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Prince who would be King" by Sarah Fraser

This is the biography of Prince Henry (1594 - 1612), eldest son of King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland) who died as Crown Prince and Prince of Wales at the age of 17 before fulfilling any of the promise he showed (though "he could be bumptious and immature at times"; C 20). His death led to the succession of his younger brother Charles as King Charles I.

As with many biographies, it is of most interest because of the other people who were around at the time. Prince Henry's coterie included:

• Thomas Coryat: a traveller and travel writer who introduced the fork to England and the word umbrella; he died in India and is memorialised by Robin Lloyd-Jones in the unjustly forgotten novel Lord of the Dance), 
• Sir Thomas Chaloner: who was friends with alchemist and magician John Dee and discovered alum on his Yorkshire estate and exploited it
• Thomas Harriot, Henry's tutor, who as scientist and mathematician advanced navigation, created a phonetic alphabet for the Algonquin tribes he encountered in North Carolina while visiting Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated Roanoke colony , discovered Snell's Law before Snell, developed algebraic symbols, and used a telescope to observe sunspots
• George Chapman who dedicated his translation of the Iliad to Prince Henry
• Cornelius Drebbel who later went on to test the world's first submarine in the Thames
• Ben Jonson who wrote a number of masques for Henry and also wrote plays such as the Catiline which criticised the "giants of the earth" who "asset-strip the whole earth for their personal gain" (C 24)

Memorable moments:

• Quoting James I & VI: "The highest bench is the sliddriest to sit upon" (C 4)
• "Extreme Calvinism and the idea of a contractual, not absolute, monarchy often went hand in hand." (C 5)
• "Tacitus ... concluded that men in positions of power must exercise Stoical self-control ... [but] what Stoics thought of as their own moral constancy might lead to a high-minded fanaticism and an even worse tyranny" (C 16)
• "How could the people enjoy their liberties when they were left too poor to act?" (C 24)
• "Yearning to soar above the grey compromises necessary to everyday life, he was a glory-hunting young man. He risked developing the affliction of visionaries and heroes, who can become inhuman in the pursuit of their vision." (C 29)

This was a well-written history whose short chapters kept the pace up. It cast light upon an era about which I was unfamiliar but which is just as interesting as any other time and deserves my further study.

January 2020; 266 pages

"The Duchess of Malfi" by John Webster

On Sat 27th May I went to St Giles Church in the centre of London to see this classic Jacobean revenge tragedy in a production by Scena Mundi. It was a superb production despite the difficulties of playing in the round in a church with echoey acoustics and big windows letting in bright daylight which made the scenes in the dark particularly difficult.

For me the outstanding performance was that of Pip Brignall (@PipBrignall) playing Ferdinand as a slightly fey, always unstable, mercurial character who could flip from tenderness to rage as quickly as any spoiled princeling. Jack Christie (@ChristieWJ) was also magnificent as Bosola and made sense of this character's continual oscillations between cruelty and remorse. Thomas Winsor (@ThomasWinsor) as Antonio and Jess Murphy (@MariaFlorentina) as The Duchess were also brilliant.

The core of the plot is that The Duchess of Malfi, a widow, secretly marries her steward Antonio Bologna from love despite having been warned by her brothers (who want to inherit her estates) not to do so. Ferdinand is incandescent with fury when he discovers that his sister has had a child; her reputation is shot. The other brother, The Cardinal, is also angry but very cold and controlled. They take their revenge. When the identity of the father is known Ferdinand locks his sister away and tortures her with fake tableaux of her husband and eldest son dead, and with madmen, before he has her, her children and her maidservant strangled by Bosola. Both Bosola and Ferdinand and then filled with remorse and Ferdinand, who has killed his twin, blames Bosola and goes mad. Bosola, fearing for his life, plots to kill the two brothers but kills Antonio by mistake before killing F and The C and getting killed himself.

A twisting plot and the motivations of the characters are difficult, especially Bosola who is filled with remorse before he kills the Duchess. Webster wasn't good on plot. The story that Ferdinand wants his sister's money only appears in Act 5. People confess when they should keep their mouths shut, the Cardinal's mistress falls in love with Bosola (and so betrays the Cardinal) in the space of a single line, she revives from death for just a moment to give a final speech before finally dying; lots of stupidities.

But the poetry is exquisite.

The Cardinal and his brother "are like plum-trees that grow crooked over standing-pools; they are rich and o'erladen with fruit, but none but crows, pies and caterpillars feed on them. Could I be one of their flattering panders, I would hang on their ears like a horseleech, till I were full, and then drop off." The Cardinal "is a melancholy churchman. The spring in his face is nothing but the engend'ring of toads". 

"The law to him

Is like a foul, black cobweb to a spider, -

He makes it his dwelling and a prison

To entangle those shall feed him."

When the Duke relies on face to speak character Bosola says

"There's no more credit to be given to the face

Than to a sick man's urine, which some call

The physician's whore, because she cozens him."

When Duke offers Bosola gold. Bosola distrusts:

"Never rain'd such showers as these

Without thunderbolts i' the tail of them. - Whose throat must I cut?"

"'Diamonds are of most value,

They say, that have pass'd through most jewellers' hands.'

'Whores by that rule are precious.'"

"Like the irregular crab,

Which, though't goes backwards, thinks that it goes right

Because it goes its own way"

"The marriage night

Is the entrance into some prison."

"And those joys,

Those lustful pleasures, are like heavy sleeps

Which do fore-run man's mischief."

"Say a man never marry, nor have children,

What takes that from him? Only the bare name

Of being a father, or the weak delight

To see the little wanton ride a-cock-horse

Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter

Like a taught starling."

"He's a fool

That, being a-cold, would thrust his hands i' the fire

To warm them."

"Search the heads of the greatest rivers in the world, you shall find them but bubbles of water."

"Though lust do mask in ne'er so strange disguise,

She's oft found witty but is never wise."

"like one

That hath a little fing'ring on the the lute,

Yet cannot tune it."

Ferdinand is very angry. He threatens :

"Of her bleeding heart I make sponge ...

... I might toss her palace 'bout her ears,

Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads,

And lay her general territory as waste ...

"We must not now use balsamum, but fire, 

The smarting cupping-glass, for that's the means

To purge infected blood ...

... my imagination will carry me

To see her, in the shameful act of sin ...

... with some strong-thigh'd bargeman;

Or one o' th' wood-yard, that can quoit the sledge,

Or toss the bar, or else some lowly squire

That carries coal up to her privy lodgings ...

... I would have their bodies

Burnt in a coal-pit, with the ventage stopp'd,

That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven:

Or dip the sheets they lie in, in pitch or sulphur,

Wrap them in't, and then light them like a match;

Or else boil their bastard to a cullis,

And give 't his lecherous father, to renew

The sin of his back ...

