Adapting William Shakespeare's The Tempest in Film ... - unipub

Adapting William Shakespeare's

The Tempest

in Film and Literature

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

eines Magisters der Philosophie

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von

Gerhard SCHREIBER

am Institut für Anglistik

Begutachterin: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Maria Löschnigg

Graz, 2014

I would like to dedicate my diploma thesis to my mother, Gertrude,

and to my father, Ernst, who are always there for me and have supported me

selflessly throughout my studies.

This thesis would not have been possible without the help, support and patience of

my supervisor, Mag. Dr. Maria Löschnigg.

Thank you.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1

2 William Shakespeare - Life and Works ........................................................................................ 3

2.1 Biographical Background ......................................................................................................... 3

2.2 Overview of Shakespeare's Works .......................................................................................... 4

2.2.1 Drama .............................................................................................................................. 4

2.2.2 Poetry .............................................................................................................................. 6

3 William Shakespeare's The Tempest ........................................................................................... 7

3.1 An Introduction to The Tempest .............................................................................................. 7

3.2 A Brief Summary of the Plot .................................................................................................... 9

3.3 An Analysis of the Main Characters ...................................................................................... 12

3.3.1 Character Constellation ............................................................................................... 12

3.3.2 Prospero ........................................................................................................................ 12

3.3.3 Caliban ........................................................................................................................... 15

3.3.4 Ariel ................................................................................................................................ 17

4 Adapting The Tempest ................................................................................................................ 18

4.1 A General Introduction to Adaptations .................................................................................. 18

4.2 Literary Adaptations of The Tempest .................................................................................... 20

4.3 Cinematic Adaptations of The Tempest ................................................................................ 22

4.3.1 Film Versions of The Tempest ....................................................................................... 23

Excursus: Postcolonialism............................................................................................................ 25

5 Aimé Césaire - Une Tempête ...................................................................................................... 28

5.1 Aimé Césaire's Life and Works.............................................................................................. 28

5.1.1 Biographical Background ............................................................................................... 28

5.1.2 Aimé Césaire's Major Works and Legacy ...................................................................... 31

5.2 Martinique - A Brief Overview ................................................................................................ 32

5.3 Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête ................................................................................................ 35

5.3.1 Introduction to the Play .................................................................................................. 35

5.3.2 A Brief Summary of the Plot .......................................................................................... 36

5.3.3 The Tempest vs. A Tempest ......................................................................................... 38

5.3.4 Une Tempête - An Epilogue .......................................................................................... 48

6 David Malouf – Blood Relations ................................................................................................. 50

6.1 David Malouf’s Life and Works .............................................................................................. 50

6.1.1 Biographical Backgound ................................................................................................ 50

6.1.2 David Malouf’s Literary Works ....................................................................................... 51

6.2 Australia’s Colonial History .................................................................................................... 52

6.3 A Brief History of Australian Theatre ..................................................................................... 54

6.4 David Malouf’s Blood Relations ............................................................................................. 57

6.4.1 An Introduction to the Play ............................................................................................ 57

6.4.2 A Summary of the Plot ................................................................................................... 59

6.4.3 Blood Relations vs. The Tempest .................................................................................. 63

6.4.4 Malouf's Revision of Characters .................................................................................... 68

7 Peter Greenaway - Prospero's Books ....................................................................................... 74

7.1 Prospero’s Books – Background Information ........................................................................ 74

7.1.1 Prospero’s Books – An Introduction .............................................................................. 74

7.1.2 Peter Greenaway – The Director ................................................................................... 76

7.1.3 Sir John Gielgud - Prospero .......................................................................................... 78

7.2 Prospero’s Books – The Film ................................................................................................ 79

7.2.1 The Technology Behind the Film ................................................................................... 79

7.2.2 Prospero’s 24 Books...................................................................................................... 80

7.3 The Tempest vs. Prospero’s Books ....................................................................................... 85

7.3.1 General Notes ................................................................................................................ 85

7.3.2 The Main Characters in Prospero’s Books .................................................................... 87

8 Fred M. Wilcox – Forbidden Planet ............................................................................................ 90

8.1 The ‘Brains’ Behind the Film .................................................................................................. 90

8.1.1 Fred McLeod Wilcox – The Director .............................................................................. 90

8.1.2 Other Persons Responsible for the Film........................................................................ 91

8.2 Forbidden Planet – An Introduction ....................................................................................... 92

8.2.1 The Film ......................................................................................................................... 92

8.2.2 The Cast of Forbidden Planet ........................................................................................ 94

8.3 A Summary of the Plot ........................................................................................................... 95

8.4 The Tempest vs. Forbidden Planet ....................................................................................... 99

8.5 The Main Characters of Forbidden Planet .......................................................................... 100

8.5.1 Character Constellation ............................................................................................... 100

8.5.2 Dr. Morbius/Prospero................................................................................................... 101

8.5.3 The Monster from the Id/Caliban ................................................................................. 102

8.5.4 Robby the Robot/Ariel.................................................................................................. 103

8.5.5 Commander Adams/Ferdinand & Altaira Morbius/Miranda ......................................... 104

9 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 105

10 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 108

10.1 Primary Sources .................................................................................................................. 108

10.2 Secondary Sources ............................................................................................................. 108

10.3 Web Sources ....................................................................................................................... 110

I n t r o d u c t i o n | 1

1 Introduction

No other writer in literary history had a greater influence on literature and

contemporary media than William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is everywhere. Almost

every human being on this planet has at least heard the name 'Shakespeare'. His 38

plays were precursors for numerous other dramas by playwrights from all over the

world. The plays have been translated into many different languages and are widely

read by people of many different ages. His sonnets are cornerstones of poetry and

were so successful that they even paved the way for the new tradition of the English

(Shakespearen) sonnet. Throughout the centuries, Shakespeare's works have been

subject to a considerable amount of research and countless studies and

interpretations. This is still true in the present day. Experts will continue to discover

new perspectives on his dramas and poems and find new answers to the questions

that arise in his numerous ambiguous formulations.

Shakespeare is rumoured to have based his works on several different

sources and his works have also been rewritten and adapted in large numbers.

Writing back to the canon of literature is more common today than ever before. In

particular, Shakespeare's plays have been subject to a vast number of new

interpretations through rewritings and cinematic adaptations. This is especially the

case with Shakespeare's most famous plays, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A

Midsummer Night's Dream, McBeth and Othello, which have been reworked by other

playwrights, novelists, poets, filmmakers and even by composers, several times.

The first reason why I chose Shakespeare's The Tempest, which compared to

the other plays is not so well known, is because of its colonial theme. It was and still

is of great interest for postcolonial rewriters who reinterpreted the play's theme in

order to allude to the aftermath of colonialism together with its still existing problems

in the former colonies. The two examples I will therefore analyse in this thesis are

Une Tempête, by the French author of Afro-Caribbean origin, Aimé Césaire, which is

very faithful to the original plot, and Blood Relations by the Australian author David

Malouf, which is rather loosely based on Shakespeare's play. The second reason for

choosing The Tempest, is its numerous cinematic adaptations in many different film

genres. I will therefore discuss the postmodern reworking Prospero's Books, directed

by the British exceptional artist Peter Greenaway, and Forbidden Planet directed by

I n t r o d u c t i o n | 2

the American filmmaker Fred M. Wilcox, which again is a rather liberal interpretation

of the play's plot in the form of a science fiction movie.

The main aim of this diploma thesis is to compare the aforementioned

rewritings and adaptations to Shakespeare's The Tempest and to investigate what

has been adapted from the original and how this has been converted and interpreted

in the reworkings. Therefore, the first part of this thesis (see Chapter 2) briefly

outlines Shakespeare's life and his literary legacy in order to present why the famous

Renaissance author is still so important today. The second part (see Chapter 3) of

the present study provides background information about The Tempest, a brief

summary of the plot and an analysis of the main characters. It is supposed to inform

the readers of this thesis about The Tempest so that they are able to follow the

discussions of the two rewritings and the two cinematic adaptations. The third section

(see Chapter 4) of this thesis contains an overview of adaptations in general, then

focuses on literary and cinematic adaptations in particular, and, last but not least,

offers an excursus about postcolonialism. This chapter is meant to explain what

adaptations there are and why The Tempest has been subject to so many

reinterpretations. At the end of the respective sections there will be lists provided

which contain the most prominent rewritings/film adaptations of the play.

The forth part (see Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8) will be the main part of this thesis in

which the two rewritings of The Tempest, Une Tempête and Blood Relations, as well

as the two cinematic reinterpretations, Prospero's Books and Forbidden Planet, will

be analysed and contrasted with Shakespeare's original. Every subchapter gives a

brief introduction to the author and the adaptation itself, a summary of the plot, an

analysis of what has been used from The Tempest in the respective reinterpretation,

how this was used and what was altered from the original. The last section of every

of the aforementioned subchapters focuses on how the original characters from the

play have been incorporated in the reworking, and for what reason. The main

purpose of the fourth part, and also of this thesis, is to present four distinct

approaches to William Shakespeare's The Tempest from four different countries

(France, Australia, England, USA), which thus offer four individual interpretations of

the play's theme.

W i l l i a m S h a k e s p e a r e - L i f e a n d W o r k s | 3

2 William Shakespeare - Life and Works

2.1 Biographical Background

The English-born writer, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), world-famous for

his numerous plays and poems, was and still is one of the most influential authors of

all time. It is still commonly claimed that there is not much known about the life of

William Shakespeare as there are numerous gaps in his biography. However, this is

not correct. Throughout the centuries several Shakespeare researchers have

discovered more and more documents regarding the life of the famous author and

compiled an almost complete biography of Shakespeare. It is said to be the best

documented biography of a citizen from the English Renaissance (cf. Suerbaum

2006: 14). Although there is no doubt about Shakespeare’s existence, rumour has it

that he may not really be the author of his works. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 13) However,

in the following thesis Shakespeare will be considered the actual author of all of the

writings usually accredited to him.

Shakespeare was born in 1564. He was baptised on April 26, 1564 in

Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, which is known from the record in the church

register of Stratford's parish church. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 14) It is assumed that

young William later received a proper education in a renowned local grammar school.

This fact is based on quotations in some of his dramas. In November 1582 he

married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than him. With her he had three

children, Susanna and two years later the twins Judith and Hamnet. (Cf. Suerbaum

2006: 14) His son Hamnet died at the age of 11 in 1596. (Cf. Schabert 2009: 140)

After Shakespeare's marriage a gap in his biography occurs. Thus, it is not

clear when Shakespeare moved to London, but he definitely attracted attention and

became considerably famous there. The period between his marriage and him

already living in London covers almost eight years, during which it is unknown what

happened in Shakespeare's life. In 1592 Shakespeare was already a notable

playwright and actor. From 1594 Shakespeare is said to have joined an actors guild

called “Lord Chamberlain’s Men” (later “King’s Men”) which not only featured some of

the most famous players of this time but also possessed the well-known “Globe

Theatre” where almost all of Shakespeare’s plays were performed. During the


following years Shakespeare became increasingly wealthy and famous. He obtained

his own coat of arms in 1596, had shares in business with The Globe Theatre and

acquired a spacious house near Stratford called the "New Place" which he retired to

in 1610. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 15-6). Rumour has it that his last works from 1612

onwards were not written in London any more. Some researchers have found

indications to support this in The Tempest's stage directions. (Cf. Schabert 1992:

174)

Shortly before his death in 1616 Shakespeare wrote his final work, namely his

last will in which he bequeathed the majority of his extensive possessions to his

eldest daughter’s son and the remaining belongings to his second daughter and his

wife Anne. Curiously, Shakespeare is said to have passed away on the same day

that he was born, i.e. April 23. What is definitely certain is the fact that Shakespeare

was buried on April 26, 1616, in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford in a grave of

honour. His daughter Susanna, her husband and Shakespeare's wife Anne were also

interred next to him after their deaths. (Cf. Schabert 2009: 166-7)

2.2 Overview of Shakespeare's Works

2.2.1 Drama

During his lifetime

Shakespeare wrote 38 plays

which have greatly influenced

authors over the centuries, or, to

be more precise, he actually

wrote 35 plays and co-authored

three dramas, i.e. Pericles, Henry

VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.

It is presumed that Shakespeare

took part in the creation of more

than 38 plays, however, this is not

entirely verifiable. (Cf. Schabert

2009: 192) His plays are generally classified into "Tragedies", historical dramas –

Figure 1: Title page of the 1st Folio (1623)


also known as "Histories" – and "Comedies", according to their first publication in the

first Folio (F1) of 1623. (Suerbaum 2006: 73)

The F1 came out seven years after Shakespeare's death and was compiled by

Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell. It includes 36 dramas

and is the only original source for 17 of them. 20 of Shakespeare's other plays were

also published in prints of their own during the author's lifetime. These prints and the

F1 are the only original sources of Shakespeare's famous dramas. (Cf. Schabert

2009: 192-3) F1 had a circulation of about 1200 prints and cost 1£. Its precise title is

"Mr. William | Shakespeares | Comedies, | Histories, & | Tragedies, | Published

according to the True Originall Copies. | London | Printed by Isaac Jaggard, and Ed.

Blount. 1623" (Schabert 2009: 212). The book consists of 908 pages and is divided

into three categories, i.e. "Comedies", "Histories" and "Tragedies". (Cf. Schabert

2009: 212-3) The first drama featured in F1 is The Tempest which will be of great

importance later in this thesis when Peter Greenaway's screen adaptation Prospero's

Books is discussed.

For the great majority of Shakespeare's plays it is impossible to determine

exactly when they were written. (Cf. Wells 2003: 121) Only a few dramas can be

dated more precisely as for example The Tempest, which according to reliable

sources was first performed on November, 4 1611 in Whitehall before King Jacob I

and his royal household. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 14) It can be assumed that

Shakespeare started his career as a playwright mainly with historical dramas, such

as the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, the early tragedy Titus Andronicus and

several comedies, such as Love’s Labours Lost, The Comedy of Errors and The

Taming of the Shrew, all said to have been created before 1594. Soon after, he wrote

his probably most famous tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, and one of his most well-

known comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Leaving tragedies almost aside for

about seven years after writing Romeo and Juliet and concentrating on comedies

and historical dramas, Shakespeare composed his greatest tragedies from 1601

onwards. The most famous and most influential ones are certainly Hamlet, Othello,

King Lear and Macbeth. From 1609 till his death in 1616 Shakespeare wrote only five

plays including The Tempest, which was probably written in 1611 and will be in the

focus of the following chapter. (Cf. Wells 2003: 121)


2.2.2 Poetry

Shakespeare began his career as a poet with two epic poems, i.e. "Venus and

Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". Shakespeare was probably inspired by Ovid and

his Metamorphoses when writing those two poems, which he dedicated to the well-

known aristocrat and patron of literature, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, in

order to become more famous and to find sponsors for his playwriting. (Cf. Suerbaum

2006: 410)

The most famous poems Shakespeare wrote are his Sonnets and these are

considered the most valuable of his works beside his plays. They are also said to

have been dedicated to famous persons, although they were not issued as such by

Shakespeare himself, but much later in 1609 by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. Of the

154 sonnets the first 126 are not addressed to a beautiful woman as the lyric

convention might 'prescribe' it and as it might also appear to many readers at first,

but to a young man. The main topics of these sonnets are friendship, beauty,

immortality, differences of age and status, jealousy and rivalry. Sonnets 127-152 are

directed to the so-called "Dark Lady". Unlike in the traditional sonnet, where the

subject of desire is mostly a young and beautiful lady with blonde hair, Shakespeare

chose a dark-haired woman who is not nearly as virtuous and innocent as the usual

object of desire in a sonnet. The main themes behind the "Dark Lady" sonnets are

sexual obsession, the blindness of lovers and the conflict between desire and

reason. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 412-4) Some of the sonnets of the first group are said

to be dedicated to a rival poet. References to the "rival poet" can be found in sonnets

76-86. (Cf. Schabert 2009: 581) The aforementioned modifications in content and the

use of the structure and the rhyme scheme introduced by Henry Howard, Earl of

Surrey (abab cdcd efef gg) set Shakespeare's sonnet apart from the Italian sonnet.

Consequently, he became one of the most famous sonnet writers of all time and

definitely the most influential representative of the English sonnet. (Cf. Schabert

2009: 572)

T h e T e m p e s t | 7

3 William Shakespeare's The Tempest

3.1 An Introduction to The Tempest

The Tempest was presumably written in 1610 and 1611, which makes the play

one of Shakespeare’s latest works. As already mentioned before, the play was first

performed in 1611 at the Jacobean royal court and first published in the first

Shakespeare Folio (F1) in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death. In 1613 The

Tempest was staged at court again at the wedding ceremony of Princess Elisabeth –

Jacob I.'s daughter – and the German Elector Prince Friedrich von der Pfalz. (Cf.

Suerbaum 2006: 211-212) Technically a comedy, The Tempest is categorized as one

of Shakespeare's "romances" due to its lack of 'real' comical effects, the consistently

serious content and the inclusion of characteristics of the typical romance or

adventure story. A romance usually involves topics such as separation, reunion,

wonders, magic, shipwreck and solitude. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 14)

(Cf. Orgel 2008: 4-5)

There are no known direct or apparent sources on which Shakespeare might

have based the story of The Tempest. It is assumed that Shakespeare invented the

plot himself. However, there are numerous influences which have formed the

composition of The Tempest. First, Shakespeare used common romance

'ingredients' for this play as well as for his other romances, The Winter's Tale,

Cymbeline and Pericles. Second, he presumably incorporated reports about a

historical event into his play which occurred in 1609. These reports are called

Bermuda Pamphlets and were records of a shipwrecked British vessel on the way to

Virginia which was stranded on the Bermudas. (Cf. Orgel 2008: 62-3) The Bermudas

are not even close to the Mediterranean island which figures in The Tempest,

however they have kind of a mystical connotation as they were quite unexplored at

the time of the English Renaissance and many ships are rumoured to have

disappeared in the famous Bermuda triangle. Third, Ina Schabert also mentions

probable literary sources Shakespeare might have used as a template for The

Tempest, for example, the German playwright Jakob Ayrer's comedy Die Schöne

Sidea (The Beautiful Sidea), which was written before 1605, and two other narratives

in Ortunez de Calahorra's Espejo de Principes y Caballeros (transl. The Mirrour of

Princely Deeds and of Knighthood) (1562) and Noches de Invierno (transl. Winter


Nights) (1609) by Antonio de Eslava. Schabert also refers to William Thomas' History

of Italy (1549) in which names from The Tempest such as a Duke Prospero Adorno

of Milan can be found. (Cf. Schabert 2009: 473-4)

One very striking feature of The Tempest is that it takes up the issue of

colonialism. Margaret Kohn concisely defines colonialism in her essay as "a practice

of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another" (cf. Kohn

2003: online). In the case of the Tempest the island is 'ruled' by the former Italian

duke Prospero, who enslaves one of the island's natives, Caliban, and has another

servant, Ariel, fulfil his plans. The shipwrecked crew is wandering on undiscovered

land and are all controlled by Prospero. Colonialism is very old. It began in ancient

times when the Greeks and the Romans eagerly wanted to expand their empires.

