Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare

Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" (A Moorish Captain) by Cinthio (a disciple of Boccaccio) first published in 1565. The work revolves around four central characters: Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army; his wife Desdemona; his lieutenant, Cassio; and his trusted ensign Iago. Because of its varied themes — racism, love,jealousy and betrayal — Othello remains relevant to the present day and is often performed in professional and community theatres alike. The play has also been the basis for numerous operatic, film and literary adaptations.

Characters

Othello, a Moor in the service of the Republic of Venice; Desdemona's husband and partner

Desdemona, Othello's wife and Brabantio's daughter

Iago, Othello's ensign and Emilia's husband

Emilia, Iago's wife and Desdemona's attendant

Cassio, Othello's lieutenant

Brabantio, a Venetian senator, Gratiano's brother, Desdemona's father, and Othello's father-in-law

Bianca, an associate of Cassio's sometimes identified as a courtesan

Roderigo, a dissolute Venetian, Desdemona's admirer, and Iago's confederate

Duke of Venice, or the "Doge"

Gratiano, Brabantio's brother

Lodovico, Brabantio's kinsman and Desdemona's cousin

Montano, Othello's Venetian predecessor in the government of Cyprus

Clown, a servant

Officers, Gentlemen, Messenger, Musicians, Herald, Sailor, Attendants, etc.

Plot

The play opens with Roderigo, a rich and dissolute gentleman, complaining to Iago, a high-ranking soldier, that Iago has not told him about the secret marriage between Desdemona, the daughter of a Senator named Brabantio, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. He is upset by this development because he lusts for Desdemona and has previously asked her father for her hand in marriage. Iago is upset with Othello for promoting a younger man named Michael Cassio above him, and tells Roderigo that he (Iago) is simply using Othello for his own advantage. Iago's argument against Cassio is that he is a scholarly tactician and has no real battle experience from which he can draw strategy.

By emphasizing this point, and his dissatisfaction with serving under Othello, Iago convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughter's affair. After Roderigo rouses Brabantio, Iago says aside that he has heard rumors that Othello has had an affair with his wife, Emilia. Later, Iago tells Othello that he overheard Roderigo telling Brabantio about the marriage and that he (Iago) was angry because the development was meant to be secret.News arrives in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus; therefore Othello is summoned to advise. Brabantio arrives and accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft, but Othello defends himself successfully before an assembly that includes the Duke of Venice, Brabantio's kinsman Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators, explaining that Desdemona became enamored of him for the stories he told of his early life.

By order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, hisensign Iago, and Emilia as Desdemona's attendant.The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration. Iago schemes to use Cassio to ruin Othello and takes the opportunity of Othello's absence at the celebration to persuade Roderigo to engage the drunken Cassio in a fight. The brawl greatly alarms the citizenry, and Othello is forced to quell the disturbance. Othello then strips Cassio of his rank. After Cassio sobers, Iago persuades him to importune Desdemona to act as an intermediary between himself and Othello, hoping that she will persuade the Moor to reinstate Cassio.

As it happens, Cassio is courting a woman named Bianca, who is a seamstress and, allegedly, a prostitute. Desdemona drops a handkerchief that was Othello's first gift to her and which he has stated holds great significance to him in the context of their relationship; Emilia obtains this for Iago, who has asked her to steal it, having decided to plant it in Cassio's lodgings as evidence of Cassio and Desdemona's affair. Emilia is unaware of what Iago plans to do with the handkerchief. After he has planted the handkerchief, Iago tells Othello to stand apart and watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him about the handkerchief. He goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca; because Othello cannot hear what they are saying, Othello thinks that Cassio is referring to Desdemona. Bianca, on discovering the handkerchief, chastises Cassio. Enraged and hurt, Othello decides he is going to kill his wife and Iago suggests to Othello to let him kill Cassio.Iago convinces Roderigo to kill Cassio because Cassio has just been appointed in Othello's place, whereas if Cassio lives to take office, Othello and Desdemona will leave Cyprus, thwarting Roderigo's plans to win Desdemona. Roderigo attacks Cassio in the street after Cassio leaves Bianca's lodgings and they fight. Both are wounded. Passers-by arrive to help; Iago joins them, pretending to help Cassio. Iago secretly stabs Roderigo to stop him from talking and accuses Bianca of conspiracy to kill Cassio.In the night, Othello confronts Desdemona, and then kills her by smothering her in bed, before Emilia arrives. At Emilia's distress, Othello tries to explain himself, justifying his actions by accusing Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls for help. The Governor arrives, with Iago and others, and Emilia begins to explain the situation.

When Othello mentions the handkerchief (distinctively embroidered) as proof, Emilia realizes what Iago has done; she exposes him, whereupon Iago kills her. Othello, realizing Desdemona's innocence, attacks Iago but does not kill him, saying that he would rather have Iago live the rest of his life in pain. Lodovico, a Venetian nobleman, apprehends both Iago and Othello, but Othello commits suicide with a dagger before they can take him into custody. At the end, it can be assumed, Iago is taken off to be tortured and possibly executed.

Source: Othello is an adaptation of the Italian writer Cinthio's tale, "Un Capitano Moro" from his Gli Hecatommithi (1565), a collection of one hundred tales in the style of Boccacio's Decameron. No English translation of Cinthio was available in Shakespeare's lifetime, and verbal echoes in Othello are closer to the Italian original than to Gabriel Chappuy's 1584 French translation. Cinthio's tale may have been based on an actual incident occurring in Venice about 1508.[1] It also resembles an incident described in the earlier tale of "The Three Apples", one of the stories narrated in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights).[2]

Desdemona is the only named character in Cinthio's tale, with his few other characters identified only as "the Moor", "the squadron leader", "the ensign", and "the ensign's wife". Cinthio drew a moral (which he placed in the mouth of Desdemona) that European women are unwise to marry the temperamental males of other nations.Cinthio's Moor is the model for Shakespeare's Othello, but some researchers believe the poet also took inspiration from the several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England circa 1600.[4]While Shakespeare closely followed Cinthio's tale in composing Othello, he departed from it in some details. Brabantio, Roderigo, and several minor characters are not found in Cinthio, for example, and Shakespeare's Emilia takes part in the handkerchief mischief while her counterpart in Cinthio does not.

Unlike Shakespeare's Iago, Cinthio's ensign lusts after Desdemona and is spurred to revenge when she rejects him. Shakespeare's opening scenes are unique to his tragedy as is the tender scene between Emilia and Desdemona as the lady prepares for bed.Shakespeare's most striking departure from Cinthio is the manner of his heroine's death. In Shakespeare, Othello suffocates Desdemona, but in Cinthio, the Moor commissions his ensign to bludgeon his wife to death with a sand-filled stocking. Cinthio describes each gruesome blow, and, when the lady is dead, the Moor and his ensign place her lifeless body upon her bed, smash her skull, and cause the cracked ceiling above the bed to collapse upon her, giving the impression its falling rafters caused her death.In Cinthio, the two murderers escape detection. The Moor then misses his wife greatly, and comes to loathe the sight of his ensign. He demotes him, and refuses to have him in his company. The ensign then seeks revenge by disclosing to the "the squadron leader" (the tale's Cassio counterpart), the Moor's involvement in Desdemona's death.