Till I know who leaps my sister, I'll not stir:

That known, I'll find scorpions to string my whips,

And fix her in a general eclipse."

WOW!

A: We'll sleep together: -
D: Alas, what pleasure can two lovers find in sleep?
C: My lord, I lie with her often; and I know
She'll much disquiet you ...
For she's the sprawling'st bedfellow.
...
[to A] Wherefore still when you lie with my lady
Do you rise so early?
A: Labouring men
Count the clock oft'nest Cariola,
Are glad when their task's ended."

"A politician is the devil's quilted anvil -

He fashions all sins on him, and the blows

Are never heard: he may work in a lady's chamber,

As here for proof."

"With such a pity men preserve alive

Pheasants and quails, when they are not fat enough

To be eaten."

"Man is most happy when's own actions

Be arguments and examples of his virtue."

"I account this world a tedious theatre,

For I do play a part in 't 'gainst my will."

"I am acquainted with sad misery

As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar"

"What's this flesh? a little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste; our bodies are weaker than those paper prisons boys use to keep flies in. Dids't thou ever see a lark in a cage? such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison."

"I know death has ten thousand several doors

For men to take their exits; and 'tis found

They go on such strange geometrical hinges,

You may open them both ways."

"Murder shrieks out:

The element of water moistens the earth,

But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens."

"Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young."

"I bade thee, when I was distracted of my wits,

Go kill my dearest friend, and thou hast done't."

"I'll go hunt the badger, by owl-light"

"Your bright eyes

Carry a quiver of darts in them, sharper

Than sunbeams." 

"Like the mice

That forsake falling houses, I would shift

To other dependance."

"Are you so far in love with sorrow,

You cannot part with part of it?"

"The only way to make thee keep my counsel

Is not to tell thee."

"I must look to my footing:

In such slippery ice-pavements, men had need

To be frost-nail'd well; they may break their necks else ...

Security some men call the suburbs of hell

Only a dead wall between."

"Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,

Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."

"I would sooner swim to the Bermudas on

Two politicians' rotten bladders, tied

Together with an intelligencer's heart-string,

Than depend on so changeable a prince's favour."

"I will no longer study in the book

Of another's heart"

103 pages; May 2017

Update July 2022: I have just watched the BBC4 production from the Sam Wanamaker Theatre next to the Globe in London. Once again, I thought the actors were brilliant even though the plot is labyrinthine and the motivations of the characters are frequently bonkers. But the poetry is sublime. 

Other plays reviewed in this blog can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Alchemist" by Ben Jonson

I saw the RSC production of 'The Alchemist' directed by Polly Findlay at the Barbican Theatre on Saturday (matinee) 17th September 2016. The cast included Ken Nwosu as Face, Mark Lockyer as Subtle, Siobhan McSweeney as Dol Common, Joshua McCord as Dapper, Richard Leeming as Abel Drugger, Ian Redford as Sir Epicure Mammon and Tom McCall as Kastril; they were all magnificent.

I imagine it is a difficult play to adapt; Ben Jonson packed it full of references to London in 1610. The company mostly cut or adapted these but kept most of the language authentic.

The play itself has a slightly lopsided structure. Many of the early scenes are repetitions of the same situation: another dreamer is coming to be parted with his money. It is not until later that some of the situations start to dovetail, the gulls come too quickly to be separated, the con artists start having to improvise and everything comes to a farcical climax.

I was impressed with Act 1 which starts with a furious argument between Subtle, the alchemist, and Face, the steward of the house; Dol Common mediates and they eventually shake hands. This was a great way of getting a bit of explanatory back story in at the beginning.

The scenes, in this Act and the others, run on one into another; often the knocking heard in one scene presages the entry of the character in the next; sometimes the main character of the subsequent scene has entered even before the last scene has ended. This makes a very smooth and faster pace than breaking everything up.

Act 1 continues with the arrival of Dapper, a young gentleman about town , "a fine young qoudling") the first of their gulls, who wants to win money gambling and is persuaded that Subtle can charm Dapper's aunt, the Queen of Fairy, to give Dapper a fly which will help him win. He is sent off to fumigate himself and recite 'hum' and 'buzz' thrice and change his shirt.

This scene is made especially difficult by references to topical issues (the RSC cut most of them out): Simon Read, who had been convicted of summoning spirits to discover a thief and Tobias Matthews, his cheated customer; Chiause, a Turkish imposter who pretended he was a messenger from the Sultan; Clim o' the Cloughs, outlaw etc. The RSC changed the word 'Chiause' in 'chirk' which meant something like 'sneak' and after Dapper protested that he was no 'chirk' Face used the word repeatedly as if he didn't know what it meant. Very clever!

Then Abel Drugger, a tobacconist, who has a shop situated on a corner, wants to know where to put the door to attract the most trade (Feng Shui?). The pair tell him what he needs to know and promises that he will be a great alchemist himself some day.

Their next mark is Sir Epicure Mammon. Subtle explains that Sir E has contracted him to provide the philosopher's stone so that Sir E can use it to cure illness, old age and poverty: "He will make/ Nature ashamed of her long sleep ... If his dream last, he'll turn the age, to gold." 

In Act 2 Sir Epicure Mammon boasts to Surly that when he has from Subtle the Philosopher's Stone he will make all his friends rich and cure all the diseases of the world, he will enjoy a harem and epicurean delights. Surly is sceptical which goads Sir E onto more extravagant claims. There is a lot of hot air in this speech which the RSC turned into comedy by making the other characters repeatedly attempt, vainly, to interrupt Sir E in full flow.

Subtle comes in and pretends to check with Face that all of the stages in processes A B C D E F and G are been carried out correctly; there are a lot of alchemical terms being used here as he tries to blind Surly and Sir E with science ("Some do believe hermaphrodeity/ That both do act, and suffer.") but Surly stays sceptical: "What else are all your terms,/ Wherein no one o' your writers 'grees with others?" A good question for today's sociologists. 

Dol walks across the stage and Face and Subtle tell their guests that she is the mad sister of a Lord who has been sent to be cured. Face hints to Sir E that her madness is nymphomania and Sir E asks: "Is she no way accessible? No means,/ No, trick, to give a man a taste of her - wit -"

Ananias, an Anabaptist, arrives. Subtle quizzes his 'apprentice' Face in alchemy; using lots of terms. But Ananias reveals that he has not brought any more money, his masters becoming increasingly sceptical and worrying that they are being duped. Subtle sends him packing.

Abel Drugger the tobacconist appears; he now wants Subtle to make possible a marriage between himself and a lady whose brother opposes the proposed match.

