The four-day event will include performances of The Tempest by Bradley University Theatre (Feb 24th), Measure for Measure by Loyola University (Feb 25th), and a compression of all three parts of Henry VI by Western Illinois University (Feb 26th), along with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) as an opener on Feb 23rd.
I will be directing Bradley’s production of The Tempest so from time to time; I will be sharing the creative process of developing this production in this blog.
Over the past week I have had some very interesting discussions with colleagues about Caliban. This conversation arose out of collaborative discussions to discover a production approach. This is the second time I will have directed this wonderful play. In my original production staged back in 1989, we took a post-colonial approach to the production where Caliban (played by the wonderful actor Craig Wallace now working with the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC) was the oppressed noble islander fighting to regain his rightful authority over the island and freedom from Prospero (played by the equally wonderful Michael Connolly who is now the head of the MFA acting program at SMU.)
In this production I am taking a different approach – The Tempest as a revenge play. I picked up on this tread in reading an N.Y. Times interview with Shakespeare Scholar Marjorie Garber, the author of Shakespeare After All.
"Here's a man exiled from Milan with his infant daughter," she said of Prospero and Miranda. "He's been brooding on how to get back what's been taken from him."
"He creates a storm, and nobody dies. There is a marriage rather than a death at the end. He wreaks his vengeance by not reaping his vengeance."
" 'The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance,' " Ms. Garber said, quoting Prospero.
The issue is pertinent today, she said, to "the Iraq war, any situation of conflict that goes back a number of years in which one or the other of the parties bears an old grudge."
Focusing on Prospero’s rage and his reclaimed humanity through forgiveness becomes a challenge when we look at the inhumane way he treats Caliban especially in light of our post-colonial world-view. The more we humanize Caliban the more inhumane we make Prospero. Not that this complexity is to be avoided but it got me thinking – Is Caliban a man or a monster? Is the play an exploration of early colonial attitudes towards natives or is it a fantasy where magic and monsters live?
Shakespeare was writing in a pre-colonial world (or at least in the very early days of it.) The Tempest was first performed in 1611. The story is inspired, in part, by the shipwreck of the Sea Venture in Bermuda in 1609. The Sea Venture was bringing supplies to the struggling settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. The first Africans to arrive in Jamestown occurred in 1619 when a Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food. So while slavery was a practice of the time – the impact of colonialism to the "new world" was not known at the time of his writing. Shakespeare's writings were more influenced by the fantasy of that unexplored world.
For example, in 1.2.374 of The Tempest, Caliban references the Patagonian God Setebos:
I must obey; his art is of such power
It would control my dam’s god Setebos,
And make a vassal of him.
Magellan discovered Patagonia at the southern tip of South America in 1520. A fellow voyager, Antonio Pigafetta, described the discovery in Relations of the First Round-the-world Trip (1536)
"When one of those people die, ten or twelve demons all painted appear to them and dance very joyfully about the corpse. They notice that one of those demons is much taller than the others, and he cries out and rejoices more. They paint themselves exactly in the same manner as the demon appears to them painted. They call the larger demon Setebos, and the others Cheleulle. That giant also told us by signs that he had seen the demons with two horns on their heads, and long hair which hung to the feet belching forth fire from mouth and buttocks. The captain-general called those people Patagoni (big feet). They all clothe themselves in the skins of that animal above mentioned; and they have no houses except those made from the skin of the same animal, and they wander hither and thither with those houses just as the Cingani do. They live on raw flesh and on a sweet root which they call chapae. Each of the two whom we captured ate a basketful of biscuit, and drank one-half pailful of water at a gulp. They also ate rats without skinning them."
It is these amazing stories of the discovery of the “new world” that fired Shakespeare’s imagination.
Ironically, Caliban is not a “native” to the island having been born from the witch Sycorax almost as soon as she arrives. He has no cultural history with the area. Sycorax was exiled from Algiers to the remote island for practicing witchcraft. It was her pregnancy that saved her from being put to death. ("This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child" 1.2.269) Also, there are references in the text that Caliban's father was the devil or an evil spirit (1.2.320.) That's one for the Monster column.
Another good place start to exploring the question of man or monster is Caliban's actions. It is hard to find redeeming qualities in Caliban given his confessed attempt at raping Miranda (1.2.350) and his plans to kill Prospero (3.2.88-91.) We can understand his motivation given that his island home was "taken" from him but that occurred only after the attempted rape. That attempt must have been recent - within two years given Miranda's age. The text details the 12-year relationship Prospero and Miranda had with Caliban:
"When thou cam'st first
Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me
Water with berries in't, and teach me how
To name the bigger light and how the less
That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee
And showed thee all the qualities o'th' isle;" (1.2.333-338)
Miranda adds to this that she taught him to speak:
I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known. (1.2.354-359)
To which Caliban responds:
You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language! (1.2.364-366)
Caliban is a monster based on his actions but he is given some of the most beautiful poetry in the play.
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will 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. (3.2.135-143)
If we look to the descriptions of him in the text we see him described as:
A freckled whelp, hag born not honored with a human shape (1.2.284)
Tortoise (1.2.317)
Got by the devil himself (1.2.320)
Filth as thou art (1.2.346)
Abhorred (1.2.353)
Savage (1.2.356)
Brutish (1.2.358)
Hag seed (1.2.366)
A most perfidious and drunken monster (2.2.147)
Puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster (2.2.151)
Deboshed fish (3.2.25)
Half a fish and half a monster (3.2.28)
A plain fish (5.1.266)
Thing of darkness (5.1.275)
The most detailed description comes from the clown Trinculo in Act 2 scene 2:
What have we here, a man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish, a very ancient and fish-like smell, a kind of not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man and his fins like arms! Warm o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.
Many artists have sought to render images of Caliban as a monster as well.
Many theatre productions have presented Caliban as a monster as well. Here are two of my favorite images:
So where does all this lead me in my thinking about Caliban? Is he a monster or a native? Well, I am not sure yet. I'll explore the other half of my question - Caliban as a Native - in a later blog as I continue my Travels with Willy. (And if you don't follow this blog - I guess you will just have to come see our production in February!
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