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English Literature
Fall 1997
Body And Spirit, Stage And Sexuality In "The
Tempest"
Nora Johnson
Swarthmore College, [email protected]
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Nora Johnson. (1997). "Body And Spirit, Stage And Sexuality In "The Tempest"". ELH. Volume 64, Issue 3. 683-701.
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Body and Spirit, Stage and Sexuality in "The Tempest"
Author(s): Nora Johnson
Source: ELH, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Fall, 1997), pp. 683-701
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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BODY AND SPIRIT, STAGE AND SEXUALITY IN
THE TEMPEST
BYNORAJOHNSON
I.
Writing Plays Confuted in Five Actions in 1582, Stephen Gosson
encounters a momentarysetback in his condemnationof stage plays.
Afterall, he admits,GregoryNaziancenonce wrote "aPlayeof Christe."
But, Gosson asks, "to what ende? To be Plaid upon Stages? neither
Players nor their friendes are able to prove it."' Naziancen'splay is
morally acceptable because it cannot conclusivelybe linked to actual
performances. This distinction between a written text and a fullyembodied theatrical production becomes crucial for Gosson as he
details the abuses to which theater is prone in early modern England:
If it shouldbe Plaied,one mustlearneto trippeit likea Ladyin the
finest fashion,anothermust have time to whet his minde unto
tyrannythathe maygivelife to the picturehee presenteth,whereby
they learne to counterfeit, and so to sinne. Therefore whatsoever
such Playesas conteine good matter,are set out in print,maybe read
with profite,but cannotbe playd,withouta manifestbreachof Gods
commaundement.... Action,pronuntiation,apparel,agility,musicke,
severallyconsideredare the good blessingsof God, nothinghurtfull
of their owne nature,yet being bound up together in a bundle,to set
out the pompe, the plaies, the inventions of the divell, it is
abhominablein the sight of God, and not to be suffered among
Christians.(C, 178)
Although Gosson wants to demonstrate his respect for action and
pronunciation-for embodiment-it is clearlythe participationof actors
as they "give life" to an author'swords that makesplays intolerable.In
the process of making an author'swords into a physical spectacle,
playersare both corruptedand corrupting.
As Gosson himself points out, embodying an author's words is
especially damagingmorallywhen it requires that men or boys play
women'sroles on stage. What Gossonhere calls "trippingit like a Lady"
he elsewhere condemns in more detail, famously invoking divine
authorityto bolster his sense that "garmentsare set downe for signes
ELH 64 (1997) 683-701 © 1997 by The Johns HopkinsUniversityPress
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683
distinctivebetwene sexe and sexe"(C,175).This lack of sexual distinction troublesother writers in the period as well, so that when J. Cocke
wants to characterize"A common Player,"he has easy recourse to
images of sexualchaos:
[An actor] if he marries, he mistakes the Woman for the Boy in
Woman'sattire, by not respectinga differencein the mischiefe. But
so long as he lives unmarried,hee mistakesthe Boy,or a Whore for
the Woman;by courtingthe first on the stage, or visitingthe second
at her devotions.2
Clearly gender distinctions break down in this description, but Cocke's
conflation of transvestite performance with marital sexuality leads to
another more surprising claim: courting a boy on stage becomes
analogous to "mistaking"a whore for a woman, a formulationwhich'
powerfully connects sexual anxieties with worries about performance
and economic gain. Prostitutes and players are troubling not only
because of their sexual promiscuity,but because of their very professionalism.After all, both can be counted on to produce a facsimile of
marital relations for money. Moreover, as has often been remarked, both
sexualdisplayandpaid impersonationhavethe powerto breakdown the
categories upon which identity is founded, so that apparently stable
notions of masculinity, femininity and even authenticity itself are
threatenedby the work of the professionalactor.3
The distaste for professionalismimplied by Cocke's conflation of
acting and prostitutionresonates, of course, with another set of complaints about players, lodged this time by poets whose engagement with
theater companiesthreatenedto compromisetheir (alreadyprecarious)
social status. As is well testified by the works of Robert Greene,
universitywriterswho composed stage plays had a tendency to depict
players as parasitical "puppets" and "taffeta fools" who gained wealth at
the expense of their social betters. Greene himself even traces the
despicable character of the player to the profession's classical origins:
Now so highly were Comedies esteemed in those daies [after
Menanderbegan to write moralComedies],that men of greathonor
and grave account were the Actors, the Senate and the Consuls
the
continualliepresent, as auditors at all such sports, rewarding
Author with rich rewards, according to the excellencie of the
Comedie. Thus continued this facultie famous, till covetousnesse
crept into the qualitie,and that meane men greedie of gaines did fall
to practicethe acting of such Playes, and in the Theater presented
their Comedies but to such onely, as rewardedthem well for their
paines ... yet the people (who are delightedwith such novelties and
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pastimes)made greatresort,paide largely,and highlyapplauded
theirdoings,in so muchthatthe Actors,by continualuse grewenot
onelyexcellent,but richandinsolent.4
In Greene's etiology, the very profession of the player grows out of a
usurpationof the moralwork of playwrights.Their skill at representing
a playwright'stext is innately a misrepresentationof the playwright's
purpose, a commercializationof his more ennobling exchange with
"men of great honour and grave account." Like Gosson, Greene
imaginesthat the professionalstagingof playsinvolvesa loss of purity,a
moralcompromise.
This conflict between players and playwrightsshapes our earliest
sense of Shakespeare'sreputation. Greene's famous attack on the
"upstartCrow"-in additionto whateverclaimsit may be makingabout
Shakespeareas a plagiarist-firmly couples playing with betrayaland
usurpation:
that spendtheir
To those Gentlemenhis Quondamacquaintance,
wits in makingplaies, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdome
to preuent his extremities. If wofull experience may moue you
(Gentlemen) to beware, or unheardof wretchednes intreateyou to
takeheed:I doubtnotbutyouwil lookebackewithsorrowon your
timepast,and indeuourwithrepentanceto spendthatwhichis to
come....
Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie you be
not warned; for vnto none of you (like mee) sought those burres to
cleaue:thosePuppets(I meane)thatspakefromourmouths,those
Anticksgarnishtin our colours.Is it not strange,that I, to whomthey
all hauebeene beholding:is it not likethatyou,to whometheyall
haue beene beholding,shall (were yee in that case as I am now) bee
both at once of them forsaken?Yes trust them not: for there is an
vpstartCrow,beautifiedwith our feathers,that with his Tygershart
wraptin a Playershyde, supposeshe is as well able to bombastout a
blankeverse as the best of you: and beeing an absoluteIohannesfac
totum,is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scenein a countrey...
Trustnot then (I beseech ye) to such weake staies:for they
are as changeablein minde, as in many attyres.5
Greene representsShakespeareas a player,as anotherparasitespeaking
from his mouth, doubly the usurperbecause he is not from the universitiesandnot an authorin the waythatGreeneimagineshimselfto be.6
Greene'sresponseto the instabilityof his own life in the theateris to
distance himself from the figure of the player,and especially from the
player who dares to supplant him by writing plays. He characterizes
Shakespearein particularand playersin generalin waysthat summarize
the perceived dangers of stagecraft. If players have taken Greene's
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words and left him financially and socially bereft, Shakespeare, by
himself becoming a playwright, has usurped Greene's financial and
professionalprerogativesand has become the ultimateexample of the
untrustworthinessof "those Puppets who speak from our mouths."
Similarly,by claiming that players are "as changeablein mynde, as in
many attires,"Greene registersthe power of playersto "falsifie,forge,
and adulterate,"to breakdown the distinctionsbetween themselves and
the roles they play,just as they break down the distinctions"betwene
sexe and sexe" when they wear women's clothing. In fact, Greene's
reference to Shakespeareas having "a Tygers hart wrapt in a Players
hyde" subtly incorporatesjust such an awareness of the player as a
figureforgender'sinstability;the quotationis adaptedfromShakespeare's
3 Henry VI, in which that hide belongs not to a player,but to a woman,
to Queen Margaret(1.3.137). On some level Shakespeareis playingthe
woman at the moment that Greene casts him in the part of the upstart
playerwho usurpsthe role of playwright.His imaginedcrimes are very
much one with the sexual and ontologicalimpurityfor which theater
was famousin early-modernEngland.
I offer this passage from Greene as an introductionto The Tempest
because it positions Shakespearesolidlyin the middle of early-modern
debates about theatrical practice, not merely as one member of the
theatricalmilieubut as the specific focus of a personalattack.In fact, if
the workof Henry Crosse is any indication,this was also an influential
attack; writing Virtues Common Wealth in 1603, Crosse repeatedly
echoes both Greene'ssentimentsand his language,callingplayers"weak
staies,""Anticksand Puppets,"and, as Greene calls them in a passage
not quoted above, "buckramgentlemen":
To conclude, it were furtherto be wished, that those admiredwittes
of this age, Tragaedians,and Comaedians,thatgarnishTheaterswith
theirinventions,
wouldspendtheirwittesin moreprofitablestudies,
andleaveoff to maintaine
thosAnticks,andPuppets,thatspeakeout
of theirmouthes:forit is pittiesuchnoblegiftesshouldbe so basely
imployed,as to prostitutetheir ingeniouslaboursto inrichsuch
buckorome
gentlemen.... he thatdependethon suchweakestaies,
shallbe sureof shameandbeggeriein the ende:forit hathsildome
bene seene,thatanyof thatprofessionhaveprospered,or cometo
an assuredestate.'
Even Crosse'scomment that one seldom hears of any playwrightwho
comes to a good end seems to invokethe ghost of Greene and his highly
publicizeddeparturefrom a life of penury.Eleven years after Greene's
death and after his initial representationof Shakespeareas an upstart
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player,one hearsHenryCrossespeakingfromout of Greene'smouth,
reiteratingin generaltermsthe mistrustof playersby whichShakespeare was judgedat the beginningof his career.8What lookslike a
of
purelymoralobjectionon Crosse'spartto the theatrical"prostitution"
a writer'spotentiallywholesomepowersis in factdeeplyinfluencedby
the effortsof Greeneandhispeersto distinguishthemselvesfrombase
anxietiesabouttheaterarein factinsepaplayers.Sexualandontological
concerns
aboutprofessionalreputation.9
from
rable
morequotidian
Specific as Greene'sattackon Shakespearewas, what Crosse's
in 1603makesclearis thatthe concernsI haveoutlined
rearticulation
here are partof a largerculturalsuspicionabouttheater.Theyare so
much a partof the vocabularyof theatricalpracticein early-modern
England,in fact, that when Shakespeareturns most famouslyto
he demonstrates,
considerquestionsof theaterin TheTempest
paradoxiwithGreene'scomplaintsin Groats-worth
cally,considerable
sympathy
of Witte. Althoughthere is a long traditionof readingProspero's
of the theater,the
renunciation
renunciation
of magicas Shakespeare's
initialruminations
anxietiesreflectedat leastin Prospero's
uponstagecraftcouldas easilybelongto a Nasheor a Greene.10
of theater-and especially
It is withthislargersenseof the reputation
of players-thatI beginlookingat TheTempest.I wantto considerthe
thathe
pastthatProsperoimaginesforhimself,the politicalusurpation
casts as a theatricalproblem,a problemof the physicalityand the
parasitismof the brotherwho speaksfromout of his mouth.As The
Tempestrepresentstheatricalpractice,workingand reworkingthe
andthe statusof the player,it registers
questionof theatricalreputation
I
above.Skillat representahave
enumerated
the
precisely complaints
the
froma kindof sexualimpurity.Moreover,
tionbecomesinseparable
I
will
not
self-consciousness
theatrical
extends,
argue, merelyto
play's
but to his implicitrefiguringof
the stagingof Prospero's
renunciation,
Whatthe playbeginsby imaginingas a uniquely
theatricalreputation.
theatrical form of usurpationby an actor-ultimately a loss of identity
for the author of that actor'swords-becomes, in the last analysis,an
articulationof theatricalselflhood,an incorporationof the problemsof
theatricalproductioninto a senseof a theatrical"I."