The two depart Cyprus for Venice, and denounce the Moor to the Venetian Seignory; the Moor is arrested, taken to Venice, and tortured. He refuses to admit his guilt and is condemned to exile. Desdemona's relatives eventually find and kill him. The ensign, however, continues to escape detection in Desdemona's death, but engages in other crimes while in Venice. He is arrested and dies after being tortured. Cinthio's "ensign's wife" survives her husband's death to tell her story.

Date and text

The earliest mention of the play is found in a 1604 Revels Office account, which records that on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar ... the Kings Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinghouse att Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis." The work is attributed to "Shaxberd." The Revels account was first printed by Peter Cunningham in 1842, and, while its authenticity was once challenged, is now regarded as genuine (as authenticated by A. E. Stamp in 1930).[6] Based on its style, the play is usually dated 1603 or 1604, but arguments have been made for dates as early as 1601 or 1602.

The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on October 6, 1621, by Thomas Walkley, and was first published in quarto format by him in 1622:THE Tragoedy of Othello, The Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diuerse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friers, by his Maiesties Seruants. Written byVVilliam Shakespeare. LONDON, Printed by N. O. [Nicholas Okes] for Thomas Walkley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Eagle and Child, in Brittans Bursse, 1622.One year later, the play was included among the plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays. However, the version in the Folio is rather different in length, and in wording: as the editors of the Folger edition explain,...the Folio play has about 160 lines that do not appear in the Quarto. Some of these cluster together in quite extensive passages. The Folio also lacks a scattering of about a dozen lines or part-lines that are to be found in the Quarto. These two versions also differ from each other in their readings of numerous words.[8]

Scholars differ in their explanation of these differences, and no consensus has emerged.[9] One explanation is that the Quarto may have been cut in the printing house to meet a fixed number of pages.[1] Another is that the Quarto is based on an early version of the play, while the Folio represents Shakespeare's revised version.[10] Most modern editions are based on the longer Folio version, but often incorporate Quarto readings of words when the Folio text appears to be in error.Quartos were also published in 1630, 1655, 1681, 1695, 1699 and 1705.

Themes and tropes

Othello's racial classification

Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun,Moorish ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, sometimes claimed as an inspiration for Othello.[12]There is no consensus over Othello's racial classification; although normally performed as a black person today, he was frequently performed as an Arabduring the nineteenth century. Othello is referred to as a "Moor", a term that technically referred to a Berber and Arab people of North Africa, but which was used more casually during the English Renaissance to refer to dark-skinned people in general, including black people.[13]E.A.J. Honigmann, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concludes that Othello's race is ambiguous. Various uses of the word 'black' (for example, "Haply for I am black") are insufficient evidence, Honigmann argues, since 'black' could simply mean 'swarthy' to Elizabethans.[14] Moreover, Iago twice uses the word 'Barbary' or 'Barbarian' to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by the "tawny" Moors. Roderigo calls Othello 'the thicklips', which seems to refer to European conceptions of Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, arguing that because these comments are all insults, they need not be taken literally.[15]

Furthermore, Honigmann wonders whether the ambassador of the Arab King of Barbary, who stayed with his retinue in London in 1600 for several months and occasioned much discussion, might have inspired Shakespeare's play, written only a few years afterwards.[16]However, Michael Neill, editor of the Oxford Shakespeare edition, disagrees, arguing that the earliest external references to Othello's colour (Thomas Rymer's 1693 critique of the play, and the 1709 engraving in Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare) assume him to be a black man, while the earliest known North African interpretation was Edmund Kean's production of 1814.[17] Modern-day readers and theatre directors now normally lean towards the "black" interpretation, and North African Othellos are rare.[18]Iago / OthelloAlthough eponymously titled, suggesting that the tragedy belongs primarily to Othello, Iago plays an important role in the plot and with that has more lines than the title character.

In Othello, it is Iago who manipulates all other characters at will, controlling their movements and trapping them in an intricate net of lies. He achieves this by getting close to all characters and playing on their weaknesses while they refer to him as "honest" Iago, thus furthering his control over the characters . A. C. Bradley — and more recently Harold Bloom — have been major advocates of this interpretation.[19]Other critics, most notably in the later twentieth century (after F. R. Leavis), have focused on Othello. Apart from the common question of jealousy, some argue that his honour is his undoing, while others address the hints of instability in his person (in Act IV Scene I, for example, he falls 'into a trance').

Critical analysis

There have been many differing views on the character of Othello over the years. They span from describing Othello as a hero to describing him as an egotistical fool. A.C Bradley calls Othello the "most romantic of all of Shakespeare's heroes" and "the greatest poet of them all". On the other hand, F.R. Leavis describes Othello as "egotistical". There are those who also take a less critical approach to the character of Othello such as William Hazlitt, who makes a statement that would now be regarded as racist, saying that "the nature of the Moor is noble...but his blood is of the most inflameable kind".

Performance history

Othello possesses an unusually detailed performance record. The first certainly-known performance occurred on November 1, 1604, at Whitehall Palace in London, being mentioned in a Revels account on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar", 1604, when "the Kings Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinge house at Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis." The play is there attributed to "Shaxberd".[20]Subsequent performances took place on Monday, April 30, 1610 at the Globe Theatre, and at Oxford in September 1610.[21] On November 22, 1629, and on May 6, 1635, it played at the Blackfriars Theatre. Othello was also one of the twenty plays performed by the King's Men during the winter of 1612–13, in celebration of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine.

At the start of the Restoration era, on October 11, 1660, Samuel Pepys saw the play at the Cockpit Theatre. Nicholas Burt played the lead, withCharles Hart as Cassio; Walter Clun won fame for his Iago. Soon after, on December 8, 1660, Thomas Killigrew's new King's Company acted the play at their Vere Street theatre, with Margaret Hughes as Desdemona — probably the first time a professional actress appeared on a public stage in England.It may be one index of the play's power that Othello was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was never adapted and changed during the Restoration and the eighteenth century.[22] Famous nineteenth century Othellos included Edmund Kean, Edwin Forrest, Ira Aldridge, and Tommaso Salvini, and outstanding Iagos were Edwin Booth and Henry Irving.The play has maintained its popularity into the 21st century.

The most famous American production may be Margaret Webster's 1943 staging starringPaul Robeson as Othello and Jose Ferrer as Iago. This production was the first ever in the United States of America to feature a black actor playing Othello with an otherwise all-white cast (there had been all-black productions of the play before). It ran for 296 performances, almost twice as long as any other Shakespearean play ever produced on Broadway. Although it was never filmed, it was the first nearly complete performance of a Shakespeare play released on records. Robeson had first played the role in London in 1931 opposite a cast that included Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona and Ralph Richardson as Roderigo, and would return to it in 1959 at Stratford on Avon.