In Act 3 Ananias meets with Tribulation, a pastor from Amsterdam. They need money "For the restoring of the silenced Saints" (to help brethren who have are being persecuted by the established church) and to that end they see alchemy as an unpleasant means to a good end. "The children of perdition are, oft-times,/ Made instruments even of the greatest works." Besides, Tribulation is prepared to accept the excuse that the alchemist, being always beside sulphurous fire, is unable to escape being tainted with devilry: "Where have you greater atheists, than your cooks?" he asks. They are even prepared to accept coining as a way of getting rich.

Face is expecting a Spanish Lord to come soon in more than one sense of the word; he will get the man to fall for Dol "for she must milk his epididimis".

Drugger arrives with Kastril whose sister is the widow he would like to marry. K wants to be taught how to quarrel successfully).

Face extorts money from Dapper by promising him that the Queen of Fairy is coming. Then Subtle enters disguised as the Priest of Fairy and Dapper is blindfolded and made to throw away his purse, his ring and all "that is transitory" whilst Subtle and Dol pretend to be elves and pinch him. But Sir E is at the door! Hastily Dapper is gagged and carted away to be hidden in the privy.

Act 4 begins with Sir E being  introduced to Dol, playing the part of a mad noblewoman. She protests she is not noble; he answers

"Had your father

Slept all the happy remnant of his life

After the act, lain but there still, and panted,

He'd done enough, to make himself, his issue,

And his posterity noble"

A nice piece of anti-hereditary propaganda from Jonson
Sir E promises Dol wealth, for "I am the master of the mastery": he will possess the philosopher's stone once Subtle has manufactured it.

Kastril returns with his sister. Face has promised to arrange a marriage between her and Abel Drugger but Face really fancies her and wants her for himself. Subtle and Face argue over Kastril's sister. Then Spanish grandee Don John arrives. Face has promised a wife for him, having Dol in mind, but Dol is presently engaged with Sir E, so Subtle and Face decide that Don J should have Kastril's widowed sister ("There is no maidenhead to be feared or lost"). Don J is actually Surly in disguise, come to expose the conning rogues. He speaks Spanish, which Face and Subtle do not understand, and they speak English, which of course Surly does.

Kastril is pleased at the thought of the Spanish count for his sister but she, Dame Pliant, resists; she has hated Spaniards since the time of the Armada. But Kastril more or less forces her.

Dol, talking to Sir E, pretends to be raving lunacies. Subtle blames Sir E for this and warns that Sir E's impure thoughts will destroy the experiments (at which point, using a fuse that trails across the stage, with a wonderfully loud theatrical bang and a lot of smoke, Face blows the workshop up. Sir E's hopes are dashed.

Surly tells Dame Pliant that she is being conned and accuses Subtle but, in a wonderfully neat trick, Face turns the tables on Surly by accusing him of being the rogue at which point Kastril and Abel Drugger (who had wanted the widow and turns up) join in chasing Surly away. Now Face proposes that Abel dresses up as a Spaniard himself, to woo Dame Pliant. Surly has the clothes but there might be some spare ones from the actor who has just been playing Hieronimo in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (a part Jonson is believed to have played).

Then Dol announces that Face's master, the owner of the house they have used, is in the street outside talking to the neighbours. Face needs a shave and then he will delay his master while Dol and Subtle get all their ill-gotten gains together and decamp.

So Act 4 runs into Act 5. The neighbours tell Lovewit, the owner of the house, of all the comings and the goings but Face (in his guise as servant Jeremy) tells his master that plague visited the house (the cat got it) and so he shut the house up; no one came or went. The neighbours retract their statements.

Surly and Sir E arrive, to confront and accuse the rogues; they go off to get officers of the law. Then angry boy Kastril comes, and priests Ananias and Tribulation. Then Dapper cries out from the privy; they had forgotten him!

Subtle arranges that Dapper meets Dol, dressed as the Queen of Fairy, and receives a fly from her to help him with gambling. The three rogues are about to decamp with the loot but Face reveals that he has confessed all to his master for a pardon and the loot is confiscated by the master. The only thing that Subtle and Dol can do is flee as the Officers of the Law come to the door. Sir E claims his pots and pans which were to be converted into gold but cannot prove they are his so Lovewit keeps them. The same happens to the priests. Lovewit has also married Kastril's sister and gets a dowry from him.

Well! It started slow but it certainly ended up in classic farce.

Ben Jonson also wrote Volpone which I saw in a brilliant performance by the CandleLight Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in north London at the matinee on 13th February 2016.

Other plays reviewed in this blog can be found by clicking here.  

September 2016; 185 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

 

"The Broken Heart" by John Ford

To be honest, this play is a bit of a ragbag. Perhaps the version we have isn't complete. RADA cut out the subplot of the soldiers and the ladies in waiting without losing anything; they also cut out the cheeky male servant of Bassanes. But they couldn't tidy it up completely without rewriting an entirely new play.

There are a number of starts that show potential and then get forgotten. For example, in A1S3 Orgilus goes into hiding as a poor scholar and is recruited to act as a messenger between his sister and her lover. This is done with a lot of comedy and it has the potential to be a running comic theme or, alternatively, should Orgilus seek to bar the match, to have a lot of sinister possibilities. That's the last we hear of it. Orgilus approves his sister's match, despite Prophilus being best friend of the hated Ithocles, so the whole episode of his sister's promise and her marriage fizzles out into a sub-plot with no drama left in it.

There are bits that just confuse. In A3S2 Bassanes and Graulis are creeping through the palace at night. Why? They are discovered. So what? They are told off for disturbing Ithocles. Some time later Bassanes 'realises' that Penthea is with Ithocles and thinks that the brother and sister are having an incestuous fling (Ford had a bit of a thing about brother sister sex) and draws his swortd but it really doesn't spring form the tiptoeing in.

Mostly the problems with the play come from the characters sudden changes. Bassanes is a brilliant self-tortured jealous husband, a sort of comedy Othello, but when Penthea protests her innocence switches into an adoring and rueful man. Even one of the servants thinks he must have been gelded. One moment Nearchus is jealous that Calantha has given her ring to Ithocles, the next he is cool that they are getting married. Calantha is dancing when she hears that her father, her best friend and her fiancee are dead; she dances on. Later she explains that she was just messing with our minds. Someone is.

Ithocles has, before the play starts, done something shockingly bad by splitting betrothed sweethearts Orgilus and Penthea and forcing Penthea to marry the older Bassanes. Orgilus seems to forgive him for most of the play but then enacts his bloody revenge. Penthea forgives Ithocles so much that she pleads his suit to Princess Calantha.

This play should be strangled at birth were it not for moments of perfect poetry. There is a lot of spectacle: singing, dancing, murder, suicide and there is comedy but it lacks convincing psychology for most of the characters.