The greatest call for colonisation occurred in the 16th century as seafaring became

safer due to bigger, faster and more reliable ships. The ships could also carry more

passengers, which meant that more people could be shipped to the colonies. The

idea behind colonialism was not only to gain territory but also to spread western

(European) customs, morals and tradition to the wild and uncivilized colonies. (Cf.

Kohn 2012: online) For these reasons, Shakespeare, being a well-educated man of

the world, might already have observed the negative aspects of colonialism during

his lifetime and may also have purposely criticized them in The Tempest. Considering

this, The Tempest is one of the first plays questioning colonialism.

In recent years these references to colonialism in The Tempest have been

subject to many new interpretations and discussions and have moreover lead to

numerous new adaptations of the original play featuring a colonial or post-colonial

perspective. A perfect example of a postcolonial adaptation is Aimé Césaire's play

Une Tempête (see chapter 5) which is very faithful to Shakespeare's drama but

mainly focuses on the two servants, Ariel and Caliban, and the power relations

between the two characters and their master Prospero. Césaire's idea behind his

play was to highlight the problems that arise in connection with colonialism. He

himself grew up in a colonial environment on Martinique, a French colony island in

the Caribbean.

Shakespeare’s The Tempest was successful not only when it was first

performed but it has continued to be appreciated throughout the following centuries

up to and including today. The play is structured into five acts and, as already


mentioned earlier, is quite an unusual comedy as it hardly evokes any laughter and

comical scenes are, in fact, almost non-existent. Only the characters of Trinculo and

Stephano contribute to some hilariousness in the play. The plot of the play is very

simple and compact, and, with only 2283 lines, it is one of the shortest of

Shakespeare's dramas. The three classical unities – "the unity of time", "the unity of

place" and "the unity of action" – are almost accurately observed. The time which

covers all of the events in The Tempest nearly corresponds to the time of

performance, the action takes place only on the island and the plot is almost

exclusively about the question, what happens to the shipwrecked people. The

dramatis personae can be divided into three groups, the first group including Alonso

and his court (Antonio, Sebastian, Gonzalo), the second group consisting of Caliban,

Stephano and Trinculo and the third group made up of Ferdinand and Miranda.

These three groups are separated from one another by the shipwreck and are finally

united again by Prospero and his spirit Ariel. All these features make The Tempest a

seemingly simple but also a very special representative of Shakespeare's numerous

plays. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 213-217)

3.2 A Brief Summary of the Plot

The Tempest is divided into five acts. The first two acts consist of two scenes,

the third act of three scenes and acts four and five of one scene in each case. The

following plot summary of The Tempest will be structured according to the play's

acts.

Act I, Scene 1, of The Tempest starts off on a ship which finds itself in the

middle of a storm, providing the title for the play. The characters Alonso, Antonio,

Sebastian, Ferdinand, Gonzalo, Trinculo and Stephano are aboard this ship. They

have recently attended a wedding ceremony in Tunis and are heading back to

Naples. After the tempest turns the vessel over, these characters are all stranded on

a nearby deserted island, although on different spots. This island, which

Shakespeare located somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunis and

Naples, sets the main scene for the play. Everything else happens exclusively on this

island.


Scene 2 of Act I finds the protagonist, Prospero, together with his daughter,

Miranda, in his cave. He tells her what happened twelve years before he invoked the

storm in The Tempest. Prospero, a magician and former Duke of Milan, was betrayed

by his brother Antonio, the usurping Duke of Milan, because Prospero spent too

much time with his studies. He was sent to sea with only a small boat some

essentials and his precious books, which “A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo” (Tempest

I.ii.161) supplied for Prospero and his daughter Miranda, who was also exiled with

the deposed duke. The two 'refugees' reached the aforementioned island and started

a new life with the goods they had received. Moreover, Prospero found and enslaved

two servants on the island, the native inhabitant Caliban and the spirit Ariel whom he

rescued from the evil witch Sycorax. Through his books he has acquired

considerable magic potency, which he uses to suppress Ariel and Caliban and to

control everything on and nearby the island, even the tempest itself. Prospero thanks

Ariel for bringing the ship's crew onto the island and visits his servant Caliban. The

two argue and curse each other. Thus, the audience learns about the delicate

relationship between Prospero and Caliban. At the end of Act I, Antonio's son

Ferdinand meets Prospero's daughter Miranda and the two immediately fall in love.

In summary, Act I describes the situation the characters of the play find themselves in

and additionally reveals, via Prospero's flashback, not only the circumstances which

led to Prospero's present situation, but also via proleptic asides the magician's further

plans.

In Act II, Scene 1 the important characters Antonio (the ruling Duke of Milan),

Alonso (the king of Naples), Sebastian (Alonso's brother), Adrian, Francisco and

Gonzalo (Prospero's faithful councillor), are introduced to the audience. Aimlessly

they wander about the island and discuss their situation. When Ariel enters, he plays

some music which tires the lords and everyone except Antonio and Sebastian falls

asleep. The two remaining characters meanwhile plan to assassinate Alonso and

Gonzalo, which is only prevented by the airy spirit Ariel who freezes the two

assassins' drawn swords and whispers into Gonzalo's ear and wakes him up

instantly. Act II, Scene 2 shows Caliban who meets Trinculo and later Stephano. This

scene is one of the few in The Tempest which offers comical moments, as for

example the confusion Caliban causes when he conceals himself with a cloak and

Trinculo is not sure whether "this monster" (Tempest II.ii.29) he sees is a "man or a

fish" (Tempest II.ii.24). When Stephano enters the scene, both hide under the cloak


and the obviously drunk Stephano thinks he sees "a monster of the isle with four

legs" (Tempest II.ii.63). Caliban makes the two conspire against his master Prospero

and the group marches towards Prospero's cave while Caliban shouts out the words:

"Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom!" (Tempest II.ii.181)

Act III starts with Ferdinand working for Prospero. Miranda comes along,

speaks with him and they both confess their love to each other. Miranda proposes to

Ferdinand who gladly accepts. In Scene 2 Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano appear on

stage again. They are on their way to Prospero's cell in order to kill him. Still drinking,

they start arguing with the 'assistance' of an invisible Ariel shouting "Thou liest"

(Tempest III.ii.43), which causes additional confusion. Nevertheless, they continue

walking in order to achieve their common goal. The action of The Tempest rises to its

climax in Scene 3 of Act III, when Ariel appears in shape of a harpy in front of Alonso,

Antonio, Sebastian and Gonzalo, after he has conjured up a banquet for the lords

and made it disappear again. The lords are stricken with fear and run off stage.

Act IV opens with the wedding ceremony for Miranda and Ferdinand, for

which Prospero invokes the classical Roman goddesses Ceres, Juno and Iris and

several nymphs to perform a masquerade. Prospero interrupts this invocation when

he learns from Ariel that Caliban conspires against him with his newly found, bibulous

friends Trinculo and Stephano. Together they have decided to destroy Prospero and

take over the island for themselves, with Stephano as the intended leader. Prospero

banishes the three conspirators from his cell with the help of spirits in the form of

hounds.

Shakespeare concludes his play in Act V when Prospero summons Alonso,

Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo and forgives them for the misfortune they have

brought to himself and his daughter. He promises to bring them safely back to Naples

and to abandon his magic powers: “[...] But this rough magic I here abjure; [...] I’ll

break my staff/Bury it certain fathoms in the earth/And deeper than did ever plummet

sound I’ll drown my book” (Tempest V.i.50-51; 54-57) Finally, he releases Ariel, as

promised before, and speaks the famous "Epilogue" in which not only Prospero bids

the audience goodbye but most likely also William Shakespeare bowing himself out

from the magic of creating literature. (Cf. Suerbaum 2006: 218)


3.3 An Analysis of the Main Characters

3.3.1 Character Constellation

The following section offers an analysis of the major characters Prospero,

Caliban and Ariel as they are crucial for the analysis of the adaptations of The

Tempest which constitutes the main focus of this thesis.

3.3.2 Prospero

Prospero, who was overthrown by his brother Antonio and driven away to a

remote island in the Mediterranean Sea, is the rightful duke of Milan and the main

protagonist of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The whole action is set around him. This

can also be observed when taking a closer look at Shakespeare’s play in which

Prospero speaks more than 30% of the text followed by Caliban and Ariel (cf. Zabus

2002: 1). The other characters therefore fade into the background. Prospero has

Prospero Rightful duke of Milan

Miranda Prospero's daughter

Ferdinand's lover

Caliban Prospero's slave

Antonio Prospero's brother

Duke of Milan

Ariel Prospero's servant

spirit

SebastianAlonso's brother

Trinculo

Alonso's jester

Alonso King of Naples

StephanoAlonso's

butler

Gonzalo Former

councillor of Prospero

Ferdinand Alonso's son

Miranda's lover


complete control over them. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 25) The character of Prospero

has three different functions in the play: First, he is the former duke of Milan, second

he is Miranda's father and ruler over his two servants Caliban and Ariel, and, third, he

is a sorcerer who uses his magic in order to control everything and everyone on the

island. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 25)

Being the former duke of Milan, Prospero was considerably powerful, but he

lost his reign when Antonio seized the dukedom. This happened for two reasons:

First, Prospero was "thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the

bettering of [...] [Prospero's] mind" (Tempest I.ii.89-90), i.e. he only studied his books

and therefore transferred most of his authorities to his brother Antonio. Second,

Prospero's 'tragic flaw', i.e. the neglect of his duties as a ruler, "awaked an evil

nature" (Tempest I.ii.93) in Antonio who then betrayed Prospero. This evil nature can

also be witnessed in Act II when he tries to murder his ally Alonso and Prospero's

former councillor Gonzalo while they are sleeping: "Antonio: There be that can rule

Naples/As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate/As amply and unnecessarily/As

this Gonzalo; [...] Draw together,/And when I rear my hand, do you the like/To fall it

on Gonzalo." (Tempest II.i.260-3; 293-5) (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 25-9)

Prospero's role as Miranda's father and at the same time as the master of his

two servants Ariel and Caliban has several different aspects. On the one hand,

Prospero is a caring father who protects his daughter from the evil impersonated by

his slave Caliban who was his daughter’s "schoolmaster" (Tempest I.ii.172). On the

other hand, Prospero does not seem to be just selfless regarding his daughter. In

marrying her to the King of Naples' son Ferdinand, he fulfils not only his daughter's

wish but also secures the position of an heir (Miranda) on the thrones of the Kingdom

of Naples and Milan. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 29-30) These arranged 'political'

marriages between royals and aristocrats were a common occurrence during

Shakespeare's lifetime.

The situation of Caliban, who together with his mother Sycorax represents the

'indigenous population' of the island, is different. At first, Caliban was treated "with

human care" (Tempest I.ii.346) and was lodged in Prospero’s own cell (cf. Tempest

I.ii.346-7) Then, however, Caliban violated "the honour of [...] [Prospero’s] child"

(Tempest I.ii.347-8) and Prospero made him his "abhorrèd slave" (Tempest I.ii.350).

As a result of this, Prospero hates Caliban and describes him as "a devil, a born


devil, on whose nature/Nurture can never stick [...] And, as with age his body uglier

grow,/So his mind cankers." (Tempest IV.i.188-9; 191-2) Thus, Prospero has

succeeded in raising his daughter properly but has failed to civilize Caliban. (Cf.

Weseslindtner 2009: 32-4)

Ariel, Prospero's airy spirit, was rescued by the latter from the witch Sycorax

who had trapped him inside a tree. Therefore, Ariel owes Prospero some sort of 'life

debt' and Prospero insists on Ariel working this debt off. In this way, Ariel has to fulfil

all of his master's orders to gain his liberty. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 32)

Both Ariel, as well as Caliban, do not serve their master out of pure pleasure.

Caliban obeys his master's orders because, if he does not, Prospero punishes him

"with old cramps,/Fill[s] all [...] [his] bones with achës, make[s] [...] [him] roar,/That

beasts shall tremble at [...] [his] din." (Tempest I.ii.367-69) Ariel executes Prospero's

commands not because he is selfless, but in order to become independent from his

master and be free. Both Caliban, as well as Ariel, are controlled by force, although

they are treated in different ways by Prospero. If Caliban does not comply with

Prospero's orders, he receives corporal punishment, while Ariel ‘only’ has to face

deprivation of liberty. However, not just the methods of punishments are different but

Prospero also addresses his servants in a different manner. He calls his spirit Ariel

"chick" (Tempest V.i.317) and reveals his affection for him with loving forms of

address such as "dearly, my delicate Ariel" (Tempest VI.i.48). For Caliban he uses

the terms "tortoise", "poisonous slave, got by the devil himself", "most lying slave",

"misshapen knave" and "bastard one". (Cf. Tempest I.ii.314-45; V.i.268-73) Ariel thus

enjoys a considerably better status than Caliban. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 32-4) This

fact will also be of great importance in the context of Aimé Césaire's postcolonial

adaptation Une Tempête.

Last but not least, Prospero is a mage who gains his power from his magic

staff and the books that his faithful councillor Gonzalo deposited inside the boat

which carried Prospero and Miranda to the island. With the help of his airy spirit Ariel

he is able to invoke a tempest and several illusions in order to control and confuse

his foes. As already mentioned above, Prospero speaks more than any other

character in The Tempest, not only to other characters but he also speaks several

asides and monologues (cf. Tempest I.ii.66-116; VI.i.146-63; V.i.34-87; V.i.153-171)

including the famous Epilogue at the end of the play. Thus, Prospero is highly


responsible for the development of the story of The Tempest. In his first monologue

in Act I, Scene 2 (Tempest I.ii.66-116) he tells Miranda how and why they have come

to the island. In this way, Prospero creates a ‘retrospective narration’ which not only

provides his daughter with information but also the audience. (Cf. Weseslindtner

2009: 34-41)

All the aforementioned characteristics of Prospero make him a very special

and dominant protagonist. With Prospero’s narrative function, his magical abilities

including the raising of illusions, the invocation of spirits and the conjuring up of the

tempest, it seems as if Prospero produced and directed everything that happens in

the play. As a matter of fact, The Tempest looks as if it was written by Prospero, the

wronged duke of Milan himself rather than by William Shakespeare. Filmmaker Peter

Greenaway seized this idea and presents the Prospero of his brilliant film adaptation,

Prospero’s Books, actually writing the text of Shakespeare’s The Tempest on screen.

3.3.3 Caliban

Besides Ariel, Caliban seems to be the only surviving individual of the

indigenous population of the island in the Mediterranean Sea, where Prospero and

Miranda are stranded. The list of dramatis personae of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

describes Caliban as “a savage and deformed slave”, which, at first glance, does not

characterize the island’s native inhabitant in a very flattering manner. There is no

doubt that Shakespeare deliberately chose the name ‘Caliban’ for Prospero’s slave

in order to pun on the term ‘cannibal’. Cannibalism was and still is considered evil.

(Cf. Rowse 1984: 27) It derives from the Spanish name ‘Caríbales’ or ‘Caníbales’

which means “from the Carib”. The Caribs are a tribe from the West Indies, a group

of islands in the Caribbean Sea, who were known for eating human meat. (Cf.

Cannibalism 2013: online) Interestingly, the French author Aimé Césaire used an

island in the Caribbean as setting for his play, Une Tempête, instead of the island in

the Mediterranean Shakespeare chose for his play. One the one hand, Césaire did

this in order to refer to his own origin, the French colony island Martinique, on the

other hand, he also put more emphasis on the character Caliban and his name’s

actual origin, the Caribbean. All this will be discussed in more detail in chapter 5 of

the present study.


In Act I, Scene 2 of The Tempest the audience learns about Caliban’s past

with Prospero when the former accuses Prospero of seizing his island from him – of

which he used to be "king” (Tempest I.ii.342) – in the lines: “This island’s mine by

Sycorax my mother,/Which thou tak’st from me” (Tempest I.ii.331-2). Sycorax came

to the island from Algiers, which implies that she as well as Caliban has black skin.

Later, Caliban accused Prospero that he first stroked him and made much of him (cf.

Tempest I.ii.333), so that Caliban adored Prospero and showed him “all the qualities

o’th’isle” (Tempest I.ii.337), but eventually Prospero made him his slave. Prospero

counters these accusations by stating that he indeed treated him “with human care”

(Tempest I.ii.347), gave him shelter in his own cell and taught him to speak until

Caliban sought to violate the honour of Prospero’s child (cf. Tempest I.ii.340-50). At

this point, Prospero made Caliban his slave and now approaches him in a

disrespectful way. Regarding this, A.L. Rouse quotes from the reports of the Virginia

colonists who were shipwrecked in the Caribbean Sea (see above), that exactly this

pattern of behaviour was observed when the colonists first came across the

indigenous population there (cf. Rowse 1984: 28).

As illustrated before, Caliban portrays the so-called ‘wild man’ who carries a

number of meanings and associations. English literary history shows numerous

examples of the ‘wild man’ as he, for instance, appears in early novels such as

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, in which the protagonists

encounter a native population of an unknown place, and subsequently a conflict

between the two parties evolves. The ‘wild man’ has symbolized not only “romantic

innocence in concord with nature”, but also “an erotic character, the counterpart to

civilized society and a menace for its values” as well as “a turning away from god and

reason through madness and delusion [...] which can be healed again by reflection,

repentance and reformation" (transl. cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 48).

Caliban’s language, however, is not primitive, as might be assumed from his

nature. Prospero taught him to speak in the way he speaks himself. Caliban does not

only mention this in Act I, Scene 1, but it can also be seen in the style of his speech

in the play. Prospero as well as Caliban speak in ‘blank verse’ in contrast to other

characters such as Stephano and Trinculo, who speak in prose (cf. Weseslindtner

2009: 49). Moreover, Caliban refers to a bible passage when he instructs Stephano

in how to kill Prospero in Act III: “I’ll yield him thee asleep, where thou mayst knock a


nail into his head.” (Tempest III.ii.59-60) This bitter fate was suffered by king Sisera

who was killed by Jael with “a tent peg and a hammer” while he was fast asleep (cf.

Judges 4:21 NIV 2013: online). Thus, Caliban represents the ‘wild man’ with his

appearance and his manners but at the same time contradicts this image with his

speech and his knowledge of the bible, the opus magnum his master’s religion is

established on. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 49-50)

With Prospero’s spirit servant Ariel, Caliban does not seem to have much in

common. At first glance they are polar opposite. Ariel stands for air, lightness,

chastity and culture and, thus, strongly contrasts Caliban, who represents earth,

heaviness, libido and nature. However, at second glance they have more things in

common than just being enslaved by Prospero. Both are, for example, open to music.