The American actor William Marshall performed the title role in at least six productions. His Othello was called byHarold Hobson of the London Sunday Times "the best Othello of our time,"[23] continuing:"...nobler than [Godfrey] Tearle, more martial than [John] Gielgud, more poetic than [Frederick] Valk. From his first entry, slender and magnificently tall, framed in a high Byzantine arch, clad in white samite, mystic, wonderful, a figure of Arabian romance and grace, to his last plunging of the knife into his stomach, Mr Marshall rode without faltering the play's enormous rhetoric, and at the end the house rose to him."[24]Marshall also played Othello in a jazz musical version, Catch My Soul, with Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago, in Los Angeles in 1968.[25] His Othello was captured on record in 1964 with Jay Robinson as Iago and on video in 1981 with Ron Moody as Iago.

Another famous production was the 1982 Broadway staging with James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer as Iago, who became the only actor to receive a Tony Award nomination for a performance in the play.When Laurence Olivier played his legendary and wildly acclaimed performance of Othello at the Royal National Theatre in 1964, he had developed a case of stage fright that was so profound that when he was alone onstage, Frank Finlay (who was playing Iago) would have to stand offstage where Olivier could see him to settle his nerves.[26] This performance was recorded complete on LP, and filmed by popular demand in 1965 (according to a biography of Olivier, tickets for the stage production were notoriously hard to get). The film version still holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for acting ever given to a Shakespeare film - Olivier, Finlay, Maggie Smith (as Desdemona) and Joyce Redman (as Emilia, Iago's wife) were all nominated for Academy Awards. Olivier was among the last white actors to be greatly acclaimed as Othello, although the role continued to be played by such performers as Paul Scofield at the Royal National Theatre in 1980, Anthony Hopkins in the BBC Shakespeare television production on videotape. (1981), and Michael Gambon in a stage production at Scarborough directed by Alan Ayckbourn in 1990.When Patrick Stewart played Othello at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., he portrayed the Moor as a white man with the other characters played by black actors.

Actors have alternated the roles of Iago and Othello in productions to stir audience interest since the nineteenth century. Two of the most notable examples of this role swap were William Charles Macready and Samuel Phelps at Drury Lane (1837) and Richard Burton and John Neville at the Old Vic Theatre (1955). When Edwin Booth's tour of England in 1880 was not well attended, Henry Irving invited Booth to alternate the roles of Othello and Iago with him in London. The stunt renewed interest in Booth's tour. James O'Neill also alternated the roles of Othello and Iago with Booth, with the latter's complimentary appreciation of O'Neill's interpretation of the Moor being immortalized in O'Neill's son Eugene's play Long Day's Journey Into Night.Othello opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London on 4 December 2007, directed by Michael Grandage, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello, Ewan McGregor as Iago and Kelly Reilly as Desdemona. Despite tickets selling as high as £2000 on web-based vendors, only Ejiofor was praised by critics, winning the Laurence Olivier Award for his performance; with McGregor and Reilly's performances receiving largely negative notices.Lenny Henry, the stand up comedian, has been the latest big name to play Othello. He did so on a tour at the start of 2009 produced by Northern Broadsides in collaboration with West Yorkshire Playhouse.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare. It was suggested by "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke of Athens, Theseus, the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.

Sources

It is not known exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but, on the basis of topical references and an allusion toSpenser's Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1594 or 1596. Some have theorised that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (numerous such weddings took place in 1596), while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John. No concrete evidence exists to support either theory. In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe in London.Some features of the plot and characters can be traced to elements of earlier mythologically based literature; for example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is told in Ovid's Metamorphosesand the transformation of Bottom into an ass is descended from Apuleius' The Golden Ass. Lysander was also an ancient Greek warlord while Theseus and Hippolyta were respectively the Duke of Athens and Queen of the Amazons. In addition, Shakespeare could have been working on Romeo and Juliet at about the same time that he wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is possible to see Pyramus and Thisbe as a comic reworking of the tragic play. A further, seldom noted source is The Knight's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.[1] A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the few plays in Shakespeare's canon, along with The Tempest and Love's Labor's Lost, for which there is no known source for the main plot.[2]

Date and text

The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 8 October 1600 by the bookseller Thomas Fisher, who published the first quarto edition later that year. A second quarto was printed in 1619 by William Jaggard, as part of his so-called False Folio. The play next appeared in print in the First Folio of 1623. The title page of Q1 states that the play was "sundry times publickely acted" prior to 1600. The first performance known with certainty occurred at Court on January 1, 1605.

Synopsis

isThe play features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian queen, Hippolyta, and set simultaneously in the woodland, and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon.[3]In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to follow her father Egeus's instructions for her to marry his chosen man, Demetrius. In response, Egeus quotes before Theseus an ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus does not want this young girl to die, and offers her another choice, lifelong chastity worshipping the goddess Diana as a nun. (The word 'nun' in this sense is an anachronism.)Hermia and her lover Lysander decide to elope by escaping through the forest at night. Hermia informs her friend Helena, but Helena has recently been rejected by Demetrius and decides to win back his favour by revealing the plan to him. Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia. Hermia and Lysander, believing themselves safely out of reach, sleep in the woods.

Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen, Titania, were in the forest outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until after she has attended Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his "knight" or "henchman," since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience. So he calls for the mischievousPuck (also called Hobgoblin and Robin Goodfellow) to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness", which when applied to a person's sleeping eyelids while sleeping makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing seen upon awakening. He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower so that he can make Titania fall in love with some vile creature of the forest. Oberon streaks Titania's eyes with the juice while she is sleeping to distract her and force her to give up the page-boy.Having seen Demetrius act cruelly toward Helena, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of the elixir on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Instead, Puck accidentally puts the juice on the eyes of Lysander, who then falls in love with Helena. Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia and is enraged. When Demetrius decides to go to sleep, Oberon sends Puck to get Helena while he charms Demetrius' eyes. Due to Puck's drastic mistake of putting the juice on Lysander's eyes, both lovers now fight over Helena instead of Hermia. Helena, however, is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as neither loved her originally. The four pursue and quarrel with each other most of the night, until they become so enraged that they seek a place to duel each other to the death to settle the quarrel. Oberon orders Puck to keep the lovers from catching up with one another in the forest and to re-charm Lysander for Hermia.Meanwhile, a band of six lower-class labourers ("rude mechanicals", as they are described by Puck) have arranged to perform a crude play about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus' wedding, and venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their rehearsal. Nick Bottom, a stage-struck weaver, is spotted by Puck, who transforms his head into that of a donkey. When Bottom returns for his next lines, the other workmen take one look at him and run screaming in terror. Determined to wait for his friends, he begins to sing to himself. Titania is awakened by Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. She treats him like a nobleman and lavishes him with attention. While in this state of devotion, she encounters Oberon and casually gives him the Indian boy. Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the ass's head from Bottom. The magical enchantment is removed from Lysander but is allowed to remain on Demetrius, so that he may reciprocate Helena's love.The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an early morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius doesn't love Hermia anymore, Theseus over-rules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they all exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man." In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six workmen perform Pyramus and Thisbe. It is ridiculous and badly performed but gives everyone pleasure regardless, and afterward everyone retires to bed. Afterwards, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune.