I first saw this on Friday 17th April 2015 at the Sam Wanamaker playhouse (the covered playhouse in the Globe complex) sitting on backless wooden benches; the discomfort rather distracted from my enjoyment of the play.

I saw this at RADA on Saturday 19th March. Luke Brady was a rather comic king Amycles, good humoured even when dying, and a suitably serious Tecnicus. Polly Mirsch was perfect as Penthea in the mad scene; her body language was wonderfully nervous and her delivery extracted the full poetic value of the lines. Tom Edward-Kane as Bassanes had perfect comic timing as he traded insults with Grausis, equally well played by Jordon Stevens. Even the grunts carried pathos and comedy.

Ithocles is a hell of a part. He is a successful soldier who did this very bad thing as a boy and now regrets it. He has to reconcile himself to Penthea, woo Calantha and trade insults with Nearchus and his servant. This is a character more unstable than mercurial, bordering on the schizoid. Thomas Martin was convincingly brash and aggressive and if he never seemed overly upset when his sister died perhaps that reflected the ambitious bastard he was playing.

Matt Gavan was excellent as a sinister and bitter Orgilus. He resisted the temptation to ham up the sinister asides. I don't know how anyone could play the 'nice' Orgilus and convince the audience that Orgilus is deceiving everyone by this act. Gavan's Orgilus was at his best when he killed and when he died.

The director, Iqbal Khan, notes the "challenges of this complex and profoundly moving play". I think RADA has been brave to attempt it and the reward for their courage has been a successful production.

This is a somewhat abbreviated synopsis of a complicated plot

Act One:
Scene 1: We are in Sparta. Orgilus explains to his father, Crotolon, why he is going to Athens. He had been betrothed to Penthea but when her father died her brother Ithocles married her off to Bassanes. But Bassanes is jealous, believing she will run off with Orgilus (which Orgilus protests he does not intend) and mistreating his new wife because of this. Orgilus believes that his departure to Athens will stop Bassanes being jealous.
Before leaving, Orgilus makes his sister Euphranes promise that she will not get married without his permission. A brother or course is in charge of his sister's sex life.
Scene 2: Ithacles has been victorious in war and Princess Calantha crowns him with a laurel wreath in the poresence of her father King Amyclas. They depart to leave a couple of soldiers Groneas and Hemophil who comically woo (by boasting of their martial exploits) reluctant ladies in waiting Christalla and Philelma. When the scornful ladies leave G and H resolve to 'treat em mean to make them keen'.
Scene 3: Ogilus hasn't gone to Athens but disguised himself as a scholar at the philosophy school of Ternicus. O then sees his sister and Prophilus courting; O walks past with his nose in a book. E admits she loves P but needs to get permission from dad and brother. E fears they are overheard by O but when he realises that O is just a poor scholar (O talks academic nonsense) promises to buy him books if he will act as go-between.
Scenes 2 and 3 could easily be played for comic effect possibly with a sinister undertone, which might make the later descent into revenge and hatred a greater and more shocking contrast.

Act Two:
Scene 1: This is a brilliant scene. The two servants are both very funny and very astute. Bassanes, the jealous husband, tells Phulas his servant to block a window to prevent his wife lusting; he threatens to harm Phulas is Mrs B (Penthea) receives a letter; the extravagance of Bassanes' threats makes this scene wonderful. Phulas, pretending to be an idiot, tells his the news: multi-coloured beards, dancing bears and dragons and oh by the way there's a new law mandating divorce in cases where the husband becomes jealous. B, who mixes adoration of Penthea with vexatious aggression, has a right old ding dong with her maid, old Grausius, whom he calls a "juggling bawd ... damnable bitch-fox" and threatens to "chop thee into collops". But when all but B and G leave the stage he suborns her into spying on her mistress, a role which she accepts.
Scene 2: Ithocles, successful general, soliloquises on ambition. Armostes and Crotolon enter, arguing, A trying to persuade C to let Euphranes marry Prophilus; C saying they must wait till Orgilus gives permission. I joins the argument, recommending Prophilus but C is bitter and angry, reminding I of the part he played in tsaking Penthea from Orgilus and marrying her to Bassanes. I admits it was a foolish act of a young boy and offers reparation. C agrees that E should marry P.
A load of people now come in: E who agrees with her father C that she will marry Prophilus; B and Penthea, B still suspicious etc; when they go I is left with Penthea and arranges a private rendezvous in the palace grove. Bassanes overhears and is suspicious: "If I be a cuckold and can know it,/I will be fell, and fell."
Scene 3: Prophilus has escorted Penthea to the grove where he leaves her under the 'protection' of the disguised Orgilus. The disguised 'scholar' speaks words of love to Penthea who tells him to get lost. But then O reveals himself. She is torn between her marriage vows and her betrothal love for O. She decides that O doesn't deserve second dibs and she will stay true to Bassanes. She tells him again to go and he goes. Now B comes in with Grausis whom he scolds roundly for falling asleep, so failing in her trust. They meet Penthea and then all go off to see Ithocles who, aparently, has been taken ill.

Act Three:
Scene 1: Tecnicus warns Orgilus against doing something stupid: "let not a resolution/ Of giddy rashness choke the breath of reason." T is acting as the old man who warns the young hero in a fairy tale. But Orgilus is determined to go back to the world. Tecnicus gives a speech warning him that "real honour/ Is the reward of virtue" and "He then fails/ In honour, who for lucre or revenge/ Commits thefts, murders, treasons, and adulteries ... honour must be grounded/ On knowledge, not opinion". O goes and Armostes enters, bringing a casket contain a prohecy of the Delphic oracle; the King summons T to give counsel about it.
Scene 2: Someone sings a song asking whether you can do impossible things such as "paint a thought" or "Rob a virgin's honour chastely?" Bassanes and Grausis are creeping through the palace. Ithocles is with his twin sister Penthea; he is dying. He apologises to her for marrying her off to Bassanes instead of Orgilus. Penthea is bitter, she loved O and is a whore for being married to B when promised to O. She wants I to kill her. I tells her he loves Calantha, princess of Sparta, but C doesn't know it, nor even Prophilus his best mate. Bassanes enters with others and a dagger; he thinks that Ithocles is making advances to Penthea. Ithocles, obviously feeling a bit better, draws his sword. Penthea tells Bassanes she hasn't been unfaithful and he, slightly swiftly and unconvincingly, declares her a chaste goddess and kneels for forgiveness. Ithocles decides that B is unstable and he must protect his sister; lots leave and only B and G remain.
This is getting complicated.
Scene 3: King Amyclas is about to betroth Calanthus his daughter and heir to Nearchus, king of Argos. I, who loves her secretly, and O, who hates I, arrive. I apologises to O for the wrong he has done him and promises to serve him faithfully.
Scene 4: O tells his dad C that he likes and respects Prophilus but that he can't forget that P is I's best mate. C is angry with O and suspicious that he 'came back from Athens' before even being sent for; he suspects O; O lies and tells him that Athens has an infection.
Scene 5: Penthea, forecasting her own imminent demise, asks Calantha to be her executrix and tells C that I loves her.