Ariel sings on several different occasions and even Caliban sings in Act II, Scene 2

when he is drunk. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 51-54) They also have a common goal,

i.e. the achievement of liberty. The means both use to gain freedom from Prospero,

however, are different again. Caliban conspires against Prospero and tries to kill him

with the help of Stephano and Trinculo, whereas Ariel – who will be analysed next –

seeks a peaceful method, i.e. the execution of duties his master imposes on him.

3.3.4 Ariel

A.L. Rowse fittingly describes Ariel in his Shakespeare’s Characters as “a

spirit at Prospero’s command in The Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s most

imaginative creations” (Rowse 1984: 12). As said before, Ariel was rescued by

Prospero from the evil witch Sycorax, who is also Caliban’s mother. Therefore, Ariel

has to fulfil certain magical tasks for his master in order to become independent.

Thus, Ariel and Prospero live in some sort of symbiosis where the former is the

personification of the latter’s magic. Moreover, Prospero needs Ariel to execute his

magic. Without Ariel he would not nearly be as powerful. In Prospero’s play Ariel is

his protagonist. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 44-5) Ariel was freed from a tree by

Prospero from which he himself was not able to escape, and not even Sycorax, who

imprisoned Ariel inside the tree, could reverse her magical spell. This indicates that

Prospero, even though he needs Ariel, is more powerful than the spirit. In this

relation, Prospero can be compared to a colonial ruler who acquires goods with the


help of her/his slaves but cannot obtain them on her/his own. (Cf. Weseslindtner

2009: 44-6)

Marlene Weseslindtner also draws attention to the difficulties concerning the

portrayal of the character Ariel, which will also be also quite important for the analysis

of the screen adaptations of The Tempest. Ariel is invisible most of the time and

when he is apparent he wears a large variety of different clothes, appears as a sea

nymph or a Harpy, mainly floating in an elevated position above the other characters.

This makes a ‘realistic’ portrayal of the character on stage almost impossible. On

stage the invisibility of one character can only be enacted with the help of other

characters who pretend the invisible person is somewhere on stage. For cinematic

adaptations, however, the portrayal of Ariel does not constitute such a huge problem.

Modern studio technology provides a large variety of special effects to display

invisibility and ‘magic tricks’ on screen. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 47)

4 Adapting The Tempest

4.1 A General Introduction to Adaptations

As long as there have been plays by Shakespeare, there have been adaptations of those plays. (Fischlin 2000: 1)

The first sentence in Daniel Fischlin’s and Mark Fortier’s Adaptations of

Shakespeare aptly introduces this topic. The English Renaissance author’s famous

literary works have given occasion to numerous rewritings and film adaptations.

Shakespeare’s legacy even found its way into opera houses, as for instance Hamlet,

Macbeth, Otello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and the

musical Kiss Me Kate which is inspired by The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare’s

legacy can also be found in cartoons (e.g. Shakespeare: The Animated Tales) and

computer games (e.g. The Shakespeare Chronicles: Romeo & Juliet). Even

Shakespeare himself has adapted many of his plays from other authors and, as

mentioned in an earlier chapter, was inspired by contemporary events when writing

The Tempest (cf. Fischlin 2000: 1, 4).

A d a p t i n g T h e T e m p e s t | 19

But what is an adaptation? For every adaptation an original text is needed.

Inspired by this text another text or a film can be created. Some of the texts/films are

very faithful to the original and, in a way, preserve it while others are more loosely

related to the original and make more room for new interpretations. However,

adaptations are not done randomly but most of the time, they pursue a specific aim.

One such aim can be the transfer of the action of a play to a more contemporary

environment. Director Baz Luhrmann sets his 1996 film adaptation William

Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet in the second half of the twentieth century. He

includes elements of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which make the film a

postmodernist adaptation of Shakespeare’s Renaissance tragedy. At the same time

this film illustrates that Romeo and Juliet is a “cultural object in the modern and

postmodern moment” (Anderegg 2003: 56) which is still of high relevance today (cf.

Anderegg 2003: 54-56). Another reason for adapting a Shakespeare play is “writing

back” to an authority, which can be observed, for instance, in Aimé Césaire’s Une

Tempête and David Malouf’s Blood Relations, two postcolonial adaptations of The

Tempest, which will be analysed in greater detail in the following chapters. In these

cases the setting of the Shakespeare text is changed to a (former) colony – a

Caribbean Island and an island near Australia – and the story is more or less altered

in order to foreground a postcolonial issue. Fischlin and Fortier list further motives for

adaptations, which are “prominence, contemporary relevance, controversy, historical

taste and circumstance”. (Cf. Fischlin 2000: 1) In addition we should mention those

adaptations which highlight feminist issues as it is the case for example in Paula

Vogel’s Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief or Djanet Seras’ Harlem Duet,

both adaptations of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Already during Shakespeare’s lifetime a contemporary author, John Fletcher,

adapted Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in his comedy The Women’s Prize.

This process continued throughout the Age of Restoration and also throughout the

following three centuries up to the twentieth century and is still going on. The second

half of the twentieth century especially shows a culmination of Shakespeare

adaptations with numerous theatrical rewritings (e.g. Müller’s Hamletmachine, Sears’

Not Now Sweet Desdemona, Osment This Island’s Mine, etc) as well as cinematic

adaptations (Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, Madden’s Shakespeare in Love,

Taymore’s Titus and The Tempest, etc.). (Cf. Fischlin 2000: 1-2)


An important term which is strongly connected to adaptation is ‘intertextuality’.

This concept was established by Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva in France and

basically says that while a new text is produced, already existing cultural and textual

elements are automatically being included while writing. Every new production is

always a reproduction. Every literary work is the result of the existence of other

literary text. (Cf. Fischlin 2000: 4) “Intertextuality refers to the presence of a text A in

a text B” (Moraru 2005: 256). As far as adaptations are concerned this wide definition

of intertextuality is quite useless. More relevant for the rewritings analysed in this

thesis, is the definition of ‘limited intertextuality’. The critic Mieke Bal uses the term

‘intertextual embedding’ instead of ‘limited intertextuality’ in order to refer to narrative

texts which are incorporated into other narrative texts. The original text is thus

changed or reproduced in some form and the new text provides the foundation for

the altered (parts of the) text. One specific branch of limited intertextuality, namely

the “postmodern brand of intertextuality” (Moraru 2005: 260), will be considerably

important for the discussions of Césaire’s Une Tempête and Malouf’s Blood

Relations in this thesis. According to this form of intertextuality the rewriting of a

specific text is not only a copy of the original but also a critique. It “critiques the

‘original text’ and its ideology instead of ‘imitating’ them” (Moraru 2005: 261). Césaire

as well as Malouf thus intended to criticize colonialism in terms of ‘writing back’ to

Shakespeare’s The Tempest. (Cf. Moraru 2005: 256-261)

4.2 Literary Adaptations of The Tempest

As has been mentioned before, numerous different authors have adapted

Shakespeare’s literary heritage since his lifetime up until today. In particular, The

Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s late romantic comedies, inspired many authors to

write their own alternative version of it. The story of the play, in which a

representative of western culture ‘occupies’ an island and suppresses two native

inhabitants, offers a challenging postcolonial scenario and has therefore raised great

interest amongst contemporary re-writers. Shantal Zabus mentions in her collection

of Tempest rewritings that, unlike many other plays, The Tempest contributed

considerably to the formation of three literary movements “postcoloniality,

postfeminism or postpatriarchy, and postmodernism” (Zabus 2002: 1).


From the 1960s onwards and in connection with the aforementioned ‘boom’ of

Shakespeare adaptations in the second half of the twentieth century, a vast number

of literary rewritings of The Tempest emerged by authors from former colonies such

as the Caribbean islands, West-, East- and South Africa, Latin America, Australia,

New Zealand, Canada and India as well as from the United States and even Great

Britain. The adaptations themselves are not only plays, as the original would suggest.

There are poems, novels, essays and film scripts which are inspired by The Tempest.

(Cf. Zabus 2002: 2-3) This manifold repertoire of different rewritings of The Tempest

is still expanding.

The following list contains a selection in chronological order of the most

striking rewritings of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest based on Shantal Zabus’

Tempests After Shakespeare, the “Rewritings and Appropriations” section in the

Norton Critical Edition of The Tempest and my own research. Some of the works

listed below are not entirely based on The Tempest and only include rewritings of

certain parts of Shakespeare’s original or are only inspired by its characters.

Césaire’s Une Tempête and Malouf’s Blood Relations will be analysed in more detail

later in this thesis.

Thomas Heywood: The English Traveller (play, 1633)

John Fletcher & Philip Massinger: The Sea Voyage (play,1647)

John Dryden & William Davenant: The Tempest, or The Enchanted

Island (play, 1667)

T. Duffett: The Mock Tempest, or The Enchanted Castle (play, 1675)

David Garrick: The Tempest – An Opera (play, 1756)

Francis G. Waldron: The Virgin Queen (play, 1797)

Percy Bysshe Shelley: “With a Guitar. To Jane” (poem, ~1821)

Robert & William Brough: The Enchanted Isle or Raising the Wind

(play, 1848)

Robert Browning: “Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the

Island” (dramatic monologue, 1864)

Ernest Renan: Caliban: Suite de “La Tempête” (play, 1878)

Ernest Renan: L’Eau de Jouvence: Suite de “Caliban” (play, 1881)

Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis: “No Alto” (“At the Top”) (poem,

1901)


Percy MacKaye: Caliban By the Yellow Sands (play, 1916)

Rainer Maria Rilke: “Der Geist Ariel” (“The Spirit Ariel) (poem, 1923)

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle): “By Avon River” (poem, 1949)

D.O. Mannoni: Prospero and Caliban. (psychoanalytic writing, 1950)

Sylvia Plath: Ariel (collected poems, 1965)

Aimé Césaire: Une Tempête (play, 1969)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Homecoming (essays, 1972)

Bob Carlton: Return to the Forbidden Planet (rock musical, 1980s)

David Malouf: Blood Relations (play, 1988)

Suniti Namjoshi: “Snapshots of Caliban” (poem, 1989)

Lemuel Johnson: “Calypso for Caliban” (poem in the collection Highlife

for Caliban, 1995)

Edwin Morgan: “Ariel Freed” (poem, 1997)

Ted Hughes: “Setebos” (poem, 1998)

Nancy Houston: Plainsong (novel, 1999)

Heiner Müller: “Geh Ariel bring den Sturm“ (“Go Ariel“) (poem, 2000)

Grace Tiffany: Ariel (novel, 2005)

4.3 Cinematic Adaptations of The Tempest

Much of what has already been said about adaptations in general and

rewritings of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in particular, also applies to cinematic

adaptations. In the following I shall therefore focus on those aspects which are

relevant for cinematic reworkings only.

Film adaptations of Shakespeare’s works evidently do not have such a long

history as rewritings do, as the technology of moving pictures only appeared in the

nineteenth century. Ever since this time filmmakers enthusiastically produced

‘celluloid versions’ of Shakespeare’s famous plays. Marlene Weseslindtner mentions

that over 600 Shakespeare films, adaptations and TV-productions have been

published so far. In contrast to this, altogether only a few cinematic adaptations of

The Tempest have been published up to today. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 85; 98)


The first production of a Shakespeare movie was, of course, British.

Interestingly, it was not one of Shakespeare’s more famous plays such as Hamlet,

Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth or King Lear but one of his Histories, namely King John

which ‘led’ to the first cinematic adaptation. This silent movie was produced by the

British Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1899, and director Herbert Beerbohm

Tree simply filmed his stage performance of King John in London. (Cf. Buchanan

2005: 22-24)

The next cinematic adaptation of a Shakespeare play by the same director

was, surprisingly, a film of The Tempest. Produced in 1904 and 1905 the silent movie

lasted only for two minutes presenting just the storm and the shipwreck from

Shakespeare’s original. In 1908, the Clarendon Film Company began producing

another film version of The Tempest only three years after the first one had come out.

In contrast to all the previous Shakespeare movies, this movie was no footage of a

stage performance but was shot for the purpose of being a film. Percy Stow, the

director of the film, put The Tempest’s events into a chronological order to present

Shakespeare’s play as a tale and also included so-called ‘intertitles’ in order to

explain certain changes in action. The first American silent screen adaptation of The

Tempest was published in 1911. (Cf. Buchanan 2005: 24-36)

4.3.1 Film Versions of The Tempest

Throughout the past decades other faithful screen adaptations, as well as

movies, which are only loosely based on The Tempest – so-called ‘offshots’

(Weseslindtner 2009: 85) – have been produced. To discuss every single one of

them would go beyond the scope of this thesis. Therefore, I will only list the most

important screen adaptations of The Tempest. In the two final chapters of this thesis

two particularly interesting adaptations will be discussed in detail, i.e. Prospero’s

Books and Forbidden Planet.

The Tempest (1904/1905)

Director: Herbert Beerbohm Tree; silent film.

The Tempest (1908)

Director: Percy Stow; silent film.


The Tempest (1911)

Director: Edwin Thanhauser; silent film.

Yellow Sky (1948)

Director: William A. Wellman; a loose, Western-style adaptation

featuring Gregory Peck, which is set in the USA in the second

half of the nineteenth century.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Director: Fred M. Wilcox

The Tempest (1960)

Director: George Schaefer; a rather faithful adaptation starring

Richard Burton as Caliban.

The Tempest (1979)

Director: Derek Jarman; the island known from The Tempest in

this adaptation is Great Britain and Propero's cell is a castle. The

dialogue of the film is taken from Shakespeare's play but is

radically abridged.

The Tempest (1980)

Director: John Gorrie; a BBC television film.

Tempest (1982),

Director: Paul Mazursky; this is a very loose screen adaptation

of The Tempest set in modern times.

The Tempest (1983)

Director: John Hirsch

The Tempest (1983)

Director: William Woodman

Resan till Melonia (1989)

Director: Per Åhlin; this is a Swedish animation film set on the

imaginative island of Melonia.

Prospero’s Books (1991)

Director: Peter Greenaway

Shakespeare: The Animated Tales: The Tempest (1992)

Directors: Stanislav Sokolov, Dave Edwards; a 26 minute

abridged version of The Tempest with animated puppets instead

of actors.

E x c u r s u s : P o s t c o l o n i a l i s m | 25

The Tempest (1998)

Director: Jack Bender; this unusual and loose adaptation is set

during the time of the American Civil War in Mississippi. The film

stars Peter Fonda as the main character "Gideon Prosper".

The Tempest (2010)

Director: Julie Taymore; this film is a very faithful screen

adaptation. Taymore only switched Prospero to a female

Prospera, who is portrayed by Helen Mirren.

Excursus: Postcolonialism

With its colonialistic theme, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides an

excellent framework for postcolonial rewritings. Therefore it will be necessary to give

a brief introduction to 'postcolonialism' and 'postcolonial rewritings'. The postcolonial

rewritings by the French author Aimé Césaire and the Australian author David Malouf

are of specific interest and are discussed in chapters 5 and 6.

Before I concentrate on postcolonialism, I will briefly explain the term

'colonialism' as it self-evidently constitutes the foundation for the studies of

postcolonialism. As already mentioned in an earlier chapter, colonialism is defined as

'the conquest and repression of a people by another people' (cf. Kohn 2012: online).

According to Margaret Kohn, colonisation is often confused with ‘imperialism’. The

two concepts are basically similar. However, when taking a closer look at the Latin

origin of the words, an important difference emerges. Colonisation derives from the

Latin term 'colonus'. Figuratively, this word means 'the settlement of people on new

land’ whereas imperialism, which comes from the Latin word 'imperium', means ‘to

rule over somebody’. Thus, imperialism includes indirect as well as direct means of

control. (Cf. Kohn 2012: online)

Colonisation has been around ever since people set out to discover new

territory and in this way encountered other people. It had its climax in the 19th

century when Europe was in control of most of its colonies, colonisation is still

ongoing up until today as for example in the form of territorial claims. However,

concerns about the legitimacy of dominating non-Western people has already

occurred during the Crusades in the High- and Late Middle Ages and in the conquest


of the discovery and settlement of the Americas in the fifteenth century. Some

nations tried and are still trying to justify colonisation with the assertion of civilizing

the uncivilized. This assertion implies that the uncivilized people of this world need to

become civilized and need to be taught to live according to Western standards and

principles until they have adapted them and are ready to survive on their own. (Cf.

Kohn 2012: online)

In contrast to colonialism the study of postcolonialism has emerged rather

recently. In his study Edward Said addresses the ways in which Europeans

influenced and treated colonies in the Middle East (cf. Kohn 2012: online). However,

postcolonialism has never been a straightforward theory. Many scholars believe that

it has to be handled with care as it can be easily misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Gilbert and Tompkins, for example, state that postcolonialism runs the risk of being

put into the "post-box" (Gilbert & Tompkin 1996: 2) together with expressions such as

"postmodernism, post-feminism, post-structuralism, post-industrialism" and thus

loses its relevance (Gilbert & Tompkins 1996: 2). Therefore, it is difficult to find a

proper definition for the term postcolonialism. However, the overall theme

postcolonialism carries – which the great majority of scholars agree on – is a 'counter

discourse' against colonialism and its negative aspects. Moreover, Gilbert and

Tompkins allude that postcolonialism has a political aim. They describe it as

"reactions to colonialism in a context that is not necessarily determined by temporal

constraints: post-colonial plays, novels, verse, and films then become textual/cultural

expressions of resistance to colonisation." (Gilbert & Tompkins 1996: 2). (Cf. Gilbert

& Tompkins 1996: 2-3)

Postcolonial rewritings are very powerful methods with which to react and

resist against colonialism in a peaceful way. There are certainly several different

forms of these rewritings, however, in this thesis I will only address postcolonial

drama, in particular the two plays Une Tempête and Blood Relations. In her article

"Shakespeare's Post-Colonial Legacy: The Case of Othello" Maria Löschnigg

distinguishes between two forms of postcolonial dramatic performances, first,

"performative counter-discourses" and, second, "active (oppositional) rewritings". The

former definition concerns a revised staging of the original text, the latter represents

the actual 'rewriting' (Löschnigg 2013: 18). The process of writing back to the original

is a very common method of authors who come from a former or still existing colony.


Interestingly, these authors almost exclusively use the language of the coloniser and

in some cases even the whole structure of the original text as in Césaire’s play Une

Tempête. Césaire, who was born on the French colony island Martinique, wrote his

'version' of Shakespeare's The Tempest in French instead of Martinican Creole and

kept the structure of the Shakespeare's play, almost unchanged. By focussing on the

two characters 'Ariel' and 'Caliban' he refers to the problems of colonisation in his

home and thus writes back to the coloniser, who in this case is not English but

French. Césaire's Ariel personifies the peaceful black civil rights activist Martin Luther

King and Caliban the more radical activist Malcolm X, who were both quite prominent

figures at the time Une Tempête was first performed in 1969. Postcolonial rewritings

therefore do not only deconstruct the original text, they also challenge the text's

authority as well as the text’s author's and coloniser's authority, which Löschnigg

regards as "symbols of the culture and power of the colonizer" (Löschnigg 2013: 19).

