"Antony and Cleopatra" by William Shakespeare

I saw this play at the National Theatre in the matinee performance on Saturday 19th January 2019. Ralph Fiennes made an excellent Antony and Sophie Okonedo was simply stunning as Cleopatra.

James Shapiro (2015) in 1606 William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear points out that despite having virtually invented the soliloquy and having used it to great effect in Macbeth, the preceding play, Shakespeare has hardly any soliloquies in Antony and Cleopatra.

James Shapiro (2015) in 1606 William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear states that Shakespeare's "account of Cleopatra is suffused with paradox and hyperbole”. The example that he gives is from Act 2 Scene 2 in which Enobarbus says that Cleopatra "makes hungry Where she most satisfies". But there are many other examples too. 

Sophie Okonedo's portrayal of Cleopatra was of someone whose behaviour depended on fickle whim. She is demanding. She wants to know how much Antony loves her and he replies: "There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.” This was a wonderful portrait of a woman who is passionate and headstrong, governed by her desires.

For Antony his life in Egypt is the dream but he is repeatedly called back to reality. Antony is also able to dissociate his two lives. Thus, for him, his marriage to Octavia is purely something political whereas Octavia is furious when, as she is attempting to broker peace between Antony and Octavius, Antony runs back to Cleopatra. In the end though Antony has very little choice in the matter. As he says, in explanation of his retreat from the battle of Actium when Cleopatra's fleet disengaged and ran away and Antony followed: "My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings".

Neither of the two protagonists is good at listening.  The play opens with Antony repeatedly refusing to listen to urgent news from home. Shortly after, still in the first act,  there is a scene in which Antony is trying to tell Cleopatra that he must return to Rome because his wife Fulvia has died but Cleopatra, assuming he is going to tell her that Fulvia has called him home, won't let him get a word in edgeways. Later there was a hilariously comic scene in which a messenger (it was played by Eros in the NT production) tries to tell her that Antony has married Octavia. “I do not like 'But yet,' it does allay/ The good precedence; fie upon 'But yet'!/ 'But yet' is as a gaoler to bring forth/ Some monstrous malefactor.” she tells him and when he finally plucks up the courage to say the words she tries to kill him (in the NT production this entailed her chasing him into the swimming pool and him floudering in it getting wetter and wetter). This demonstrates an earlier comment by Enobarbus when he says that women ‘die’ when they hear bad news: “Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment ... she hath such a celerity in dying.” (which comment, of course, foreshadows her suicide). And this refusal to listen comes to the climax when Antony repeatedly refuses the advice of his generals to fight Octavius on land rather than at sea. They are appalled:

“Your ships are not well mann'd;
Your mariners are muleters, reapers, people
Ingross'd by swift impress; in Caesar's fleet
Are those that often have 'gainst Pompey fought:
Their ships are yare; yours, heavy”

They aren't the only ones who won't listen to advice. When the triumvirs (Antony, Octavius and Lepidus) are on board Pompey's ship getting drunk, Pompey is advised to cut the cable, put to sea and cut their throats but he refuses because of his honour. This, of course, dooms him in the end.

The construction of the play is interesting. There are many foreshadowings of snakes and serpents (including the crocodile which a drunken Lepidus asks about). The play has the difficult task of trying to chronicle some complicated history. Thus, although the battle of Actium, regarded by some historians as one of the pivotal encounters of world history, is more or less at the very centre of the play, there are more battles after it which gives the feel that Actium was not that important after all. And this second battle has to be divided into two days; on the first Antony believes that he has won. So the narrative is muddled as it leads to the lovers' doom.

In the end they have to die. Antony requests his servant Eros to kill him but Eros turns the sword upon himself: this led to a gasp across the auditorim in the NT production. Then Antony botches the job of suicide, lingering until he is taken to Cleopatra and hoisted to the top of the monument where she is hiding. There she is taken alive, being tricked by the one man that Antony told her she could trust, and she has to smuggle in a snake in a basket of figs so that she too can kill herself. All a bit Romeo and Juliet in the end.

Selected quotes:

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies;”

“Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.”

“The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack: the round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens: the death of Antony
Is not a single doom; in the name lay
A moiety of the world.”

