The Renaissance Theatre

Texts, Performance and Design

Christopher Cairns

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429780745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1999, this volume examines iconography, nature, gardens, staging, tradition and innovation in the Renaissance theatre, continuing the growing interest in relationships between image and performance as a fertile field for theatre research. Papers explored areas including The Tempest, Elizabeth Cary, Antonia Pulci and Shakespeare's Italian nature.

1 Shakespeare’s ambiguous magic in The Tempest

Bent Holm

1

In the dénouement of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, V, 1, Prospero as re-installed ruler, utters a line which may sound strange. Referring to Caliban he says: ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’. Obviously reconciliation is the Leitmotiv of the drama. And here Prospero recognizes the brutish creature, as if he were his illegitimate son. Which he cannot be, simply because his mother, the witch Sycorax, died before Prospero arrived at the island. Still, there seems to be some kind of connection. If one goes deeper into an examination of the story’s chronology strange patterns of symmetry emerge.

In the exposition scene Prospero recalls the background story. The (female) witch Sycorax was exiled from Africa with her, unborn, male child. Her voyage led her to the island, where she released Caliban and captured Ariel. Twelve years passed; the (male) magician Prospero was exiled from Europe with his child. His voyage led him to the island, where he liberated Ariel and captured Caliban. Another twelve years passed; a zero zone is inserted between those two different twelve-year periods, a before and an after, and with a number of reverse paralellisms based on the antagonism Sycorax-Prospero; Caliban is conceived by the devil himself; Miranda is born by a woman, who is a model of virtue etc. These distorted analogies may leave the impression that Sycorax is the back of Prospero, that the reconciliatory process leads him to the ‘acknowledgment’ of the dark parts of himself. In this way, Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda attains an incestuous flavour. These are just a few examples of the play’s wealth of ambiguous repetitions and mirrorings at various levels. The play begins with the disastrous voyage from a wedding, in Africa, and it ends with the happy embarkation for another wedding, in Europe, implying a contrast between black and white, which is fundamental.

2

It is obvious that next to reconciliation, magic, especially white magic, is a constituent of the universe of The Tempest. For this reason I will turn my attention from the dramatic universe to so-called reality; there is a world outside the theatre, even ifall the world is a stage.

Mysticism and animism were part of Elizabethan and Jacobean reality, connected with Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism and Hermeticism. The extent of that influence is widely discussed. The universe might be perceived as an animated hierarchy, peopled by spirits; man as a microcosm in a macrocosm; science and magic as intimately connected.¹ A magician managed to get in contact with the divine, and other elevated spheres. ‘The art of magic’, wrote Sir Walter Raleigh, ‘is the art of worshipping God’.² Search for knowledge, including the invocation of spirits,³ was sometimes described as dependent on the seeker’s purity of life, his chastity. Robert Fludd regarded the flesh as the root of all evil. Even pain and suffering might contribute to spiritual refinement.⁴ According to Frances Yates, a revival of certain Elizabethan ideas concerning such things as purity was seen especially among the young around 1610, which coincides with The Tempest. In Yates’ opinion Shakespeare was influenced by this revival. In any event, Prospero ‘s magic is generally white and pure.⁵

On the other hand, we have black and impure magic, mainly represented by Prospero ‘s antagonist Sycorax. Extra-theatrical reality included belief in witchcraft and trials. It is commonly accepted that the theme of witchcraft in Macbeth specifically refers to James’ interest in the issue. It seems reasonable to ask if this, too, is the case with The Tempest – a title, which by the way, is remarkable, since the storm takes place only in the first scene, though its consequences are immense. Now, if we focus on the storm and James, it turns out that a crucial moment of James’ life is associated with storms – and that this has a Danish connection.

James married the Danish princess Anne by proxy in Copenhagen, in August 1589. The princess then set sail for Scotland, but terrible storms rendered the passage impossible, and she ended up in Oslo. As he longed to be united with his bride James decided to leave for Norway to fetch his princess, an event worthy of a fairy tale. Francis Stuart, earl of Bothwell, was appointed as advisory associate of the president of the Council during James’ absence.⁶ In November James joined his bride in Norway. The wintry weather prevented him from an immediate return to Scotland and he accepted an invitation to visit Copenhagen. He spent four months in different Danish activities – drinking at the castle of Elsinore, Kronborg, for example⁷ – as well as in conversations with the period’s leading theologian, Niels Hemmingsen, called Hemmingius, who had studied at Wittenberg, and who was author of the Admonitio de superstitionibus magicis vitandis,⁸ a significant contribution to the discussion of witchcraft and diabolism. Hemmingsen was cited with respect by James when the king seven years later published his Daemonologie. James also visited Tycho Brahe, the famous astronomer and astrologer. When James returned from Copenhagen to Scotland his ship was beset by terrible storms – and his royal vessel was separated from the rest of the fleet. Finally, in May 1590, he reached harbour in Scotland. Soon after it was discovered in Copenhagen that black magic, witchcraft, lay behind the many misfortunes that beset his wedding voyage, a conspiracy which aimed at damaging the noble king and his young bride. Trials were initiated in Copenhagen, and it was revealed that a number of witches were involved. They had raised magic storms, aided by their assisting spirits who moved as quickly as lightning. Several witches were captured and burned, among them the so-called ‘Devil’s mother’⁹ and a mayor’s wife. This fact was reported in Scotland, and it was understood that the king’s absence had proven to be disastrous; evidently a conspiracy had evolved and witchcraft was involved. Hundreds of witches had been mobilised. Trials went on for a couple of years, presided over by James. His original scepticism had now completely vanished. The witches confessed their sexual obligations to the devil as part of their initiation, and at any other time it might please their master. They described the assisting spirit, its ability to move as quickly as lightning, and to change from visible to invisible.¹⁰ It turned out that the treacherous hand behind the conspiracy belonged to the usurper Bothwell, the king’s cousin. The trial revealed that the witches had conspired with their Danish colleagues. Notwithstanding the devil’s failure, the situation was grave; a number of witches were executed until 1592, after which followed some years of chaotic civil war implicating Bothwell. Obviously, an attack of such magnitude could not be of merely human origin, it had to involve demonic forces. The conspiracy aimed at killing God’s annointed.¹¹ According to the witches – at least according to the propaganda – James was the devil’s greatest enemy on earth.¹² He was to be destroyed in order that the devil might reign. Of course this served to strengthen the myth of kingship.¹³ But no doubt James was in a great state of terror.