Characters

• The supernatural characters:
  • Oberon, King of Fairies
  • Titania, Queen of Fairies
  • Puck, a.k.a. Hobgoblin or Robin Goodfellow, servant to Oberon
  • Titania's fairy servants (her "train"):
    • First Fairy
    • Peaseblossom, fairy
    • Cobweb, fairy
    • Moth (sometimes rendered as 'Mote'), fairy
    • Mustardseed, fairy

Hermia and Helena by Washington Allston, 1818

• The men and women in the play of high social class:
  • Lysander, beloved of Hermia
  • Hermia, beloved of Lysander
  • Helena, in love with Demetrius
  • Demetrius, in love with Hermia but then falls in love with Helena later on.
  • Egeus, father of Hermia, wants to force Hermia to get married to Demetrius
  • Theseus, Duke of Athens, good friend of Egeus
  • Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus
• The lower-class citizens in the play:
  • Philostrate, Master of the Revels for Theseus
  • The acting troupe (otherwise known as The Mechanicals):
    • Peter Quince, carpenter, who leads the troupe
    • Nick Bottom, weaver; he plays Pyramus in the troupe's production of "Pyramus and Thisbe," and gets a donkey head put on him by Puck so that Titania will magically fall in love with a monster.
    • Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who plays Thisbe.
    • Robin Starveling, the tailor who plays Moonshine.
    • Tom Snout, the tinker who plays the wall.
    • Snug, the joiner who plays the lion.

Analysis and criticism

Themes

Love: 

Writer David Bevington finds in the play what he refers to as the dark side of love. He writes that the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers and by applying a love potion to Titania’s eyes, forcing her to fall in love with Bottom as an ass.[4] In the forest, both couples are met by problems and assume that a partner is dead at some point. Hermia and Lysander are both met by Puck, who provides some comedic relief in the play by confusing the four lovers in the forest. Despite the darkness and difficulty that obstructs the love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is still a comedy as Benedetto Croce indicates. He writes, “love is sincere, yet deceives and is deceived; it imagines itself to be firm and constant, and turns out to be fragile and fleeting”.[5] This passage, like the play juxtaposes one idea next to another. The play is a comedy, yet it harbors serious ideas. At the end of the play, Hermia and Lysander, happily married, watch the play about the unfortunate lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, and are able to enjoy and laugh about the play, not realizing the similarities between them. Although their story is very similar to that of Pyramus and Thisbe, it does not end in tragic death.[6] Hermia and Lysander are both oblivious to the dark side of their love. They are not aware of the possible outcome that could have taken place at the forest.

Loss of individual identity

Maurice Hunt, Chair of the English Department at Baylor University, writes of the blurring of the identities of fantasy and reality in the play that make possible “that pleasing, narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play”.[7] By emphasizing this theme even in the setting of the play, Shakespeare prepares the reader’s mind to accept the fantastic reality of the fairy world and its magical happenings. This also seems to be the axis around which the plot conflicts in the play occur. Hunt suggests that it is the breaking down of individual identities that leads to the central conflict in the story.[7] It is the brawl between Oberon and Titania, based on a lack of recognition for the other in the relationship, that drives the rest of the drama in the story and makes it dangerous for any of the other lovers to come together due to the disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy dispute.

Similarly, this failure to identify and make distinction is what leads Puck to mistake one set of lovers for another in the forest and place the juice of the flower on Lysander’s eyes instead of Demetrius’. Victor Kiernan, a Marxist scholar and historian, writes that it is for the greater sake of love that this loss of identity takes place and that individual characters are made to suffer accordingly: “It was the more extravagant cult of love that struck sensible people as irrational, and likely to have dubious effects on its acolytes”.[8] He believes that identities in the play are not so much lost as they are blended together to create a type of haze through which distinction becomes nearly impossible. It is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between characters as a means of coping with the strange world within the forest, even in relationships as diverse and seemingly unrealistic as the brief love between Titania and Bottom the Ass: “It was the tidal force of this social need that lent energy to relationships”.

David Marshall, an aesthetics scholar and English Professor at the University of California - Santa Barbara, takes this theme to an even further conclusion, pointing out that the loss of identity is especially played out in the description of the mechanicals their assumption of other identities. In describing the occupations of the acting troupe, he writes “Two construct or put together, two mend and repair, one weaves and one sews. All join together what is apart or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered”. In Marshall’s opinion, this loss of individual identity not only blurs specificities, it creates new identities found in community, which Marshall points out may lead to some understanding of Shakespeare’s opinions on love and marriage.

Further, the mechanicals understand this theme as they take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Marshall remarks that “To be an actor is to double and divide oneself, to discover oneself in two parts: both oneself and not oneself, both the part and not the part”. He claims that the mechanicals understand this and that each character, particularly among the lovers, has a sense of laying down individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing. It seems that a desire to lose one’s individuality and find identity in the love of another is what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is the primary sense of motivation and is even reflected in the scenery and mood of the story.

Ambiguous sexuality

In his essay "Preposterous Pleasures, Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's Dream", Douglas E. Green explores possible interpretations of alternative sexuality that he finds within the text of the play, in juxtaposition to the proscribed social mores of the culture at the time the play was written. He writes that his essay "does not (seek to) rewrite A Midsummer Night's Dream as a gay play but rather explores some of its 'homoerotic significations'...moments of 'queer' disruption and eruption in this Shakespearean comedy."[10] Green states that he does not consider Shakspeare to have been a "sexual radical", but that the play represented a "topsy-turvy world" or "temporary holiday" that mediates or negotiates the "discontents of civilization", which while resolved neatly in the story's conclusion, do not resolve so neatly in real life.[11] Green writes that the "sodomitical elements", "homoeroticism", "lesbianism", and even "compulsory heterosexuality" in the story must be considered in the context of the "culture of early modern England" as a commentary on the "aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political ideologies of the prevailing order." Aspects of ambiguous sexuality and gender conflict in the story are also addressed in essays by Shirley Garner[12] and William W.E. Slights.