“Sir, I will eat no meat, I'll not drink, sir;
If idle talk will once be necessary,
I'll not sleep neither: this mortal house I'll ruin,
Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I
Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court;
Nor once be chastised with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up
And show me to the shouting varletry
Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus' mud
Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies
Blow me into abhorring! rather make
My country's high pyramides my gibbet,
And hang me up in chains!”

“Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have
Immortal longings in me.” (5.2.279 - 280)

January 2018

Other plays by Shakespeare that are 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

"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 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

"The Spanish Tragedy" by Thomas Kyd

I watched The Spanish Tragedy at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington on Saturday 27th February 2016. As is common with modern productions they dispensed with scenery (which has little impact on this play) and reduced props to a minimum which I was a little disappointed with because I love the dramatic impact of things like the dagger and rope. They cut the Alexandro Viluppo sub plot and the characters of Serberine and Isabella.

There were also a couple of sex changes. I'm not really a fan of the trend of changing the sex of a character; I wonder why they can't just play it in travesty. Hieronimo became Horatio's mother rather than his father. This was OK. They deleted Isabella and gave some of her lines to Hieronimo. In some ways the grieving mother was more powerful than the grieving father.

However, Lorenzo  also changed sex. This worked less well. In the original, Lorenzo and Balthazar can  be male buddies contriving that Balthazar should get Lorenzo's sister:  this can really emphasise the ways in which the patriarchal society controls even the sexual choices of the women. It works well with the fact that Bel-Imperia has 'disgraced' herself with low-born Don Andreas and that now she must marry the man her male relatives choose for her; Horatio's death is a consequence of Lorenzo's control of his sister. But Lorenzo played as a woman undermines all this. It also makes one wonder why she didn't want Balthazar for herself.

Having said this, Janet Etuk played a magnificently evil Lorenzo brilliantly. She was full of little twitches and tics. It is a difficult character to play; it can be difficult to see the motivation for the evil; in some ways Lorenzo has to react to events (eg the framing of Pedringano which is in itself a high-risk strategy) and Etuk's Lorenzo was a lovely complex of self-preservation, ambition and hatred.

Revenge really worked as a character which surprised me. It reads as if it is a device to keep the audience interested. There was a chilling start in which Revenge, played brilliantly by Leo Wan, wanders onto the stage and starts staring at members of the audience before choosing one to lead on to the stage and leaving him there; this 'audience member' turned out to be Don Andrea's ghost. (Leo Wan also transformed himself into Pedringano by means of dark glasses and a cringing stoop; it was an acting masterclass to see how stance can create a completely new character).

They also made me appreciate some of the poetry. Some lines are as classic as Shakespeare and yet have a truly modern ring. Hieronimo (Rebecca Crankshaw) was especially good at delivering Elizabethan blank verse in a way that conveyed the raw power and emotion of every grieving human parent across the ages.

It was a really brilliant production and I was overwhelmed by the end. But I'd have liked a few daggers!

Professor Sir Jonathan Bate in a Gresham College Lecture originally delivered 27th March 2019 at the Museum of London points out that Kyd's use of the ghost of Don Andrea follows the Roman author Seneca whose “trademark is indeed the supernatural intervention that winds the plot of revenge tragedy”; “linguistically, the long opening speech by the Ghost of Don Andrea is modelled on Seneca’s Agamemnon, which begins with the Ghost of Thyestes”.

It is interesting how many parallels there are between A Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet. Both start with a ghost. The theme of both is revenge though AST is a father revenging the death of a son and Hamlet is a son revenging the death of a father; in both the revenge is prompted by the ghost. Horatio is a character in both (though he dies early on in AST). In both, there is a play within a play. Hieronimo, the Hamlet figure, feigns madness; his wife actually goes mad and kills herself. Hieronimo debates (briefly) whether to kill himself. In the final scene the stage is strewn with corpses. The big difference is that AST is focussed on revenge whereas Hamlet is focussed on the moral dilemmas.

It is clear that Shakespeare had seen The Spanish Tragedy; the early Taming of the Shrew contains too partial quotes from The Spanish Tragedy in the Induction and the characters of the Lord and Christopher Sly seem to be required to comment on the action scene by scene as Don Andreas and revenge do (but Shakespeare seems to have forgotten them after the first scene).