II.
of the Dukedomin terms
ProsperotalksaboutAntonio'susurpation
thatsuggestboththe ontologicalandthe sexualimpurityof theater.He
ambitionas a case of theaterrunamok;"Tohave
categorizesAntonio's
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687
no screen between this part he played / And him he played it for,"says
Prosperoof his brother'splot, "he needs will be / Absolute Milan."'IHe
speaksof the usurpationnot merelyas a confusionof the actorwith the
partplayed (Antoniowould have no screen between actorand part),but
as the risingup of a fictionalrepresentationto overtakeits own author.
Prospero invents the role of "Prospero,"Antonio plays that role, and
Antonio then becomes the role's inventor. Moreover,when Antonio
takes on Prospero'srole, he begins behavingas if he were staginglife in
the court of Milan;Prosperosays that Antonio
Beingonce perfectedhowto grantsuits,
Howto denythem,whot'advance,andwho
To trashforover-topping,
new-created
The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em,
Orelse new-formed'em.
(T, 1.2.79-83)
Antonio'sinsidiousperformanceof the role of Prosperoincludes usurping the power to stage, create, and change the creatures that were
Prospero's.He rewrites Prospero'splay.
Prospero'sversionof Antonio'streason,then, points towardthe kinds
of usurpationthat seem characteristicof actorsin the period. As a result
of playingProspero,Antoniohas become Prosperobefore the public. At
the same time, Prosperofiguresthis politicaland theatricalmutinyas a
strangeand troublingsexual experience. He notes that his own trust in
Antonio "begot"upon his brother the "falsehood"he enacted, and he
says that Antonio became "the ivy which had hid my princely trunk /
And sucked my verdure out on't"(T, 1.2.94-95, 86-87). AlthoughI am
not suggestinganyparticulareroticbond betweenAntonioand Prospero,
I do want to register the eroticization of the language; Prospero
imagines his usurpationas a conjunctionof the sexual and ontological
impuritiesthat inhere in theatricalpractice.12
The image of ivy coveringa tree is, in fact, a fairlystandardimage for
marriageand sexualcoupling. See for exampleTitaniato Bottom:
the femaleivyso
Enringsthe barkyfingersof the elm.
0, howI love thee!howI dote on thee!'"
Adriana expresses her devotion to her husband in terms that are
especiallyevocativein this context:
Thou art an elm, my husband,I a vine
Whose weakness, married to thy [stronger] state
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Makesme withthystrengthto communicate:
If aughtpossessthee fromme, it is dross,
Usurpingivy,brier,or idle moss,
Who,all forwantof pruning,withintrusion
Infectthysap,andliveon thyconfusion.'4
Whatever else drives this play, the logic of theatrical practice-its
particularrelationto the status of the self in early-modernEnglandsuggests itself to Prosperoas the logic of his own usurpation.'5Prospero
is obscured, he implies in part, by the sexualityof staging, the sexual
parasitismof the image he has erected before the public. By makinguse
of the theatrical,he has essentially allowed himself to be locked in a
public act of fellation that drains him of his manhood and flourishes
upon his own "expenseof spirit."Like Daphne, who became an image
for the poetic-a laurel tree-because she was pursued sexually by
Apollo, Prospero'sassociationwith theater is an associationwith lawless
and overpoweringsexuality.
If Prospero'snew theatricalenterprise-what he will do as he stages
his own returnto power-is to answerAntonio'scrimes, it will apparently need to dislodge theater from its associationwith illicit sexuality
and from its power to call into question the stability of individual
identity. It looks as though one task of The Tempestwill be to weaken
the associations between theater and impurity-whether sexual or
ontological-and thus to put Prosperoback in control of theatricality
before he abjureshis art altogether.Indeed, much of the play proceeds
upon this agenda, as I will outline below. I will argue ultimately,
however,thatthe play does not answerAntonio'scrimes.The association
of theater with illicit desire and with the undoing of identity are, I will
argue,the verytools Prosperouses in his final act of self-representation.
The suggestionthat Prosperowants to purge his own art from the
impurities of Antonio's usurpationbegins with the very tree-and-ivy
image that Prosperouses to condemn Antonio. If that image suggestsa
kind of entrapmentwithin the stigmaof the theatrical,after all, it also
resonates stronglywith another of the island's famous entrapments.
Prospero remindsAriel
didconfinethee,
[Sycorax]
Byhelpof her morepotentministers,
Andin her mostunmitigable
rage,
Intoa clovenpine;withinwhichrift
thoudidstpainfullyremain
Imprison'd
A dozen years;within which space she died,
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689
Andleft thee there,wherethoudidstventthygroans
As fastas millwheelsstrike.(T, 1.2.274-81)
The languageProsperouses to describe this confinement suggests that
this is an imprisonmentwithin the womb, a torture inflicted by the
island'sonly real motherlypresence (she is an absence, of course, but a
more vividone than the mother of Miranda,whose only functionin the
play is to have been chaste).'"Prosperocelebrateshis power over that
womb almost ritually,by repeatinghis storyto Ariel once a month:
It was mine Art,
WhenI arriv'dandheardthee, thatmadegape
The pine,andlet thee out. (T, 1.2.291-93)
Prospero locates the maternal in "the damned witch Sycorax"and
distinguishes himself from it. He seems here to be saving Ariel the
delicate theatricalspirit from enslavementto the "earthyand abhorred
commands"of woman and matter.
