Finally got to see Julie Taymor's film version of The Tempest, and enjoyed it immensely. She takes a lot of liberties in some ways, but everything is done with real intelligence and style. The treatment of the play's songs, for instance, I found very fresh and interesting. (I wonder if there's another work of literature that comes so close to exposing the essence of music.) In fact, all of the thematic content resonates really strongly. There are some terrific performances as well, with Ben Whishaw as Ariel (his John Keats in Bright Star from 2009 was equally excellent) and Djimon Hounsou as Caliban standing out in particular. Also liked Russell Brand's Trinculo a lot, and Felicity Jones' Miranda was very strong. Her listening ability (crucial in Shakespearean acting) points to a big future. Some of the bigger names, Helen Mirren, Chris Cooper and David Strathairn, were surprisingly reserved in their interpretations now that I think about it, but I enjoyed them as well. I'm going to watch it again soon, and write more about it at that point, but I can certainly recommend it right now. Check it out as soon as you can, and the same goes for her version of Titus Andronicus (Titus from 1999).

Further to yesterday's post, in which I quoted from Stephen Orgel's excellent introduction to the Oxford Tempest, I would like to add two points for consideration. The first is that Shakespeare was certainly aware of the importance of collaborators in getting his work out there in front of people to do what it should, i.e. to communicate. And these collaborators included his sources, his playwright colleagues, his actors and fellow theater professionals, and his audiences, all of whom, the evidence shows, were held in high regard by Shakespeare. The second is that although it could be argued that drama itself, a form of expression which by its very nature requires high levels of participation and interpretation, deserves as much credit as Shakespeare for the creativity that his work has inspired in others, I would simply contend that it would be difficult to imagine the passage in question being written about any other writer. In other words, the openness, the possibilities, the necessity of interpretation are not in his work by accident.

Every so often I come across a passage that seems to me so elemental in its ideas that I feel obliged to quote it without any edits. The following comes from Stephen Orgel's fascinating introduction to the Oxford Edition of The Tempest (1987), and among its many important points, it should help playgoers (me included) to realize that a performance is more finite in its possibilities than is a text. Or, as Emily Dickinson put it, "A pen has so many inflections, a voice but one." Here's the unabridged excerpt:

"But all interpretations are essentially arbitrary, and Shakespearian texts are by nature open, offering the director or critic only a range of possibilities. It is performances and interpretations that are closed, in the sense that they select from and limit the possibilities the text offers in the interests of creating a coherent reading. In what follows I have undertaken to be faithful to what I see as the characteristic openness of the text that has come down to us, and to the variety and complexity of its contexts and their implications. To do this is to indicate the range of the play's possibilities; but it is also to acknowledge that many of them (as is the nature of possibilities) are mutually contradictory. There is nothing anomalous in this. The text that has come down to us is poetry and drama of the highest order, but it is also, paradoxically, both less and more than literature. It is, in its inception, a play script to be realized in performance, with broad areas of ambiguity allowing, and indeed necessitating, a large degree of interpretation. In its own time its only life was in performance, and one way to think of it is as an anthology of performances before Ralph Crane transcribed it for the printer in 1619 or 1620. As a printed text, it is designed to provide in addition the basis for an infinitude of future performances, real and imagined. For all our intuitions of autobiography, the author in it is characteristically unassertive, and offers little guidance in questions of interpretation or coherence. For Shakespeare and his company, the text was only the beginning, not the end, of the play."

I'm completely baffled by the fact that the new film version of The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor, appears to not be opening in theatrical release in Montreal. I hope I'm wrong, and it's just been delayed, but it doesn't appear so. Such a thing can't help but raise questions about the level of our society's cultural literacy. It's hard to believe that a film version of a unique and spectacular masterpiece, with a dazzling cast, and directed by one of the most talented of film-makers isn't even being given a chance to find an audience in a city like this one. And I'm not in any way placing the blame on young people when I refer to cultural literacy; it's not the fault of young people - they aren't the ones making decisions such as these. Rather it's the generation older than theirs, people of my age, who are clearly more concerned with money than content, who are responsible. I've spent enough time teaching in high schools to know that young people aren't interested in reading or seeing nonsense, and given the opportunity and the choice they will always opt to be engaged by superior work. But they're too infrequently being given that choice, which is sad. And baffling.

Wednesday's post concerned Shakespeare's use of Cinthio's prose tale as a source in the writing of Othello. Over the next couple of days, I'll discuss some of the other sources delineated by Norman Sanders in his introduction to the New Cambridge edition, and give some conjecture regarding Shakespeare's way of working with them. Incidentally, there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever left England. This puzzles some, who feel that first-hand knowledge must be necessary for someone to write so convincingly of settings as diverse as those found in the plays. I would argue that all the evidence points to Shakespeare being what Blake called a "mental traveller", and that his reading provided his imagination with everything it needed. And so, in honour of the upcoming film version of The Tempest, I'll end with an appropriate quote from Prospero (often considered to be an alter-ego of the author), who in telling his daughter Miranda about the treachery that led to their exile, recounts the kindness of Gonzalo who saved them and allowed Prospero to keep his most-loved possessions:

Some food we had and some fresh water that

A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

Out of his charity, being then appointed

Master of this design, did give us, with

Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,

Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,

Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me

From mine own library with volumes that

I prize above my dukedom.