The sur-vivance of The Tempest and the comparative philological equivalence between print edition and film adaptation we develop under its rubric can be more fully appreciated as an archival problem in relation to the paratexts of books but to the paratexts of modern editions of the play and cinematic paratexts of its adaptations. We take the epilogue to be part of a crucial paratextual zone of that resists and enables biopolitical archival management as a state of emergent ignorance. Prospero asks to be sent off, to disembark with the gentle air of the audience to fill his sails, as if he were a boat, set free, as if her were a spirit like Ariel, whom he set free only a few lines earlier. The Tempest is widely recognized for its highly elliptical narrative structure, and we want to add that it also invites or appears to allow the reader silently to fill these ellipses, or in the idiom of the play, to be “inclined to sleep” and “cease more questions” (1.2. 185; 184). We turn first to the last page of the Folio and the Arden Three edition of the Folio, then to Taymor and Greenaway’s title sequences, prologues, epilogues, and endings the better to understand how in this zone drowning a book can drown but not die; the book doesn’t get buried or cremated, and is without a beginning or an ending.
As we observed near the beginning of this essay, the Epilogue has raised questions for editors and directors by dividing Prospero’s name from his character in the play. While whoever speaks under the name “Prospero” exercises a weak sovereignty over the play in some respects, readings default to a proper name whose gets retro-projected in more or less spectral over back over the play that name stands apart from and follows. Readers tend to assume that Prospero must have drowned his book because he says in the Epilogue “all my charms ‘oerthrown” and “ Now I lack spirits to enchant.” The assumption is almost what seems to go without saying. Nevertheless, to infer from the Epilogue that Prospero has destroyed his books is to fill in an ellipsis without giving the filled in event a specific place. The Epilogue serves as a kind of guarantee that the text as a place holder for the event it does not narrate or represent, namely the destruction of the staff and book.
We think this is a rather strange interpretive operation, all the stranger because it is so easy to perform that one may not notice having performed it, so strange that it warrants further reflection. What are the limits of the reader’s backward projection of Prospero into the play, if any? Why do so many productions and adaptations of the play show Prospero or Miranda present for the shipwreck in the first scene even though the stage direction for their entrance occurs at the beginning of the second scene of Act One? Why, in short, do readers, editors, and directors all use a paratext in which Prospero is no longer himself to extend his sovereignty across the play sometimes even when he is not on stage, effectively beginning the play begin before it begins? The epilogue functions in a Prospero-centric manner. Readers tend not to wonder if other books have been left behind, if Caliban is left on the island as a kind of librarian, Prospero becoming to Caliban as Gonzalo was to him when Prospero and Miranda were set adrift.
Yet the textual place form that “Prospero” speaks is itself vulnerable. In the Arden edition, the Vaughan Masons say that it can be cut: “The epilogue is not required for a coherent reading or production because the play’s action is complete.. . .” We are not so sure. The last line of the play presents an editor and a director with a problem of deciding how to interpret last line of the play, the epilogue: “Please you, draw near”: Is this line addressed to the characters on stage who “Exit omnes” after it is delivered? Or is it the first line of the epilogue, “you” referring to the audience? The Vaughan-Masons interpolate two bracketed stage directions “[aside to Ariel]” and “to the others]” just before “Please you, draw near” and the Epilogue begins on the facing page (307). In a note at the bottom of the page (307), the credit the Signet for these stage directions.[1] The problem is that “Please you draw near” does not make sense either way. “Draw near” is not synonymous with the line “Come follow” that ends the first Act since it implies that the speaker is stationary. But does Properso leave? When Richard II tells Mowbray and Bolingbroke to “draw near,” Richard II remains in the same place. To make the meaning of “you” as the characters who remain on stage in the play work, the V-M’s have to imagine an off-stage cell to which the actors are going. They gloss the sentence as follows: “Please . . . near. This line is usually delivered to Prospero draws the court party into his cell, offstage. If Prospero remains on stage for the Epilogue, the line can be delivered to the audience as he moves forward.” p. 307. If Prospero moves forward, he, not “you” is moving. A related problem arises from the stage direction “Exuent omnes.” Does Prospero exit and then return? Or does he stay on stage and not exit until after the epilogue, which is followed by the very
The Arden edition is a particularly usefulexample of what for us is re-editing rather than un-editing the already edited Folio not only because it includes a discussion of the Greenaway and Taymor films but because it reproduces a facsimile of the last page of The Tempest, to which they append a note as follows: Note 21 The final page of The Tempest in Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623), with the “EPILOGVE” and “Names of the Actors” and, bleeding through from the verso part of the sheet, part of the title and text of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” p. 128. Certain semantic features disappear in the note. They omit “The Scene, an unvn-inhabited island” as well as the “The” at the bottom right that is meant to help the reader find his place at the top of the next page, the title “The” Two Gentleman of Verona. The end of the last page text is the beginning of the next, and the definite article the first word of a title.
The Vaughan-Masons perform other operations on the Folio tat, while far from controversial, are nevertheless strange enough to deserve critical attention. They silently move the “names of the actors” up to the second page of the edited text (162), just after the title page (161). The first variant is listed as “0] “The Scene, an vn-inhabited island” at the bottom of the page. They have zeroed it out. Extending the ambiguity about the speaker of the epilogue, they introduce as a probability that the final paratext after the epilogue. In their introduction, the Mason-Vaughans say, without offering any justification, that “the Folio’s ‘Names of the Actors’ describes Caliban as a ‘sauage and deformed slaue,’ words that may not be Shakespeare’s.” (32). In their notes they write: “0.1 NAMES OF THE ACTORS This list, originally appended to the text in F and recorded here verbatim, was probably compiled by the scrivener Ralph Crane; the descriptive terms may reflect his knowledge of contemporary stage practice and perhaps, too, his personal assessment of the characters performed at the time. See Introduction, p. 127” (p. 163). One mystery remains unsolved by the Vaughan-Masons: who write the line “Scene, an Vn-inhabitable island?”