By the same token, Prospero'sblatantstrategyof distinguishingAriel
from Calibansuggests a desire to protect theater from associationwith
the physical. Prospero continuallyassociates Calibanwith his mother
Sycorax,so that Calibanbecomes the embodimentof a kind of physicality that seems to have no place in Prospero'snew stagecraft. True,
Calibanacts for Prospero,bringinghim wood and reluctantlyobeying
orders, but it is Ariel who performsreal theater in the play,who stages
tempests and providesmusicalinterludes.Arielis the shape-shifterhere,
and his statusas pure spiritsoundslike the ideal solutionto the problem
of eroticizedtheatricalrole-playing.He is a long way fromthe concerns
of a Gosson or even from the eroticized confusion of identities that
allowed Antonioto "suckthe verdure"from Prospero'sprincely trunk.
Prospero'sdescriptionof Antonio'susurpationhas made it plain that
an actor'sbody is dangerousto a playwright.If a "spirittheater"is the
answer to Antonio's theatrical usurpation of Prospero'spower, then
surely the masque of Juno and Ceres is the spirittheater'sfinest hour.
Prospero stages the masque (with Ariel's help) as an antidote to
premaritalsexuality,offering Mirandaand Ferdinandthe spectacle of
marriage(in the person of Juno) and fertility(in the person of Ceres)
but decidedly not desire; Venus and Cupid will not appear.Fertilityis
acceptablein Prospero'stheater after all, it seems, but only as long as it
has no connection with actualbodies or sexuality.Venusand Cupid fail
to appearin this masque, it is noted, because Mirandaand Ferdinand
are too chaste to be tempted by them:
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Mars'shot minion is returnedagain;
sonhasbrokehis arrows,
Herwaspish-headed
Swearshe willshootno more,but playwithsparrows,
Andbe a boyrightout. (T,4.1.98-101)
Spokenby boy actorsdressedas goddesses and performingin a masque,
boys whose very presence on stage is an enticement to desire, this
description of Cupid's return to "natural"boyhood implies the deeroticizingof theater-and specificallythe de-homo-eroticizingof theater, an emptyingout of the intrinsicsexualcontent of plays that would
regularlypresentboys in the guise of women both mortaland immortal.
Note, too, that Ceres refuses to participatein the masque if Venus
and Cupid do because, she says, "theydid plot / The means that dusky
Dis my daughtergot"(T, 4.1.88-89). Ceres'sreferenceto the rapeof her
daughtersuggeststhat Prospero'sart is being purifiedof more thanjust
homoeroticism.For Dis stands in here, in a sense, for all of the play's
dark men, including both Caliban and the dark King of Tunis, all of
whom representsexualthreatsto daughters,be they Proserpina,Claribel,
or Miranda.This masque is designed as a kind of prophylactic,then,
against extramaritalsex, miscegenation, rape, homoeroticism, and,
perhaps, the threat of incest that accompanies Miranda'sstatus as the
only female on her father'sisland. In a way, this masque is undoing a
whole catalogueof sexualcrimes that the romanceshave bodied forth,
and the incest in Pericles.
includingthe attempted rape in Cynmbeline
So Prospero'sreturnto power-his returnto being "absoluteMilan,"
accomplished in part through this marriage and thus through this
masque-seems to depend in partupon his abilityto constructa theater
devoid of sexual provocation;the eroticized destruction of identity
implied in Prospero'shaving been "played"by Antonio necessitates a
clearing away of the sexual component of play-acting.Prospero also
seems to clear awaythe troublesomenecessity of relyingupon actorsas
he had relied upon Antonio;he interruptsthe masqueto muse upon the
final unimportanceof his own theatricalendeavor:
These our actors,
(AsI foretoldyou)wereall spirits,and
Are melted into air,into thin air:
Andlikethe baselessfabricof thisvision,
TheCloud-capp'd
towers,the gorgeouspalaces,
Thesolemntemples,the greatglobeitself,
Yea,allwhichit inherit,shalldissolve,
Andlikethisinsubstantial
pageantfaded
Leavenot a rackbehind.(T,4.1.148-56)
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691
Having a spirit theater is perhaps not enough; Prospero wants to
imagine even those spirits melting into air. However ringing a conclusion this speech may seem to provide to Shakespeare'splay-and his
career-it is not the epilogue to The Tempest;the play is not over.
Prosperohas inserted this fantasyof theater'sinsubstantialityawkwardly
into his own dramaticproduction.It comes at the height of Prospero's
powers, not at the moment he throwsawayhis books.17 The positioning
and the content of the speech suggest that there is an authorialmotive
for unweavingthe fabricof drama,that somehowthis negationof drama
bolsters the playwrightas he practiceshis craft.
Most notably,the fantasythat "ouractorsare all spirits"would seem
to expel the image of Antonio as the actor who replaced his own
playwright;we have progressed here from Prospero'sdismay at his
brother'snegative capability-Antonio's aptitudefor impersonatingand
finallybecoming someone else-to his defensiveand absolutizingvision
of a world in which everythingis negated. In exchangefor a willingness
to contemplate his own mortality,Prosperohas gained freedom from
the need to contemplatehis own replacementby Antonio. He acknowledges that he will one day disappear,but he is intent, it seems, upon
taking "the great globe itself' with him. In Prospero'sown mortalityis
the comfortingnotion that the great Globe theater will end, and with
the end of theaterwill come the end of the troublingtheatricalselfhood
that allows Prosperoto be supplantedby the brother-actorwho represents him.