A i m é C é s a i r e - U n e T e m p ê t e | 28

The Adaptations

5 Aimé Césaire - Une Tempête

5.1 Aimé Césaire's Life and Works

5.1.1 Biographical Background

I recollect my first elementary reaction on discovering him to be such a pure black, all the more mask-like on first view as he smiled... he was able to stand alone in an epoch when many anticipated a general abdication of the spirit, when nothing seemed created any longer except for the purpose of perfecting the triumph of death, when art threatened to be frozen in old accomplishments: the first new reviving breath, able to recreate total confidence is the contribution of a negro. And it is a negro who today governs the French language as there is no white man able to govern it. (Arnold 1981:16)

This is how the French born poet and writer André Breton raved about his

fellow writer and friend, Aimé Césaire, in "A Great Negro Poet", the introduction to

Césaire's 1939 poem Cahir d'un retour au pays natal (Memorandum on My

Martinique) which was republished in 1947 by a group of French writers in New York.

Breton first met Césaire on Martinique in 1941 and was particularly struck by the

young artist and his works. (Cf. Arnold 1981:15-16)

Aimé Fernand David Césaire lived quite an exciting life. Born on June 26 1913

as the second son of a tax inspector and his wife, a seamstress, in Basse-Point on

the French colony island Martinique, Césaire grew up in a destitute environment.

Aimé's paternal grandfather, Fernand, was only born a short time after the abolition

of slave work on Martinique but was able to gain acceptance in the colony's society

and even became a teacher at a local school. Fernand died at a very young age

leaving behind his wife, Eugénie, and his son (Aimé's father), also called Fernand.

(Cf. Arnold 1981:1-2, 4)

Already at a very early age Aimé Césaire was taught to read and write, mainly

by his 'African' grandmother Eugénie, which probably also led to his strong alliance to


black people, Africaness and Négritude later on. The Césaires managed to escape

poverty as the parents did everything in their power to provide the best education

possible on Martinique for their children. Apart from Aimé, who became the most

famous member of the Césaire family, most of his five siblings acquired respectable

positions as teachers, magistrates, pharmacists and functionaries of the French

Empire. Aimé was brought up mainly with the French language and with only a very

little input of Martinican Creole, which he abandoned completely in his early years.

Later in his life he would pursue the complete opposite by fighting for black rights,

black values and black customs, which also include the native languages of blacks.

(Cf. Arnold 1981: 4-5)

After finishing the Lycée Schoelcher in Martinique's capital Fort-de-France with

a considerable performance record in French, English, Latin and History, Aimé

Césaire was recommended for the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris in 1931. There he

had to prepare for and pass an exam cycle in order become accepted at École

Normale Supérieure. During his time at these schools he met and became friends

with the Senegalese student Léopold Senghor and the Guyanese student Léon

Damas, who highly influenced Césaire and also significantly affected his attitude

towards black values. Césaire, Damas and Senghor created the famous term

Négritude, a term that stands for "a resurrection of black values" (Arnold 1981: 9),

and together wrote for the journal L'Etudiant Noir (The Black Student) in which

Césaire took up and criticized the policy of the cultural assimilation of blacks. In this

time Aimé also met his first and only wife Suzanne Roussi. They married in 1937. (Cf.

Wildgen 2010: 36)

After finishing his degree at Lycée Louis-le-Grand and as a consequence of

the outbreak of the Second World War, Césaire and his family returned to Martinique

in 1939. This was the beginning of the most creative period of writing and politics in

Aimé's life. At this time on Martinique, he also became acquainted with André Breton

who would later write the introduction to the first publication of the Cahiers in 1947.

Moreover, Césaire was one of the founding editors of the literature magazine

Tropiques in which he discussed "the ideological connections between the evolving

Martinican version of negritude and the culture of European modernism." (Arnold

1981: 13) After spending some time in Haiti he returned to Martinique and was

unexpectedly elected mayor of the island's capital Fort-de-France, representing a


colonial form of Stalin's communist party, which considerably affected and

contradicted his later political views. (Cf. Arnold 1981: 12-18) Together with the

famous philosophers and writers Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, and other

influential masterminds of that time, Césaire founded the regularly appearing

magazine Présence africaine which then contained anti-colonial topics, issues about

African culture, art and dignity and also established the Négritude movement. (Cf.

Société Présence Africaine: online)

As a result of his publications, political activities, his devotion to the rights of

black people and his cooperation with well-known persons, such as Pablo Picasso,

Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, Césaire became relatively well-known, and in

the late 1940s and beginning of the 1950s he reached the peak of his writing career

as well as of his position as a politician. However, this golden age did not last very

long. Political changes, the outbreak of the Korean War and the violent suppression

of African people in Algeria, the Ivory Coast, French Indochina and Madagascar

destroyed most of Césaire's visions and hopes. These disillusioning circumstances

had a significant impact on his writing. He reoriented himself politically and authorially

and founded a new political party, the "Parti Progressiste Martiniquais" (Ritz 1999:

online), after having officially left the French communist party. In the 1960s, apart

from his well-received political commitment on Martinique, Aimé Césaire also wrote

his famous plays, including Une Tempête. During this time Aimé Césaire also

suffered a heavy setback when his wife, Suzanne Césaire, passed away in 1966. (Cf.

Wildgen 2010: 38-39)

In 1976, Euvres Completes, a complete collection of Césaire's written works

was published including the poems, plays and historical and political works he had

written up to that year. (Ritz 1999: online) In 1982 the final volume of his poetry, moi,

laminaire, was issued. In 1993, Césaire retired from his political commitments. (Cf.

Wildgen 2010: 39-40) He died on April 17, 2008 in Fort-de-France at the age of 94. A

state funeral was held on April 20 in honour of Aimé Césaire. (Cf. Largange 2013:

online) The former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was prepared to give a

speech at the funeral but Césaire's family eventually kept Sarkozy from doing it at the

graveside. (Cf. Wildgen 2010:39-40) On April 6, 2011, Sarkozy honoured Césaire in

the Panthéon in Paris with the words "Aux grands hommes, la patrie


reconnaissante." (To great men, the fatherland is grateful). However, Césaire

definitely would have gone sour on the world "patrie". (Cf. Crispin 2000: 7)

5.1.2 Aimé Césaire's Major Works and Legacy

Besides his dedication to politics and the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire

wrote numerous literary works which earned him considerable fame, mainly in the

French speaking world but also worldwide.

Césaire is better known for his poems – some of which in the length of a novel

– than for his plays and political essays. His poems are said to range between

"artistic 'modernism' and black consciousness". (Cf. Ritz 1999: online) During his life

eight collections of poetry were published, including Cahir d'un retour au pays natal

(1939, 1960), Les armes miraculeuses (1970), Moi, laminaire (1982) and the final

collection with the simple name La Poésie (1994). For the theatre Césaire wrote four

plays between the years 1958 and 1969. (cf. Largange 2013: online) Three of them,

La Tagédie du roi Christophe (1963), Une Saison au Congo (1966) and Une

Tempête (1969), which will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, address

colonization, liberation and the oppression of black people in colonies. (Cf. Arnold

1981: 18)

As already mentioned before, the majority of Aimé Césaire's works were well-

known in France and other places where people speak French. However, as most of

his work was translated into English, many speakers of English are also familiar with

the name Césaire. Return to my Native Land, A Season in the Congo, The Tragedy

of King Christophe, Aimé Césaire - The Collected Poetry, A Tempest and Notebook

of a Return to my Native Land are only some of Césaire's publications translated into

English. Additionally, numerous essays, tributes, studies and also five film

documentaries about Césaire and his life have been made. (Cf. Largange 2013:

online)

In 2007 the Martinique International Airport in Fort-de-France, formerly known

as Le Lamentin, was renamed into Aéroport International Martinique Aimé Césaire in

honour of the celebrated author. (Cf. Société par Actions 2012: online)


5.2 Martinique - A Brief Overview

The small Island of Martinique is located right in the middle of an archipelago

north-east of Venezuela. It is surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and also has access

to the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Antilles, more precisely the Lesser Antilles, also

known as the Caribees. Other islands close to Martinique are the two members of

Commonwealth Dominica in the north-west and Saint Lucia in the south. The nearest

island, which also is a French oversees department, is Guadeloupe north of

Martinique. The name 'Martinique' probably derived from the Indian word Madiana,

meaning "Island of Flowers" or Madinina, i.e. "Fertile Island with Luxuriant

Vegetation". (Cf. Cornevin: online)

Archaeological diggings certify the presence of humans on the Lesser Antilles

as far back as 2000 BC. From the first century BC onwards different tribes started to

settle in the Greater Antilles, as well as the Lesser Antilles, from South America. (Cf.

Région Martinique: online) From about 200 AD the Arawaks began populating the

island. They were a very peaceful tribe, which turned out badly for them as they were

driven away by the Caraïbes, a rather militant tribe from Central America which

conquered Martinique between the 8th and the 15th century. The Caribbean acquired

its name from this tribe and rumour has it that the term "cannibalism" also derived

from those people. (Cf. Wildgen 2010: 21)

The first Europeans arrived in 1502 when Christopher Columbus discovered

the island on his 'fourth expedition'. From then on the island was ruled by the

Spanish. Martinique's inhabitants were first treated with respect and the contact with

the Caraïbes was based only on trade. In 1635 the 'Compagnie des Îles de

l'Amérique' lead by the French buccaneer Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc started settling

the island and the exploitation of the population began. The settlers dispersed or

killed the Caraïbes and many of them also died of imported diseases. (Cf. Wildgen

2010: 21-22) Fights between the indigenous population, the French settlers and the

remaining Spanish people were raging over the island for years. Finally, French

troops gained the mastery on Martinique and began to import slaves from West-

African regions. (Cf. Région Martinique: online)

During the shipping to Martinique, the slaves from West African territories

where separated according to their origin. This was done in order to prevent them


from communicating with each other, from forming groups and to decrease the

probability of solidarity and rioting. On arrival, the slaves were isolated from one

another. This resulted in the emergence of a French based Creole language not only

between slave and master but also amongst slaves. With the increase of sugar

plantations on the island, more and more African slaves were imported. As a result,

the majority of Martinique's population at this point in time was black, not white. This

led to the birth of a new social class, the mulatto. (Cf. Wildgen 2010: 22)

A mulatto has black and white ancestors. The rise of the "mulatto class" on

Martinique was due to the increasing number of female black slaves procreating with

the white plantation owners who mostly came to their new home without a wife. On

Martinique mulattos had a special status. As they were partly of white origin most of

them obtained their freedom and a piece of land. At the end of the 18th century

12000 mulattos held one third of the island. Socially they were positioned between

slaves, who were on the bottom of the social scale, and white land owners, who were

on top. After the abolition of slave work in France in 1794, mulattos increasingly

gained influence. However, on Martinique slavery was not prohibited until 1848, as

the abolition law was not implemented in the French colony and, moreover, Napoléon

Bonaparte disagreed with the slave work ban and insisted on the continuation of

slave work on the island. His Martinican wife Joséphine de Beauharnais influenced

his decision considerably. After the permanent abolition in 1848 the situation of the

slaves did not change immediately. Most of them fled but returned to their masters

because they did not know where to go or where to stay and lacked of food as well. If

they were paid for their work at all they usually received an extremely low wage,

which created a situation for them equal to slave labour. (Cf. Wildgen 2010: 24-25)

In 1794 the British occupied Martinique for 8 years until it was returned to

France in 1802. During this time and the years until 1848 there were numerous slave

revolts, which in many cases were crushed violently. (Cf. Région Martinique: online)

During the Second World War Martinique was ruled by the Vichy Regime. The

German Empire had occupied the greater part of France and many French sailors,

who were deployed to Martinique, were stranded there. The result of all this was that

the black and mulatto inhabitants of the island, who by then lived relatively peacefully

with the white population, experienced a terrible boost of racism and discrimination

towards themselves practised by the white sailors. This was the first time a call for a


Martinican nationalism emerged, which was greatly inspired by Aimé Césaire's

concept of Négritude. (Cf. Wildgen 2010: 24)

After World War Two, Césaire was significantly responsible for Martinique

becoming a French oversees department. However, the integration of the Caribbean

island to continental France did not result in the expected social and economical

improvements. As a consequence Césaire left the French Communist Party and

founded his own party. Again the situation did not significantly improve and

Martinique was still heavily dependent on France. From 1982 and 1983

'decentralisation' was implemented, making the former French colony a more

autonomous region with the authority to decide on education and social affairs. (Cf.

Wildgen 2010: 24-25)

Martinique's racial issues are still a problem today. Black slaves were always

oppressed and exploited in the history of the island, especially during the time the

Code Noir (Black Code) was in force. According to this decree slaves were severely

punished when they tried to escape or gathered together without permission.

However, the suffering continued in another form when the Black Code expired and

slavery was abolished. An increasing number of mulattos and blacks were integrated

into the French educational system and later were given functionary positions in

France and its numerous colonies. Two of Césaire's siblings, for example, held such

positions in Senegal and Dakar. This assimilation of blacks and mulattos into French

society and lifestyle generated another issue: Racism and discrimination against

blacks by blacks. According to Wildgen (2010: 26-29), blacks or mulattos who

consider themselves fully European tend to look down on people of the same origin.

This is not an exclusive problem of the Antilles. This can also be seen in many other

former colonies as well as in every country with immigrants. Mostly immigrants who

have achieved a certain standard of living in a country in many cases discriminate

against other newly arrived immigrants, although they may have a similar or in fact

the same migration background.


5.3 Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête

5.3.1 Introduction to the Play

As already mentioned before, Aimé Césaire was

a poet rather than an author of drama and prose. He

only wrote four plays during his lifetime, Et les Chiens

se taisaient (1958), La Tragédie du roi Christophe

(1963) (engl. The Tragedy of King Christophe), Une

Saison au Congo (1966) (engl. A Season in the Congo)

and Une Tempête (1969) (engl. A Tempest) (cf.

Largange 2013: online). Especially with Une Tempête,

Césaire also addressed an English audience as his play

is a very faithful adaptation of The Tempest, a play

written by the most famous English playwright, William

Shakespeare. La Tragédie du roi Christophe, Une

Saison au Congo and Une Tempête all deal in a way

with colonisation, imbalances in the relationships

between blacks and whites and with confrontations

between the colonizer and the colonized. (Cf. Kelley 1992: xii)

Une Tempête was written in the years 1968 and 1969 and first performed in

Tunisia at the Festival d'Hammament directed by Jean-Marie Serreau. It was again

played in Paris and Avignon (cf. Césaire 1969: no page number). There exist two

English translations of the French original and these differ only in some details, which

does not affect the contents of the text at all. The first translation by Richard Miller

was published in 1985 with an introduction by the historian Robin Kelley, and the

second translation, which will be used mainly in this study, is a more recent one by

Philip Crispin from the year 2000. Richard Miller, who translated the first version of A

Tempest, mentions in his "translator's note" that transforming the text from French to

English caused him considerable difficulties as there are variations in "cultural

background, tone, milieu and so on." (Miller 1992: no page number) Moreover, he

was always tempted to use original parts of Shakespeare's The Tempest for his

translation, especially when it came to Ariel's songs, even though Césaire had not

intended to directly quote from Shakespeare in his Tempête (Cf. Miller 1992: no page

number).

Figure 2: Title page of Une Tempête (1969)


James Arnold describes Césaire's play, Une Tempête, as a "critical reflection

on the value system of Western humanism using Shakespeare's play as a paradigm."

(Arnold 1981: 270) What he means is that with The Tempest Césaire found the best

foundation for creating a play which criticises colonisation, power relations and the

discrimination of black people. Césaire reinforces this by using the subtitle

"Adaptation pour un théâtre nègre" (Adaptation for a Black Theatre). The title cover of

the original edition (see Figure 2) from 1969 shows a white man with hat and coat

holding a black bare-chested man by the arm raising a cane just before he hits him.

The man looks exactly like a typical plantation owner, a person nobody would

connect to Shakespeare's Prospero in any way. Also the black person, who obviously

is Caliban, does not look like the character from The Tempest but rather like a typical

black slave. Inside the cover the name of the picture can be seen. It's called "La traite

des nègres" which figuratively means "slave trade". This alone already indicates that

Césaire had something different in mind than just simply adapting a literary classic.

5.3.2 A Brief Summary of the Plot

The following plot summary and the analysis of the text and the characters

afterwards is exclusively based on Philip Crispin's translation of Une Tempête in the

reprinted version of 2011.

Césaire's Une Tempête is a very faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's The

Tempest. Césaire uses almost the same character constellation as Shakespeare. He

only changes some minor details of the original and some of the character's

attributes, especially those of Caliban and Ariel. He incorporates a couple of

additional figures into the story, all of which will be dealt with in further detail later in

this chapter.

Une Tempête begins in a very unusual manner, i.e. with an epic element

which destroys the theatrical illusion immediately. A character outside the action,

namely a Master of Ceremonies, hands out certain character-specific masks to the

actors. Each actor has to choose one mask while the Master of Ceremonies

comments on the action and tries to 'sell' the different roles to the actors. Finally, he

invokes a storm: "Go! Blow, winds! Rain and lightning in abundance!" and Act One

begins. (A Tempest 2011: 15)


The story starts off near an unknown island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea.

Scene 1 features a ship, caught in a storm, carrying Alonso, King of Naples, and

Antonio, Prospero's Brother, and all the other dramatis personae known from

Shakespeare's play. The tempest seizes the ship and it capsizes. Scene 2 shows

Miranda and Prospero. The audience learns how Prospero, a magician, and his

daughter Miranda have come to the island. Prospero has been victim of an intrigue

schemed by his brother Antonio, the usurping Duke of Milan, and Alonso. Accused of

being a heretic, Prospero was expelled to the island with his daughter without having

been granted a trial. In the meantime, Antonio took his place as the Duke of Milan.

After this, Ariel, a mulatto slave having some sort of magical powers, and Caliban, a

black slave, are introduced to the audience. They learn that Ariel has invoked the

storm in order to bring the ship's crew, Alonso, Antonio, Gonzalo, Ferdinand,

Sebastian, Adrian, Francisco (referred to as "Group A" hereafter), Stephano,

Trinculo, the Boatswain and his Mariners onto the island. Act I ends with Ferdinand,

the son of Alonso, entering the stage. He meets Ariel, Prospero and Miranda and

falls in love with her immediately. Like in the original, he has no idea that his father

and his 'fellows' have survived the shipwreck, nor does Alonso know about

Ferdinand's miraculous survival.

In Act II, Scene 1 Ariel approaches his fellow slave Caliban and tries to

persuade him to work against their master Prospero together. Whilst Caliban only

wants to resort to violence and kill Prospero, Ariel wants to change Prospero. In

Scene 2, the audience for the first time encounters Group A. Ariel and some sprites

enter the stage together with Prospero, who is invisible, and offer them a table full of

food. When Group A tries to eat the sprites carry the table away again. After a little

while they return with the table. Now Group A becomes suspicious and refuses to eat

from the table at first, but then they give in and devour the meal. After this, Alonso

and Gonzalo fall asleep and Antonio and Sebastian plan to kill the other two in order

to make Sebastian the new King of Naples. As soon as they draw their swords to slay

the sleepers Ariel intervenes waking Alonso and Gonzalo. Ariel reveals to them that

Prospero has sent him and wants to summon them at his cave for the marriage of his

daughter Miranda, to Ferdinand.