Act Four
Scene 1: Nearchus is wooing Calantha, trying to take from her a ring. She throws it on the ground near I who picks it up and returns it. Nearchus and his servant have the hump. Tecnicus has a sealed prophecy for the King and says he is going away forever. He tells Ithocles: "When youth is ripe, and age from time doth part,/The lifeless trunk shall wed the broken heart." He tells Orgilus: "Let craft with courtesy a while confer, / Revenge proves its own executioner." O assumes that T is in his dotage.
Scene 2: Bassanes is sorry for being jealous. Too late. Penthea has gone mad and let her hair down (the stage direction says she enters with "her hair about her ears". In some wonderful poetry she regrets she won't have children, recognises Orgilus as one she once loved and then faints. She hasn't slept or eaten for ten days.
Scene 3: The King Amyclas is dying. He doesn't understand the explanation of the oracle. When Calantha asks to marry Ithocles he assents, even though he had previously planned for her to marry Nearchus. Orgilus, in a sinister aside, notes of Ithocles that :"The youth is up on tiptoe, yet may stumble."
Scene 4: Penthea is dead. Ithocles is caught in a booby trapped chair prepared for him by Orgilus who then stabs him to death.

Act Five:
Scene 1: The remorseful Bassanes is scared of Orgilus
Scene 2: Calantha is dancing. As she does, Armostes whispers that her dad the king is dead. She goes on dancing and he is shocked. Then Bassanes tells her Penthea is dead. She dances on and he is shocked. Then Orgilus tells her Ithocles is murdered. She keeps dancing to the end and he is "thunderstruck". Then she tells the company that she heard these rumours and Orgilus confesses freely he killed Ithocles. She condemns him to death. He chooses to bleed to death; he himself will be the surgeon. He dies.
Scene 3: Calantha, now queen, makes various appointments. Then she puts a ring on the finger of the corpse of ithocles. She kisses him and her heart breaks; she dies. Armostes remembers the prohecy: "The Lifeless Trunk shall wed the Broken Heart".

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Volpone" by Ben Jonson

I saw Volpone performed by CandleLight Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in north London at the matinee on 13th February 2016. They managed to communicate the humour of the play (though with perhaps more physical comedy than Jonson might have approved) while keeping true, so far as I could ascertain, the the majority of the text. Significant changes were in staffing: Volpone's dwarf, hermaphrodite and eunuch were compressed int the dwarf; the rather redundant 4 Avocatori were reduced to a single judge and the crowd of Act Two became audience participation! It was an energetic performance, especially from Volpone. The only reason why Ben J might have turned in his grave was that the ten strong cast outnumbered the audience.

This is my review of my reading of the script of this play

Volpone is written in a variety of forms. Volpone himself uses blank verse, as do most of the others, but there are moments on unevenly scanned rhyming couplets (it is as though Jonson seeks either rhyme or scansion but sees both as a luxury to be doled out as meagrely as might be, for example in the Epilogue) and occasionally prose.

Volpone, the Fox, loves gold. The very first two lives are:

Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!

Open the shrine that I may see my saint.

There follows a paean to gold:

Thou canst do naught and yet mak'st men do all things

He gets it by fraudulence. He pretends to be "turning carcass" on his death bed. His servant, ("his parasite") Mosca, the Fly, persuades Volpone's even more avaricious friends to give Volpone presents with the aim of inheriting Volpone's fortune.

In Act One the friends approach Volpone one by one. The first is Voltore, the Vulture, a lawyer with a keen nose for death. The second is old, partly deaf Corbaccio, the raven, the bird of death, who tries to persuade Mosca to give Volpone some medicine which Mosca fears is poison. Mosca persuades Corbaccio to write a will disinheriting his own son and naming Volpone as the sole legatee; after all the invalid Volpone is bound to die before Corbaccio. The third is Corvino, the Crow.

Mosca has some fine lines is cynicism:

Hood an ass with reverend purple,

So you can hide his two ambitious ears, 

And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.

gentle sir,

When you do come to swim in golden lard,

Up to the arms in honey, that your chine

Is borne up stiff with fatness of the flood,

Think on your vassal; but remember me.

Those filthy eyes of yours, that flow with slime

Like two frog-pits, and those same hanging cheeks,

Covered with hide instead of skin ...

That look like frozen dishclouts set on end!

Brilliant stuff!

In Act Two, Volpone pretends to be a famous doctor (a 'mountebank', so called because he stands upon a bench) and tries to persuade the gullible to buy his quack remedy. Peregrine observes:

I have heard they are most lewd imposters, 

Made of all terms and shreds

At this time lewd meant ignorant. The terms and shreds sounds like an echo of Autolycus in The Winter's Tale.

Volpone fulminates, in prose, against rival medicine men:

Those turdy-facey-nasty-patey-lousy fartical rogues ... want not their favourers among your shrivelled, salad-eating artisans which is a great insults! These physicians prescribe nothing but water cocted with aniseeds. This term cocted means boiled as, presumably in concoct.

Celia, wife of Corvino, sees Volpone from the window of her room and throws down money in exchange for a bottle. He sees her and falls in love. Corvino, not penetrating Volpone's disguise, is furious with his wife for her immodesty at showing herself, he calls her a whore and promises to lock her up.

Death of mine honour, with the city's fool? 

A juggling, tooth-drawing, prating mountebank

And at a public window? Where, whilst he

With his strained action and his dole of faces

To his drug lecture draws your itching ears,

A crew of old, unmarried, noted lechers

Stood leering up like satyrs?

...

Well, you shall have him, yes!

He shall come home and minister unto you

The fricace for the mother [a massage for hysteria]. Or, let me see,

I think you'd rather mount? Would you not mount? 

And he proposes drawing a line around her like a conjuror would around a spirit (as in Dr Faustus by Marlowe) so she is trapped within the magic circle.

However, Mosca persuades Corvino that Volpone is recovering his health and so less likely to die and leave his money to Corvino; the only solution is to furnish Volpone with a young lady (Mosca pretends that Volpone is impotent); Corvino hits on the scheme of pimping his own wife and, having berated her for immodesty, tells her to dress herself gorgeously for a feast with Volpone.

Mosca begins Act Three with some classic lines:

I fear I shall begin to grow in love

With my dear self ...