Moreover,the speech'svery power as a rhetoricalset piece becomes
an assertionof Prospero'scontrol over his medium:"These our actors/
(As I foretold you) were all spirits."Prospero sees past the apparent
liabilities of theater and is able to use them for his own ends. The
destructionof the individualself associatedwith theatricalpracticehas
itself become an authorialeffect manipulatedby Prosperoand therefore
implicitly tamed to meet his needs. As Prospero dwells upon the
possibilityof melting "into air, into thin air,"he has in fact ensconced
himself within the gorgeous palace of his own rhetoric, tempting
audiences to forget that the real difficulty for Prospero lies not in
meltinginto airbut in meltingso easilyinto his brother.Even Prospero's
confessionthat "ourlittle life / Is roundedwith a sleep"implies that our
little lives are rounded (T, 4.1.157-58). The image is of containment,
gestalt,and the containeris Prospero'sbelief in the dream-likequalityof
his own life. A fantasy designed to suggest acceptance becomes in
Prospero'shands a fantasyof freedom from his rulinganxieties.
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III.
One can trace in Prospero'sspeech, then, an effort to move away
from the instabilityof the self that his languageinitiallyassociatedwith
theater. There is as well a movement away from the sexuality of
theatricalrepresentationtraceablein the intensityof Prospero'sfantasy
about the insubstantialityof an actor'sbody;our actors are all spirits.'s
But this false ending to the play actuallyworks to establish Prospero
more firmlyas a theatricalauthor,since it adds "relinquishingauthorial
control"to his bag of authorialtricks. In a sense, Prosperois preparing
us for his real renunciation,helping to ensure that we recognize that
final leave-takingnot as a failure of power but as a chosen authorial
effect. With its assertion of the insubstantialityof the actors who
represent Prospero, its erasure of the sexuality of theater, and its
defense against the interminglingof identities that theater occasions,
this speech looks like an answerto Antonio'scrimes.
But the effort to cleanse playing of its more troubling aspects
accountsfor only a portionof this text'sevident self-consciousnessabout
theater. As suggested above, there are importantways in which The
Tempestdoes not finally undo Antonio'seroticized destructionof the
individualself. There are indications,for instance, that this stagingby
Prospero of authorial control over the very conditions of theatrical
practice that seem to militate against the idea of an authorialself
obscures the extent to which Prospero'sart has been allyingitself with
illicit sexuality all along. Prospero stages his anti-sexual masque for
Mirandaand Ferdinand,which seems to maintainthe split between a
bodiless theater and Caliban'stoo-physicalpresence, a split that seems
to be reinforcedby the fact that awarenessof Caliban interruptsthis
scene. Nevertheless, theater in The Tempestnever gets too far away
from Caliban and his material necessities.'9 It is Caliban who chops
wood for the island, and wood is importantlyassociatedwith the stage,
the "wooden 'O'"-and of course the trees that Prospero uses to
describe his own confinement in the theatrical."'So Caliban and the
physical remain an importantpart of Prospero'sstagecraft.The other
great moment of spirit theater in this play, moreover, suggests that
spirit-actorssometimes play the part of Caliban,that Prosperosometimes models his own theater on his encounter with Caliban. The
Caliban-Arielsplit is not an absolute split after all.
When Prospero's spirits provide an illusory banquet to Alonso's
courtiers, Gonzalo speaks for them all in remarkingupon the spirits'
apparentcourtesy:
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If in Naples
I should reportthis now, would they believe me?
If I should say I saw such islanders,For certes these are people of the island,Who, though they are of monstrousshape, yet note,
Their mannersare more gentle, kind, than of
Our human generationyou shall find
Many-nay, almostany. (T, 3.3.27-34)
These are particularly elegant monsters, but they bear more than a
passing resemblance to Caliban, who, we have learned, used to have
pretty good manners himself:
and then (he says to Prospero)I lov'd thee,
And showed thee all the qualitieso'the'isle,
The fresh springs,brine-pits,barrenplace and fertile.
(T, 1.2.338-40)
There is the passing suggestion that Prospero is restaging his own
experience of Caliban, here, the only real person of the island, employing the very monster of physicality who was so rigorously kept out of the
marriage masque."'
This suggestion that Prospero relies more upon Caliban for his
stagecraft than he likes to admit accords, I think, with another of the
play's puzzling moments. As Prospero readies himself to stage his final
scene of reconciliation, he makes a speech that casts him in the role of
Caliban's mother Sycorax. I mean here the speech that Prospero
borrows from Ovid's Medea, the passage that begins
Ye elves of hills, brooks,standinglakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printlessfoot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune. (T, 5.1.33-50)
This is the speech that goes on to claim that Prospero can bring dead
people back to life; it generally sounds unlike Prospero's other speeches
in its incantatory power, as is appropriate, since it borrows so heavily
from Medea's words in Ovid.22
That Prospero should give a speech that reminds the play's audience
of witchcraft, and thus of the abhorred Sycorax and the physicality
Prospero seems to want to escape, comes as no great surprise if we have
gone back for yet another look at those images of entrapment with
which this discussion began. For just after Prospero celebrated his
power to release Ariel from Sycorax'stree, he threatened to return Ariel
to that confinement:
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If thoumoremurmur'st,
I will rendan oak
Andpeg thee in his knottyentrailstill
Thouhasthowledawaytwelvewinters.(T, 1.2.294-96)
Even at this early point in the play the distinctionsbetween Prospero
and Sycoraxbreakdown.