In Act III Trinculo, who is apparently intoxicated, first discovers Caliban under

a wheelbarrow, calling him "an Indian". He lies down next to him. Stephano enters,


singing, holding a bottle of Bordeaux in his hand. He also discovers Caliban, calls

him "a Nindian", and thinks he has "two heads" and "eight paws" (A Tempest: 43),

before he realizes that there are two persons, one being Caliban, the other his old

friend and drinking companion Trinculo. All three sing and drink together and

eventually Caliban tricks his two new friends into a conspiracy against Prospero in

order to reclaim the power over his island. (Trinculo, Stefano and Caliban are

hereafter referred to as "Group B".)

In the meantime, Prospero prepares the wedding ceremony for Miranda and

Ferdinand and makes Ariel conjure up the goddesses Juno, Ceres and Iris. But it

seems as if Ariel has accidentally awoken another god who presents himself as

Eshu, a black devil god. Eshu sings a song about himself with shockingly explicit

lyrics ending it with "[...] and with his penis he smites". (A Tempest: 48) Meanwhile,

Group B is approaching Prospero's cave. They see Prospero's shiny clothes hanging

from a line. Immediately, Stephano and Trinculo fight over them and are surprised by

Prospero and Ariel. They are all taken prisoners by Ariel.

In Prospero's cave Ferdinand and Miranda are playing chess when Group A

together with Prospero and Ariel enters. A little later, Group B also enters the scene

and Prospero forgives them all. First, they all plan to set sail for Naples, until

Prospero wants to make peace with Caliban which the latter rejects with the words

"I'm not interested in peace. I'm interested in being free." (A Tempest: 58). Hence,

Prospero counteracts Caliban's wish and decides to stay on the island in order to

"defend civilization". (A Tempest: 62) He thinks that without him "the island is dumb".

(A Tempest: 61)

The play ends soon after this sequence when the curtains are lowered halfway

to indicate that some time has gone by and Caliban can be heard singing: "LIBERTY,

OH-AY! LIBERTY! (A Tempest: 62)

5.3.3 The Tempest vs. A Tempest

The following analysis of differences between Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête

and Shakespeare's The Tempest will not consider every single deviation of the

former from the original, but will rather focus on those modifications which make Une

Tempête a striking postcolonial rewriting of Shakespeare's masterpiece.


5.3.3.1 Differences in Content and Plotline

As already mentioned earlier in this chapter, Une Tempête is very faithful to its

proto-text regarding content and plotline. Shakespeare's play is divided into five acts

and nine scenes whereas Césaire's version consists of only three acts and ten

scenes. This might seem like a considerable difference, however, if one takes a

closer look at both plays it is clear that Césaire only included Act IV and Act V of The

Tempest into Act III of his play as Scenes 4 and 5. Taking this into consideration the

acts and scenes of Une Tempête follow the original quite closely. With regards to the

plotline, Césaire's play sticks close to Shakespeare's play. What Césaire modifies are

mostly elements which foreground the postcolonial relevance of his play.

Before I discuss differences in content and action in more detail, I will briefly

outline changes in the character constellation, as these variations are crucial for the

following analysis. Césaire definitely altered the two servant-characters Ariel and

Caliban, who have considerably more importance in the adaptation than in The

Tempest. Caliban is still a black slave but is portrayed as a much more rebellious

character than Shakespeare's Caliban. Philip Crispin describes Caliban in his

introduction to A Tempest as a "dignified protagonist" who uses a different language

than the colonizer Prospero, which provides Caliban his "own identity and autonomy".

Prospero can only "dictate" not "discourse" whereas Caliban can switch between

languages. In Une Tempête Caliban's cursing is a symbol for the revolt against

Prospero and the denial of his assimilation into his 'master's' social patterns.

Ariel, on the other hand, is not the airy spirit of Shakespeare's play but a

mulatto slave, which crucially lowers his status as compared to that in The Tempest

and, moreover, connects Une Tempête with the postcolonial situation of Martinique,

Césaire's birthplace and late residence, where black slaves had to work and live

together with mulattos and their white masters. A character, Césaire has added to the

dramatis personae appearing in the original Tempest, is the black devil god Eshu,

who appears at Miranda's and Ferdinand's wedding ceremony in Act III, Scene 3,

along with the classic Greek gods and goddesses. Another persona, Césaire

invented for Une Tempête is the Master of Ceremonies who speaks to the actors

before Act I.

I will now focus on the changes Césaire has made and explore their dramatic

functions within a postcolonial context.


Act I starts off exactly the same way as Shakespeare's original. Prospero's

'opponents' are shipwrecked due to the storm Ariel has evoked on Prospero's

command. In Scene 2, in both versions, Prospero tells his daughter, Miranda, why

and how they stranded on the island. Césaire, however, makes an island in the

Caribbean Prospero's exile whereas in Shakespeare's Tempest it is an island in the

Mediterranean Sea where Alonso, Antonio and the others sail back to Naples from

Claribel's wedding in Tunis. Césaire obviously used a Caribbean island in order to

refer to Martinique. Another striking difference is the reason why Prospero was

banned from Europe. Shakespeare uses Antonio's and Alonso's treachery as the

main reason whilst Césaire adds another reason, namely "heretical perversion". He

includes a flashback into Act I, Scene 2, where a Friar charges Prospero with heresy

taking all his "titles", "positions" and "honours" from him. This episode shows that

Prospero himself violated the laws of religion in his former home country. He was

accused of changing the world view and using "Hebrew, Syrian and other demonic

tongues" which are not allowed by God and the church (cf. A Tempest: 20). Here,

Césaire links Prospero to the famous scientist Galileo Galilei, who introduced the

heliocentric world view which was rejected by the church. As a result he found

himself in front of an inquisitorial trial – just as Prospero in Césaire's play – which

forced him to renounce his scientific achievements. For the remaining years of his life

Galilei was placed under house arrest. (Cf. Van Helden: online) Religion also played

a huge role in connection with colonization. Customs and religious traditions of the

native population were often counteracted with inquisitional trials and burnings of

witches.

As in Shakespeare's original, Caliban, Ariel and Ferdinand are introduced to

the audience. However, the dialogue between Prospero and Caliban is much more

agitated in Césaire's version than in Shakespeare. In Césaire's adaptation, Caliban is

more aware of his own origin than in Shakespeare's play. He utters words such as

"Uhuru" in his native language, curses Prospero with a "[...] hello crammed with

wasps, toads, pox and dung" and implies that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder

when he responds to Prospero's remark of him (Caliban) being ugly with the words:

"You think I'm ugly, well I don't find you handsome at all." With this utterance Césaire

refers to the different cultural concepts of beauty and ugliness. What one culture may

consider beautiful the other might be absolutely disgusted by. (Cf. A Tempest: 22)

As the dialogue between slave and master continues Caliban mentions that without


Prospero being on the island he would be "The king of the island!" Furthermore,

Caliban fondly speaks of his mother Sycorax, who Prospero calls a "hag", and who

also symbolizes mother nature where Caliban originates from. He is the natural heir

of the island, not Prospero. According to Caliban, Prospero only tought him to speak

in his 'master's' language in order to understand his orders. Eventually, Caliban

decides to change his name into "X", a reference to the rather radical black freedom

fighter Malcolm X, who will be referred to in greater detail later. (Cf. A Tempest: 23-

25) All the aforementioned points are important allusions to the real-life situation

between colonizer and colonized as they occurred on Martinique and in other

colonies.

Act II introduces a complete new scene which is not included in The Tempest

at all. The mulatto slave Ariel calls on Caliban's help to work together in order to

change Prospero for the good of all. Caliban refuses this invitation seeing in Ariel an

ally of Prospero. He rather wants to kill Prospero whilst for Ariel violence is a no-go.

Césaire surely added this scene in order to emphasise the relationship of the two

slaves with each other. As said at an earlier point, there were three different classes

on Martinique, i.e. whites, blacks and mulattos. Mulattos and blacks were almost

exclusively slaves, however, the mulattos, having white origin to a small part, had

considerably more influence and power than blacks. In Act II, Scene 2 of A Tempest,

Césaire refers to this by making the mulatto Ariel much fonder of Prospero, who

clearly treats him better than Caliban. It is therefore understandable that Caliban

hates Prospero and does not want to take part in Ariel's peaceful approach.

However, this does not mean that Caliban also detests Ariel. They address each

other with "brother" and wish each other "courage" and "good luck" which are both

signs of respect. Ariel, in particular, approaches Caliban and wants to cooperate with

his fellow sufferer to break free from their common 'master'. Ariel also cares for his

'brother's fate when he comes to warn him about Prospero's revenge against him.

Nevertheless Ariel does not want to join Caliban's war against Prospero, he rather

takes the position of the peaceful counterpart to the aforementioned 'Malcolm X', i.e.

Martin Luther King.

Act II, Scenes 2 and 3 are quite identical to Act II Scene 1 in The Tempest.

Alonso, Antonio and the rest of Group A (see above) are introduced. They converse

about the island and Gonzalo is teased much more intensively than in the original.


When the King of Naples and Gonzalo fall asleep Sebastian and Antonio try to

assassinate the two, which is prevented by Ariel who wakes Gonzalo and Alonso.

Another striking difference between the two plays at this point is that in Césaire's

adaptation it is already revealed in Scene 3 that Prospero and his daughter are still

alive and living on the island while in Shakespeare's original Prospero exposes

himself to Group A not until Act III, Scene 3. The banquet created by Ariel and the

assassination attempt also take place in this scene in Shakespeare whereas in Une

Tempête they are set right before Prospero's revelation in Act II, Scenes 2 and 3.

The reason why Césaire has positioned this scene earlier might be that he wanted to

focus on the postcolonial dimension of the play, i.e. the relationship between Ariel,

Caliban and Prospero, rather than on the final disclosure for the shipwrecked that

Prospero has been behind everything that happened to them, which is quite an

important episode in Shakespeare's play.

Act III, Scene 1 begins exactly as in Shakespeare's original. Ferdinand is

working for Prospero. In The Tempest he is bearing logs, in Une Tempête he is

picking the soil. This alteration by Césaire might be a reference to the work the

slaves on Martinique usually had to perform when serving their masters on the sugar

plantations. Another interesting difference between the two Tempests is that in the

adaptation Caliban has to take over Ferdinand's work which does not happen in the

original. Thus, in the case of Une Tempête, the situation of Caliban as a slave

finishing someone else's work he is normally not supposed to do, is highlighted

again. Scene 2 of Act III in Une Tempête features the two drunkards Stephano and

Trinculo meeting Caliban. In Shakespeare they mistake him for a fish whereas in

Césaire's version Trinculo takes Caliban for an Indian and Stephano thinks he is "a

Nindian" (A Tempest 2011: 42) some kind of beast with "two heads" and "eight paws"

(see above). The term "Indian" and "Nindian" again refer to colonisation and to

Christopher Columbus, discoverer of both America and Martinique, calling America's

indigenous population "Indians". By assuming that Caliban is an animal, the status of

Caliban as a human being is further decreased by Stephano, a representative of the

white conquerors.

The wedding ceremony, which is being held in Act III, Scene 3 in Césaire's

version, happens in Act IV, Scene 1 in the original. In this scene Césaire introduces

an entirely new dimension with the black god Eshu. Césaire deliberately chooses this


Yoruba god in order to remind the audience of African spirituality, the voodoo cult of

Haiti, where Eshu plays an important role too, and, last but not least, to ruin

Miranda's and Ferdinand's wedding by behaving completely differently from the other

gods and goddesses, Ceres, Iris and Juno, by singing inappropriate songs and

dancing around. This otherness in behaviour is considered wrong by the white

participants of the wedding. By introducing Eshu, Césaire probably wanted to

illustrate that African religion and cult are usually not accepted by whites and that this

was exactly the case on Martinique and in all the other colonies as well. Eshu is sent

away by Prospero and the ceremony is cancelled without Miranda and Ferdinand

being married, which is not the case in The Tempest where they are married in the

end. This additionally shifts Césaire's adaptation away from the classical comedy for

which a marriage at the end is an essential ingredient. Instead Césaire again lays the

focus on something completely different: Eshu – in a transferred sense the strange

religion or culture – intervenes in Prospero's wedding ceremony – a ceremony

arranged strictly after the laws and customs of another culture or religion – and thus

destroys it in a subversive manner making the wedding impossible.

Scene 4 of Act III in Une Tempête again features the trio Caliban, Stephano

and Trinculo heading towards Prospero's cave in order to overthrow him. The action

is quite similar to Act IV, Scene 1 of The Tempest but when Prospero confronts them

in Césaire's adaptation, he takes them prisoners whereas in the original they are

driven away by spirits in the shape of hunters and dogs.

Act III, Scene 5 of Une Tempête unites Prospero with Group A as in the final

act of The Tempest. However, the most striking difference can be found in this final

sequence. In the original Tempest Prospero leaves the island with his daughter and

everybody else and insults Caliban; "He is as disproportioned in his manners as in

his shape. Go, sirrah. to my cell; [...] As you look to have my pardon, trim it

handsomely." (Tempest V.i.290-3); and leaves him behind. Caliban obeys

submissively with the words: "Ay, that I will; and I'll be wise hereafter, and seek for

grace." (Tempest V.i.294-5). In contrast to this, Une Tempête closes with an entirely

different tableau: Césaire has Prospero stay on the island, sending everybody,

except Caliban, home to Europe. After Prospero wants to forgive Caliban for his

attempt to overthrow him, Caliban dismisses Prospero's reconciliatory attempt and

tells him that he detests him. Caliban holds a long speech insulting Prospero,


complaining about his treatment and listing why he hates him so intensely. (Cf. A

Tempest: 58-60) Césaire seems to have used Caliban's monologue as a metaphor

for all the colonized people, especially, when Caliban calls Prospero a liar and "a

great illusionist" who has created a picture of him that is "incompetent" and

"underdeveloped" but which Caliban nonetheless had to accept and believe in. (Cf. A

Tempest 2011: 59)

This sequence above doubtlessly refers to the intrinsic nature of all

colonizer/colonized relationships. The colonizers infiltrated the colonized with the

belief that they were not able to survive without the colonizer. The colonizer bestows

civilization upon the native population, which the colonized are forced to accept. As a

result the colonized internalizes this feeling of inferiority. However, the colonizer's

real intentions are somehow different. In reality the colonies were only established in

order to gain power, money and raw materials with the cheapest efforts, i.e. slave

work. The longer the colonizers occupied the colonies the lesser they wanted to

leave. Césaire highlights this issue with Caliban speaking the following lines: "And

that's why you'll stay, like those men who established the colonies and can no longer

live elsewhere. An old addict, that's what you are." (A Tempest: 60). Philip Crispin

aptly calls this "an exposition of how colonisation decivilises the colonizer". (Cf.

Crispin 2000: 9)

After Caliban's monologue, Prospero is shocked and decides to stay in order

to "defend civilization". (A Tempest: 62) However, now he announces a more radical

approach, "I will answer your violence with violence!" (A Tempest: 62) Many riots in

the colonies, carried out by the colonized people, were oppressed violently by the

colonizers. Here Césaire again draws parallels to reality in the colonies.

The final scene in Une Tempête is rather dark as Prospero and Caliban are

desperately fighting each other. The last words the audience witnesses is Caliban's

cry for freedom, "LIBERTY, OH-AY! LIBERTY! (A Tempest: 62) In contrast to

Shakespeare's The Tempest, Césaire leaves the audience with a cliffhanger.

Caliban's cry for freedom could be an indicator that he has finally beaten Prospero or

that he is still longing for liberty and his outcry is a more or less frantic one or maybe

even the final one before Prospero defeats him. However, no matter how this final

scene is interpreted, it once and for all constitutes an end to Caliban's submission.


5.3.3.2 Césaire's Revision of Characters

5.3.3.2.1 Ariel

Ariel is represented in a completely new way in Une Tempête. In The Tempest

he is "an airy spirit" who was imprisoned in a "cloven pine" by the evil witch Sycorax

because he did not follow her "earthy and abhorr'd commands" and was "refusing her

grand hests" (cf. Tempest I.ii.273-9). In Une Tempête Ariel is not a spirit but a

mulatto slave who has befallen the same fate as Shakespeare's Ariel. Both Ariels

consequently are in some sort of 'life debt' of Prospero as in both plays he rescued

Ariel from Sycorax. Like in the original, also in Césaire's version Ariel is treated far

better by Prospero than fellow servant Caliban. In The Tempest Prospero addresses

him as "my Ariel", "my industrious servant Ariel", "dearly, my delicate Ariel", "my

dainty Ariel", etc. and quite similarly also in Une Tempête Prospero says to him "my

dear Ariel" "my chick" or simply "Ariel". This makes Ariel a very close and privileged

servant and in a way Prospero's lapdog because he obeys him to win his freedom.

In Césaire's adaptation Ariel has an additional function as already broached

above. Mulattos were quite high in number on the Caribbean islands and had certain

prerogatives if compared to black slaves. Most of the time they obtained a piece of

land and sometimes they were released from slavery as well. These are very

interesting parallels between Césaire's Ariel and the mulattos in the Caribbean

society where he also grew up being a black person. They usually had a better

position than blacks and sometimes were also in charge of them. This is also the

case in Une Tempête where, from Prospero's point of view, Ariel holds a much higher

position than Caliban just as the mulattos held a higher position than blacks.

Ariel's speech in the adaptation also differs from that in the original. Being a

mulatto, he sometimes uses expressions which are of African origin, e.g. "Baobab", a

famous African tree, and "Ceiba", a tree that grows on the Lesser Antilles. (cf. A

Tempest, Endnotes) Referring to African trees, Caribbean trees and speaking

English makes Césaire's Ariel a perfect personification of a mulatto, having all three

origins (black, mulatto and white) combined in one person.

