Shakespeare, to his fans, is timeless. His plays can withstand almost any interpretation; be set in any era – past / present / future; and take colour / age / and gender blindness to virtually any level (see the 82 year old Ian McKellen currently playing Hamlet). With the exception of The Taming of the Shrew – which struggles to rise above bad old-fashioned misogyny whatever the director tries to do with it, all his plays seem to be productive fields of innovative exploration of human behaviour for every new director and cast: see the African themed Hamlet, starring Paapa Essiedu.
Essentially, the words are there – it’s up to the actors and their director to find new insights; no need to change or omit or give ‘trigger warnings.’ Anyone going to a theatrical production should be prepared to have their sensibilities challenged (I know from experience I can’t take the gore in Titus Andronicus, and have to close my eyes when Gloucester’s eyes are stamped out in Lear).
Mind, the powers that be at the Globe theatre in London might disagree about being tough on audience sensitivities. In one of their recent anti-racist lectures, an American academic argues that audiences should be warned that The Tempest is a manifestation of ‘settler colonialism,’ – an interpretation that (white) audiences have been unwilling to accept and need to be more aware of. Prospero, a high-born westerner, lands on the magical island with his infant daughter, Miranda, and takes charge. But he was washed up there unwillingly and wants nothing more than to get back to his homeland, rather than colonise this one.
Prior to his arrival, the pregnant witch, Sycorax, had been dumped there, also against her will, where she gave birth to Caliban. Was she the original ‘settler coloniser,’ rather than Prospero?
Sycorax was dead by the time Prospero arrived and he took the young Caliban into his home until he tried to rape Miranda. But before Sycorax and Prospero, the occupants of the island had been ethereal figures, including Ariel, whom Sycorax had enslaved and locked in a tree until Prospero rescued him. True, once ‘freed,’ Ariel has to work for Prospero until gaining his full freedom just before Prospero leaves the island. But one imaginative director has Ariel holding Prospero’s broken wand at the end of the play, as if trying to figure out how to mend it, so would he now be in control of the island?
These many layers, based on what Shakespeare actually wrote, make it hard to interpret the play as a just an unthinking pro-colonial manifestation, tying in with the sixteenth century Western exploration and exploitation of the Americas and the role of black people in Tudor Britain. And what should we make of Caliban trying to ‘colonise’ Miranda’s body?
As another academic, Carol Chillington Rutter, says: ‘Shakespeare’s plays are multi-vocal, multi-perspectival. If you cut them, mute one voice to privilege another, erase “what could distress theatre-goers” you deny audiences access to recognition and understanding.’
If only we aspiring modern authors and playwrights, with all our education and social awareness, could provide so much food for thought for our readers and viewers.
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