Even the initialact of rescuingAriel from the pine tree turns out to
be a more ambiguousstatement about physicalitythan my argument
had originallyacknowledged.As Brad Johnson has noted, Prospero's
reference to Ariel as a "spirittoo delicate / To act [Sycorax's]earthyand
abhorred commands"raises questions about what those commands
might have been.23"Abhorred"
suggeststhe possibilityof "whoring,"and
the word "spirit"is a well-knownShakespeareaneuphemism for semen,
as in "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame / Is lust in action"
(Sonnet 129). Under the guise of freeing spirit from matter,Prospero
hints that he may also be rescuing male spirit from its unhappy
heterosexualemployment.This secondarymeaningopens up the possibility that there is a kind of physicality,a recuperationof sexualstigma,
employed in Prospero'sart, for in pulling spirit from out of a tree he
duplicates the actions of the ivy that sucked the verdure from his own
princely trunk.Prosperopositions himself as Antonio,in the sense that
Antonio is the figure for theater gone awrywith terriblesexualimplications. Prospero'srescue of Ariel, then, while it mayworkto separatehis
art from a feared sexualitythat he associateswith women, also rejoins
his artwith the illicit desire Prosperohas seemed to want to purge from
his theater.
In fact, as JonathanGoldberghas suggested,Prospero'spossessionof
In act 1, scene 2, Prospero
Ariel is itself an occasion for erotic display.24
issues a commandto Ariel that makes no real sense:
Go make thyself like a nymph o'th'sea;
Be subject to
No sight but thine and mine; invisible
Toeveryeyeballelse. Go takethisshape,
And hither come in't. (T, 1.2.301-5)
Ariel is commanded,essentially,to go offstage and change clothes, and
his return in the costume of a water-nymphtwelve lines later is
pointedlygratuitous.Prosperocalls him "Fineapparition,"and whispers
commandsin his ear.Then Arielleaves. The point here, apparently,is to
let Prospero and the audience enjoy a costume change, even though
there is no reason--exceptpleasure-for an invisiblenymphto dressup.
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Of course Ariel's cross-dressingimplicates him, and Prospero, in
more than just an excess of sartorialimagination.Nor are his female
roles confined to this one pleasing display.Ariel appearsas a Harpyin
act 3, scene 3, to Prospero'sevident delight:"Bravelythe figure of this
Harpy hast thou / Perform'd,my Ariel; a grace it had devouring"(T,
3.3.52-53). For all that Prospero'sactionshave registeredthe urgencyof
escape from the physical, and coded that escape as a rejection of an
abhorred and earthy femaleness, the pleasure he takes in his own
ravishingspectacle suggests a different set of priorities.Ultimately,the
theatricalbreakdownof signs distinctivebetween sex and sex is neither
as complete nor as threatening as Gosson's condemnations would
indicate. As long as there is an "actual"woman-in this case a Sycoraxwhose sexualitycan be disavowed,femaleness itself can be performed
with a devouringgrace. Prospero'sspirit theater is neither a utopia of
spiritualpuritynor a utopiaof free genderplay,but is insteada carefully
crafted representation of the theatrical, responsive both to cultural
pressures that mandate gender difference and to the pleasures of
breaking that difference down. If, by allowing himself to be played,
Prosperohas been trappedin a realmof eroticizedspectaclethat usurps
him on some profound level, both public and subjective, it seems
puzzling and significantthat his returnto "himself' should incorporate
both erotic spectacle and the ontological blurring that was such a
scandalfor Gossonand his peers. As troublingas it was in early-modern
Englandfor authorsand playersto be feminized-prostituted-by their
employment, The Tempestnevertheless models a form of self-staging
that renders even feminizationpowerful.
IV.
I have argued that Prospero'sgestures toward purifying his art of
illicit desire and of the destruction of the individual self have been
accompaniedby gestures that reconnect theater and illicit desire, and
that the autonomyof his self-presentationcollapses as he cites Medea.
The last moment I want to considerin TheTempestreconnectsProspero
very powerfullywith the confusion of self and self-representationthat
have seemed to drive so much of his subsequent theatricalpractice.
In the play's Epilogue, Prospero steps forward claiming that his
charms have all been overthrown,and he makes an interesting statement about his dependence upon the audience:
now, 'tis true,
I mustbe hereconfinedbyyou,
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Or sentto Naples.Let me not,
SinceI havemydukedomgot,
Andpardonedthe deceiver,dwell
In thisbareislandby yourspell;
Butreleaseme frommybands
Withthe helpof yourgoodhands.(T, Epi.3-10)
Who exactlyis talkingto us here? Prosperothe charactercannotaddress
the audiencewithoutending the theatricalillusionthat makeshim real.
The actor who plays Prospero,however,cannot be stuck on that island
once he steps out of his part. For a characterwho began this play
meditatingupon the excesses of his own implicationin the theatricalregretting the power of his actor Antonio to step out of theater and
overtake him-this is a strange resolution. Prospero ends up in a
predicamentverylike the one he seemed to be tryingto escape;now we
see on stage the problem-or the impossibility-of telling the difference between Prosperoand the actorwho plays Prospero.
Moreover,Prospero'sstrategyof differentiatinggrossphysicalityfrom
his theatricalpracticehas been predicatedupon his abilityto keep Ariel
and Calibanin separatecategories. We have alreadyseen that strategy
compromisedseverely,since Ariel has more to do with the homoerotic
than Prospero'sstrategy of scapegoating Caliban makes immediately
obvious, and since Calibanhas more to do with theater than the play
readily acknowledges. But here the distinctions between Ariel and
Calibanbreak down entirely,as both of Prospero'semployees seem to
collapse back into Prospero. Remember that Prospero has two last
pieces of work to complete; he must pardonCalibanand his companions, and he must set Ariel free. We see neither event take place, but as
this new versionof Prosperosteps before us here he has two requests:
set me free and forgive me for my crimes. I am suggestingthat as the
actor/Prosperosteps forwardfrom The Tempestto present the "real"or actuallythe unreal-Prospero, he seems not to mindbeing associated
with any of the varioussexual or ontologicalpossibilitiesthat Ariel and
Caliban have represented. He seems to be Ariel, longing to be freed,
and he seems to have become Prospero'simage of Caliban,needing to
be forgiven.
