Why raise a tempest? – more detours: why Caliban and Ariel are so (not) important

There are still a few detours to take before I’ll finally come to the heart of the matter – maybe just because it is a pity to leave the “less important” aspects of the play untouched which began to make so much more sense being put into their rightful place. When we stood outside the underground I remember that I expressly dismissed Caliban and Ariel as “not important”. I suppose I basically said that because I was so annoyed with Caliban and the “political correctness stunt” they pulled at the end of the play. That I just said it out of spite. And of course it is untrue because Ariel and Caliban MUST be important as they are such spectacular characters, and, in my experience, every character in “Shakespeare” that has more than a few lines to say is kind of important. (And, of course!, this became A LOT longer than I thought it would…)

Nonetheless, thinking now about Ariel, I understand that there was probably a sound reason for saying it. The most important moment for understanding the play became in fact the moment that Simon Russell Beale selected, but it is not the most DIFFICULT moment of the play. The most difficult moment is when Ariel asks Prospero if he loves him. Because – what is this supposed to mean? WHY does he ask this question? I realized that I had no clue and thought at first that “the RSC”, or Simon Russell Beale, hadn’t either because Prospero just kind of shrugs off the question as if it was NOT IMPORTANT. But, having definitely understood what Prospero is about, it became obvious that this is again exactly the RIGHT thing to do. This is the NATURAL reaction Prospero would show. Being, at this moment!, COMPLETELY HUMAN, he would neither understand why Ariel asks the question nor, of course, see how it might matter – Ariel being a spirit not a human being - if he loved him or not. In fact, right then, he has more important HUMAN matter to deal with.

But, even though Simon Russell Beale makes it a natural reaction, he makes it SIGNIFICANT enough to make us NOTICE this moment. I take it “the RSC” had a field day with it because they would know a lot more than I do about what it “is supposed” to mean. And because of that I am the more grateful to them for keeping it simple. Even somebody like me - who STILL don’t know “anything” about Shakespeare as a person, and am still not the least bit interested in “biographical” - has at least this constellation of a fair young man and a dark lady in mind … The best thing that can probably “happen” to Ariel is to remain a MYSTERY.

This still doesn’t REMOVE the question, and it shouldn’t be removed, on the contrary! Questions like this should always be ASKED, and the real thrill about it is anyway what “happens” when the question gets on the stage. Making it about Prospero, not about Ariel, felt right. But, whatever the reason, I had at least a distinct feeling that Ariel has a RIGHT to ask. Having been so magnificent and singular and supremely USEFUL as he knows he is. He must know that he has done much more for Prospero than Prospero has done for him – who holds him as a slave! – but nonetheless does EVERYTHING that is asked of him WITH GOOD GRACE and as perfectly and efficiently as could be imagined. He must be every director’s favourite actor – and what does he get for it? - He is even the one to give Prospero his “cue” when he needs it. Obviously, having become some kind of expert in “human matters” by taking his task so seriously, Ariel appears to deal much better with them. He is the one who shows Prospero the way to forgiveness – and we cannot know if he would have found it without him. So, “the actor” (the stage, the theatre) is a really BIG THING, much bigger than “we” usually think. But it isn’t MEANT, in any way, to “take over” and become a surrogate for real human life.

On the other hand, “all the world is a stage”! Making Ariel ASK the question is a statement as well, and dismissing it in this way is quite a rigorous answer to it. It makes us NOTICE the question, even if we haven’t been prepared for it by reading or having seen the play, and I suppose this was the point, for Shakespeare, of asking it. (In this case the biographical impact is just too obvious!) And it is, I think, why Ariel is so important: He is all about “walking the line” – and, in the end, will escape every attempt to “nail” him to a certain place.

And this may already be the reason that Caliban is his “antipode”, semantically speaking. It is in fact absurd that “we” should CARE about Ariel, or that he might care about us. Maybe my favourite discovery about Ariel is that he kind of embodies the fourth wall … (How should “we” LOVE something that we will never touch, or reach, and that will never acknowledge us in any way. But still we do, and how do we do that …? That is in fact the big secret.) And, I suppose, “we” wouldn’t spend a second thinking about Ariel’s fate whereas, where Caliban is concerned, the thought struck me before “the RSC” decided to take a stand: What is going to happen to Caliban when Prospero leaves?