Drowning the Paratext
With this understanding of the strange kinds of things that can happen when the Folio is re-edited in mind, we are now in a better position to appreciate how the epilogue motivates decisions in Greenaway and Taymor film adaptations concerning when to show Prospero or Prospera, when to show Miranda, when to show the destruction of Prospero’s books, how to show it, and how manage those decisions in their cinematic paratexts. Although the two films are strikingly different, Taymor’s being far more accessible than Greenawya’s, Both films begin before the beginning and end after the ending.
THAT’S IT FOR NOVEMBER 6
Problem of attribution. In their introduction to the Arden 3, the Vaughans say, without offering any justification, that: “the Folio’s ‘Names of the Actors’ describes Caliban as a ‘sauage and deformed slaue,’ words that may not be Shakespeare’s.” (32)
Caliban as anagram, 31 “it was either too obvious or too cryptic for critical comment until 1778 (31)
Prospero is also, as briefly discussed above, a magician. He wears a magic robe, uses a magic staff, and refers to his books on magic. Magic is his technology, a means of getting what he wants.” (25)
Only at Prospero’s final invitation, ‘Please you draw near,’ do they join in one place. (17)
A correlation though not necessary but nevertheless motivated between the end title sequence and the opening title sequence, There is opening title sequence in the The Tempest.
Miranda is present, but almost overly so. The footage s undercranked so that she appears to be running at a superhuman speed, as if she were a spirit like Airlel or had magical powers like Propsera. She also gets Prospera to clam down as riel does.
The DVD menu is worth discussing (will match Anonymess discussion).
It begins and ends with Prospero and is all shown as if underwater.
There are two shots of books "drowning." There is also shot of the
ship burning in the distance.
The ship also burns as it is wrecked by Ariel, and there's a shot of
it fully restored in a harbor.
The film is good for us in that it highlights the play's not so
obvious opposition between burning and drowning.
The fantasy you identified is operative all over the play, I am
realizing. Like Miranda freaking out when the ship goes down and
Prospero reassuring her; but then Ariel has to reassure Prospero, who
contradicts her own reassurance of Miranda and is similarly
reassured--almost the same words--not a hair on their heads harmed.
Ariel just gives a more detailed account of what happened to the
survivors. Ariel also talks about the ship burning (in the play)--I
had forgotten that.
Interesting too what gets a flashback and what does not--there's no
flashback for Prospera getting few books with Gonzalo's help or of her
library WE see no books in a flashback of Prospera and Miranda (baby)
on the boat in which they are set adrift.
Just wondering f the issue of the book not being a prop and being both
singular and plural is related to drowning as a figure for the
disappearance of the prompt book in production--or its being a prompt
(there, but invisible, off-stage).
So The Tempest as a kind of tele-prompter / ing?
No book burning there, but also no book
destruction, no tearing up a book, or tearing out a page; no
figurative desire, as in R and J, to "tear" a "name" ("Had I it
written")
Julie Taymor’s The Tempest; opening title over a sand castle—begins to melt in the rain, Miranda is holding it; cross-cutting between ship and Miranda running;
The bed catches fire; ten cuts to Prospera, then Miranda running to her, ship burning in the distance; as inside of ship catches fire
Shot of Prospara in the menu is shot when she turns the clouds back after the storm and after the ship as sunk.
No flashback of knowing how I loved my books, furnished with me”
Ariel merges form watery reflection and makes a splash, literally, as his entrance.
Flashback after he merges to the shipwreck—ship on fire, Airel surrounded by fire too. Citing lines about sulpherous ship—so there is textual motivation for showing it burning.
Boat burning versus book burning.
Ariel quotes Ferdinand mockingly “o devils here” (sounds like Caliban)
But are they safe?
Not a hair perished.
Look. The ship is hidden. So we see the ship in harbor completely restored. Taymor wildly accelerated what we learn only in the final scene of the play, giving us even more reassurance, defaulting the audience to her Ariel-centric reading of the play, as if the audience were Ariel.
Ariel is transparent, moves around with a sound effect in a kind of fastforward tracing.
Flashack of Ariel being trapped in the pine; cut back to Prospera with background of forest splashing down the screen as the new background comes into view-a variation of the wipe, or inversion of it.
“invisible to every eyeball else”
Porspera on Caliban. We cannot miss him. He does make our fire. Fetches in our wood.
Caliban gets no flashbacks when he tells the story of showing Prospera the island.
Miranda gets the abhorr’d slave . . . I taught thee language” lines
Prospera so slave hence—the actor was in Amistad, playing a slave; also in Gladiator.
Ariel sings full fathom five under water, superimposed on shot of Ferdinand hearing ad looking around to find who is singing, in a series of shots,
“Where should this music be?
Follow it or rather it has drawn me, it begins again. Falsetto—a bit like Greenaway.
Full fathom, under water, but also in a forest (through which Ferdinand is walking—close ups of both Ariel and Ferdinand
The ballad does remember my drowned father.
The film’s diegesis separates “realism” from “magical” special effects, and also combines them, overlaps, in some sequences, differentiating the spirit Ariel from the “real” human characters.
Myself am Naples, ever since my father.
Ariel appears only in shots with Prospera—not in sots of Ferdinand and Miranda.
“I charge thee that thou attend me.”
(Prospera telling Miranda the tale—would cure deafness—doe’st thou mark?”—Prospera thinking her call doesn’t trough? Tat she has to keep replacing it, redialing? As if Miranda were not there, as she couldn’t tell by looking to see if Miranda is listening or not?