The Tempest - Stratford Festival

y Alonso and his court in the play’s most famousline: “O brave new world / That has such peoplein’t.” But it is said to a group of would-be murderersand thieves. That is why Prospero replies, “’Tisnew to thee.” He knows what the King and hiscourt represent: he has suffered at their hands.Prospero struggles with the idea of forgiving them.At first it is conditional: “They being penitent, / Thesole drift of my purpose doth extend / Not a frownfurther.” Alonso has been changed by the eventsof the play, but Antonio and Sebastian have not.Yet Prospero decides to return to their world. Why?Shakespeare leaves it for us to decide.Kott sums up this remarkable play in this way: “Innone of the other Shakespearean masterpieces –except Hamlet – has the divergence between thegreatness of the human mind on the one hand, andthe ruthlessness of history and frailty of the moralorder on the other, been shown with as muchpassion. . . . Like all great Shakespearean dramas,it is a passionate reckoning with the real world. . .a drama of lost illusions, bitter wisdom, and offragile – though stubborn – hope.”In The Tempest Shakespeare shows us that abrave new world does exist – in the potential ofthe human mind and heart – but sadly its frontiersare constantly shifting.Robert Blacker is Dramaturge for As You Like Itand The Tempest and the Stratford ShakespeareFestival. The Oxford edition of The Tempest,edited by Stephen Orgel, that was used forthis production is on sale at the Festival’sTheatre Store, as is Jan Kott’s Shakespeare OurContemporary, one of his books quoted above.Prospero’s ArtMagic was considered a legitimate scientificstudy by some Renaissance intellectuals, andmusic and visions were two of a magus’s tools.Music was used to create charms. That is whyAriel so often sings, and few of Shakespeare’splays have as many references to sound. “Be notafeard, the isle is full of noises,” Caliban tells hisfellow conspirators.Producing visions was another part of amagus’s art, and in few of his plays doesShakespeare provide as much opportunityfor spectacle. This was driven in part by hisaudience’s growing taste for the new courtentertainments called masques. The vision of Iris,Ceres and Juno that Prospero serves up to blessFerdinand and Miranda’s betrothal is an exampleof one. Though these spirits, Prospero conjuresup a world in which there is no winter, no death –a vision that is shattered by his recollection of themurder plot against him.4