Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Origins, Themes, and Stagecraft
Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Origins, Themes, and Stagecraft
The Tempest was probably written in 1610–1611 and was first performed at Court by the King’s Men in the fall of 1611. It was performed again in the winter of 1612–1613 during the festivities in celebration of the marriage of King James’s daughter Elizabeth. The Tempest is most likely the last play written entirely by Shakespeare, and it is remarkable for being one of only two plays by Shakespeare (the other being Love’s Labour’s Lost) whose plot is entirely original. The play does, however, draw on travel literature of its time—most notably the accounts of a tempest off the Bermudas that separated and nearly wrecked a fleet of colonial ships sailing from Plymouth to Virginia. The English colonial project seems to be on Shakespeare’s mind throughout The Tempest, as almost every character, from the lord Gonzalo to the drunk Stephano, ponders how he would rule the island on which the play is set if he were its king. Shakespeare seems also to have drawn on Montaigne’s essay “Of the Cannibals,” which was translated into English in 1603. The name of Prospero’s servant-monster, Caliban, seems to be an anagram or derivative of “Cannibal.”
The Flexibility of Shakespearean Stagecraft
The extraordinary flexibility of Shakespeare’s stage is given particular prominence in The Tempest. Stages of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period were for the most part bare and simple. There was little on-stage scenery, and the possibilities for artificial lighting were limited. The King’s Men in 1612 were performing both at the outdoor Globe Theatre and the indoor Blackfriars Theatre, and their plays would have had to work in either venue. Therefore, much dramatic effect was left up to the minds of the audience. We see a particularly good example of this in The Tempest, Act II, scene i when Gonzalo, Sebastian, and Antonio argue whether the island is beautiful or barren. The bareness of the stage would have allowed either option to be possible in the audience’s mind at any given moment.
Special Effects and Masque-like Qualities
At the same time, The Tempest includes stage directions for a number of elaborate special effects. The many pageants and songs accompanied by ornately costumed figures or stage-magic—for example, the banquet in Act III, scene iii, or the wedding celebration for Ferdinand and Miranda in Act IV, scene i—give the play the feeling of a masque, a highly stylized form of dramatic, musical entertainment popular among the aristocracy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is perhaps the tension between simple stage effects and very elaborate and surprising ones that gives the play its eerie and dreamlike quality, making it seem rich and complex even though it is one of Shakespeare’s shortest, most simply constructed plays.
The Tempest: A Farewell to the Stage?
It is tempting to think of The Tempest as Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage because of its theme of a great magician giving up his art. Indeed, we can interpret Prospero’s reference to the dissolution of “the great globe itself” (IV.i.153) as an allusion to Shakespeare’s theatre. However, Shakespeare is known to have collaborated on at least two other plays after The Tempest: The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII in 1613, both probably written with John Fletcher. A performance of the latter was, in fact, the occasion for the actual dissolution of the Globe. A cannon fired during the performance accidentally ignited the thatch, and the theater burned to the ground.