Did William Shakespeare write The Tempest as a farewell to the theatre? Whether or not it was intended as such, his romance about revenge and reconciliation on an enchanted island, which opens in a production starring Christopher Plummer on Friday at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, has become closely associated with endings both planned and unplanned in the 400 years since it premiered.
Certainly, when it was first announced that Plummer would be playing Prospero this summer, it was logical to wonder whether this would be the 81-year-old actor's parting part.
The role has become a favourite for actors nearing the end of a long stage career: Just five years ago, revered Canadian actor William Hutt took his final bow at Stratford in it, released from his long career as he spoke Prospero's last line: “As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.” (That's the audience's cue to clap.)
Christopher Plummer as Prospero, with Julyana Soelistyo as Ariel in The Tempest, opening Friday at the Stratford festival.— David Hou / Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Plummer, however, has been clear that his Prospero is not a swan song. With his recent Oscar nomination and box-office success with films like Up, his career is still going strong and he intends to return to the stage quickly – possibly in a comic role directed by Des McAnuff, who is also helming The Tempest. (Perhaps Malvolio in next season's rumoured production of Twelfth Night?)
So how did Prospero come to be associated with final curtains in the first place? Though it appears at the beginning of the First Folio, the 1623 collection of Shakespeare's plays, The Tempest is widely considered to be the Bard's final full play. And the magician Prospero has long been read as the poet's stand-in, at least since the 19th century when it became fashionable to try to glean traces of an author's autobiography in his work.
In Shakespeare's story – which has no known original source – Prospero, who was once Duke of Milan, rules over an uncharted island that is ostensibly located in the Mediterranean, but contains hints of the New World and, practically speaking, exists solely in the imagination.
When a ship full of his old enemies and friends come within the vicinity of the island, Prospero, with the help of the spirit Ariel, causes it to wreck; he then manipulates the survivors from afar, sending them on quests and teaching them lessons.
The parallel to artistic creation is very clear, though Prospero doesn't behave exactly like a playwright – as critic Northrop Frye observed, he's really more of an actor-manager, both playing the lead role and directing the show.
When Prospero gives up the “art” of magic and says he'll “retire me to my Milan, where every third thought shall be my grave” in the final scene, however, generations of critics have imagined Shakespeare similarly tottering off to Stratford-upon-Avon to putter in the garden.
But not everyone is as soft-headed. “In point of historical fact, The Tempest was not Shakespeare's last play, and the romantic notion of a 'farewell to the stage' serves the Shakespeare myth better than the Shakespeare reality,” Harvard professor Marjorie Garber grumbles in her book Shakespeare After All. “It is we, not the playwright, who seem to need a ceremonial occasion to say goodbye.”
Indeed, most scholars believe that Shakespeare followed The Tempest with at least two other plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and possibly the legendary lost play Cardenio.
But since those endeavours were co-authored by John Fletcher, however, they have, perhaps unfairly, tended not to be viewed as “real” Shakespeare.
In any case, who's to say that the Bard didn't head off to Stratford and then, like so many artists ill-advisedly do to this day, attempt a comeback? Hutt himself – who, it should be noted, played Prospero a total of four times at Stratford –came out of retirement to perform King Lear, in a way, on the TV series Slings and Arrows. And he planned a return to Stratford in 2007, before ill health forced him to withdraw.
In fact, if Shakespeare is similar in personality to Prospero, then it makes sense that he would have trouble staying away from the stage. As The Tempest draws to a close, Prospero keeps delivering speeches that sound as if they should be epilogues. First there's “our revels now are ended,” which includes the famous line, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” Then there's “this rough magic I here abjure,” where he breaks his staff and drowns his magic books. By the time he gets to the actual epilogue and lets us know that now his “charms are all o'erthrown,” it can feel like a victory lap.
Academic David Bevington has eloquently expressed why the connection between Prospero's final speeches and Shakespeare is so hard to shake. “No doubt it is a romantic fiction to associate the dramatist Shakespeare with Prospero's farewell to his art,” he has written, “but it is an almost irresistible idea, because we are so moved by the sense of completion yet humility, the exultation and yet the calm contained in this leave-taking.”
Similarly, it will be hard not to associate the words Prospero speaks this summer at Stratford with the aging, adored actor playing him. While we hope and expect Plummer's performance this summer will be just another notch on his belt, if he plays it well it will no doubt feel like a valediction.
The Tempest runs in Stratford, Ont., from June 25 to Sept. 12.