Probably the most striking deviation from the The Tempest and also the most

important postcolonial aspect of the play is the newly invented Scene 1 in Act II

where Ariel visits Caliban and tries to convince him that they should work together


against Prospero. This scene contains references to two famous black people, who

actively campaigned and fought for the rights and recognition of black people in

society. Caliban, being more radical and naming himself "X" (cf. A Tempest: 25)

obviously personifies the historical activist "Malcolm X" whereas Ariel with his more

peaceful approach impersonates "Martin Luther King". Césaire also included links to

King's famous speech "I have a Dream" when Ariel speaks the following lines to

Caliban: "[...] but after all we are brothers, brothers in suffering and slavery. Brothers

in hope as well" (A Tempest: 29) and "I often dreamt a rapturous dream that one day

Prospero, you and I would set out as brothers to build a wonderful world, [...]" (A

Tempest: 31) The latter quote "build a wonderful world" might also be an intentional

reference to the song "Wonderful World" by black jazz-musician Louis Armstrong.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were both famous activists for black civil

rights movements. Malcolm X was member of the US Black Muslim Movement and

the Nation of Islam which was led by Elijah Muhammad. The reason why Malcolm

Little named himself Malcolm X was because he wanted to dispose of his black

origins and his religious background. He also wanted to highlight that the white man’s

oppression is an ‘ex’-oppression, which he was not influenced by any longer. The

Black Muslim Movement was known for its violent, mostly armed resistance against

white privileges. (Cf. Zabus 2002: 46-7) Martin Luther King, on the other hand, who

promoted black civil rights until his assassination in 1968, pursued a peaceful

approach against the white supremacy. With his peaceful March on Washington in

1963 and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, King accomplished a giant leap for

the black civil rights movement. His speeches were very rhythmical and, as can be

observed in “I Have a Dream”, also feature refrains similar to songs. (Cf. Campbell &

Keane 2006: 93, 126) This again proves the strong connection between Martin

Luther King and Ariel, who does not only approach his white master Prospero

peacefully but also sings very often in both The Tempest and Une Tempête.

5.3.3.2.2 Caliban

In both plays, the original as well as the adaptation, Caliban is portrayed as a

black slave who serves his master Prospero. Caliban is more submissive in The

Tempest, whereas, in Une Tempête, he challenges Prospero on any possible

occasion. Césaire makes Caliban a freedom fighter who hates his master deeply

from the heart. He seems to be a ticking time bomb that is about to explode any


minute to destroy Prospero. Prospero also seems to detest his black slave more than

in Shakespeare's play. In Act I of Une Tempête he calls Caliban a "brute animal", in

Act II "monster" and in Act III "devilish", etc. degrading him as much as possible and,

finally, even admitting that he also hates Caliban. He actually detests him so much

that he stays on the island to fight him and liberate the island from him at the end

which does not happen in the original where Prospero makes his peace with Caliban.

Caliban, on the other hand, stands up to Prospero, disobeys him, questions

his orders, insults him and even wants to "vomit [him] up" (cf. A Tempest: 58). With

this, as Crispin notes, "[t]he infamy of colonial exploitation is recognized and named.

Colonialism is envisioned as a disease, a dehumanising project that treats land,

nature and people as brute commodities. It must be vomited out". (Cf. Crispin 2000:

9) He refers to his 'master' as "liar", "great illusionist" "scum" (see above) and even

"old cancer" (A Tempest: 59), signifiers which Césaire intends to be understood as

metaphors for every colonizer. In The Tempest the word choice of the dialogues

between Prospero and Caliban is not as vulgar as in Une Tempête, which makes the

relationship between Caliban and Prospero appear more relaxed in the original.

Just as Ariel, Caliban also speaks several words in his mother tongue in Une

Tempête, first to emphasize his origin and, second, to incense Prospero, who does

not understand him and warns him in Act I not to use his "savage tongue". (A

Tempest: 22). In order to take revenge, Prospero mocks Caliban in calling him

"Cannibal" and "Hannibal". In addition, Caliban uses "Uhuru" the Swahili expression

for freedom instead of a salute and very often calls out the name of another Yoruba

god, namely Shango. According to the appendix of the translation of Une Tempête

applied here, Shango is the god of thunder and lightning and possessor of the Bata

drums. The Shango cult derived from western Nigeria and is also prevalent in the

Caribbean and in Brazil. (A Tempest 2011: Endnotes [4]). Crispin adds to this that in

this way Caliban in Césaire's play "remains true to his own cultural system [...]"

(Crispin 2000: 11). This again indicates the postcolonial touch Césaire wanted to give

his play.

5.3.3.2.3 Eshu

The rather short performance of the character Eshu in Act III, Scene 3 in Une

Tempête might at first sight conceal the importance of the Yoruba god in Césaire's


play. The black devil god, as he is described in the dramatis personae, does not

appear in The Tempest at all. Eshu enters the stage at the wedding ceremony

together with the classical Roman goddesses, but it is not clear whether Ariel has

called forth the black god on purpose. Either Ariel has made a mistake or Caliban is

responsible for his apparition. Prospero, however, links the incident directly to

Caliban and learns from it that his slave plans a complot against him.

I have already mentioned above that Eshu is a black god. In Haiti there is also

the voodoo god "Legba", who is responsible for opening the gateway between the

world of the living and the spiritual world. With the summoning up of Eshu, Césaire

wants to confront the audience with African customs and spirituality. He wants to

shock them with otherness and also to show that customs, such as voodoo, are still

common amongst African peoples. Thus, Eshu stands symbolically for the

"insubordination" and "unbowed dissidence" of his people. (Cf. Crispin 2000: 11)

5.3.3.2.4 Other characters

As far as the other characters appearing in the two plays are concerned they

are quite interchangeable as to their dramatic functions. However, in Césaire's

"creative revision" (Crispin 2000: 9) their functions are more strongly accentuated.

Prospero, in the broader sense, stands for the colonizer who wants to civilize the

island and make its inhabitants subservient. Ariel and Caliban personify the

colonized. Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, Stephano and Trinculo represent other

colonizers or settlers who recklessly exploit the inhabitants and treat them like

beasts. The classical Roman goddesses refer to white religion, the voodoo god Eshu

represents the untameable black religion. Miranda, Ferdinand and Gonzalo do not

stand out with a special meaning, except, to a certain extent, being colonizers as

well. In fact, the aforementioned characters are marginalized in Césaire's adaptation.

Some of them are crucial for the original play being a comedy, e.g. Miranda and

Ferdinand as 'the lovers'.

5.3.4 Une Tempête - An Epilogue

Aimé Césaire used Shakespeare's The Tempest to rewrite his own

postcolonial version of it. He stays very close to the original text, keeps most of the

original storyline, reduces scenes unnecessary for his 'message' and just alters

certain specific parts and characters in order to generate a literary reflection of the


black people's situation in former and current colonies. Therefore, Shakespeare's

play provides the perfect basis for the creation of a postcolonial rewriting: Prospero, a

former white duke, arrives on a foreign island, which has no infrastructure, just

nature, and henceforth rules over it and its inhabitants. Césaire makes Prospero the

colonizer, Ariel and Caliban two slaves and a black Yoruba god crash Miranda's

wedding.

However, Césaire chose The Tempest not only for its suitable content to

criticize colonial systems in Une Tempête. He also wrote back to the Empire, in this

case Shakespeare's home country, Great Britain, or more specifically, England.

Great Britain pursued a considerably stronger policy of expansion than France and

therefore also had many more colonies. In these colonies the same discrepancies

occurred as in others.

In this context also James Arnold confirms that it was Césaire's intention to

write a "critical reflection on the value system of Western humanism [...]" (cf. Arnold

1981: 270). The white man is supposed to learn from other cultures not to rule them.

Arnold also mentions one negative aspect of Une Tempête, namely the "example of

Césaire's inability to treat directly the social and political dilemma of blacks in a white

dominated society." (Arnold 1981: 270)

But what effect has Césaire's Une Tempête on Shakespeare's The Tempest?

How is the original read after reading the adaptation? Une Tempête has an even

stronger effect on The Tempest than vice versa. When the original is read, without

knowing Césaire's version, one hardly thinks of colonisation and of Prospero being a

white slave owner. One rather pities Prospero for the situation he finds himself in

after Antonio's betrayal and after being exiled to a remote island. Caliban and Ariel

do not necessarily attract the audience's sympathy. Ariel is indebted to Prospero due

to his rescue and Caliban rather makes Prospero's life miserable. So the situation is

clear: Prospero is good, the antagonists Ariel and Caliban are bad.

D a v i d M a l o u f - B l o o d R e l a t i o n s | 50

However, after reading Césaire's version also Shakespeare's play can be

seen from a different perspective. Prospero, as a matter of fact, has not come to the

island voluntarily, however, he makes Ariel and Prospero his slaves and rules the

island with his magic and the help of his servants but against their wills. It seems just

as if Shakespeare also wrote The Tempest to point out the bad state of affairs on the

British colonies. This would make The Tempest the first anti-colonisation work ever.

6 David Malouf – Blood Relations

6.1 David Malouf’s Life and Works

6.1.1 Biographical Backgound

David George Joseph Malouf was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, on

the 20th of March 1934 to a Lebanese father and an English mother, whose

ancestors came from Spain. Malouf spent his childhood in the suburban area of

South Brisbane which he later described in his memoirs 12 Edmondstone Street, in

1985. (Cf. David Malouf Biography: online) He attended Brisbane Grammar School

and completed his bachelor degree in English at The University of Queensland in

1954. Until 1957 Malouf worked as a lector at his alma mater. In 1959, however, he

decided to leave Australia for almost ten years. He travelled through Europe and

taught English at several schools and universities in London. In 1962 he relocated to

St. Anselm’s College in Birkenhead, England until he finally moved back to Australia

in 1968. He was offered the position of tutor and lecturer of English at the University

of Sidney, where he practiced until 1977. While lecturing at the University of Sidney,

Malouf was already pursuing a career in writing which became a full-time occupation

in 1977. (Cf. David Malouf: online)

Malouf was an active member of the Literary Board (1973-1975) and the

Australian Opera Board (2001-2009). He is still a Life Member of Sidney PEN and an

ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. (Cf. David Malouf: online) His

dedication to Australia’s indigenous population is reflected in many of his works

including Blood Relations. After 1977 David Malouf frequently spent parts of the year

in the Tuscany on order to find peace of mind for his writing. However, since 1985 he

permanently resides in Sydney. (Cf. David Malouf Biography: online)


6.1.2 David Malouf’s Literary Works

David Malouf started writing when he was only a child. At the age of seven he

had already written for a local newspaper. After he read the poems of Kenneth

Slessor as a teenager he wanted to become a poet. In 1960, Malouf’s first poem was

published in the literary journal Meanjin. His first collection of poetry was Bicycle and

Other Poems and first came out in 1970, his second collection, Neighbours in a

Thicket, was published in 1974. The latter lead to Malouf’s breakthrough as a poet in

Australia and brought him several literary prizes, such as the Townsville Foundation

for Australian Literary Studies Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal

and the Grace Leven Poetry Prize. From this time on, Malouf also began writing

prose and in 1975 his first novel, Johnno, was published. With his second novel An

Imaginary Life, which came out in 1978, he became a internationally renowned writer.

(Cf. David Malouf Biography: online) This novel, as well as his play Blood Relations,

contain intertextual references to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Both the novel’s

protagonist ‘Ovid’ (the Roman poet) and the play's main character, Willy, have certain

parallels with Prospero. (Cf. Zabus 2002: 98)

Altogether, David Malouf wrote nine novels, and his most recent, Ransom,

was released in 2009. The Australian writer’s main field of attention however, is

poetry. He composed eight verse collections including Wild Lemons, Guide to the

Perplexed and Other Poems, Typewriter Music and Revolving Days. The latter three

collections were only published recently in the years 2007 and 2008. Besides this,

Malouf also authored five short story collections – Antipodes (1983), Untold Tales

(1999), Dream Stuff (2000), Every Move You Make (2006) and The Complete Stories

(2007) – four libretti – Voss (1986), Mer de glace (1991), Baa Baa Black Sheep

(1993) and Jane Eyre (2000) – and also wrote non-fictional work such as essays and

memoirs. However, David Malouf only wrote one play, i.e. Blood Relations which will

be the main focus of the following subchapters. (Cf. David Malouf: online)

During his career David Malouf gained numerous popular literary awards. The

Geraldine Pascall Prize for Fiction (1988), the Australian Living National Treasure

(1997), the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2000), the Lloyd O’Neil Award

for Services to the Australian Book Industry (2008) and three honorary ‘Doctor of

Letters’ degrees (D.Litt h.c. Macquarie University, D.Litt h.c. University of

Queensland, D.Litt h.c. University of Sidney) These depict only a small selection of


the prizes awarded to David Malouf during his productive writing career. (Cf. David

Malouf: online)

6.2 Australia’s Colonial History

Australia is one of the oldest continents on Earth. The people, who are today

referred to as “indigenous people” or “Aboriginals”, settled on the land that is today

called “Australia” over 50000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. They came to

Australia by boat from South East Asia. In their ‘prime’ the number of aboriginal

people amounted to approximately one million, who were mainly hunters and

gatherers. They lived in almost every part of the landmass, were associated to over

300 different clans, spoke over 200 different languages but only followed one

common creed, i.e. Dreamtime. The Aboriginals consider Dreamtime to be the period

in which the world and everything living on it was created by totemic spirit ancestors.

Those spirit ancestors play a central role in aboriginal myth. (Cf. Australia’s History:

online) Australia’s indigenous population did not have any concept of property except

for weapons and tools. Land was not in possession of a person, rather the person

belonged to the land. (Cf. Strohscheidt 2002: 67)

The first Europeans are believed to have discovered ‘Terra Australis Incognita'

– which the then unknown and hypothetical continent was referred to – in the 17th

century. However, there is no historical evidence for this. What has been proven is

that William Janssen, Dirk Hartog, Fancisco Pelsaert, Abel Tasman, Antony van

Diemen and Willem de Vlamingh finally reached the continent Australia after the

Spanish and Portuguese conquerors landed only on the Solomon Islands and the

New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). They thought this was the undiscovered continent in

the South Pacific they were sent out to frind. In 1768 the British Royal Navy Captain

and explorer James Cook sailed to the South Sea by order of the Royal Society. (Cf.

Prießnitz 2002: 274-5) The command issued to James Cook by the British admiralty

for appropriating newly found land reads as follows :

You are likewise to observe the genius, temper, disposition and number of the natives, if there are any, and endeavor by all means to cultivate a friendship and alliance with them, making them presents of such trifles as they may value, inviting them to traffick, and shewing them every kind of civility and regard; taking care however not to suffer yourself to be surprized by them, but to be always on your guard against any accident.


You are also with the consent of the natives to take possession of convenient situations in the country in the name of the King of Great Britain, or, if you find the country uninhabited take possession for His Majesty by setting up proper marks and inscriptions as first discoverers and possessors. (McRae 1991: 10)

In 1770, Cook executed this order and took possession of New South Wales

on behalf of the British Empire. (Cf. Prießnitz 2002: 274-5) However, the aboriginal

population was not living according to Western standards. It was therefore

considered legitimate to seize new land from them without their accordance. (Cf.

Strohscheidt 2002: 69) The crew for Cook’s ship consisted of 1000 men, of which

717 were convicts who were ‘sentenced’ to assist Cook in founding a new colony and

then to remain in their newly erected ‘prison’. In the following decades more prisoners

were brought to Australia in order to serve the free settlers. This continued until the

year 1840 when the transfer of convicts to Australia was prohibited. (Cf. Pitett 1991:

online)

After the first waves of colonisation a vast number of massacres against the

indigenous population were carried out. The Aboriginals, however, struck back and,

as a result of this, a number of guerilla wars emerged in the country. In the end, the

colonisers were equipped with better arms and overpowered the Aboriginals.

Numerous black Australians were dislodged or even killed, and many clans were

extinguished. By the 1920s the Australian indigenous population had been reduced

to 30000 people. (Cf. Strohscheidt 2002: 70)

After the period of massacres a period of racial segregation followed. The

surviving Aboriginals were relocated to reservations and missions controlled by the

church. There they were supposed to be Christianised and civilised, and laws

securing the protection of the white population from the Aboriginals were issued. The

next step in Australian minority policy was assimilation instead of protection. In the

Second World War many aboriginal men were recruited as soldiers and thus

disposed themselves of the image of a second-grade human being. The Australian

government hence decided to assimilate the indigenous population. As a

consequence, they were not segregated from the white population any more but had

to live according to white rules and standards and had to reject their own cultural

heritage completely. Up until the 1960s aboriginal children were taken from their

families in order to receive a ‘proper’ western education. These children are referred

as the ‘Stolen Children’ or the ‘Stolen Generations’. In the 1970s and 1980s the


policy of assimilation was changed to a policy of integration, which supported a full

participation of Aboriginals in Australian society. Aboriginals who preferred to live a

traditional live instead were allowed to do this. (Cf. Strohscheidt 2002: 71-80)

The situation of Australia’s indigenous population has improved nowadays but

in some areas it is still unsatisfactory. Statistics show that they are still far-off from the

white population when it comes to living standards and social acceptance. The large

majority of black Australians are unemployed and live in slums with poor

infrastructure. Many are addicted to drugs and alcohol and violence and crime go

hand in hand with their daily lives. The Australian government is trying to better the

situation of the indigenous people by providing a stronger police force and more

doctors and social workers for the areas where Aboriginals are living. Prime minister

Rudd publicly apologised for the misdeeds his forefathers have done to the aboriginal

population. All this has considerably raised the status and the self-awareness of

Black Australians. However, the situation of the Aboriginals nowadays is just as Ingo

Neumayer implies at the end of his article: “still a long way to go” (transl. Neumayer

2013: online) (Cf. Neumayer 2013: online)

6.3 A Brief History of Australian Theatre

The ‘age’ of Australian theatre began soon after the first ship with convicts and

settlers landed on the then new continent in 1788. As there were no theatre

buildings, theatrical performance as such was difficult to realize. The first “quasi-

theatrical displays” (Fotheringham 2000: 134) were military shows, parades, pseudo

battles and pseudo invasions. The first actual plays were mainly retellings of striking

incidents that occurred in the early Australian colonies. (Cf. Fortheringham 2000:

134-5) However, Richard Fotheringham mentions that theatre in Australia was not

always English. Besides the aboriginal inhabitants, who had their own distinct theatre

culture, there were a large number of immigrants from countries other than Great

Britain, as for example Asia, Italy and France, who staged plays by native playwrights

in their respective mother tongue. The first performance of an English play, however,

happened on the vessel “Scarborough” on January the 3rd, 1788, seventeen days

before it reached the Australian coast. The name of the play ‘staged’ on the vessel is

unfortunately unknown. (Cf. Fotheringham 2000: 140-2)


In 1789 the first recorded performance in English was staged on mainland

Australia. It was the comedy The Recruiting Officer (1706) by the Irish playwright

George Farquhar, and it was dedicated to the birthday of King George III. The

characters were played by convicts and about 60 people were watching the

performance. In the following decades, English theatre performances occurred with

increasing regularity. Many theatres had been built in the colonies, as for example

the Theatre Royal in Sidney (1833) and Adelaide (1838), the Royal Victoria Theatre

in Sidney (1838) and The Pavilion in Melbourne (1841). (Cf. Australian Theatre

History: online) Richard Fotheringham tries to map Australian theatre by dividing up

the subsequent century (1850s-1950s) according to three economic turning points in

Australia’s history (cf. Fotheringham 2000: 140-1). The first turning point were the

Australian Gold Rushes which started in the beginning of the 1850s. This made a

vast number of new immigrants from all over the world come to Australia, theatre

establishments were built and the number of touring theatre groups from the USA,

such as the New York Serenaders and the Backus Minstrels, also increased. Not just

theatre performances, in particular of Shakespeare plays, but also operas became

more popular in this century, which attracted the attention of opera companies and

famous opera stars from all over the world. At the turn of the century Australian

theatre increasingly shifted from the English tradition to a native Australian one.