These Danish events ‘had a decisive effect on the first great witch-panic in the British Isles’.¹⁴ This meant the introduction of continental demonology in Scotland and England, mainly with the publication of James’ own Daemonologie from 1597,¹⁵ later on expressed in legislation during James’ English reign.¹⁶ The Daemonologie consists of dialogues concerning magic in general, sorcery and witchcraft, and spirits and ghosts. James evidently refers to personal experiences, such as the use of wax images for harming or killing. He adds that witches: ‘can raise storms in the air, either upon the sea or land, though not universally, but in such a particular place and prescribed bounds, as God will permit them to trouble; which likewise is very easy to be discerned from any other natural tempests (…), in respect of the sudden and violent raising thereof, together with the short enduring of the same. And this is likewise very possible to their master to do’.¹⁷ James distinguishes between two kinds of magic: one practised by magi, aiming at deeper knowledge and learning, and a selfish and evil use, driven by greed, practised by witches. White and black, in short.

The point is of course, that there are a number of corresponding traits between James’ experiences and the events of The Tempest. The back stories are practically identical: Prospero was an ‘absent’ prince, who left government to a kinsman whom he trusted, but who proved to be treacherous: i.e. his brother Antonio who behaved like, and at the end became, the ruler. Furthermore the wedding voyage from a distant country, the magical storm, the separation of a royal vessel from its fleet. But in a reversed version. It is no longer the ruler who is the humiliated and impotent victim. No, he is now the master of the situation. He has defied diabolic and obscene forces and is now able – by using his own almost divine magic power, and an assisting spirit, Ariel – to control the movements of his enemies.

In other words, the question is raised whether the plot additionally outlines a kind of compensation, a reversed mirroring of the extremely traumatic events experienced by James years earlier, by depicting him as a strong and wise ruler, philosopher and intellectual – which, as it happens would agree with James’ view of himself.¹⁸ However, I must emphasize that I am not forcing yet another attempt at a definitive interpretation. This is an attempt to suggest another possible contemporary reflection or reception.

It may be objected that James actually modified his views of witchcraft.¹⁹ But the same objection might be raised concerning Macbeth performed in 1606. It should be recalled that James had his Daemonologie reprinted in the folio edition of his works in 1616. In 1613 he involved himself in a polemic about a case of impotence apparently induced by witchcraft. The theologians claimed that since this was not mentioned in the Scriptures it was superstition. The Devil had the idea later on, replied James – and he added: ‘Look my Daemonologie’.²⁰ Maybe the image of James’ modification of his view on magic should be modified … The issue is complex. Anyway, one particular fact points to an objective connection, beyond discussion; namely that magic storms at sea, nautical maleficia, until then was a Danish (Scandinavian) peculiarity, virtually unknown in the British Isles (see Fig. 1.1). The introducti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• 1 Shakespeare’s ambiguous magic in The Tempest
• 2 Mountebanks, mummers and masqueraders in Thomas Platter’s diary (1595–1600)
• 3 The figure of Desdemona in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century illustrations
• 4 Alone of all her sex: Elizabeth Cary, the Viscountess Falkland
• 5 The portrait of Elizabeth Cary in the Ashmolean Museum: ‘cross dressing’ in the English Renaissance
• 6 Shakespeare’s Italian nature, or, from garden to stage
• 7 ‘What is’t you lack?’ Comedie obligations in Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
• 8 Adjusting the canon for later fifteenth-century Florence: the case of Antonia Pulci
• 9 Venues and staging in Ruzante’s theatre: a practitioner’s experience
• 10 Candelaio: la commedia di un filosofo
• 11 ‘La musica ben adattata è l’anima e ‘l condito di tutta la festa ’: music and poetry in Michelangelo Buonarroti il giovane’s Il giudizio di Paride (1608)
• Index