If the "revelsare ended" speech melts the great Globe theater into
thin air, here the theater itself takes a kind of revenge. This time it is
Prosperowho becomes ephemeralwhen he is shownto depend upon an
actor's body in a more radical way than even his earlier language
admitted. For all his efforts to controlthe physicalityof stagingand the
parasitical nature of the image he has erected before the public,
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Prosperostandsbefore us, ultimately,as merelyan effect of the theater,
a flickeringpossibilityevoked by the professionalskill of the "richand
insolent"actorsthat Greene had inveighed against.
This final stagedversion of Prosperocomplicatesnot only Prospero's
approachto early-moderntheatricalpractice, but our own as well. In
response to the antitheatricalwritingof its day,The Tempestarticulates
what I have called a theatrical "I," a representationof a mode of
selfhood that is made up of the very factorsthat would seem to militate
against a sense of the self: theatrical role-playing,illicit desires that
confuse gender categories, the perceived parasitismof the successful
actor.It seems to me that this responseadds a layerof complexityto our
contemporarydiscussionsof early-modernselfhood,sexualidentity,and
authorship.Before copyrightlaw,before the notion of sexualsubjectivity that Foucaulttraces to the nineteenthcentury,in a period that many
of our theoretical discourses mark as prior to the invention of these
concepts, The Tempestdemonstratesthat sexualityand authorshipare
neverthelessbound up in compellingwayswith the question of identity
on the early-modern stage. These are, finally, questions that play
themselves out in the body of the actor.
SwarthmoreCollege
NOTES
1 StephenGosson,Plays Confutedin Five Actions(1582), E5v in Marketsof Bawdrie:
The Dramatic Criticismof StephenGosson,ed. ArthurF. Kinney(Salzburg:Institut fiir
Englische Spriche und Literature, 1974), 177. Hereafter cited parentheticallyand
abbreviatedC.
2 Cocke elaboratesupon the actor'sparticipationin an unacceptablyproteanselfhood:
"Takehim at the best, he is but a shiftingcompanion;for he lives effectuallyby putting
on, and puttingoff.... His own [profession]is compoundedof all Natures,all humours,
all professions"(1615, repr. in E. K. Chambers,TheElizabethanStage, 4 vols. [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1923], 4:256-70). "A Common Player"is attributed to Cocke by
Chambers, who reproduces the text from two variant editions included among the
essays of John Stephens.
3Accountsof sexualityandtheaterin thisperiodincludeJonasBarish,TheAntitheatrical
Prejudice (Berkeley: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1981); Lisa Jardine,Still Harping on
Daughters:Womenand Drama in the Age of Shakespeare(New York:ColumbiaUniv.
Press, 1983); Laura Levine, Men in Women's Clothing: Antitheatricality and
Effeminization,1579-1642 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv.Press, 1994);Louis Montrose,
The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeareand the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan
Theater (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), ch. 1-3; Meredith Anne Skura,
Shakespearethe Actor and the Purposesof Playing (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press,
1994), ch. 1-2.
4 Robert Greene, Francesco'sFortunes,or Thesecond part of Greene'sNever too late
(1590), in TheLife and CompleteWorksin Proseand Verseof RobertGreene,M. A., ed.
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Alexander B. Grosart, 15 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 8:131. See similar
sentiments expressedby Thomas Brabine, "in praise of the Author,"in his prefatory
poem to Greene'sMenaphon,and in Nashe'scommendatoryletter "Tothe Gentlemen
Students of both Universities,"in the same text (ed. G. B. Harrison [Oxford:Basil
Blackwell,1927], 17-20).
5 Robert Greene, Groats-Worthof Witte, bourghtwith a million of Repentance:The
Repentanceof RobertGreene(1592; London:The Bodley Head Ltd., 1923), 43-47. For
a summaryof scholars'attempts to explainthe precise natureof the chargesGreene is
making here, see D. Allen Carroll, "Greene's 'VpstartCrow' Passage: A Survey of
Commentary,"Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 28 (1985): 111-27.
Carroll includes a discussion of the nature of Henry Chettle's apology for Greene's
attack,which maypossiblyindicatethat Shakespeareor his friendstook steps to respond
to Greene (115-17).
6At a late stage in the preparationof this essay, I discoveredScott Cutler Shershow's
wonderfulPuppetsand "Popular"Culture(Ithaca:CornellUniv. Press, 1995). Shershow
cites this passagein chaptertwo, "Authorshipand Culture in Early ModernEngland,"
which traces the uses of puppets and puppet imageryin the constructionof theatrical
authorship,both in The Tempestand BartholomewFair (43-108). His insightsregarding
the deploymentof puppet theater add tremendouslyto the questions I have considered
here. Althoughwe considermanyof the same momentsin this play,ultimatelyI see The
Tempestas more willingto own aspects of theatricalpracticethat markit as "low"than
Shershow'sargumentsuggests.
7 HenryCrosse,VirtuesCommonWealth:Or the Highwayto Honour(London,1603),
Q4v.
"See Carrollfor a discussion of the influence of Greene's descriptions,along with
those of Nashe, whom Greene may be echoing, upon Samuel Rowlandsand the second
Returnof Parnassus(120).