Other interpretations

Feminist

Male dominance is one thematic element found in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's comedies often include a section in which females enjoy more power and freedom than they actually possess. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena and Hermia escape into the woods for a night where they do not fall under the laws of Theseus or Egeus. Upon their arrival in Athens, the couples are married. Marriage is seen as the ultimate social achievement for women while men can go on to do many other great things and gain societal recognition.[14] In his article, "The Imperial Votaress," Louis Montrose draws attention to male and female gender roles and norms present in the comedy in connection with Elizabethan culture. In reference to the triple wedding, he says, "The festive conclusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream depends upon the success of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested in Amazon warriors, possessive mothers, unruly wives, and willful daughters are brought under the control of lords and husbands."[15] He says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a woman changes hands from father to husband. A connection between flowers and sexuality is drawn. The juice employed by Oberon can be seen as symbolizing menstrual blood as well as the sexual blood shed by virgins. While blood as a result of menstruation is representative of a woman's power, blood as a result of a first sexual encounter represents man's power over women.[16]There are points in the play, however, when there is an absence of patriarchal control. In his book, Power on Display, Leonard Tennenhouse says the problem in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the problem of "authority gone archaic."[17] The Athenian law requiring a daughter to die if she does not do her father's will is outdated. Tennenhouse contrasts the patriarchal rule of Theseus in Athens with that of Oberon in the carnivalistic Faerie world. The disorder in the land of the faeries completely opposes the world of Athens. He states that during times of carnival and festival, male power is broken down. For example, what happens to the four lovers in the woods as well as Bottom's dream represents chaos that contrasts with Theseus' political order. However, Theseus does not punish the lovers for their disobedience. According to Tennenhouse, by forgiving of the lovers, he has made a distinction between the law of the patriarch (Egeus) and that of the monarch (Theseus), creating two different voices of authority. This distinction can be compared to the time of Elizabeth I in which monarchs were seen as having two bodies: the body natural and the body mystical. Elizabeth's succession itself represented both the voice of a patriarch as well as the voice of a monarch: (1) her father's will which stated that the crown should pass to her and (2) the fact that she was the daughter of a king.[18] The challenge to patriarchal rule in A Midsummer Night's Dream mirrors exactly what was occurring in the age of Elizabeth I.

Production

During the years of the Puritan Interregnum when the theatres were closed (1642-1660), the comic subplot of Bottom and his compatriots was performed as a "droll." Drolls were comical playlets, often adapted from the subplots of Shakespearean and other plays, that could be attached to the acts of acrobats and jugglers and other allowed performances, thus circumventing the ban against drama.When the theatres re-opened in 1660, A Midsummer Night's Dream was acted in adapted form, like many other Shakespearean plays. Samuel Pepys saw it on Sept. 29, 1662, and thought it "the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw...."[19]After the Jacobean/Caroline era, A Midsummer Night's Dream was never performed in its entirety until the 1840s. Instead, it was heavily adapted in forms like Henry Purcell's musical masque/play The Fairy Queen (1692), which was not revived after its initial performance at the Dorset Garden Theatre. Richard Leveridge turned the Pyramus and Thisbe scenes into an Italian opera burlesque, acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1716. John Frederick Lampe elaborated upon Leveridge's version in 1745. Charles Johnson had used the Pyramus and Thisbe material in the finale of Love in a Forest, his 1723 adaptation of As You Like It. In 1755, David Garrick did the opposite of what had been done a century earlier: he extracted Bottom and his companions and acted the rest, in an adaptation called The Fairies. Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1816.

The Victorian stage

Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008)In 1840, Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, but padded it out greatly with musical sequences and balletic dances. Vestris took the role of Oberon, and for the next seventy years, Oberon and Puck would always be played by women. After the success of Vestris' production, nineteenth century theatre continued to treat the Dream as an opportunity for huge spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred. Huge, detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest, and the fairies tended to be envisaged as gossamer-winged ballerinas. The much-loved overture by Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period, with the text often being cut to provide greater space for music and dance. Augustin Daly's production opened in 1895 in London and ran for 21 performances. The special effects were constructed by the famous Martinka Magic Company, which was later owned by Houdini. Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged a 1911 production with live rabbits.

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–11, although some researchers have argued for an earlier dating. The play's protagonist is the banished sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, who uses his magical powers to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore. The entire play takes place on an island under his control whose native inhabitants, Ariel and Caliban, respectively aid or hinder his work. While listed as a comedy when it was initially published in the First Folio of 1623, many modern editors have since re-labeled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances.No obvious single source has been found from which Shakespeare may have derived his plot. However, the play does seem to draw on several then-contemporary accounts of shipwrecks in the New World, as well as the works of Montaigneand Ovid's Metamorphoses. The play's basic structure reflects that of the then-popular Italian commedia dell'arte. It is one of two Shakespearean plays which follow the neoclassical three unities (the other is The Comedy of Errors). Around the 1950s and 60s, The Tempest attracted a lot of attention from post-colonial critics for its portrayal of Ariel's and Caliban's reactions to foreign control of their island.It did not attract a significant amount of attention before the closing of the theatres in 1642, and after the Restoration it attained popularity only in adapted versions.[3] Theatre productions began to reinstate the original Shakespearean text in the mid-19th century,[4] and, in the 20th century, critics and scholars undertook a significant re-appraisal of the play's value, to the extent that it is now considered to be one of Shakespeare's greatest works.

Characters

Prospero is the usurped Duke of Milan and the play's protagonist

Miranda is Prospero's daughterAriel is an airy spirit

Caliban is Sycorax's son, who has been enslaved by Prospero

Alonso is the King of Naples

Sebastian is Alonso's brother

Antonio, the usurping Duke of Milan, is Prospero's brother

Ferdinand is Alonso's son

Gonzalo is a counsellor who gave aid to Prospero and Miranda before they were cast off

Adrian and Francisco are lords

Trinculo is a jester

Stephano is a drunken butler

Boatswain

Master of the shipIris, Ceres and Juno are spirits

Synopsis

The magician Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded for twelve years on an island after Prospero's jealous brother Antonio — helped by Alonso, the King of Naples — deposed him and set him adrift with the then three-year-old Miranda. Gonzalo, the King's counsellor, had secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the most-prized books from Prospero's library. Possessed of magic powers due to his great learning, Prospero is reluctantly served by a spirit, Ariel, whom Prospero had rescued from a tree in which he had been trapped by the Algerian witch Sycorax. Prospero maintains Ariel's loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the "airy spirit" from servitude. Sycorax had been banished to this island, and had died before Prospero's arrival. Her son, Caliban, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion and their own language. Following Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by Prospero to serve as the sorcerer's slave, carrying wood and gathering berries and "pig nuts" (acorns). 

In slavery, Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his daughter. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with contempt and disgust.The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother, Antonio, is on a ship passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Antonio's friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso of Naples, Alonso's brother and son (Sebastian and Ferdinand), and Alonso's advisor, Gonzalo. All these passengers are returning from the wedding of Alonso's daughter Claribel with the King of Tunis. Prospero, by his spells, contrives to separate the survivors of the wreck into several groups. Alonso and Ferdinand are separated and believe one another to be dead.

Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with Stephano and Trinculo, two drunkards, whom he believes to have come from the moon. They attempt to raise a rebellion against Prospero, which ultimately fails. In another, Prospero works to establish a romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda; the two fall immediately in love, but Prospero worries that "too light winning [may] make the prize light", and compels Ferdinand to become his servant, pretending that he regards him as a spy. In the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and Gonzalo so that Sebastian can become King. They are thwarted by Ariel, at Prospero's command. Ariel appears to the "three men of sin" (Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian) as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Prospero manipulates the course of his enemies' path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him.In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Prospero, who forgives Alonso. He also forgives Antonio and Sebastian, but warns them against further betrayal. Ariel is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Alonso and his entourage (including Prospero himself and Miranda) back to the Royal fleet and then to Naples, where Ferdinand and Miranda will be married. After discharging this task, Ariel will finally be free. Prospero pardons Caliban, who is sent to prepare Prospero’s cell, to which Alonso and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Prospero indicates that he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. Prospero has resolved to break and bury his staff, and "drown" his book of magic, and in his epilogue, shorn of his magic powers, he invites the audience to set him free from the island with their applause.