On the other hand, I wrote an novel (not yet published, if you'd like to represent me get in touch) which starred a character called Pedro and I wrote a short story which I might yet turn into a novel which stars Balthazar and that was before I had either read or seen this play.

The synopsis below refers to the published play, not to the way it was adapted

Act One:

Scene 1: The ghost of Don Andrea and the figure of Revenge leave Hell and come to watch the play. Don A was killed in a battle between the King of Spain and the Vice-King of Portugal (Portingale).
Scene 2: The Spanish general tells the King of Spain how the battle went. They won. Moreover Balthazar, Prince of Portugal, was captured. But there is a dispute about who captured him: both Lorenzo (son of Cyprian the Dike of Castille and therefore the King of Spain's nephew) and Horatio (son of Hieronimo, the Knight-Marshall of Spain) claim the capture: the King rules that Lorenzo wins the horse and arms and Horatio will get the ransom but that Prince Balthazar should be lodged in Lorenzo's house.
Scene 3: Back in Portugal the Vice-King is bewailing the death of his son. Alexandro suggests that Balthazar may still be alive but Villuppo falsely lies that he saw Alexandro shoot Balthazar in the back on the battle-field. Alexandro is arrested.
Scene 4: Bel-Imperia, Lorenzo's sister, who had an affair with newly-dead Don Andrea (he calls it secret but she chats about it with Horatio) asks Horatio how DA died; he reports that Balthazar killed him and that he, Horatio, got there too late to rescue DA. Lorenzo and Balthazar now walk in and it is clear that B has fallen in love with B-I. She rebuffs him angrily and exits, dropping her glove which Horatio retrieves and hands back to her; she gives it to him.
There is then a banquet at which Balthazar again professes that he loves B-I and Hieronimo puts on a rather daft masque that (unhistorically) celebrates the triumphs of the English in Portugal.
Scene 5: Don A protests that it isn't worth coming out of Hell to watch banquets and lovey-loving; Revenge promises conflict to come.



Act Two:


An interesting feature of Act Two is how the characters from time to time break out into extended passages of rhyming couplets. Is there a pattern to this?
Scene 1: Balthazar complains to Lorenzo that B-I does not reciprocate his love. Lorenzo counsels patience:

In time the savage bull sustains the yoke,

In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure,

In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak, 

In time the flint is pierced with softest shower,

But B disagrees:

No, she is wilder and more hard, withal

Lorenzo thinks there might be another man and questions B-I's servant Pedringano; as soon as P prevaricates L (a truly hot-tempered man) draws his sword and threatens to kill him; P is bullied into admitting that B-I has the hots for Horatio.
Scene 2: Whilst P, L and B eavesdrop from the balcony, B-I and Horatio arrange a place to make sweet love:

Happily the gentle nightingale

Shall carol us asleep ere we be ware,

And, singing with the prickle at her breast,

Tell our delight and mirthful dalliance.

The image is interesting. Nightingales were supposed to stab themselves with thorns because Philomena had been turned into a nightingale after revenging herself her brother in law who had raped her. And 'prickle' of course alludes slyly to a man's penis.

Scene 3: The Portuguese ambassador and the King of Spain have agreed that B-I shall marry Balthazar; B-I's dad, Castille, the King of Spain's brother, will force his daughter to agree to this.
Scene 4: Horatio and B-I meet and get cosy;

Now that the night begins with sable wings

To overcloud the brightness of the sun,

And that in darkness pleasures may be done,

Come, Bel-Imperia, let us to the bower

And then it gets sexy. They kiss and say, in rhyming couplets:

BI: Nay then, to gain the glory of the field,

My twining arms shall yoke and make thee yield.

H: Nay then, my arms are large and strong withal;

Thus elms by vines are compassed till they fall.

BI: O, let me go, for in my troubled eyes

Now mays't thou read that life in passion dies.

H: O, stay awhile and I will die with thee;

So shalt thou yield and yet have conquered me.

And that last couplet is prophetic, but not of the 'little death' that comes with orgasm. Lorenzo and Balthazar and servants Pedringano and Serberine rush in. They hang Horatio and stab him and bundle B-I away. Sex has been replaced with death.

Scene 5: Horatio's dad, Hieronimo discovers the body:

Who hath slain my son? 

is a raw cry of grief.