"Interestingly,after studyingat length the financialcircumstancesof playwrightsin
the period, Bentley concludes that although it was true that dramatistsduring this
period were beholden to the acting companiesfor their financialand professionalwellbeing, which might explain some of their complaints, "the professionalplaywrights
made more moneythan other literarymen of their time, and more thanthey could have
made as schoolmastersor curates-professions which might have been open to manyof
them. Not only do the extant accounts of paymentsshow very respectableincomes for
the time, but unrecorded payments . . . certainly added to the income of most
professional playwrights"(Gerald Eades Bentley, The Professionsof Dramatist and
Player in Shakespeare'sTime, 1590-1642 [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984],
108-9). Ultimately, neither the alleged sexual excess of the player's craft nor the
financial arrangementsthat governed a playwright'sprofits can be the entire cause of
the occasionalantagonismbetween playersand playwrightsin this period. Instead,both
factors must worktogether with anxietiesabout authorialcontrol.
10For examplesof commentaryon the extent to which it is possible to read Prospero
as a figure for Shakespeare,see Stephen Orgel, "Prospero'sWife,"in Representingthe
English Renaissance,ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,
1988), 220; and David Sundelson,"So Rarea Wonder'dFather:Prospero'sTempest,"in
RepresentingShakespeare:New PsychoanalyticEssays, ed. MurrayM. Schwartzand
Coppelia Kahn(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980), 51.
"William Shakespeare,The Tempest,ed. FrankKermode(London:Methuen, 1962)
1.2.107-9. Hereaftercited parentheticallyand abbreviatedT.
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12I am indebted to RichardWheeler for this suggestion. See also David Sundelson,
who says that the passagehighlightsProspero'sandrogynyand implicitimpotence (35).
13WilliamShakespeare,A Mids'ummler
Night'sDream,ed. HaroldF. Brooks(London:
Methuen, 1979), 4.1.41-43.
14William Shakespeare,A Colmedyof Errors, ed. R. A. Foakes (London: Methuen,
1962), 2.2.174-80.
15The questionsof "self' and "identity"in this period have been debated at length in
recent years. To Stephen Greenblatt'searly study other critics and historians have
added a range of observations. Catherine Belsey, Francis Barker, and Jonathan
Dollimore see the concept of subjectivityas anachronistic,as does Peter Stallybrass,
in this period. Recently,KatherineEisaman
who tracesthe uses of the word "individual"
Maus has articulateda powerful critique of such theories, noting that the evidence of
is widespread,and arguingagainsthistoricaldifference as a
what she calls "inwardness"
privileged tool for dislodgingthe hold of the bourgeois subject. My own sense of the
question runs parallelto Maus's;somethinglike a self seems to me very much at stake
in this text and in the period generally.That selfhood should ultimatelyremainillusory
is inherent in the concept itself, ratherthan a markof absolutehistoricaldifference. See
Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy:Identity and Difference in Renaissance
Drama (London: Routledge, 1985); Francis Barker, The TremulousPrivate Body:
Essays on Subjection(London:Methuen, 1984);JonathanDollimore,RadicalTragedy:
Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeareand his Contemporaries
(Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1993); Stephen Greenblatt,RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980); Peter Stallybrass,"Shakespeare,the Individual, and the Text,"in Cultural Studies,ed. LawrenceGrossberg,Cary Nelson, and
PaulaA. Treichler(New York:Routledge, 1992), 593-612. Mausis carefulto note that
what she calls "inwardness"is not identicalwith subjectivity,and that subjectivityitself
is a set of constructionsthat variesby speakerand instance (Inwardnessand Theaterin
the English Renaissance[Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996], 1-34).
'6 For a varietyof
approachesto this imageand to the problemof mothersin this play,
see JanetAdelman,SuffocatingMothers:Fantasiesof MaternalOrigin in Shakespeare'ss
Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest (New York:Routledge, 1992), 236-38; Marianne L.
Novy, Love'sArgument:GenderRelationsin Shakespeare(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
CarolinaPress, 1984), 184-87; Orgel, 217-30; and Sundleson,39.
"7This implies, interestingly,that actors' bodies become most dangerous precisely
when Prosperois at the height of his powers.
18Leah Marcusnotes that the performancesgiven at Prospero'scommandare all the
more reflective of his pure intention because they involve no actualplay-texts.She sees
this disembodied theater as granting Prospero complete control at the expense of
"monumentality,"or the opportunity to establish authorial reputation in a written
artifact (PuzzlingShakespeare:Local Readingand Its Discontents[Berkeley:Univ. of
CaliforniaPress, 1988], 49).
'9See Mary Loeffelholz, who argues that because Prospero'smasque encourages
Mirandato see herself as Proserpinaand Ceres as her long-lost mother, it implicitly
positions Prosperoas her "raptor,"and thus as Caliban ("Twomasques of Ceres and
Proserpine:Comusand The Tempest,"in Re-memberingMilton:Essayson the Textsand
Traditions,ed. MaryNyquist and MargaretW. Ferguson [New York:Methuen, 1987],
29).
am indebted to Janet Adelmanfor this suggestion.
Shershowpowerfullyconnects the "islanders'"
performancewith both the question
20 I
21
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of theatricalplayingand the problem of colonial "othering,"citing Rachel M. Kelsey's
"Indian Dances in 'The Tempest,"' (Journalof English and Germanic Philology 13
[1914]: 98-104; Shershow,93-96).
22See FrankKermode'sIntroduction,(T, 147-50).
23
See Bradley William Johnson, "Birthed Effects: Shakespeare'sGeneration of
Monsters,"diss., Universityof California,Berkeley, 1995. See especially ch. 5, "The
Politics of Pregnancy:Maternity,Monstrosity,and Makinga Man in The Tempest."
24JonathanGoldberg,Sodometries:RenaissanceTexts,ModernSexualities(Stanford:
StanfordUniv. Press, 1992), 143.
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