SOURCES

There is no obvious single source for the plot of The Tempest; it seems to have been created out of an amalgamation of sources.[5] Since source scholarship began in the 18th century, researchers have suggested that passages from Erasmus's Naufragium (The Shipwreck, published in 1523 and translated into English in 1606) and Richard Eden's 1555 translation of Peter Martyr's De orbo novo (or Decades of the New Worlde Or West India, 1530) influenced the composition of the play.[6] In addition, many scholars see parallel imagery in a work by William Strachey, an eyewitness report of the real-life shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda while sailing toward Virginia; a character in the play makes reference to the "still-vexed Bermoothes." Strachey's report was written in 1610; although it was not printed until 1625, it circulated in manuscript and many critics think that Shakespeare may have taken the idea of the shipwreck and some images from it. Another Sea Venture survivor, Sylvester Jordain, also published an account, A Discovery of The Barmudas, so the event would have been widely known. Kenneth Muir warns that even though "[t]here is little doubt that Shakespeare had read ... 

William Strachey's True Reportory of the Wracke" and other accounts, "[t]he extent of the verbal echoes of [the Bermuda] pamphlets has, I think, been exaggerated. There is hardly a shipwreck in history or fiction which does not mention splitting, in which the ship is not lightened of its cargo, in which the passengers do not give themselves up for lost, in which north winds are not sharp, and in which no one gets to shore by clinging to wreckage," and goes on to say that "Strachey's account of the shipwreck is blended with memories of St Paul's – in which too not a hair perished – and with Erasmus' colloquy."[7] Along these lines, as a possible source for the play, modern researchers have recently added Ariosto's 1516Orlando Furioso, which contains many of the storm references also found in Naufragium.[8]The Tempest may take its overall structure from traditional Italian commedia dell'arte, which sometimes featured a magus and his daughter, their supernatural attendants, and a number of rustics. The commedia often featured a clown known as Arlecchino (or his predecessor, Zanni) and his partnerBrighella, who bear a striking resemblance to Stephano and Trinculo; a lecherous Neapolitan hunchback named Pulcinella, who corresponds to Caliban; and the clever and beautiful Isabella, whose wealthy and manipulative father, Pantalone, constantly seeks a suitor for her, thus mirroring the relationship between Miranda and Prospero.[9]One of Gonzalo's speeches is derived from Montaigne's essay Of the Canibales, which John Florio translated into English in 1603, that praises the society of the Caribbean natives:It is a nation . . . that hath no kinde of traffike, no knowledge of Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike superioritie; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no occupation but idle; no respect of kinred, but common, no apparrell but naturall, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corne, or mettle. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousnes, envie, detraction, and pardon, were never heard of amongst them.[10]In addition, much of Prospero's renunciative speech[11] is taken word for word from a speech by Medea in Ovid's poem Metamorphoses.[12]

Date and text

The Tempest is believed to have been written in 1610–11, and is generally accepted as the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone, although some researchers have questioned both assertions.[13] Scholars also note that it is impossible to determine if the play was written before, after, or at the same time as The Winter's Tale, whose dating has been equally problematic.[14] Edward Blount entered The Tempest into the Stationers' Register on 8 November 1623. It was one of 16 Shakespearean plays that Blount registered on that date.Edmond Malone placed the emphasis for the 1610-11 date on the account by Silvester Jourdain — A Discovery of the Bermudas (13 October 1610) — and the Virginia Council of London's A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia (8 November 1610), whereas E.K. Chambers identified William Strachey's A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight as Shakespeare's "main authority" for The Tempest.[15]Some scholars have challenged the 1610–11 dating of the play, discounting the likelihood of Strachey's narrative as a source and proposing other, earlier, source material. This idea may be traced to the 19th century scholars Joseph Hunter and Karl Elze and has recently been supported by researchers Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky.[16] Alden T. Vaughan, however, challenges the conclusions of Kositsky and Stritmatter in his 2008 paper "A Closer Look at the Evidence".[17]The Tempest presents relatively few textual problems in comparison with many of Shakespeare's other plays. The text as we have it has a simple history: it was first published in the First Folio in December 1623. In that volume, The Tempest is the first play in the section of Comedies, and therefore the opening play of the collection. This printing includes more stage directions than any of Shakespeare's other plays, although these directions seem to have been written more for a reader than for an actor. This leads scholars to infer that the editors of the First Folio, John Heminges and Henry Condell, added the directions to the folio to aid the reader, and that they were not necessarily what Shakespeare originally intended. Scholars have also wondered about the masque in act 4, which seems to have been added as an afterthought, possibly in honor of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth andFrederick V in 1613. However, other scholars see this as unlikely, arguing that to take the masque out of the play creates more problems than it solves.[18]

Themes and motifs

"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-capped 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. ..."—Prospero

The theatre

The Tempest is explicitly concerned with its own nature as a play, frequently drawing links between Prospero's Art and theatrical illusion; the shipwreck was a spectacle that Ariel performed, while Antonio and Sebastian are cast in a troop to act.[20] Prospero may even refer to theGlobe Theatre when he describes the whole world as an illusion: "the great globe ... shall dissolve ... like this insubstantial pageant".[21] Ariel frequently disguises himself as figures from Classical mythology, for example a nymph, a harpy and Ceres, acting as the latter in a masqueand anti-masque that Prospero creates.[22]Early critics, such as Thomas Campbell in 1838, saw this constant allusion to the theatre as an indication that Prospero was meant to represent Shakespeare; the character's renunciation of magic thus signalling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage. This theory persists among later critics, and remains solidly within the critical canon.[23]

Magic

Magic was a controversial subject in Shakespeare's day. In Italy in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his occult studies. Outside the Catholic world, in Protestant England, where Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, magic was also taboo; not all "magic", however, was considered evil.[24] Several thinkers took a more rational approach to the study of the supernatural, with the determination to discover the workings of unusual phenomena. The German Henricus Cornelius Agrippa was one such thinker, who published in De Occulta Philosophiahis observations of "divine" magic. Agrippa's work influenced Dr. John Dee, an Englishman and student of supernatural phenomena. Both Agrippa and Dee describe a kind of magic similar to Prospero's: one that is based on 16th-century science, rationality, and divinity, rather than the occult. When King James took the throne, Dee found himself under attack for his beliefs, but was able to defend himself successfully by explaining the divine nature of his profession. However, he died in disgrace in 1608.[25]Shakespeare is also careful to make the distinction that Prospero is a rational, and not an occultist, magician. He does this by providing a contrast to him in Sycorax. Sycorax is said to have worshiped the devil and been full of "earthy and abhored commands". She was unable to control Ariel, who was "too delicate" for such dark tasks. Prospero's rational goodness enables him to control Ariel where Sycorax can only trap him in a tree. Sycorax's magic is frequently described as destructive and terrible, where Prospero's is said to be wondrous and beautiful. Prospero seeks to set things right in his world through his magic, and once that is done, he renounces it, setting Ariel free.[25][edit]Criticism and interpretation