O heavens, why made you night to cover sin?

he asks in a rejoinder to darkness that hides to permit pleasures of scene 4.
Then with his wife, Isabella, Hieronimo swears to identify and be revenged on the killers because

To know the author were some ease of grief

For in revenge my heart would find relief.

His wife agrees:

Time is the author of both truth and right,

[although Francis Bacon would have it that "Truth is the daughter of time" which isn't quite the same].

Scene 6: Don A protests that his mate Horatio has been killed and his beloved B-I made even more unhappy whilst Balthazar is still OK. Revenge promises he will enjoy what is to come.

Act Three:

Scene 1: The Vice-King of Portingale is still under the impression that his son, Balthazar, has been killed by Alexandro, despite his ambassador having negotiated a ransom for the release of Balathazar in the last Act. Fortunately, just as Alexandro is being tied to the stake to be burnt, the Ambassador arrives with the news that Balthazar is alive. Villuppo admits that he lied (for gain) and is arrested.
Scene 2: Hieronimo is grieving for Horatio:

O eyes, no eyes but fountains fraught with tears!

O Life, no life, but lively form of death!

O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs,

Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds!

which is a nice quatrain containing the three lines starting the same but the third continuing over two lines to remove the tyranny of form and give a more natural feel.
He asks heaven:

How should we term your dealings to be just

If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust?

which is a very good question. We often say: judge not by words but by deeds and the Bible comes close to this in Romans 2:6 when it says that God "will render to every man according to his deeds". On the 'do as you would be done by' principle then, Hieronimo is entitled to judge heaven by its deeds.
 He calls the night

sad secretary to my moans

There is some classic writing here!
Suddenly there falleth a letter from the sky, written by B-I in her blood. She is locked away from Hieronimo but reveals that her brother Lorenzo and Balthazar were those responsible for Horatio's death and urges Hieronimo to avenge his son. But Hieronimo suspects that the letter is a ploy to entrap him. He can't imagine why B-I would accuse her brother of murder or what reason L and B would have to murder Horatio.
Lorenzo and Pedringano meet Hieronimo and he asks to see B-I but L says she has been removed by his dad because she is disgraced; he asks H why he wants to see B-I but H won't say and leaves. Now L suspects that Serberine has told H about the murder so he pays P to assassinate S, telling him to shoot S at 8PM at Saint Luigi's Park. Then he tells his page to tell S to meet him, L, at the park at 8PM. Then he tells the Watch to keep watch at the park at 8PM. Treacherous!
Scene 3: P enters with a pistol. The Watch enter. S enters. P shoots S. The Watch arrest P and take him to Hieronimo's house.
Scene 4: Lorenzo warns Balthazar that they may have been betrayed. The page arrives with the news that P has killed S and B goes off to Hieronimo's house to prosecute P. Now a message arrives from P asking L for help; L talks in double meanings and sends a box to P with the message that P's pardon is in the box (but he warns the messenger not to open the box). Lorenzo, alone on stage, soliloquises: "Now stands our fortune on a tickle point" and then speaks Italian which means: "And what I want, no one knows; I understand, and that's enough for me."
Scene 5: The boy with the box opens it and discovers it is empty.
Scene 6: Hieronimo condemns P to death:

Thus must we toil in other men's extremes,

That know not how to remedy our own. 

P jokes with the hangman. The boy with the empty box is standing by and P thinks his pardon is in the box. But he gets hanged.
Scene 7: Hieronimo is still grieving for Horatio. Again there are wonderful lines:

... ceaseless plaints for my deceased son

The blust'ring winds, conspiroing with my words,

At my lament have moved the leafless trees,

Disrobed the meadows of their flowered green,

Made mountains marsh with spring-tides of my tears,

And broken through the brazen gates of hell.

The hangman enters with a letter from P to Lorenzo. H reads it; it reminds Lorenzo that P killed S for him and also helped to kill Horatio with Balthazar. H realises that B-I's letter told the truth.
Scene 8: Isabella, talking herbs (another hint of Hamlet), "runs lunatic".

