Our upcoming field trip

Just a link to some information about the library:

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/about.html

Winter's Tale Bloggers: Post #1

Hi WT bloggers,

We actually don't start The Winter's Tale till after spring break, so your assigned prompt for this unit pertains to our upcoming field trip to the Clark Library.  I'd like each of you to select one eighteenth-century editor of Shakespeare and describe for your classmates who you chose (bit of biographical info), why you chose him (why he seemed more interesting to you than some other candidates), a few characteristics of his 18th-c edition of Shakespeare, and what differentiated this edition from prior or later ones.  Candidates (just to throw out a few names) could range from Rowe to Theobald to Pope to Warbuton to Steevens.  See me if you are having trouble tracking down information.

The Tempest. A Musical Dramedy...

Throughout the acts of the play there are a few instances when the certain characters break out into singing and dancing. They all vary in reasons as to why they are being done though. The first instance is in Act 2, scene 4. It is not much of a song but more of a telling of the island by the Devil himself below the stage. There are constant repetitions of the word “hell” and other words referring to suffering and gore. This is some scary S*#!.  It does continue later on at the end of the scene.

            The Next instance is what seems to be a drunken Caliban. This is one of those comedic moments in a play when no one knows what is going, but it is still pretty hilarious. 

            Act 4 scene 2          lines 45-48

            Caliban: We want musick, we want mirth,

                          Up, Dam, and cleave the Earth:

                         We have now no Lords that wrong us

                         Send thy sprights among us

            Next thing you know a bunch of spirits come out of nowhere and they seem to be having a party. It is pretty brilliant how the stooges of the island are off having an amazing time. The question can be raised as to whether or not the spirits really did exist of not, or they are all just going crazy on the “enchanted island”.    

            The very end of the play, dancers and singers all come together as if this play just became a musical. This play has such an epic ending; it had to have blown people’s minds back then. Davenant and Dryden really went all out here, because this performed in real life would be absolutely amazing. 

Who’s Running This Operation?

I must say that I thought Davenant and Dryden's The Tempest was quite a bit easier to read than Shakespeare's, but with their "clarity" I found myself asking a lot more questions about what was happening. While I grew quite frustrated with all of the communication issues in the adaptation, I decided to focus this post on the question of who is running the show.

As we discussed, in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero seems to stand in as the playwright or director, controlling the magical goings-on from behind the scenes as they would the actual play. In the adaptation, it seems much less clear who has the ultimate power and where it comes from.

The beginning shows that Prospero does indeed have some form of magical powers when Miranda asks him to stop the storm if he started it “by [his] Art” (1.2.5) and when he very clearly sends her into a charmed sleep (1.2.95-96). But a few scenes later (Act 2, Scene 4), there are Devils singing to Antonio, Alonso, and Gonzalo. Prospero didn’t mention earlier that he was sending the Devils, and Ariel is not in the scene to lead them, so where did the Devils come from? The island? Antonio and Alonso’s consciences? Or maybe some hallucination due to dehydration? In this instance, there is some indication that Prospero may have had something to do with the apparitions when he tells Ariel that “[Ariel] and [Ariel’s] meaner fellows [their] last service did worthily perform,” but the praise comes about two and half scenes after the Devil incident in which, as I said previously, Ariel does not appear, so how can the audience be sure that was the service for which he is praising Ariel (3.2.130-131)?

I think one of the more surprising contests to Prospero’s absolute power, though, is Caliban’s admission that “[his] Mother left [him and his sister] in her Will a hundred Spirits to attend [them], Devils of all sorts, some great roaring Devils, and some little singing Sprights” (4.2.39-41). In Shakespeare’s Tempest, one of the arguments for Caliban’s submission to Prospero is that, though some interpretations of Caliban may show him to be physically superior, Prospero controls the spirits that make Caliban obey. But if Caliban has some Spirits in his control, why has he been made so submissive to Prospero? Were his Spirits defeated? Are they less powerful than Prospero’s Spirits? Why has Prospero allowed Caliban to keep the Spirits, or does he even know? Also, Caliban specifically calls some of his Spirits “Devils,” so could Caliban somehow be responsible for the Devils of Act 2? Actually, Caliban’s role and entertaining host in the “lower plot” seems to foretell Prospero’s ending role as entertaining host in the “high plot,” but that puts them on more equal levels and confuses the reasons for how Prospero usurped Caliban on the Island.