Genre

The story draws heavily on the tradition of the romance, a fictitious narrative set far away from ordinary life. Romances were typically based around themes such as the supernatural, wandering, exploration and discovery. They were often set in coastal regions, and typically featured exotic, fantastical locations and themes of transgression and redemption, loss and retrieval, exile and reunion. As a result, while The Tempest was originally listed as a comedy in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, subsequent editors have chosen to give it the more specific label of Shakespearean romance. Like the other romances, the play was influenced by the then-new genre of tragicomedy, introduced by John Fletcher in the first decade of the seventeenth century and developed in the Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations, as well as by the explosion of development of the courtly masque form by such as Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones at the same time.

Dramatic structure

The Tempest differs from Shakespeare's other plays in its observation of a stricter, more organised neoclassical style. The clearest indication of this is Shakespeare's respect for the three unities in the play: the Unities of Time, Place, and Action. Shakespeare's other plays rarely respected the three unities, taking place in separate locations miles apart and over several days or even years.[27] The play's events unfold in real time before the audience, Prospero even declaring at the end of the play that everything has happened in mere hours.[citation needed] All action is unified into one basic plot: Prospero's struggle to regain his dukedom; it is also confined to one place, a fictional island, which many scholars agree is meant to be located in the Mediterranean Sea.[28] (Another reading suggests that it takes place in the New World, as some parts read like records of English and Spanish conquest in the Americas.[29] Still others argue that the Island can represent any land that has been colonised.)

Postcolonialist

In Shakespeare's day, most of the planet was still being "discovered", and stories were coming back from distant islands, with myths about the Cannibals of the Caribbean, faraway Edens, and distant tropical Utopias. With the character Caliban (whose name is roughly anagrammatic toCannibal), Shakespeare may be offering an in-depth discussion into the morality of colonialism. Different views of this are found in the play, with examples including Gonzalo's Utopia, Prospero's enslavement of Caliban, and Caliban's subsequent resentment. Caliban is also shown as one of the most natural characters in the play, being very much in touch with the natural world (and modern audiences have come to view him as far nobler than his two Old World friends, Stephano and Trinculo, although the original intent of the author may have been different). There is evidence that Shakespeare drew on Montaigne's essay Of Cannibals — which discusses the values of societies insulated from European influences — while writing The Tempest.[31]Beginning in about 1950, with the publication of Psychology of Colonization by Octave Mannoni, The Tempest was viewed more and more through the lens of postcolonial theory. This new way of looking at the text explored the effect of the coloniser (Prospero) on the colonised (Ariel and Caliban). Though Ariel is often overlooked in these debates in favor of the more intriguing Caliban, he is nonetheless an essential component of them.[32] The French writer Aimé Césaire, in his play Une Tempête sets The Tempest in Haiti, portraying Ariel as a mulatto who, unlike the more rebellious Caliban, feels that negotiation and partnership is the way to freedom from the colonisers. Fernandez Retamar sets his version of the play in Cuba, and portrays Ariel as a wealthy Cuban (in comparison to the lower-class Caliban) who also must choose between rebellion or negotiation.[33] Although scholars have suggested that his dialogue with Caliban in Act two, Scene one, contains hints of a future alliance between the two when Prospero leaves, Ariel is generally viewed by scholars as the good servant, in comparison with the conniving Caliban — a view which Shakespeare's audience may well have shared.[34] Ariel is used by some postcolonial writers as a symbol of their efforts to overcome the effects of colonisation on their culture. Michelle Cliff, for example, a Jamaican author, has said that she tries to combine Caliban and Ariel within herself to create a way of writing that represents her culture better. Such use of Ariel in postcolonial thought is far from uncommon; the spirit is even the namesake of a scholarly journal covering post-colonial criticism.

Feminist

The Tempest has only one female character, Miranda. Other women, such as Caliban's mother Sycorax, Miranda's mother and Alonso's daughter Claribel, are only mentioned. Because of the small role women play in the story in comparison to other Shakespeare plays, The Tempest has not attracted much feminist criticism. Miranda is typically viewed as being completely deprived of freedom by her father. Her only duty in his eyes is to remain chaste. Ann Thompson argues that Miranda, in a manner typical of women in a colonial atmosphere, has completely internalised the patriarchal order of things, thinking of herself as subordinate to her father.[35]The less-prominent women mentioned in the play are subordinated as well, as they are only described through the men of the play. Most of what is said about Sycorax, for example, is said by Prospero. Further, Stephen Orgel notes that Prospero has never met Sycorax—all he learned about her he learned from Ariel. According to Orgel, Prospero's suspicion of women makes him an unreliable source of information. Orgel suggests that he is skeptical of female virtue in general, citing his ambiguous remark about his wife's fidelity.[36]

Production

                                                                                   ........*........ In the 

late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it became Caliban, not Prospero, who was perceived as the star act of the Tempest, and was the role which the actor-managers chose for themselves. Frank Benson researched the role by viewing monkeys and baboons at the zoo: on stage, he hung upside-down from a tree and gibbered.[52]

20th century & beyond

Continuing the late-nineteenth-century tradition, in 1904 Herbert Beerbohm Tree wore fur and seaweed to play Caliban, with waist-length hair and apelike bearing, suggestive of a primitive part-animal part-human stage of evolution.[52] This "missing-link" portrayal of Caliban became the norm in productions until Roger Livesey, in 1934, was the first actor to play the role with black makeup. In 1945 Canada Lee played the role at the Theatre Guild in New York, establishing a tradition of black actors taking the role, including Earle Hyman in 1960 and James Earl Jones in 1962.[53]In 1916, Percy MacKaye presented a community masque, Caliban by the Yellow Sands, at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York. Amidst a huge cast of dancers and masquers, the pageant centers on the rebellious nature of Caliban but ends with his plea for more knowledge ("I yearn to build, to be thine Artist / And 'stablish this thine Earth among the stars- / Beautiful!") followed by Shakespeare, as a character, reciting Prospero's "Our revels now are ended" speech.[54]John Gielgud played Prospero numerous times, and called it his favorite role.[55] Douglas Brode describes him as "universally heralded as... [the 20th] century's greatest stage Prospero".[56] His first appearance in the role was in 1930: he wore a turban, later confessing that he intended to look like Dante.[53] He played the role in three more stage productions, lastly at the Royal National Theatre in 1974.[57]Peter Brook directed an experimental production at the Round House in 1968, in which the text was "almost wholly abandoned" in favour of mime. According to Margaret Croydon's review, Sycorax was "portrayed by an enormous woman able to expand her face and body to still larger proportions - a fantastic emblem of the grotesque ... [who] suddenly ... gives a horrendous yell, and Caliban, with black sweater over his head, emerges from between her legs: Evil is born."[58]In spite of the existing tradition of a black actor playing Caliban opposite a white Prospero, colonial interpretations of the play did not find their way onto the stage until the 1970s.