... I know not how,

Success hath made me wanton. I could skip

Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake,

I am so limber. Oh, your parasite

Is a most precious thing

He then persuades Bonario, a good person and Corbaccio's son, to hide in a balcony so he can observe his father disinheriting him. Meanwhile, Corvino tries to persuade Celia to sleep with Volpone. Dragging her to the house he tries to force her into Volpone's bed. She is incredulous. Does he intend to watch her make love to Volpone?

Celia: Before your honour?

Corvino: Honour! Tut, a breath.

There's no such thing in nature; a mere term

Invented to awe fools. What is my gold

The worse for touching? 

...

I grant you, if I thought it were a sin 

I would not urge you. Should I offer this

To some young Frenchman or hot Tuscan blood

That had read Aretine, conned all his prints, [Aretino had published pornographic sonnets which accompanied erotic prints]

Knew every quirk within lust's labyrinth

And were professed critic in lechery,

And I would look on and applaud him,

This were a sin; but here 'tis contrary,

A pious work, mere charity, for physic,

And honest polity to assure mine own.

She is still reluctant so he threatens her with terrible tortures and tries to bribe her with promises of jewels, asking (with heavy irony)

Will you disgrace me thus?

He is persuaded by Mosca to leave her there so that the husband might not witness the wife's shame. When he is gone, Volpone leaps off his couch, reveals himself as the mountebank, and tries to seduce Celia but she still resists. In the nick of time Bonario intervenes, wounding Mosca in the face and running off with Celia.

Act Four. Bonario and Celia are on trial accused by Volpone, in absentia, represented by Voltore; Corbaccio and Corvino are the perjured witnesses, trying to cover up their shame by heaping guilt upon son and wife. They prevail, Bonario and Celia are taken away to be sentenced.

Act Five. Volpone now dreams up his final jest: he will 'die' having written a will in favour of Mosca. In an echo of Act One the suitors each come to see Mosca only to discover that they have been left nothing. Reeling from the disappointment, Voltore now goes back to court to retract the statements he made but Volpone, revealing only to Voltore that he is actually alive and therefore still able to name Voltore his heir, persuades Voltore to fake a fit and pretend to have been possessed, so retracting his retraction. Keeping up? Mosca continues to say that Volpone is dead. Volpone realises that he has tricked himself out of his own fortune by leaving it to Mosca; in revenge he reveals himself to the court. Mosca is sentenced to the galleys, Volpone to imprisonment, Voltire is debarred, Corbaccio forced to leave his fortune to Bonario and retire into a monastery and Corvino is made to divorce his wife, returning her to her father with three times her dowry.

It's not Shakespeare but it is a damned fine romp and full of many delightful touches (foreshadowings, ironic twists etc) that turn this farce into dramatic art.

February 2016; 208 pages

Other plays reviewed in this blog can be found by clicking here.

I also saw the RSC production of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist at the Barbican Theatre (close to Blackfriars, where it is set) on Saturday (matinee) 17th September 2016

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Tempest" by William Shakespeare

The Tempest was probably Shakespeare's last play. In the epilogue the old magician seems to be saying goodbye to his audience.

It is all about magic. The tempest itself is conjured up by magic. The magician is Prospero, who was Duke of Milan until his brother usurped his place (usurping brothers seems to be a Shakespeare theme, eg Hamlet and Claudius); Prospero was sent out to sea and landed on this enchanted island where he used his spells to command spirits, such as Ariel, and to usurp, in his turn, the island from Caliban, deformed monstrous son on Sycorax, a witch. The magical tempest brings those involved in Prospero's usurpation to the island; with them at his mercy he can begin to wreak his revenge.

So there is a fundamental theme of usurpation. Prospero's brother usurped the Dukedom of Milan. But Prospero in his turn has stolen the enchanted isle from Caliban. Stefano, with the assistance of Trinculo and at the prompting of vengeful Caliban, hopes to kill Prospero and become king of the island. And Antonio prompts Sebastian to usurp the kingdom of Naples by killing Sebastian's brother Alonso while he lies sleeping. Even Gonzalo, the goody who saved Propsero and Miranda when they were sent to sea in a small boat, dreams of becoming king of a Utopia based on the island.

On the other hand, in some ways this is a Jacobean revenge tragedy except that at the end Prospero forgives everyone.

Yet, apart from Ferdinand and Prospero's daughter Miranda falling in love, nothing much happens.

In terms of drama, this is a full Shakespearean play. There is a shipwreck. There is planned murder. There is a magical banquet at which dishes appear and disappear. There is a courtly masque. And there is drunken clowning. But the only character who develops, it seems to me, is Alonso, King of Naples, who regrets his part in Prospero's usurpation and sees this as the cause of the death (he thinks) of his son Ferdinand.

Perhaps I need to see it to appreciate it. I only ever saw a youth theatre production (which was abridged but very well done and enjoyable) and a filmed version. 

Perhaps I'm not the sort of person to get beguiled by spirits. And I did feel so sorry for poor Caliban.

I have now seen this play on Saturday (matinee) 25th June 2016 at the Royal Theatre in Northampton. It was an interesting production. Several of the male roles were played by women and the gender of the character was changed; thus, Duke Prospero of Milan became Duchess Prosper. This was fine except that the children of the old characters became younger siblings so that Ferdinand was the younger brother of the King of Naples and Miranda the younger sister of Duchess Prosper. This lost the patriarchal force of the Prospero-Miranda relationship and (more seriously in my view) weakened the King of Naples overwhelming grief when he is bereft of his son and heir (somehow losing a younger brother doesn't have the same primeval appeal).

I also saw this play in an RSC production at the Barbican with the brilliant Simon Russel Beale as Propsero on 5th August 2017.

I have also seen a Lazarus  production at Greenwich Theatre on Saturday 16th February 2019. This was another gender swap production with a female Prospero and a male Miranda while retaining a male Ferdinand so that the marriage of M & F became a gay marriage. This led to one awkward moment when Prospero warns Ferdinand against breaking Miranda's "virgin knot" before the marriage is solemnised which was rescued by Miranda saying "Mu-u-u-m" when he heard this said. The outstanding actors in this production were Prospero and Trinculo.

Ariel was played by six spirits who sang his songs in harmony and shared his lines and business. This actually worked quite well, even when Prosper was reminding them of how they had been released from the cramping cleft in which Sycorax had imprisoned them: they lined up and barked 'yes mistress' at appropriate places. It also helped when the food had to magically appear and disappear.

But this play is about usurpation and colonialism; it is about revenge; it is about an old man imposing his will on his slaves, including his daughter; it is about manipulation. This production played up the magical elements brilliantly but the raw power of the human relationships were sometimes lost.