The next shocking confusion of the puppet master on the Island comes after Hippolito’s apparent death. Prospero angrily asks Ariel “Why did’st thou not prevent, at least foretel, this fatal action then?” and Ariel responds that “[Ariel] was forbidden by the ill Genius of Hipplito, Who came and threaten’d…to bind me in the bottom of the Sea” (4.3.47-48, 50-53). First of all, this calls to question everything Ariel can do. Ariel’s response to Prospero’s query about foretelling makes it seem as though Ariel could see the future, it’s just that Ariel was forbidden in this one instance. But if Ariel can see the future, why was Ariel ever imprisoned by Sycorax or made a slave by Prospero? And why can’t Ariel see when Prospero will set Ariel free from obligation? However, Ariel’s response also brings up the question of just how powerful Hippolito is. Ariel apparently has disobeyed or disappointed Prospero, who is supposedly the most powerful on the Island, but Ariel did this because she feared Hippolito’s reaction to her disobedience more. Ariel’s fear makes Hippolito seem like the most powerful person on the Island, but he was defeated by Ferdinand’s sword which, as Ariel and Prospero prove earlier, should not be able to stand up to magical charms. If Hippolito is powerful enough to make Ariel fear him, why doesn’t he think to use magic to take Miranda away from Ferdinand?

I’m not sure if I’m just being to finicky on the matter or if Dryden and Davenant were going for the Shakespeare standard of ambiguous and not succeeding, but I found the issues of power throughout the play unsatisfactorily unclear. Too many of the instances above felt more like poor planning, or inclusions to advance Dryden and Davenants’ focal plot (the innocence of Miranda, Dorinda, and Hippolito). I did enjoy moments of this version, but I also felt like the inconsistencies, particularly about the powerhouse on the Island kept interfering with the areas that Dryden and Davenant seemed to focus on.

"The Tempest and The Olympics" Revisited

I’d like to revisit my earlier post about Danny Boyle’s choice to use The Tempest for the London Olympics inspiration and my initial difficulty seeing the connection. In some ways, the Olympics parallel the start of the play: Athletes from all over the world and meet in a foreign land to compete and more importantly, represent their country. Obviously, nationalism and agency is a crucial element the characters’ struggles and the way we as readers interpret them. To add insult to injury in Shakespeare’s version there are no clear winners. Even at the very end it is unclear if the spectators or the actors are in control. Paradoxically, the Olympic winners could not be clearer; winners are often times determined only by splitting seconds into fractions.

In my mind there is an obvious connection between Boyle’s decision and the choice to publish The Tempest as the first play in the folio. In both cases, The Tempest is chosen to represent Shakespeare and consequently, his larger body of work, national identity, and influence. As discussed in class, the placement of the play in the folio was as much a commentary upon the play and it’s author as it is the audience. One reason I believe the play and the Olympics are paired well is precisely the dichotomy between what constitutes a winner in the play versus the games and the role of the audience in deciding. Ultimately if nobody is watching the Olympics nobody wins because advertisers wont pay for it to be televised the following term (as Lear says: “nothing comes of nothing”). The precise purpose of the pregame show in the first place is to engage the audience because of the integral role they play in the event, a fact both Prospero and evidently, Boyle is acutely aware of.

Authorship, Dumbledore & HitRecord

On Wednesday we touched upon the subject of authorship, how it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which words are Shakespeare's and which were put there by editors and even actors. I think we also mentioned how the plays have changed over time, with the addition of scenery, women actors, more sophisticated equipment and special effects, all adding to but also fundamentally changing the way audiences perceive the work. This creates a bit of a community, where the author isn't as important as the work itself. This idea has always been interesting to me, as I have always liked to know the background of an author/director to give me context in analyzing their works. But in this sort of community-type art, the backgrounds of the creators are hard to distinguish from one another and eventually melt together. I was wondering what everyone thought about this- is the author's background/perspective important to you when reading/viewing their work, or does the work exist autonomously for you?

I bring this up because it reminded me of two things:

Roland Barthes' piece, "The Death of an Author", which is long and not all that fun to read, but it basically argues that we should not incorporate the intentions of the author or their context/beliefs/etc are important when viewing their works. He says that the writer and the work are separate, and once the work is finished, the author is essentially "dead" and has no further input or relevance to the analysis of their works. I always disagreed with this because I think context and perspective of the creator is very important (not in every case, but most) and I personally like knowing background information like this. The only time I ever fully agreed with Barthes was when JK Rowling made some sort of comment about Dumbledore being gay. For some reason this drove me absolutely bonkers for I always felt that Dumbledore was wonderfully enigmatic and almost asexual in a way, and I never thought any background on him was necessary. And as soon as she said that, I found myself angrily saying that she never made that explicit in the books, she lost her chance, so she has no say in how other people interpret Dumbledore and she should just SHUT THE HELL UP. (JK Rowling makes me mad in ways that I can't describe or even begin to understand).

