Sour grapes

So, I've hesitated to write this post. It almost seems inappropriate. But, I told myself when I started documenting  my work as an actor that I was going to be honest, even when it hurt. So here goes.

My last post was about challenging expectations. And although I was writing there about choices I was making while playing Marcus Andronicus, that post was heavily flavored with subtext. I was still stinging from a not terrible but certainly not positive review of a production of The Tempest that I had just been in.

A preliminary question - is it in bad taste to write a response to a review? Or is it legitimate to get a closing argument? I made my case on the stage, isn't that enough? The issue, I guess, is that it bothers me that someone might have read the review who didn't see the production.

The reviewer in question felt that Prospero embodies the wisdom and acceptance of old age, and he felt my performance lacked the appropriate wisdom and gravitas. I disagree with the assumptions that the review is based on. It's certainly true that I did not portray Prospero with wisdom - because I don't actually think anything in the play suggests that Prospero is wise. He places his brother, Antonio, in control of his dukedom, placing him in a position to usurp the throne. Does a wise man lack such an understanding of his own brother that he would put himself in this sort of position? Prospero allows Caliban, a monstrous hagspawn, to share the same cell with him and his young daughter, until the beast tries to violate the young girl's honor. Not the best decision. But looking deeper than just the facts of the play, looking at the text itself, Prospero speaks in very broken verse throughout the play, he repeats himself... in short, his speech does not reflect clear thoughout the majority of the play. After all, this is a guy who has commanded graves to open and let the dead walk the earth. Doesn't really seem like a good idea. Prospero is powerful, but he is not wise. He is capricious and reckless. He is much like a Tempest himself. He is dangerous to be around.

Now, I made some choices with my characterization that may be unusual. I chose to show - for lack of a better term - giddyness in Act I, scene ii, when Miranda and Ferdinand first meet. Why? Because Prospero repeats himself several times during this scene, which I felt shows a high level of excitement. The words are not identical, but the sentiment of them is. Prospero says "it goes on, I see as my soul prompts it..." He promises to free Ariel for this. he observes that at the first sight, Miranda and Ferdinand have changed eyes. He promises again to free Ariel. He notes Miranda and Ferdinand are both in either's powers. I wanted a reason for the repetition. I don't think you can make the argument that Shakespeare was just being sloppy here - I think you find a reason for odd things in the text. And it was my feeling that the repetition showed excitement, and a lack of certainty about whether this was going to work. This is not Gandalf stroking his beard, this is a much more emotionally bare character.

Keeping that giddyness in mind, I put a gag in Act IV, scene i. Also probably an unusual choice, I suppose. When I was about to give Miranda to Ferdinand, I decided to break the two speeches up into three sections. Prospero says

If I have too austerely punish'd you,
Your compensation makes amends, for I
Have given you here a third of mine own life,
Or that for which I live; who once again
I tender to thy hand:

Here, I acted as though I were finished speaking and brought her hand toward his. Then, I interrupted the motion with the next part of the speech.

...all thy vexations
Were but my trials of thy love and thou
Hast strangely stood the test. Here, afore Heaven,
I ratify this my rich gift.

Pause. Start to hand Miranda over. Interrupt.

O Ferdinand,
Do not smile at me that I boast her off,
For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise
And make it halt behind her.

Ferdinand replies,

I do believe it
Against an oracle.

Prospero says, emotionally,

Then, as my gift and thine own acquisition
Worthily purchased take my daughter:

And then, the third interruption.

BUT
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd...

A cheap gag, maybe. But that is not a very interesting couple of lines without it. Not to mention the fact that starting that scene with levity provides great contrast to Prospero's moment of greatest anger in the play, which comes right after the masque.

The funny thing is... I usually try not to watch a version of a show I'm doing during rehearsal or the run, because I don't want to copy anything. I don't want to get up there and ape some other actor's great choices. But for whatever reason, the day the review came out, I watched some Youtube clips of various film versions of The Tempest, and I was actually quite surprised. In some of them, Prospero was played as the wise, old wizard, and to be frank... I thought it was boring.

The idea that Shakespeare was Prospero has gone around for years, that The Tempest was Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre, at least as a full-time writer. So I suppose there's a desire to have Prospero be a serious character. And while the epilogue definitely plays that way, I absolutely do not think that's the case for the play as a whole. The closest thing to a reference to Prospero's age I can find in the play is included in the excerpt above - that Miranda is a third of his own life. An ambiguous statement, to be sure, which makes one wonder what the other two thirds are. One possible interpretation is that he is three times her age. She's "twelve years since" plus "not yet three years." Somewhere around 42. Richard Burbage was 44, I believe, when he played Prospero in 1611. A recent American Shakespeare Center podcast I listened to placed the possible age of Prospero even younger than that.

At any rate, I don't think there's anything in the text that demands that Prospero be an old, wise man, other than the fact that he's a wizard, and when we think of wizards, we think of old men with purple, pointy hats and robes with stars on them. I think this is probably not the idea that necessarily prevailed in the Elizabethan era. Or at least, not what is represented by the text of the play. And my characterization of Prospero was based on my interpretation of the words on the page, not on a pre-conceived idea of the character.

So when I wrote about challenging the expectations of the audience... this is what I was actually writing about. I'm not so vain as to think that anyone who doesn't like my choices must necessarily be wrong, but I will say that the choices I made about how to play Prospero were based on a very close reading of the script, and were informed by the verse, by repetition, by what was said, how it was said, and when it was said, by what Prospero knew when he asserted fact and what he didn't know. I am absolutely willing to allow that there may be a better way to play the character. But to convince me would require an argument from the text. And that's what I think was lacking in the review.