This is a scene by scene synopsis of the play.

Act 1
Scene 1: A dramatic start; a storm at sea.
Alonso, the K of Naples, his younger brother Sebastian and Alonso's son Ferdinand, together with Antonio, D of Milan and Gonzalo, a nobleman from Naples are on board a ship. The Boatswain, trying to keep the ship afloat, tells them they are in the way; when a ship is endangered all men are equal, in fact the Boatswain is the more important man: "What do you here? Shall we give o'er and drown? Have you a mind to sink?" he asks. The confusion of the storm and on board the ship is echoed my the mixture of prose and blank verse; the play starts with prose and the blank verse only begins after the soaked seamen cry that all is lost "To prayers, to prayers!" But Gonzalo's last speech is back in prose.

In the Northampton production I failed to hear a single word of the dialogue because of the noise of the storm.

Scene 2: This long scene is mostly used to tell the back story.
Miranda's first words are to accuse her father, Prospero, of creating the storm by his magic. We are immediately moved from the realism of S1 to a realm of magic. Perhaps the storm has been our entering into the liminal experience.
Prospero admits the accusation but reassures the gentle, kind and empathetic ("I have suffer'd / With those that I saw suffer") Miranda that no one has been harmed in the storm. Then, raking his magic cloak off, he tells her his reasons.

This long speech is punctuated by regular accusations that Miranda is not paying attention to him: what a teacher he is! This is brilliant Shakespeare, breaking up a long speech so that the audience have time to gather their wits and regroup (and the accusations of not paying attention are levelled at the audience, perhaps). She repeatedly reassures him that she is: "Your tale, sir, would cure deafness."

Prospero's story is that he used to be the Duke of Milan but, when Miranda was a little girl, just three, Prospero's brother Antonio, to whom Prospero had delegated most f the actual business of government, form a treacherous alliance with Alonso the King of Naples and overthrew Prospero who was sent out to sea with his baby girl in a small ship. Fortunately a "noble Neapolitan", Gonzalo, gave them what was necessary as well as Prospero's magic books.

But now is Prospero's opportunity for revenge. The ship in the storm contained all his enemies: Antonio and Alonso, as well as the good Gonzalo, and Sebastian, the younger brother of Alonso, King of Naples, and Ferdinand, son and heir to Alonso. These passengers on the ship all jumped overboard and have been safely washed up on the ships; the mariners stayed with the ship which is now safe in harbour.

Miranda, after this long tale, falls asleep. Prospero puts his cloak back on (back to magic) calls his magic spirit Ariel, who created the storm. Ariel is a sort of puck. He describes how Ferdinand was first to leap from the ship, "hair up-staring" and is now sitting with his arms folded ("in this sad knot") "in an odd angle of the isle", painting a picture of awkwardness.

Then Ariel reminds Prospero that he has been promised his liberty. The blank verse here is fractured, jumping backwards and forwards as the two discuss and argue, a long way from the end-stopped complete line blank verse that Shakespeare's early plays are written in. Prospero is angry with his slave, reminding him that he freed him from being painfully trapped in a "cloven pine" for twelve years, a fate he had been doomed to by Caliban's mother, the witch Sycorax (who then died so was unable to release him). Ariel reluctantly (very curt end lines: "My liberty"; "No"; "I do not sir"; "Pardon, master" etc) accepts he will continue to obey Prospero. This is the piece which, in the Northampton version, was acheieved with a line up of Ariels all barking their answers like soldiers.

Now Prospero wakes Miranda and calls Caliban. While Ariel is a spirit of the air, of fire, of water, Caliban is an ugly misshapen brute, a spirit of the earth (his name is cognate with both the Caribbean, where the Tempest is more or less set, and 'cannibal' which were both in turn named after the violent Carib Amerindian tribe rather than the gentle Arawaks). Caliban is also Prospero's slave and he resents it, pointing out that he was the son of the witch Sycorax who originally ruled the island; ironically Prospero the usurped has become Prospero the usurper. Prospero bullies Caliban, calling him names: slave, earth, tortoise, poisonous slave, lying slave, filth; and threatening him with pinches and side-stitches. He claims that he looked after Caliban in his own house (although presumably it would have once been Caliban's own) "till thou didst seek to violate / The honour of my child" and Caliban smirks "O ho, O ho! Would't had been done / Thou didst prevent me - I had people else/ This isle with Calibans". So at some stage Caliban tried to rape Miranda.

But now Caliban is a slave and all that Prospero has taught him is dust and ashes: "You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is I know how to curse." But he has to obey.

So Prospero, the protagonist, is actually a usurper who bullies Ariel and Caliban to be his slaves. Not a nice man!

Ferdinand enters, accompanied by an Ariel he cannot see, who sings to him; he thinks it is the sounds of nature. Despite these soothing sounds, Ferdinand is mourning his father whom he thinks has drowned. This should be made much more of but as soon as Miranda sees Ferdinand she is smitten and he with her: "At the first sight" they are in love. But Prospero recognises (in an aside to the audience; this was very well done in the Northampton version) that (if only for the sake of the play!) he can't make the path of true love too easy: "I must uneasy make lest too light winning / Make the prize light." Calling Ferdinand a traitor he manacles him (despite Miranda's protests) and takes him prisoner.

Act 2

Scene 1: another long scene: the ship-wrecked aristocrats:
Gonzalo, the good courtier, who helped Prospero, is cheerful and optimistic. Sebastian, brother to the King of Naples, and Antonio, the usurper of Prospero's dukedom, are a pair of moaning pessimists who make fun of Gonzalo's panglossianism. And Alonso, King of Naples, is grieving the death of his son (younger brother in the Northampton version). Strangely, he rejects the suggestion that Ferdinand may have survived the shipwreck; most bereaved people cling to any hope long after it is reasonable. Cruelly, Sebastian blames Alonso for Ferdinand's death: "The fault's your own" and Gonzalo chides him. Then Gonzalo launches into a description of the Utopia that this island could be; he envisages a communistic commonwealth with himself as King; this is full of ironies as he is talking to his boss the King of Naples and being quite radically republican; perhaps Shakespeare wanted to emphasise how much the old order had been disrupted by the chaos of the storm on this enchanted isle.
Then Ariel arrives and puts all but Sebastian and Antonio to sleep. Taking advantage, Antonio now seeks to persuade Sebastian to usurp Naples and offers to kill Alonso there and then with his sword. Sebastian remembers that Antonio usurped his own brother and asks about the state of Antonio's conscience: "I feel not/ This deity in my bosom" replies Antonio. So Sebastian agrees to treason. 