The difference might lie in the fact that, though this might not be strictly true, Caliban is “human” whereas Ariel is not. At least he requires means to live and displays (I’d almost say ALL the) typical human needs and drives. To determine this, strictly scientifically, we might in fact need “a doctor”. The witch Sycorax, his mother, might be human, but we don’t know that. (The only two things we know about her are in fact that she was “blue-eyed”- which, by the way, makes it rather unlikely, strictly scientifically impossible, that Caliban is black - and not exactly pretty.) And about the father we know nothing at all. Personally I favour the theory that the father at least is not human but that Caliban was begot in some ominous way, which best remains unknown, and so became a “monster”. The Globe Theatre appears to have had a similar idea and made Caliban some kind of “white” and red devil. It doesn’t really matter, of course, if Caliban is white or black or bright turquoise. My own proof for his humanity was that, when I saw the production of the Globe, where Caliban is neither ridiculously disfigured nor politically correctly pitiful (as in the production by the RSC), but kind of brightly ugly and beautiful at the same time, and madly “alive”, and kind of childish, and really VISCIOUS, he was the only person on that stage that struck me as human and created a response of human empathy in ME.

So, far from thinking that I have even STARTED to nail Caliban, the important things I discovered about him are that he is kind of dangerously human – one of these characters that can say anything about what “we” really feel and want because nobody takes them seriously – and that Prospero genuinely FEARS him because he is the only one who can make his carefully laid plans go completely bust. I think there is a real moment of stress for Prospero when he realizes that he has forgotten Caliban. And I imagine that he lived as much in fear of him as Caliban lived in awe of Prospero, in a state of being permanently harassed and bullied by Prospero’s Elves … o, sorry!

This WAS intentional, of course! I really tried but I can’t refrain from making another detour (within the detour) about Tolkien – this time completely without dwarves because they ACTUALLY sprang from Norse mythology. Not when I noticed that the detour was in fact about “Shakespeare”. I think I was pleased to read, decades ago, that Tolkien’s favourite play was “Macbeth” because it is my favourite play as well, and this is why I put this quote to memory, without really understanding it. But, strangely, as far as I can think back, I always had my doubts about it. Considering my “differences” with him –which was part of what made “Tolkien” such interesting reading! – I always had the feeling that he didn’t REALLY understand “Macbeth”. (As “in” the dwarves (sorry!) there is so much more “heathen” morality and thinking than Christian. Maybe this was even the main outcome of reading the Icelandic sagas that, despite all the political strategies to suppress it (these days mainly conducted by “Hollywood”) there is still about eighty to ninety percent “heathen” in us. And, seeing the actual outcome especially of good series like “Doctor Who” or “House of Cards” that A LOT OF PEOPLE watch, I am even confident that, in the long run, Shakespeare has been more successful than “Hollywood” (and the Popes). But, SORRY AGAIN!, this was just a different post (probably the one about “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” which I shall never write) compressed into one sentence.)

Strictly speaking, it is of course rubbish to claim that I understand “Macbeth” better than other people because everybody who loves a text probably understands it slightly, or completely, differently than everybody else who loves it. But I found some kind of corroboration for my opinion becoming involved with “The Tempest”. “Macbeth” couldn’t have been Tolkien’s favourite play because, judging from what he has written, he couldn’t have understood Macbeth AS WELL AS he understood Ariel and Caliban, “developing” them in writing in the form of the Elves and the character of Gollum.

Reading and watching “The Tempest”, there cannot be any doubt where Gollum “sprang” from, seeing both of them cowering and whinging around Prospero/Frodo, with a secret agenda of their own to get at what is “precious” to them. The story, as such, is almost completely IDENTICAL! Even though Tolkien actually developed it much further by making Gollum the secret (anti)hero of the whole “Lord of the Rings”. WITHOUT HIM the ring wouldn’t have been destroyed, evil would never have been defeated! - Maybe what I love most about Tolkien is the way he let his characters develop a life of their own, even probably beyond what he himself intended for them, because he consequently looked for the best and TRUEST version of their story. In “The Lord of the Rings” he makes Gollum a much more important character than Caliban was for Shakespeare – who probably really DIDN’T CARE what happens to him after Prospero has left. But what happened to Tolkien WRITING started to happen to me, and “the RSC”, READING respectively producing the play, and probably to lots of people SEEING Caliban on the stage: we didn’t agree, we began to care. I admit to be kind of proud not to be somebody who would ever care about the sniveling, pathetic creature the RSC made of Caliban - and somehow got the impression that the actor playing Caliban wasn’t really either - but there might be lots of people WHO ARE! (And who might have felt relieved by being politically correctly “absolved” of the “sin” of caring for Prospero, a slave-holder! - whereas inserting politically correct lines into a Shakespeare play gave me the creeps.) I rather “fell in the love” with the viscious, childish version, or at least preferred him to most of the lifeless Ariels I have seen. What is important though, even kind of strange, is that people DO CARE.