This whole community art thing reminded me of a website called HitRecord.org (started by actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The whole idea is that one person makes some sort of art work, uploads it to the site, and loses all ownership of that piece. Then anyone else can take that artwork, change it or adapt it or add to it, and then do the same. Short films come about on this website, where one person wrote a script, another filmed it, another added music and another added animation. This creates such interesting artwork that I think would never have the opportunity to come about if we were all so strict on authorship.


Anyway, sorry for the long-windedness and the random and angry Dumbledore rant.

Thoughts on authorship anyone?

Musicality in The Tempest

My first reaction in hearing about The Tempest as an opera is similar to my reaction to hearing about Spiderman the musical: something close to confusion. Isn’t Shakespeare

Considered a straight play? What would prompt someone to suggest including music in Shakespeare?

But in The Music of Shadwell’s “Tempest” by William Barclay Squire, he points out that many of the songs, like Full Fathom Five, Come unto these yellow sands, and The master, the swabber, the gunner and I, come directly form Shakespeare’s work.  Most of the words even come from lines intended to be songs

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands.

Curtsied when you have and kissed, the wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

Hark, Hark!

(1.2.375-382)

So why were “musicals” or operas being created, if Shakespeare had already included some songs?

At least some of the fascination with the operatic version would have come from Charles II. Coming to England after spending years in France where operas were more popular, Charles II may have also brought his preferences from some parts of French culture. Dryden even mentions in his prologue “We have machines to some perfection brought, And above 30 Warblying voycs gott,” referring a men’s chorus gathered and used due to Charles II’s influence.

Also, Thomas Shadwell was able to work with composers who wrote down their music. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there is not a known tune for Ariel’s songs or Stephano’s sea chantys, so we don’t really know how “musical-like” the songs were. There may not have been actually tunes much beyond the lyrical qualities of the poems or there could have been well-known tunes to go with them. Shadwell’s songs, though, are able to be reproduced because the sheet music of the composers he worked with, like Pelham Humphrey, still exist today. It seems like songs are less noticeable when each new production of the play incorporates different tunes and focuses more on the words and action. When the tunes are able to be reproduced, like Shadwell’s, a play is more easily categorized as an opera.

The Music of Shadwell's "Tempest" William Barclay Squire

The Musical Quarterly , Vol. 7, No. 4 (Oct., 1921), pp. 565-578

Published by: Oxford University Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/738190

Shakespeare's Tempest at Drury Lane During Garrick's Management George Winchester Stone, Jr.

Shakespeare Quarterly , Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter, 1956), pp. 1-7

Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2866105

CAMDEN, CARROLL, Songs and Chorusses in The Tempest, Philological Quarterly, 41:1 (1962:Jan.) p.107-118

Not so serious

Dryden’s adaptation of The Tempest is almost the complete opposite if the original work. For one, Caliban is treated a lot better in the original work, compared to Dryden's adaptation. Caliban was once the island savage with beautiful lines, but now he is nothing more than a character that seems to just fill in minor blanks throughout most of the play. The most complex dialogue he gets is when he has his dialogue with Prospero.

            Act one of scene two in the adaptation, Caliban’s dialogue with Prospero is exactly the same from the Shakespearean version. It is very interesting as to why Dryden has chosen to do so, but Caliban no longer has his many touching speeches. His most famous speech, in ACTIII: II, no longer exist, as does his presence throughout most of the play. One could say the Dryden made up for his loss by bringing Sycorax into the play. It seems that she was brought in to add more to the comedic value of the play.

            This being an Adaptation, it should not be too big of a surprise that the play was greatly altered, especially into a comedy. Caliban’s lines are now drawn to plain comedic aspects, such as liquor. Trinculo’s character has also been altered. When he is with Caliban, Sycorax, and Stephano, they are all working together act as a bunch of fools on this lost paradise. The great uninhabited island has now been turned into the “enchanted island”. 