This is a bit quick and then they have to whisper together at the side of the stage to give Ariel time to wake the sleepers up; this is a bit clumsy.  In the Northampton version Ariel was given time because, just before they slit the throats of the King and Gonzalo, they kissed (Sebastian was played as a woman called Simona), got into a passionate embrace and left the stage for a quickie! Antonio returns buttoning up his flies.
Antonio and Sebastian draw their swords but before they can use them the others wake up; Sebastian has to pretend they hear wild beasts and wanted to protect his brother, the King. The party wanders off to search for Ferdinand.

Scene 2: A comic interlude
Caliban is bringing wood for Prospero. He curses P and then, at the sound of thunder, worries about the little pinches that Prospero torments him with. Hearing a voice, afraid it is one of P's devils, C hides.
But it is Trinculo, jester to the court of Naples, and we switch to prose. He sees the hiding Caliban who smells of fish but he decides he is not a monster but an islander killed by a lightning strike. The storm coming, Trinculo hides under the cloak with Caliban.
Stephano arrives, drunk and drinking. Caliban thinks he is P's devil and he begs S for mercy; S seeing the cloak and Caliban and Trinculo underneath it thinks he has come across a strange monster having fits which, if he can cure the fits and tame it, he could enslave and then sell. So he feeds Caliban alcohol but is himself scared when Trinculo calls out to him.
The two friends are reconciled, using the bottle as Bible, and drinking together. Caliban, enamoured of the strange new taste of this new drink, pledges himself to serve Stephano. Thus are the Caribbean natives seduced with alcohol and enslaved.

Act 3:
Scene 1: Love scene

Ferdinand has been told to stack wood by Prospero and he is labouring to obey. He is happy to be a slave because of Miranda. Miranda is upset for him and offers to carry the logs for him but he refuses her. In the Northampton version he is labouring over a great barrel that she can pick up quite easily. He woos her, telling her he is a Prince and would despise this base labour were it not for her. She asks, directly, "Do you love me?" and he says, beating around the bushes a bit, yes. The pledge to marry and join hands. Prospero, eavesdropping, is glad.

Scene 2: Another comedic interlude
Stephano and Caliban and Trinculo are all drunk. Stephano and Trinculo quarrel and Caliban, having pledged himself to Stephano, takes the part of his master. Ariel (invisible but audible) intervenes from time to time saying 'thou liest'; Caliban and Stephano attribute these words to Trinculo though he denies it and they beat him. Good slapstick stuff.
Caliban attempts to persuade Stephano to murder Prospero by hammering a nail through his head, braining him, sticking a knife in his paunch or slitting his throat. He reminds Stephano to burn Prospero's books first because without them P cannot summon any spirits; they all hate him. As inducement C offers S the bed of Miranda. S agrees to assassinate P and they plan to do it in half an hour when P will take his normal afternoon nap. Ariel, of course, has overheard all of this.

Scene 3: A magical banquet
This scene is based on the Aeneid (book 3) when Virgil and his companions prepare themselves a banquet only to have a flock of Harpies (the Ariels in black) swoop down upon them and devour it. Prospero watches the action from high above the stage. He was in one of the boxes, in Northampton, but his lines were voiced by one of the Ariels with an echo box. This scene was really well done.
King Alonso with good courtier Gonzalo, and the two wannabe usurpers Sebastian and Antonio, with two other lesser courtiers Adrian and Francisco are still searching for Ferdinand. But old Gonzalo can go no further and King Alonso too is tired. He despairs of finding his son: "He is drown'd ... Well, let him go."
Antonio and Sebastian are still resolved to assassinate the King the next chance they get, tonight, when the King and Gonzalo will be tired.
Suddenly spirits bring a banquet onto the stage. The shipwrecked noblemen discuss this strange event and resolve that other tall travellers' tales may also be true.
But then Ariel, dressed like a harpy, comes on stage, claps his hands and the food disappears. He then accuses the "three men of sin" (Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian) that they "did supplant good Prospero"; for which they will be punished by hellish torments.
After Ariel (and Prospero) goes, Alonso realises that his son has been killed because of his own guilt: "Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded; and / I'll seek him deeper then e'er plummet sounded, / And with him lie there mudded." He goes and is followed by Sebastian and Antonio. Gonzalo is fearful that they may do something rash and asks Adrian and Francisco to follow them.

Act 4: A single scene act.

At the start, Prospero permits Ferdinand to get engaged to Miranda whilst repeatedly warning him not to get too lustful and not to touch her before they are married. This doesn't work as well when Prosper is the elder sister. Then, as if to celebrate the engagement, he treats them to a masque in which Ariel plays Ceres and other spirits play her sidekicks. This 'play within a play' is a sort of liminality within a liminality; it ends when Prospero remembers that Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano are on their way to kill him. And he ends it with these famous lines:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air,

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Then Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo enter. They have been led by Ariel through thorns and a stinking pond and they are grumbling. Then they see "glistering apparel" which Ariel has hung on the near lime tree and are distracted from their murderous intent with the fripperies, much to Caliban's disgust. Spirits in the shape of dogs and hounds enter and drive them away.

Prospero and Ariel leave the stage only to reappear in the next Act.

Act 5:
Scene 1:
Ariel, still hinting that his release is due, reports to his master that the Alonso and Gonzalo ans much chastened by their experiences and ready to seek forgiveness. He says: 

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.

This was almost my favourite moment of the Northampton interpretation. Of course, Ariel is a spirit. He can't feel emotion. And he recognises that this makes him less than human. Those last three words, "were I human", were spoken with such regret! It was brilliant. 

Prospero stage manages the revelation of himself to Alonso, Gonzalo, Sebastian and Antonio. They stand, charm-struck, within his magic circle whilst he tells them off. Alonso, still reeling from the supposed death of his son and made a better man by his experiences, announces that he will restore Prospero to his Dukedom if his story is true; Gonzalo of course is good. But Sebastian and Antonio, though forgiven by Prospero, are not so redeemed.

Now Prospero reveals Ferdinand and Miranda, in love and playing chess. Gonzalo remarks that Prospero lost his Dukedom so that his descendants should rule Naples.
The Boatswain and Master of the boat appear.
Finally Prospero lets Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano out of their captivity in the lime grove.

And, promising to free Ariel, that's it.

In this scene, during his renunciation of magic, Prospero says "I'll drown my book". In The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate points out the similarity to the end of Marlowe's Faustus when, just before he is carted off to damnation, the Doctor promises "I'll burn my books".

Epilogue:
Prospero addresses the audience in ten rhyming couplets, with lots of enjambing, and asks the audience to set him free from the Enchanted Island. In Northampton she then waited for the first claps before leaving the stage.

December 2015, updated June 2016, February 2019

Other Shakespeare plays reviewed in this blog may be found here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God