Performances in England directed by Jonathan Miller and by Clifford Williams explicitly portrayed Prospero as coloniser. Miller's production was described, by David Hirst, as depicting "the tragic and inevitable disintegration of a more primitive culture as the result of European invasion and colonisation."[60] Miller developed this approach in his 1988 production at the Old Vic in London, starring Max von Sydow as Prospero. This used a mixed cast made up of white actors as the humans and black actors playing the spirits and creatures of the island. According toMichael Billington, "von Sydow's Prospero became a white overlord manipulating a mutinous black Caliban and a collaborative Ariel keenly mimicking the gestures of the island's invaders. The colonial metaphor was pushed through to its logical conclusion so that finally Ariel gathered up the pieces of Prospero's abandoned staff and, watched by awe-struck tribesmen, fitted them back together to hold his wand of office aloft before an immobilised Caliban. The Tempest suddenly acquired a new political dimension unforeseen by Shakespeare."

Psychoanalytic interpretations have proved more difficult to depict on stage. Gerald Freedman's production at the American Shakespeare Theatre in 1979 and Ron Daniels' Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1982 both attempted to depict Ariel and Caliban as opposing aspects of Prospero's psyche. However neither was regarded as wholly successful:Shakespeare Quarterly, reviewing Freedman's production, commented that "Mr. Freedman did nothing on stage to make such a notion clear to any audience that had not heard of it before."[63]In 1988, John Wood played Prospero for the RSC, emphasising the character's human complexity. The Financial Times reviewer described him as "a demented stage manager on a theatrical island suspended between smouldering rage at his usurpation and unbridled glee at his alternative ethereal power".

Japanese theatre styles have been applied to The Tempest. In 1988 and again in 1992 Yukio Ninagawa brought his version of The Tempest to the UK. It was staged as a rehearsal of a Nohdrama, with a traditional Noh theatre at the back of the stage, but also using elements which were at odds with Noh conventions. In 1992, Minoru Fujita presented a Bunraku (Japanese puppet) version in Osaka and at the Tokyo Globe.[65]Sam Mendes directed a 1993 RSC production in which Simon Russell Beale's Ariel was openly resentful of the control exercised by Alec McCowen's Prospero. Controversially, in the early performances of the run, Ariel spat at Prospero, once granted his freedom.

 An entirely different effect was achieved by George C. Wolfe in the outdoor New York Shakespeare Festivalproduction of 1995, where the casting of Aunjanue Ellis as Ariel opposite Patrick Stewart's Prospero charged the production with erotic tensions. Late twentieth-century productions have gradually increased the focus placed on sexual (and sometimes homosexual) tensions between the characters, including Prospero/Miranda, Prospero/Ariel, Miranda/Caliban, Miranda/Ferdinand and even Caliban/Trinculo.[67]The Tempest was performed at the Globe Theatre in 2000 with Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero, playing the role as neither male nor female, but with "authority, humanity and humour... a watchful parent to both Miranda and Ariel."[68] While the audience respected Prospero, Jasper Britton's Caliban "was their man" (in Peter Thomson's words), in spite of the fact that he spat fish at the groundlings, and singled some of them out for humiliating encounters.[69] By the end of 2005, BBC Radio had aired over 300 Shakespeare performances in its history, and The Tempest was the most popular of them, having been produced 21 times.

Literature and art

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the earliest poets to be influenced by The Tempest. His With a Guitar, To Jane identifies Ariel with the poet and his songs with poetry. The poem uses simple diction to convey Ariel's closeness to nature and "imitates the straightforward beauty of Shakespeare's original songs."[83] Following the publication of Darwin's ideas on evolution, writers began to question mankind's place in the world and its relationship with God. One writer who explored these ideas was Robert Browning, whose poem Caliban upon Setebos (1864) sets Shakespeare's character pondering theological and philosophical questions.[84] The French philosopher Ernest Renan wrote a closet drama, Caliban: Suite de La Tempête (Caliban: Sequel to The Tempest), in 1878. This features a female Ariel who follows Prospero back to Milan, and a Caliban who leads a coup against Prospero, after the success of which he actively imitates his former master's virtues.[85] W. H. Auden's "long poem" The Sea and the Mirror takes the form of a reflection by each of the supporting characters of The Tempest on their experiences. The poem takes a Freudian viewpoint, seeing Caliban (whose lengthy contribution is a prose poem) as Prospero's libido.

Caliban influenced numerous works of African literature in the 1970s, including pieces by Taban Lo Liyong in Uganda, Lemuel Johnson in Sierra Leone, Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Kenya, and David Wallace of Zambia's Do You Love Me, Master?.[87] A similar phenomenon occurred in late 20th-century Canada, where several writers produced works inspired by Miranda, includingThe Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Prospero's Daughter by Constance Beresford-Howe and The Measure of Miranda by Sarah Murphy.[88] Other writers have feminised Ariel (as in Marina Warner's novel Indigo) or Caliban (as in Suniti Namjoshi's sequence of poems Snaphots of Caliban).

From the mid-eighteenth century, Shakespeare's plays, including The Tempest, began to appear as the subject of paintings.[90] In around 1735, William Hogarth produced his painting A Scene from The Tempest: "a baroque, sentimental fantasy costumed in the style of Van Dyck and Rembrandt".[90] The painting is based upon Shakespeare's text, containing no representation of the stage, nor of the (Davenant-Dryden centred) stage tradition of the time.[91] Henry Fuseli, in a painting commissioned for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789) modelled his Prospero on Leonardo da Vinci.[92] These two eighteenth century depictions of the play indicate that Prospero was regarded as its moral centre: viewers of Hogarth's and Fuseli's paintings would have accepted Prospero's wisdom and authority.[93] John Everett Millais's Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1851) is among the Pre-Raphaelite paintings based on the play. In the late nineteenth century, artists tended to depict Caliban as a Darwinian "missing-link", with fish-like or ape-like features, as evidenced in Noel Paton's Caliban.

Charles Knight produced the Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakespeare in eight volumes (1838–43). The work attempted to translate the contents of the plays into pictorial form. This extended not just to the action, but also to images and metaphors: Gonzalo's line about "mountaineers dewlapped like bulls" is illustrated with a picture of a Swiss peasant with a goitre.[94] In 1908, Edmund Dulac produced an edition of Shakespeare's Comedy of The Tempest with a scholarly plot summary and commentary by Arthur Quiller-Couch, lavishly bound and illustrated with 40 watercolour illustrations. The illustrations highlight the fairy-tale quality of the play, avoiding its dark side. Of the 40, only 12 are direct depictions of the action of the play: the others are based on action before the play begins, or on images such as "full fathom five thy father lies" or "sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not".

SOURCE: WIKI