Tickets Now Available!! The Tempest Drag Show

Michael Dobson asserts “Shakespeare’s plays belonged to the theatre more significantly than they belonged to Shakespeare” in the 1660s; after researching adaptations of The Tempest, I believe his assessment to be assuredly true (Dobson 18). John Dryden and William D’Avenant adapt The Tempest into one of the most influential adaptations of the period, The Enchanted Island—published in 1660 and performed in 1667. The Enchanted Island later spawns an operatic adaptation by Thomas Shadwell in 1674 and Thomas Duffet’s The Mock Tempest in 1676. Dobson’s poignant statement is not only true because of the pervasiveness of The Tempest’s influence to writers and orchestrators of the 1660s but also because of the pervasive influence of the theatre upon the play. Already communicated in class: In 1660 women are allowed to act on stage, a shift that inevitably affects the audience’s—particularly male—relationship to the play. To complicate the female stage presence further, Dryden and D’Avenant add a male character named Hippolito to be performed by female actress Mary Davis. Dobson illuminates that the meta-theatricality already present in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is elevated in The Enchanted Island as Hippolito jokes about the evident transvestitism on stage:

[FERD.] So give me leave to ask you, what you are.

HIP. Do not you know?

FERD. How should I?

HIP. I well hop’d I was a man, but by your ignorance/Of what I am, I fear it is

not so: Well, Prospero! This is now the second time you have deceiv’d me!

The liminal gender and racial identity of Shakespeare’s Caliban is therefore overshadowed by the more overtly ambiguous gender identity of newly added character, Hippolito. Through meta-theatricality Hippolito directly engages the audience in discourse over the social positions of men and women and what exactly the qualifications for these positions are. The ambiguity of Davis’/Hippolito’s sexuality functions, as Dobson claims, “to dramatize the fact that sexual roles are just that—roles”.

I find this point to be particularly relevant given the discussion at the end of our last class about the presence of meta-theatricality in The Tempest; a device obviously embraced and proliferated by Dryden and D’Avenant through the advent of the female actress.

Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660-1769. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. 39-52. Print.

Tempest Blogger's: Post 2

Hi Tempest Blogger's

For your second post, I'd like you to do a little preliminary research into restoration adaptations of Shakespeare's The Tempest.  To get you started: important revisions of The Tempest are authored by John Dryden & William Davenant, Thomas Shadwell, and Thomas Duffett.  Track down some information about, and ideally even some text from, any of these adaptations, compare it to the Shakespeare text we just studied, and post your conclusions for your classmates.

Tempest Performances update

Hi all!

The director of the Tempest got back to me (very generously) as follows:

I will arrange the following:

9 tickets for 2/17

5 tickets for 2/18.

They'll be at the door in your name. All comps.

Thank you very much! And if it would help you to have me or (some of) the cast come and visit one of your classes, just let me know.


So to see the play, just go to the scene dock theater on your specified night and ask for your ticket under my name.


I also would love to take him up on his invitation to talk to the class, schedule permitting, so I plan to ask him to come the week of Feb 20th (after we have all seen the performance).

Visualizing Caliban

I can’t say I remember how I visualized Caliban the first time I read The Tempest because I was reading it as a script with an actor already cast in the role. This time, though, especially after I read Prospero’s description of him being a “freckled whelp… not honored with a human shape,” I envisioned him as physically resembling someone like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. That early description and Prospero’s clear mistreatment of him made me think of him as a young man with unfortunate physical deformities that was despised by society, simply because he did not look like them.

Then I watched the MFA production where Caliban was played by a handsome actor whose only “monster-like” qualities were an odd, seaweed-type wreath on his head and his pigeon-toed walk. However, I was still rather horrified by the choice because the actor who played Prospero was white and the actor who played Caliban was black.

Now, I know I’m qualifying, but before I continue with why I this caught my attention, I feel like I need to mention two things. 1) I got over my horror very quickly because the MFA cast is actually very diverse, and Miranda and Ferdinand were also played by African-American actors. 2) I have been in several classes recently that look more closely into racial constructs and how perceptions of race have affected past and present societies, so I feel like I tend to notice more situations like this.

This momentary horror got me to thinking about how people putting on the Tempest cast Caliban. Does the casting or visualization of Caliban reveal what we find monstrous and unacceptable in our society? I thought back to my high school production and realized that the actor who played our Caliban, though a brilliant actor, was also not known for his charming personality and he was considered a bit socially awkward around school. The MFA’s choice for Caliban did not really call into question issues of race, but I did look at the cast for the 2010 The Tempest and that Caliban really is the only black actor in a cast of white actors. Even my visualization of Caliban was of a human being with physical deformities rather than an actual monster.

All of this made me wonder, what would the Caliban actor in Shakespeare’s time have looked like? Would they have made him look fish-like as Trinculo claims later in the play?  Would they have used a person who looked physically different in skin-tone or body shape? Would they just have expected the audience to project their own vision onto the actor?

