Magic is another thing which watching on stage can make it look a lot more realistic. There is a lot of magic used in the tempest so the director has to make the magic look extra special to achieve the full potential of stagecraft. The playwright wrote the story to be a play so it should be easier to make the magic look better than an image that someone who is reading the play has in his or her head.
The best example (to do with magic) of Shakespeare’s stagecraft is the invisibility of Ariel. “It was mine art, when I arrived and heard thee, that made gape the pine and let thee out”. Prospero is in total control of Ariel, Ariel is saying this to refer to the fact that Sycorax (Caliban’s mother) locked Ariel in a pine tree for 12 years and it was Prospero who let him out which is why Ariel is like a slave to Prospero. “thy thoughts I cleave to” This shows how Prospero has full control over Ariel and how Ariel can read even his thoughts. Within this stagecraft, the audience has to pretend that Ariel is invisible when they actually can see him. This is called suspension of disbelief. Without this knowledge in our minds that Ariel is really invisible it helps us to understand the joke of this scene and we can see why Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are becoming so confused. By Shakespeare enabling the stagecraft of Ariel’s invisibility, we are reminded how really Prospero has all the power and how Stephano regal acts are not real, how Stephano is really not a true leader with real power. Stephano is being made a fool of in a couple of ways as he keeps on turning on Trinculo every time Ariel says “thou liest” and he keeps on showing parts of his “unregal” side “I will supplant some of your teeth” Stephano forgets his act and he turns on Trinculo like a mother protecting her cubs. This is an example of slapstick comedy; he starts slapping Trinculo like he’s a clown on a stage. This also shows how again Stagecraft can make a play on a stage quite a powerful experience.
Next is the subject of Metatheatre. Metatheatre is when a playwright includes a play inside their play, or an author including a story inside their story. It is also to show the audience that what they’re watching is a play and not real life. Normally metatheatre is used to teach a lesson to the audience. Metatheatre is used in ‘The Tempest’ when Prospero makes a play for Ferdinand and Miranda’s wedding. Its supposed to teach us that just like it dissolved into thin air when it finished so to life and everything around us is temporary and nothing can have too much power as one day it too will just ‘dissolve’ or ‘die’ or ‘rot and fade away’. It is mentioned in Prospero’s speech about the “great globe” when he says “our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits – and are melted into air, into thin air.” This whole speech is an example of metatheatre as he is explaining to the audience how this play is not real and none of what they just saw was actually real although it may look like it. Another example occurs right at the end of the play when Prospero is about to give up his magic and he is speaking directly to the audience, asking them for an applause and cheers he says, “But release me from my bands with the help of your aged hands. Gentle breath of yours my rails must fill, or else my project fails which was to please” In this speech, Prospero reminds the audience that they are in a play and asks them to clap if they’ve liked the play which they payed to see. Prospero reminds the audience of this because when someone is watching a play or a film, they sometimes forget where they are as they are too engrossed in the storyline of the film.
Music is another aspect which manifests itself better in a play than a novel. When one is merely reading the book, one can only imagine what the tune of Ariel sounds like or what the ‘scout em and flout em’ dance really looks like. Performance brings the musical reference alive.
The raucous song and dance of the drunken trio: Caliban is the leader of the dance and this shows that even with Stephano’s regal act, Caliban is really in control of the group! Stephano loses his regal ways whenever something out of the ordinary and it shown with the song, when he hits Trinculo and on line 218 when he says “I do begin to have bloody thoughts”. By watching this unfit behaviour for a king performed by Stephano, the Shakespearean audience can learn and appreciate about European power and Colonialization, they can also learn about natives like Caliban and how they live in their “natural habitat”. We can only see that Caliban is in control of the dance when we are watching a play, as this is not written in the script itself. Caliban towards the end of these scenes starts speaking from prose to verse and in iambic pentameters for example in his beautiful speech about the sounds of the island at the end of act IIIii when he says “Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not …” and although we can read this in a novel of the play it is still easier and more realistic to watch it in a play.
Finally, I wish to consider costumes. In ‘The Tempest’ the main point of costumes are the ‘flashy trashy’ “trumpery” that appeal to Stephano and Trinculo. We see again here that watching a play is of course better, as one can see just how bad the clothes actually are and how much Stephano and Trinculo are not under control of everything. The main point of these clothes are to distract Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano. Whilst they are distracted, Prospero intends to “plague them all”. Once we see these clothes we know that this is going to be a funny scene and indeed it is. (The next part is also funny as the ‘majestic’ Stephano and his followers are not really looking like kings at all, in fact they are looking more like tramps all wet from the swamp of mud smelling like “horse piss”. This is another example of costumes stagecraft) Caliban sees straight through these clothes but Trinculo and Stephano don’t and they start trying them on. We see from this that Caliban is not as stupid as he appears and Stephano and Trinculo are as stupid as they look, it shows who is the cleverest of the three and it shows that all Stephano attempts to be regal have not worked and they are gone as quickly as they came with just one little distraction.
These are just a couple of points on the theme of power and stagecraft used in ‘The Tempest’ and there are also many others proving that there are clear advantages of telling a story by way of a play, than simply in a novel.