Why, did I not give you gowns and goodly things,

Bought you a whistle and a whipstalk too,

To be revenged on their villainies?

she asks her maid.
Scene 9: B-I, sequestered, bemoans her fate.
Scene 10: Lorenzo, confident that the fuss over Horatio's murder has blown over, brings B-I to him and suggests to her, in front of Balthazar, that they killed Horatio because B-I was doing naughty stuff with him like she had done with Don Andrea, so he, acting on his father's orders, was killing H to preserve B-I's honour: it was an honour killing! Balthazar now tries wooing B-I.
Scene 11: Two Portuguese encounter Hieronimo and ask him the way to find Lorenzo (at whose house Balthazar is staying until the ransom is paid). Hieronimo tells them to follow the path into hell:

There is a path upon your left-hand side,

That leadeth from a guilty conscience

Unto a forest of distrust and fear ...

They laugh. He laughs. They conclude that H is either lunatic or senile. MORE presages of Hamlet, especially if we equate these two with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Scene 12: Hieronimo enters with a dagger and a rope, considering whether to kill himself, but decides against it and throws them away. "This way or that way?" isn't exactly 'To be or not to be' but it is the purport without the poetry. The King and the Ambassador and Lorenzo and Lorenzo's dad Castille arrive; H calls for justice from the King. The Ambassador announces the terms of the treaty with the King that Balthazar shall marry B-I. He also has the ransom due to Horatio. This sets H off into further calls for justice. He digs in the ground with his dagger. They all think he is mad. Lorenzo suggests that he should be sacked from the Marshalship; it would seem that the K has not heard of Horatio's death.
Scene 13: Another soliloquy from Hieronimo. He reflects that it is likely that L, to cover up his murder of H, will have himself killed. He suggests that the best way forward for his is to dissemble: "Thus therefore will I rest me in unrest,/ Dissembling quiet in unquietness,/ Not seeming that I know their villanies,/ That my simplicity may make them think/ That ignorantly I will let all slip..." Some citizens come in to plead for Hieronimo to hear their grievances; Don Bazuto is grieving for his murdered son which sends Hieronimo off into yet more paroxysms of grief:

O my son, my son, O my son Horatio! 

... Gentle boy, be gone/

For justice is exiled from the Earth." 

This scene was probably the most intense of the Old Red Lion Theatre production.
Scene 14: The assembled nobles of Spain and Portugal are gathered to celebrate B marrying B-I. Castille warns his son Lorenzo that there are rumours that L is preventing Hieronimo from gaining access to the King; L protests that he has been misunderstood so C sends for H, who arrives after B and B-I have come in, B speaking love and B-I reluctance. H pretends in front of C that he has no quarrel with either L or B.
Scene 15: The ghost of Don A is angry that H is reconciled with L and B. But Revenge promises DA that H is dissembling.

Act Four:

Scene 1: B-I berates Hieronimo for his apparent acceptance of his son's murder; he swears he will be avenged and she swears to help him.
Lorenzo and Baklthazar rock up and ask H to help them entertain B's father, Vice-King of Portingale. He recruits them to play the parts in a tragedy he has written about an assassin who murdered a husband so that the Turkish emperor could gain the husband's wife but she killed herself; the murderer then ran away and hanged himself. H says he will play the murderer; Lorenzo the husband, B-I the wife and B  the Turkish emperor. And each person shall play their part in a different language.
Scene 2: Isabella comes in with a weapon that she uses to chop down the arbour where Horatio was hanged and then stab herself.
Scene 3:  H prepares the play with Castille; he gives C the playscript to be taken to the King and requests that "when the train are passed into the gallery/You would vouchsafe to throw me down the key." B appears with props, half-bearded.
Scene 4: The performance begins. Despite the fiction that the actors are speaking in different languages, it is actually played in English. Whilst the actors are playing, the audience comment on the play.
The action of the play is brief. H, playing the assassin, stabs L, the husband; B-I, playing the wife, stabs B, the Emperor and then herself. Then Hieronimo, playing herself, reveals the body of Horatio and addresses the audience. He explains what he has done and runs off to hang himself. The audience realise that L and B-I and B are dead. They grab H and abuse him and threaten him with tortures so he will tell them who his confederates are. To foil them he bites out his tongue but, Castille observes, he can still write. The King of Spain gets a knife to sharpen the pen but instead stabs his brother and himself, so eliminating the royal line of Spain.
Scene 5: Don Andrea's ghost approves and tells Revenge where the dead people shall be placed in Hell.

Utterly, utterly brilliant.

February 2016, 130 pages

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

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