Australian playwrights such as Steele Rudd and Louis Esson considerably

contributed to the rise of Australian theatre. (Cf. Australian Theatre History: online)

According to Fotheringham the second turning point in the history of Australian

theatre is the Great Depression, which was triggered by a stock market crash in 1929

and an increase of sound film productions, especially in Hollywood. Cinemas soon

became more popular than theatres and the number of film productions quickly

exceeded the number of stage performances. (Cf. Fotheringham 2000: 140) The

economic crisis of the 1930 as well as the rise of the sound film damaged Australian

theatre considerably. However, in this period of economic and theatrical depression,

small independent theatre groups could attract attention much more easily than

before. (Cf. Australian Theatre History: online)

Fotheringham’s final turning point in Australian theatre history occurred in the

1950s and 1960s. In this decade the Australian government considerably influenced

Australian theatre by supporting it financially. New theatres were built and theatrical


productions were financed at the expense of the state, which resulted in the

reduction of private theatre companies. As a result of the government funding the

focus of the dramas shifted from traditional British to “high art” and “national drama”

(Fotheringham 2000: 142). Plays from Great Britain were still staged in Australia but

Shakespeare’s dramas were deliberately dismissed. According to Fotheringham “the

1980s probably saw fewer productions of [...] [Shakespeare’s] plays than in any other

decade” (Fotheringham 2000: 142). (Cf. Fotheringham 2000: 140-2)

The decades following the 1950s offered numerous new plays by Australian

writers. Altogether there is only a small body of Australian plays when compared to

other English speaking countries. Due to government financing in the 1950s and

1960s, numerous new forms of plays with various contents emerged, but with no

common Australian tradition. “Australian drama has kept re-inventing itself without

forging a theatrical culture” (Akerholt 2000: 209). In the 1950’s the first plays which

established a distinct Australian theatrical culture emerged. Famous representatives

of this new contemporary Australian theatre are the dramatists Ray Lawler (Summer

of the Seventeenth Doll, 1955), David Williamson (Travelling North, 1979; Emerald

City, 1987; Brilliant Lies, 1993; Amigos, 2004; Happiness, 2013), Barry Oakley

(Bedfellows, 1975; Music, 2012) and Jack Hibberd (A Stretch of the Imagination,

1972; A Toast to Melba, 1975; The Crown vs. Alice Springs, 2001). (Cf. Australian

Theatre History: online)

Towards the end of the 1980s Australia not only celebrated its 200th ‘birthday’

but also became more sophisticated in its approach to the indigenous population.

This can be observed especially in connection with Australian theatre. During this

time, multicultural theatre – e.g. Janis Balodis’ Too Young for Ghosts (1985), which

tells the story of a Latvian family immigrating to Australia – as well as Aboriginal

theatre – e.g. Jack Davis’ The Dreamers (1982) and No Sugar (1987) – emerged.

Additionally, rewritings and re-interpreting of famous British classics became popular.

In his play Away, the Australian playwright Michael Gow adapted parts of

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear, and used the play to

address Australian affairs. David Malouf created his play Blood Relations – which will

be discussed more extensively in the next chapter – in a similar way. He used

characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in order to illustrate the problems of the

Lost Generations (see above). (Cf. Akerholt 2000: 224-7) Thus, the aforementioned


plays “dramatise inner worlds and the conflict between the freedom of inner life and

the restrictions of social life” (Akerholt 1987: 7).

The tradition of an Australian theatre continued to grow through the 1990s,

and 2000s and up to and including today. It features issues of Australia’s indigenous

population, traditional customs and music as well as contemporary political and social

issues. Concerning this, the Australian government states that “theatre-goers could

almost take for granted the array of dynamic performance styles, theatre companies

and venues available to entertain, delight and challenge them” (Australian Theatre

History: online). (Cf. Australian Theatre History: online)

6.4 David Malouf’s Blood Relations

6.4.1 An Introduction to the Play

Blood Relations is the only play David Malouf has written. It was first

performed on June 24, 1987 at the Sidney Opera House. Willy, the protagonist, was

played by John Wood and his housekeeper Hilda by Maggie Kirkpatrick. Laurence

Clifford was cast as Willy’s half-aboriginal son Dinny, Paul Goddard as Hilda’s son Kit

and Heather Mitchell as Willy’s daughter Cathy and his ex-wife Tessa. Blood

Relations was directed by Jim Sharman, and Alan John provided the background

music. However, Blood Relations is not as popular as most of Malouf’s poems and

novels. At the moment its printed version is unavailable on most of the online trading

platforms such as amazon which, in this case, means that there were no recent

reissues of the play. (as of Mar. 07, 2014).

David Malouf deliberately chose Shakespeare’s Renaissance comedy The

Tempest as a pattern for his play. As Shakespeare’s play offers a colonial theme it

provides the perfect basis from which to refer to struggles between Australia’s

indigenous population and the white population, whose European ancestors

colonized the island. In the case of Blood Relations, the focus lies on the struggle

between the white ‘colonizer’ Willy, who came to Australia from Greece, and his

illegitimate half-aboriginal son Dinny. Malouf even included several pieces of music

and dance in his play in order to refer to traditional aboriginal culture. However, the

correlations between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Malouf’s Blood Relations are

not nearly as obvious and transparent as in Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête, which was

analysed in chapter 5. While Césaire almost solely adhered to Shakespeare’s drama


and transferred the complete dramatis personae of The Tempest directly to his

adaptation, Malouf created his main characters along the lines of the characters of

the original text. The storm appears in Malouf’s play but unlike in The Tempest,

where the storm introduces the action in Act I, in Blood Relations it leads to the play’s

climax in Act 2, Scene 2. The plot of Malouf’s play is, however, completely different to

that of the The Tempest.

Chantal Zabus presents an interesting statement by Professor Helen Gilbert in

her discussion of Blood Relations: according to Gilbert, Malouf’s play is an

”oppositional reworking of The Tempest” (Zabus 2002: 90). This means that Blood

Relations is a reactive response to Shakespeare’s play rather than simply an

imitation of it. The action of Maloufs rewriting is divided into what May-Brit Akerholt in

her introduction to Blood Relation calls “the real and the symbolic level” (Akerholt

1987: 8). The ‘real level’ of the play speaks for itself. Everything happening in the

‘real level’ is reality. The ‘symbolic level’, on the other hand, only occurs in Willy’s

subconscious. In this latter level, Willy experiences flashbacks in which he relives

episodes from his life, such as the moment when he cheated his former business

partner Frank in a game of poker (cf. Blood Relations 48-50), or speaks to his

deceased wife Tessa (cf. Blood Relations 56-60). Through these flashbacks the

audience gradually learns about Williy’s obscure past, and in connection with the two

journalists McClucky and Dash, who try to trace Willy, Malouf’s play appears as a

simple “detective story” (Akerholt 1987: 8) at first glance rather than a postcolonial

rewriting of The Tempest.

In order to stage the two aforementioned levels of the play, director Jim

Sharman had several ‘zones’ constructed on stage in 1987, which were clearly

distinct from each other. Characters were able to switch between these zones and

could also remain in one zone while commenting on the action happening in another.

Two musicians were placed next to the stage and were fully visible to the audience.

The music, composed by Alan John and played by the two musicians, is essential in

the play as it highlights important moments in the line of action. (Cf. Akerholt 1987:

8)

Blood Relations is a play in two acts. The first act is divided into seven scenes

and the second act into four scenes.


6.4.2 A Summary of the Plot

The following plot summary of Blood Relations will be structured according to

the play’s two acts and seven scenes. Unlike the plots of Césaire’s Une Tempête and

Greenaway’s cinematic adaptation Prospero’s Books (see chapter 7) the plot of

Malouf’s rewriting is only loosely based on the The Tempest, as is Fred M. Wilcox’s

science fiction film Forbidden Planet (see chapter 8).

Malouf begins the text of his drama with specific directions on how the stage is

to be set up. The main setting is the living room of Willy’s house which is located on

the coastal area of North Western Australia. Other rooms, such as Willy’s office and

parts of the kitchen are also visible to the audience. Malouf lists “essential furnishing”

(Blood Relations: 16) such as a dining table, a folding card table, an upright piano

and several packing cases (crates) which he considers “chief features” of the room.

These crates are used for many other purposes apart from storage. Some of them

function as a ‘wall’ for posters or a place to pile up old newspapers whereas others

are turned into 'stands' for clothes and hats.

The action in Act I commences in the early morning of Christmas Eve when

Willy enters the room from outside shouting at an invisible person. Dinny, Willy’s

illegitimate, half-aboriginal son, and Hilda, Willy’s housekeeper, are also present and

are annoyed considerably by Willy’s blaze of anger. Hilda teases Willy by referring to

his outburst as “Willy’s hammering up a storm” and calling him “Cyclone Willy” (Blood

Relations: 18). Scene 2 begins with Willy speaking to another unseen person. The

audience learns that Willy originally came from a little island, which was so small that

it was not even charted. He was tired of small islands and searched for “the biggest

God – damned island there is” (Blood Relations: 19) which, in his case, was

Australia. Willy also states that as a child he was called ‘Spiros Kyriakou’, and now

he wants to be addressed as ‘Willy McGregor’. Later in Scene 2 Cathy, Willy’s

daughter, enters and argues with her father about her current situation. Cathy wants

to leave Willy’s residence and make something of her life. Willy ignores her attempts

to persuade him and tells her how strong he used to be in the past and how he

ablated rocks in front of his residence in order to bring the sea closer to his house.

Later Willy starts to sympathise with Cathy’s concerns but does not want to let go of

her. He mentions that he is dying and that he would miss her too much (cf. Blood

Relations: 22). Cathy does not agree with her father, she lets him sleep and says to


Hilda: “I can’t go on living for the next twenty years in someone else’s dream” (Blood

Relations: 24).

Scene 3 introduces the side plot of Blood Relations featuring the journalist

McClucky and the photographer Dash. McClucky has heard of Willy’s obscure past

and wants to locate his whereabouts and find out more about his personal

background. Therefore, McClucky and Dash follow Williy’s adopted son Kit and his

business partner Edward, who have just arrived at the airport and are heading

towards Willy’s house for the festive family reunion. McClucky refers to Willy as 'Big

Bill' and 'La Farge' and mentions that Willy buys “thirty, forty percent of every

company he can lay his hands on” (Blood Relations: 28). Dinny meanwhile hides

behind a bush and witnesses the scene. In Scene 4 Cathy excitedly awaits her

stepbrother and her flame Edward while Willy is being moody and does not “want a

whole lot of strangers in the house” (Blood Relations: 29). When Kit and Edward

finally arrive they are accompanied by McClucky and Dash whom they met on the

way from the airport. McClucky pretends that the fan belt of their car is damaged and

that they were lucky to have met Kit and Edward. Thus, the journalist and the

photographer have made their ways into the lion’s den.

In the next scene (5) Willy has a long conversation with Edward in which the

former contests everything the latter has to say. Willy questions his qualities as a

business partner, as a gambler and as a lover. Edward becomes considerably

annoyed by the old man’s behaviour. At the end of the scene Hilda interrupts the two

and through Willy the audience learns of Hilda’s former career as an opera singer

and circus performer. Scene 6 finds all members and guests of the family at a picnic.

The action is split up into several segments. A shift from one segment of action to

another is indicated by music. In one segment McClucky tries to find out more about

Willy’s past. Willy only answers contradictorily and unclearly. Another segment

features Dash singing. The final segment of Scene 6 has Dinny recapitulate bits and

pieces from the time when he was taken from his aboriginal family. He metaphorically

uses ants and termites in order to refer to blacks (Aboriginals) and whites

(colonisers).

The final scene of Act I is set later in the same evening. Dash is already quite

drunk and tries to take photographs of Willy. When Hilda and Willy start singing

‘White Christmas’ and McClucky tries to interview Dinny, he rages and leaves the


room after shouting: “It’s bloody ninety-six in the shade out there. [...] And they’re

singing about a white Christmas” (Blood Relations: 43). Following this, Willy again

annoys members of his family with his statements. Cathy wants to “run things” and

Willy simply replies that “running things is a man’s job” (Blood Relations: 44; 45),

Dinny, who has meanwhile returned into the room, wants to be recognized as an

Aborignial, but Willy just sends him out with McClucky and Dash to show them the

bush. Kit complains about his adoptive father still treating him as if he were six years

old. As a result everybody, except Hilda, Edward and Willy, leaves the room. Soon

after, Edward mentions that his father was betrayed by his business partner.

Suddenly the light changes and Edward – who, in the ‘real level’, does not yet know

who his father’s business partner really was – becomes his father Frank and finds

himself in the middle of a game of poker. In this flashback an important episode in

Willy’s life is presented. The audience witnesses how Willy cheated Frank out of his

money. After this flashback, Willy denies that he “never cheated any man in [...] [his]

whole life” (Blood Relations: 50). Edward, who still does not know who betrayed his

father, tells Kit what he witnessed as a young child. His mother died in a car accident

and his father married another woman, who will later be revealed as Willy’s ex-wife

Tessa. When Edward returned home from football practice his father Frank had

committed suicide and, prior to this, killed his whole family including Tessa. At the

end of Act I Willy phones someone to obtain information about Edward.

In Act II, Scene 1, Dinny returns with McClucky and Dash from the bush.

McClucky is thankful and kisses Dinny on the cheek. They go off stage and leave

Willy alone in the room where he falls asleep. The lights are dimmed and music

begins to play. Suddenly, Tessa, Willy’s deceased ex-wife – who is played by the

same actress as Cathy – enters the stage. In this dream episode Willy and Tessa

argue about the relationship they had before she left him and married his business

partner Frank. She blames Willy and says that he only believes in conflict and is

terrified by calmness. Willy replies that he never wanted power himself but love and

accuses Frank of luring her away from him (cf. Blood Relations: 58-9). Hilda finally

awakes Willy from the illusion in which he was captured. After that, the other

characters enter the room and they open a bottle of champagne and begin to drink

and dance. Willy loses control over the situation. Cathy and Edward start to dance

closely together, which indicates a detachment from her father. Dinny, who is rather

drunk, renders lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest which are originally spoken by


Caliban. After this Willy seems terrified and asks Dinny to stop, but then Dinny starts

complaining about the treatment he received from Willy when he was a child, which

encourages Kit to join the argument. Once the situation is more or less under control,

Hilda mentions at the end of Act II, Scene 1, that “there’s a storm brewing” (Blood

Relations: 71)

Scene 2 begins with thunder and lightning. Willy stands in front of the house

and confronts Edward. Edward, who as yet has no clue that Willy is responsible for

the deaths of his family, learns this through the following argument that Willy. Willy

provokes Edward so intensely that the latter tries to kill the old man with an invisible

knife. They begin to wrestle on the ground. Cathy interrupts the quarrel between the

two and a change of light indicates another shift from dream to reality. Willy is no

longer visible to either Cathy or Edward. The two adjourn to the bedroom and leave

Willy alone. Scene 3 is set in the morning after the storm, with Willy sitting downstage

completely soaked. He had to get out of the house because he was "suffocating" (cf.

Blood Relations: 76). The family and the two journalists eat breakfast together. After

that, Cathy and Edward play backgammon. Willy falls asleep again and experiences

another dream sequence which includes his adoptive son Kit and his illegitimate son

Dinny. Interestingly, after Willy finishes the conversation with Kit, the latter steps

behind Dinny, who has entered the stage during the conversation and is waiting in

the shadows. At the same time, Dinny steps out of the shadow and starts another

argument with Willy. After this argument both Kit and Dinny move behind Willy and

form a “triple figue” (Blood Relations: 81). Willy walks back into the house to Hilda

and washes himself with invisible water. This moment is reminiscent of the last rites

performed by Catholics before death. Afterwards he goes to bed. When Cathy enters

and wants to wake up Willy, Hilda only replies: “He isn’t there, pet. He isn’t there”

(Blood Relations: 82).

The final scene of Blood Relations takes place on the verandah in front of

Willy’s house. Willy has died during the night and his family watch as a plane carries

Willy’s ashes and scatters them over the broad expanse of the ocean. Meanwhile,

Dash and McClucky are inside the house where Dash breaks open Willy’s crates to

reveal their contents. What the two discover inside are the rocks that Willy has dug

out of the ground whilst building his house. Willy’s family has become suspicious at

the noise Dash made when opening the crates. Hilda, who at the end of the play


increasingly sounds like Willy, expels McClucky and Dash immediately from the

house. Surprised and disappointed at the same time the two walk off stage. In the

last minutes of the play Dinny produces Willy’s flute from his pocket, holds it up and

says to Hilda: “Look – Willy’s flute. He gave it to me” (Blood Relations: 86). He starts

playing and continues until the curtain drops. Thus, through Hilda adopting Willy’s

manners, and Dinny, who plays on the flute which Willy gave to him, the spirit of the

latter remains alive inside his housekeeper and his aboriginal son.

6.4.3 Blood Relations vs. The Tempest

The plots of David Malouf’s Blood Relations and Shakespeare’s The Tempest

are clearly distinct from each other. This comparison of the two plays will not focus on

the main differences in structure and plot, as implemented in the discussion of Aimé

Césaire’s Une Tempete, but will be based on those episodes, occurrences and

objects in Blood Relations which are reminiscent of The Tempest. Furthermore, this

section will illustrate how Malouf has converted and realised Shakespeare’s drama in

his play. The characters of Malouf’s rewriting, who are the major links to The

Tempest, will be discussed separately in the subsequent section.

When reading Blood Relations, or seeing its performance for the first time, one

might not immediately consider it a rewriting of The Tempest as there is only one

direct quotation from The Tempest in Malouf’s play (cf. Blood Relations: 64-5). Other

intertextual references are not as obvious. In the introduction to Blood Relations,

May-Brit Akerholt mentions that Malouf’s rewriting “weaves echoes of The Tempest

into his composite picture. From The Tempest the idea of forgiveness and atonement

arises [...] [It] does not merely borrow from the classic play but creates its own

traditions out of older ones.” (Akerholt 1987: 9).

The action of The Tempest is set in Willy’s residence on the tropical coastal

area of North-Western Australia (cf. Blood Relations: 16). Chantal Zabus calls this

location a “dystopic ‘island’ between the desert and the sea” (Zabus 2002: 89). This

and the fact that Willy’s house is completely isolated, are the first few parallels

between Blood Relations and The Tempest, where an isolated island in the

Mediterranean Sea is the main setting. In Act I, Scene 1 Willy warns of a cyclone and

Hilda hears thunder. ‘Water’ is also present in the first scene. Cathy wishes for a

rainy Christmas and Hilda runs water into a kettle. (Cf. Blood Relations: 18) The


water, the rain and the storm all refer to Act I, Scene 1 of The Tempest, in which

heavy rain and the tempest overturn the ship which carries Prospero's foes.