That Tolkien’s Elves were not derived from any mythology, not even Christian, at least not as to their “content” - as to what kind of people they actually are - might be more controversial. For me it was just obvious, thinking about the first Elves from “The Hobbit” which are naughty and teasing and not really very dignified. Shakespeare himself introduces the possibility of making spirits kind of “worldly” and entertaining AT THE SAME TIME as “otherworldly” and impressive. In the “Lord of the Rings” (following the mythology of the “Silmarillion” and related stuff) Tolkien achieved to make them much more dignified and impressive but took off most of the “edge” that would make them feel like real beings. In the beginning of “The Fellowship” Frodo and Sam encounter the kind of Elves that might have sprung from “The Hobbit” in the woods before they meet with the “High Elves” in Rivendell – who are wise and boring, kind of like a courtly poem is compared to a Chaucer tale. But the Galadhrim have a “gritty” (and creepy) feel to them too, being impressively “elvish” and kind of remote AT THE SAME TIME. (Which is embodied by Cate Blanchett in the films in an unparalleled way. Not unlike Bilbo Baggins as a hobbit, or some of the dwarves (sorry!), I would never have SEEN an Elf in my life if I hadn’t seen her …) It is likely that the IDEA of the Elves sprang from Christian mythology - rather than folktales! - but the MATERIAL Tolkien is actually playing around with, more or less successfully, must have come from “The Tempest”. And it is not the only aspect that was kind of “perfected” by the people who made the films because, finding the right actors to bring these characters on screen – actors with the potential to create “non-trivial” characters by making them as “big” and recognizable as people from “Shakespeare” – Galadriel, Elrond, Thranduil, and Tauriel embody, in varying degrees, both the main aspects of what makes Shakespeare’s spirits and Tolkien’s Elves so “different” and finally irresistible: supernatural perfection combined with human flaws.

I must admit that this detour took me rather far away from what I intended to write about. But this is as well the beauty of it. And it is never “just” for fun – even though it is fun, at least for me! In fact it is MY BEST METHOD of getting to the bottom of questions like why “The Tempest” is such an important play, why it is so special. Because, if there are a lot of people who think so, they are usually right. And the reasons for most people who like the play to like it might even be exactly the reasons why I unconsciously disliked it all this time: First of all for being some kind of “meta”-play about the theatre, not because I don’t find this interesting AS SUCH, but because I usually never figure these things out, or, if I do, can never be sure that I am right. Well, in this case Simon Russell Beale completely saved me the bother just, I suppose, by KNOWING “Shakespeare” so well. Second, for being so much like “fantasy” and therefore not to be taken seriously – well, you might think I should know better by now … But I still don’t really care for fantasy, or science fiction (or horror, by the way!) BECAUSE they are fantasy, science fiction (or horror). I just have seen such interesting examples OF WHAT THEY CAN BE USED FOR. (My least favourite play by Shakespeare is probably still “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, not only because I have seen a couple of stupid productions of it, but even that might change when I actually take a look someday…) And a big part of the undeniable attraction of “The Tempest” are certainly the virtually INEXHAUSTIBLE characters of Ariel and Caliban whose potential I have just begun to discover for myself, partly by remembering “Tolkien”. And of which, in my opinion, the colonial angle (about Caliban) and the biographical angle (about Ariel) are the least exciting part. (Being what we know “everything” about anyway …) So, a big “second” layer of reality is building up on that stage, which is growing in all directions - AWAY from the real human interest story of the play. And this is as beautiful as kind of irritating and difficult on the other hand. And I think it actually requires radical measures like the “roaring stunt” exercised by Simon Russell Beale to take us back to what is REALLY going on.