I decided to also see how The Royal Shakespeare Company performed Caliban. I was a bit surprised by their choice, but I liked it. According to the website I found, The Royal Shakespeare Company used a monster stage puppet for their Caliban. Now, even though I could probably find research on how monsters who do not have any semblance of human form can still represent a range of human fears and xenophobic tendencies, I personally believe that it effectively removes Caliban as a symbol of who we actually ostracize in society. If Caliban looks like an evil monster out of a fairy-tale, then it seems to me that it would be easier to place Caliban in the role of bumbling villain and focus on other parts of the story.

Caliban 2010 The Tempest (movie)

Caliban The Tempest (Royal Shakespeare Company Production)

I feel like I haven’t come to a definite decision on this topic. I like the idea of Caliban being an actual monster, so that the power struggle between Prospero and Caliban takes a more personal tone rather than a comment on the distribution of power and privilege in society. However, using the role for social commentary could be very effective if the audience is aware of it. Mostly what I have decided from this train of thought is that casting Caliban requires a lot of contemplation on what message his characterization will send to the audience.

Caliban the Cannibal

            Caliban, the son of Sycorax, is seen as the only as the only non-human figure on the island. He inhabited the island before any of the other characters, and claimed it as his own. When Prospero and Miranda arrive, Caliban shows them how to survive on the island and in return, Prospero and Miranda teach Caliban their language and religion. After the attempted rape of Miranda, Caliban becomes enslaved by Prospero, and their relationship turns for the worst.

            Caliban is viewed as a monster or deformed man. Most of his lines are often short and simple, but his speeches that express his are often wordy and beautiful. His most famous…..

Act3.3:134-142

Caliban: But not afeard: the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Wil hum about mine ears; and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again

            This speech is given when Caliban is trying to be accepted by Stephano. He spends much “God”, Stephano the drunk. These scenes in the play are obviously viewed as the comedic parts, as a fool is being taken advantage of by everyone. Similarly, Caliban is kind to Stephano just as he was with Prospero. It seems as if he views them as a sign of hope since he was betrayed by Prospero, but yet again, Caliban gets the short end of the stick as the play progresses. It is the uncultivated that continuously being usurped by “natural” men. 

Kyle T. Doss

Rock Fish

The identities of the characters are each in a state of liminality on the island: There are no easily identifiable villains and heroes, from many perspectives the characters experience a strange type of identity crises on the island. The dual identities that the characters are seemingly unable to reconcile manifests itself figuratively when Trinculo invades Caliban’s personal space hiding inside of his cloak. The oddness of the scene can thus be used to question the value of identity, as neither Trinculo nor Caliban correctly identify one another’s identities and simultaneously intimately occupy the same space.

What is the value of being at the top of a hierarchy; or even, what is the disadvantage of being on the bottom of one? Trinculo isn’t royal or divine by any means; he is a jester—an incredibly low status figure. Regardless, Caliban, a character that is himself a veritable contradiction—between human and fish, bush and rock, slave and monster—thinks he’s a god. At that moment, regardless of the reality of the situation—the reality that specifies hierarchal position—Trinculo is a god, not a jester; at the moment Trinculo comes upon the concealed Caliban, he is indeed a piece of foliage. Shakespeare uses this incredible conflagration of identities to question the value of assigning them at all-- whether or not Caliban is a rock or a fish is irrelevant; the fact that the characters, and by extension the readers, can even contemplate the relevance of identity is exactly what Shakespeare is attempting to arouse.

Tempest Performances

Hi all,

So I emailed with the director of the Tempest, and he said the following:

"If you arrange a classroom visit - i.e. have everyone come together - I should be able to organize all tickets for free."

This sounds awesome to me, so I thought I'd post the dates on the blog and then poll people in class W to see if we could coordinate a class visit.  I'm going to put in a plug for the 17th or the 18th, since the Tempest will be freshest in our minds...

let me know!  (and Allison I know you've seen it once already)

Remaining performances are:

Friday, February 17, 2012 – 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 18, 2012 – 8:00 PM
Thursday, February 23, 2012 – 7:00 PM
Sunday, February 26, 2012 – 2:30 PM
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 – 7:00 PM
Saturday, March 03, 2012 – 2:30 PM 

Fake suicide scene from Lear

Here is a link to Lear performance--scroll down the scenes to see the Gloucester suicide bit.  sorry I couldn't figure out how to embed the specific scene.  If I do, I'll come back and change it.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/king-lear/watch-the-play/487/