The storm in Blood Relations only appears at the end of the play, whereas in

The Tempest, it occurs in Act I, Scene 1. The storm, however, is deeply rooted in

Malouf’s play. It is not only mentioned that a storm/cyclone is approaching but most

of the time the others link this (hypothetical) storm to Willy’s hot temper as for

example in Act I, Scene 1, where Hilda says “Willy’s hammering up a storm” and calls

the old man “Cyclone Willy” (Blood Relations: 18), in Act I, Scene 2 where Cathy

states that Willy is “chasing imaginary storms” (Blood Relations: 22) or in Act II,

Scene 1 in which Tessa says to Willy “If there isn’t a storm brewing on the horizon

you’ll whip one of your own up” (Blood Relations: 58). All these lines refer to Willy as

the creator of his own inner ‘storms’ and also the one which arises in reality at the

play’s climax. This is also the case with Prospero in The Tempest. He conjures up a

storm in order to draw his enemies to his island. In Blood Relations Willy’s ‘enemies’

– or rather his ‘children of sorrow’ – are either already present (Hilda, Cathy, Dinny)

or come to Willy’s house voluntarily (Kit, Edward, McClucky, Dash). Willy ‘invokes’ his

storms when he feels uncomfortable with the situation he finds himself in or when he

argues with the other characters. In The Tempest Prospero’s storm does not harm its

conjuror, it rather helps him take retribution on his enemies, whereas in Blood

Relations Willy dies during the night after the storm which, in a metaphorical sense,

means that the storm has actually killed him (cf. Blood Relations: 73-83).

The stage directions before the actual text of the play feature a list of essential

furniture which the ‘living room’ on stage has to be equipped with. One specific part

of the furniture is Willy’s crates or packing cases which are to be spread across the

room. In these crates the rocks which Willy has worked out of the ground to let the

sea in are stored (cf. Blood Relations: 22). Willy lifted the heavy rocks “like a feather”

and “Puff! By Magic” (Blood Relations: 22) out of the channel he built and put them

into his crates. Willy claims aditionally that “forty million years this bit of coast had

been one way and [...] [he] changed it” (Blood Relations: 22). The rocks inside the

crates are the remains of Willy’s former power (magic) on the one hand, and, on the

other hand they symbolize the way Willy has manipulated his environment. This

again strongly references The Tempest in which Prospero gains his power from his

magic staff and his books. Prospero 'drowning' his books and disposing of his magic


powers at the end of Shakespeare’s play is reminiscent of Dash breaking the locks

on Willy’s crates, which causes Willy's secret to be revealed. In the way Willy’s crates

and Prospero’s books are related, as are Prospero’s magic staff, which he breaks in

The Tempest in order to free himself from his magic powers, and Willy’s flute, which

he hands to Dinny shortly before he dies. With these references to Shakespeare’s

text Malouf presumably wanted to highlight the white coloniser’s (impersonated by

Willy) urge for power and possession during Australia’s colonial period.

In Act II, Scene 1, Kit enters the stage dressed in a “Greek robe with a staff

and elaborate hairdress” (Blood Relations: 60). Shortly afterwards, Cathy and

Edward appear dressed in sarongs in order to act as prince and princess for the

‘show’ Kit has prepared (cf. Blood Relations: 62). After Kit puts a CD into his compact

disc player Willy asks him: “What now? More Magic?” (Blood Relations: 63). When

the music starts Kit, Cathy and Edward begin to dance. In this case Malouf was

inspired by the ‘wedding scene’ from The Tempest (cf. Tempest IV.i) where Prospero

invokes classical Greek goddesses for the wedding ceremony of his daughter

Miranda and Alonso’s son Ferdinand. Together with “certain nymphs” and “certain

reapers” the goddesses begin to dance and sing (cf. Tempest IV.i.139ff). With the

‘dancing scene’ and its connection to Shakespeare’s ‘wedding scene’, Malouf

probably wanted to refer to Willy’s Greek origins (cf. Blood Relations: 20-1) on the

one hand, and to the traditions and customs of the aboriginal people on the other

hand. Dance, which represents an integral part of aboriginal culture, is performed by

the white colonisers, impersonated by Cathy, Kit and Edward. In The Tempest the

‘coloniser’ Prospero invokes the Greek goddesses Ceres, Iris and Juno. Greek

mythology is one of the cornerstones of Western society and represents Western

traditions and customs. Thus, Malouf again draws parallels between Shakespeare's

and his play.

The only direct quotation from The Tempest can be found in Act I, Scene 2 of

Blood Relations. Dinny apparently played Caliban in a performance of Shakespeare's

play during his time at boarding school and recites a part of Act I, Scene 2 (cf. Blood

Relations: 64-65). In these lines, Caliban accuses Prospero of having seized his

island from him, which he had inherited from his mother Sycorax, and of having

betrayed and enslaved him, even though they had been on good terms before. (cf.

Tempest I.ii.331-44). When Dinny finishes his speech he stands opposite Willy and


stares at him. At this moment of silence the audience witnesses strong tension

between Dinny and his father. Willy's reaction to this emphasises the awkwardness

of the situation: "Willy: Hilda, get me a sweater. There's a chill in the air. [To Dinny]

That's enough, son. You've had enough. [...] Dinny! Why are you doing this to

yourself? In front of people! Strangers! You used to be such an affectionate kid."

(Blood Relations: 65). Willy clearly knows what Dinny actually wanted to achieve with

his speech. By quoting from The Tempest, Dinny did not want to present his

knowledge of Renaissance drama but to express his grief, caused by his father, to

everyone present in the same way as Caliban explains his plight to Miranda and

Prospero. Dinny's response to Willy's reaction confirms this: "You [Willy] sent me

thousands miles away, to fucking Brisbane. To be with white kids I never seen

before. I missed you! You sent me away, to learn to think like a white boy." (Blood

Relations: 66). Chantal Zabus has plausibly described why Malouf used this

particular quotation from The Tempest in his play. He wanted to "hint at the process

of acculturation for indigenous minorities but also at the Australian practice of

separating Aboriginal and mixed-blood children from their non-White families on

account of their being 'civilizable'" (Zabus 2002: 91). In the same way, Willy has

taken Dinny from his mother and sent him to a 'white' school in Brisbane where he

had no access to the customs and traditions of his people at all. There he had to live

according to Western rules and thus has forgotten most of his real origins. Dinny,

therefore, stands for all the representatives of the "Stolen Generations" (see section

6.2) who were taken away from their families and were 'civilized' by the White

population of Australia.

Another allusion to The Tempest occurs in Act I, Scene 7 in which Willy cheats

his business partner Frank. This scene is presented via one of the dream sequences

and takes place in Willy's past. However, Willy's betrayal of Frank (played by

Edward) happens in reverse in the Shakespeare's play, namely when Antonio

together with Alonso removed Prospero from his dukedom (cf. Tempest I.ii.120ff). In

this case the protagonist is betrayed by a confidant whereas in Blood Relations the

protagonist betrays a confidant. In Act II, Scene 2, Willy refers to Prospero's lost

dukedom: "I didn't even have a ... kingdom for him to steal" (Blood Relations: 72).

The reason why Malouf exchanged the roles of betrayer and betrayed is presumably

because he wanted to give his protagonist a more negative association than

Shakespeare provided for Prospero. Malouf did this in order to emphasise the figure


of the cruel coloniser who defrauded the Aboriginals of their natural existence. Many

Aboriginals of the Stolen Generations suffered severely as they were missing their

families and were not able to integrate into Western society. Frank could not bear

losing all his money to his former friend Willy and eventually kills himself and his

whole family.

During the climax of Blood Relations, Willy reveals to Edward that he once

was Frank's friend and business partner. They begin to fight and Edward wants to

stab Willy with an invisible knife. Edward's hand suddenly freezes in mid air (cf. Blood

Relations: 74). This is reminiscent of Act V, Scene 1 of The Tempest where Antonio,

Alonso and Gonzalo are charmed and remain motionlessly inside Prospero's magic

circle (cf. Tempest V.i stage dir.). Act II, Scene 3, in which Dinny, Willy and Kit stand

behind each other and form one triple figure (cf. Blood Relations: 80-1) also has

parallels to Shakespeare's work. In The Tempest, Trinculo hides underneath a cloak

together with Caliban. When Stephano comes on the stage, he sees "a monster of

the isle with four legs" (Tempest II.ii.63) (cf. Tempest II.ii.17-60). Other allusions to

The Tempest are the frequently recurring image of cards and card games (cf. Blood

Relations: 35; 44-50) as well as the game of backgammon Cathy and Edward play in

Act II, Scene 3 (cf. Blood Relations: 79). In the The Tempest Miranda and Ferdinand

play a game of chess (cf. Tempest V.i.171-5). Playing innocent games like poker,

backgammon or chess insinuates the game of love played by the two couples

Miranda and Ferdinand, and Cathy and Edward. (Cf. Zabus 2002: 90-1)

As in The Tempest, Blood Relations features a considerable amount of music

and songs. Music introduces the beginning of almost every scene in Malouf’s drama

and is also played when reality changes into a dream sequence. During the picnic in

Scene 6 of Act I, Dash, for example, starts to sing and throughout the action Hilda

and Dinny do the same. In Blood Relations music is much more present than in The

Tempest. The orchestra is even located next to the stage and can be seen by the

audience and a piano, which is played by the characters, stands in the living room of

Williy’s house. In the Shakespeare’s drama however, music can only be heard in

certain situations, such as the wedding ceremony and when Ariel or Caliban sings.


6.4.4 Malouf's Revision of Characters

This section provides a brief comparison between the main characters of The

Tempest’s and those of Blood Relations. The parallels between these characters are

more obvious than most of the allusions mentioned in the latter subchapter.

6.4.4.1 Character Constellation

6.4.4.2 Willy/Prospero

It is quite clear from the beginning that Malouf used Prospero as a template for

his main protagonist Willy. However, the tie between the two characters is not as

obvious as, for instance, in Césaire’s Une Tempête or Greenaway’s film adaptation

Prospero’s Books (see chapters 5 and 7), in which Prospero was directly transferred

from the original. Willy is not a magician like Prospero. He is a former business man

who wants to overcome his dark past by living in a solitary place on an ‘island’

between the desert and the sea (cf. Zabus 2002: 89). This is emphasized by the fact

Willy Kit Hilda's son; Willy's

adoptive son; Edward's business

partner

Tessa † Willy's ex-wife;

Frank's wife

Frank † Willy's former

business partner

Edward Frank's son; Kit's business partner; has an affair with

Cathy

Cathy Willy's daughter; has an affair with

Edward

Dinny Willy's illegitimate son;

Aboriginal

Dash Photographer

McClucky Journalist

Hilda Willy's housekeeper


that Willy uses aliases in order to veil

his past. He was born as Spiros

Kyriakou, was William LaFarge during

most of his life and now refers to

himself as the Scot William McGregor.

This secrecy renders Willy more

unfavorably than Prospero who ‘only’

urges control and power and has to

overcome Antonio's betrayal. Willy, on

the other hand, deceived his business

partner Frank and mistreated his

deceased wife Tessa, his illegitimate

son Dinny and many other people. All this does not reflect well on Willy. Thus, Willy

can be seen as an ‘evil’ version of Prospero.

In Act I, Scene 1 of The Tempest, Prospero conjures a storm which overturns

the ship carrying his foes Antonio and Alonso. He did this intentionally to take

revenge on them for cheating him of his dukedom. Willy, however, is not really able

to invoke an actual tempest. The storms he creates happen inside his mind.

Prospero, on the other hand, uses the magic powers he has acquired from his books

and with the help of his spirit servant Ariel calls forth the storm, Greek goddesses,

spirits and other illusions. The ‘magic’ Willy performs in Blood Relations, only occurs

inside his mind and is presented via the dream episodes. There he is able to

influence and control others (e.g. freezing Edward), but he can also relive episodes

from the past such as when he meets his deceased wife Tessa and his dead

business partner Frank again. According to Akerholt these dream sequences in

Malouf’s play are “not separated from a state of consciousness but are a part of it”

(Akerholt: 9). Just as Prospero, Willy wants to pull the strings in every situation, but

unlike his ‘prototype’ he does not succeed. He loses control of his daughter Cathy,

and his influence over his son Dinny, his housekeeper Hilda and her son Kit is

considerably more inferior than Prospero’s authority over his servants Ariel and

Caliban and his daughter Miranda, whom he actually wants to marry to Ferdinand.

Hence, Willy is not only a more evil but also a more desperate ‘version’ of Prospero.

Figure 3: Cathy (Heather Mitchell) & Willy (John Wood) 1987


At first glance, Willy’s relationship to his son Dinny is completely different to

the one between Prospero and Caliban. What is certain is that Dinny is the equivalent

of Caliban in Malouf’s play. He represents the indigenous population of

Australia in the same way as Caliban symbolizes all the native inhabitants on 'his'

island. In The Tempest, Caliban is Prospero’s slave while Dinny is Willy’s son.

However, Willy treats Dinny like Prospero treats Caliban. Willy took Dinny away from

his mother and his people and had him educated in a 'White' school. He usually

refers to him as “son” but on a very distant level and he refers to Kit and Edward in a

similar way. Willy tries to persuade Cathy that she has to be a man in order to make

progress in the word (cf. Blood Relations: 44-5), and says that “running things is a

man’s job” (Blood Relations: 45). Dinny replies that it is “a white man’s job”. Willy

responds that in order to run things, one has to be “a bastard like the rest of them”

(Blood Relations: 45). In this case Willy uses the word ‘bastard’ ambiguously. On the

one hand, it stands for a bad, ruthless person, but, on the other hand, the original

meaning of the word refers to a child born out of wedlock, which Dinny actually is.

Both Willy and Prospero forfeit their powers in the course of the play. Prospero

voluntarily breaks his magic staff and drowns his books at the end of The Tempest

(cf. Tempest V.i.54-7) while Willy’s power is frequently defied and even ridiculed in

Malouf’s play. Prospero’s power is threatened only by Caliban and his two allies

Trinculo and Stephano, who want to kill Prospero and rule the island (cf. Tempest

II.ii; III.ii; IV.i.195-268). In Blood Relations Willy’s power is endangered not only by

Dinny’s confrontations concerning his aboriginal descent, but also by his stepson

Kit's "gay-lib" lifestyle and through losing control of his daughter Cathy, who wants to

go to Sidney and is in love with Edward. Willy tries to abandon his drive for control

when he confesses to his ex-wife Tessa that he actually “never wanted power” but

love (Blood Relations: 58). This can be regarded to Prospero’s abjuration of magic

but with one difference: Willy never actually wants to give up control of his family.

One of the most striking differences between Willy and Prospero is that

Prospero survives at the end of the play whereas Willy dies. In his novel An

Imaginary Life, which led to Malouf’s breakthrough, the protagonist Ovid who shares

many of Prospero’s characteristics, dies in the end. Chantal Zabus comments on this

by stating that “death is the ultimate transformer of the Australian Prospero while


Caliban lives on”, which, at the same time, leads to the “deprivileging of Prospero [...]

and the rise of Caliban” (Zabus 2002: 92). (Cf Zabus 2002: 92).

6.4.4.3 Dinny/Caliban

As already mentioned above, Dinny represents the ‘Caliban’ of Blood

Relations. His mother is an Aboriginal and had either a quick affair with Willy or was

raped by him. He was then taken from his aboriginal family and educated following

the rules of Western society. In this way, Dinny is a representative of the Stolen

Generations (see section 6.2) and his mother is therefore the equivalent to Caliban’s

mother Sycorax. Akerholt regards this as “the plight of the Aboriginal race today

through the model of Shakespeare’s classical outcast” (Akerholt 1987: 9). Unlike

Caliban, Dinny has never learnt to speak the language of his mother. He is a black

person with a white mind. However, wherever he goes people treat him as the black

person that he appears. This can be witnessed numerous times throughout the play

as for example, in Act I, Scene 3, in which Dinny observes McClucky and Dash from

the distance. When Dash notices Dinny’s presence he refers to him as ‘abo’, which is

not quite politically correct (cf. Blood Relations: 28). Even Willy calls the indigenous

people “abos” (Blood Relations: 32) and considers his son an accident (cf. Blood

Relations: 66). At the beginning of the play Willy states that he and Dinny were

actually good mates and that his son was “such an affectionate kid “. But now Dinny

“does everything he can to get on the wrong side of [...] [Willy] (Blood Relations: 21).

This turn of events occurred when Dinny recognised his aboriginal past and started

thinking ‘black’ at the age of twenty. This was presumably triggered by Dinny meeting

his mother again who, together with the other Aboriginals of her clan, was ashamed

of him. (Cf. Blood Relations: 66-7)

Hence, Dinny’s major plight is not being recognised as an Aboriginal by

anybody. Even when he uses the metaphors of ‘ants’ and ‘termites’ from his dream,

(cf. Blood Relations: 40) McClucky and Dash do not seem to understand that he was

actually dreaming of white people (termites) devouring him (ants). When everybody is

singing “White Christmas”, Dinny reminds his family members that they are in

Australia where usually there is no snow (cf. Blood Relations: 43). Later during the

play he wishes the others that all their “Christmasses be white” (cf. Blood Relations:

70) alluding to Christmas as a celebration for White people only. Finally, Dinny

inherits Willy’s flute in the last scene of the play which, together with the crates,


symbolises Willy’s 'heritage'. Through Willy’s death Dinny succeeds his place in the

family, in a similar way to Caliban winning back rule over his island when Prospero

decides to leave at the end of The Tempest.

6.4.4.4 Hilda/Kit/Ariel

No Ariel-figure is apparent in Malouf’s play. Prospero’s airy spirit lives on in

two characters of Blood Relations, i.e. Willy’s housekeeper Hilda and her son Kit.

Hilda watches over Willy and seems to be the only person who understands him and

supports him. Hilda is a former opera singer and circus performer from Romania who,

together with her son, was saved by Willy. In order to have an heir, he adopted Kit.

This combines both Hilda and Kit with Shakespeare’s Ariel, who was also rescued by

Prospero from the evil witch Sycorax and hence has to serve the former. This is also

the case with Hilda and Kit although in a slightly eased form. Hilda has to do the

housework for Willy and is the good spirit of the house. For Kit, Willy had something

different in his mind: He wanted his adopted son to make something of himself, but

Kit started living a “gay-lib” lifestyle (Blood Relations: 45) which resulted in Willy

treating Kit as if he were still six years old (cf. Blood Relations: 47). Hilda serves as a

mediator between Willy and the other characters and also between the others. Thus,

Hilda represents the good and helpful side of Ariel while Kit represents the rebellious,

libertine side of the spirit, who wants to be released from his master's control.

6.4.4.5 Other Characters

The aforementioned characters are not the only ones Malouf imported into his

play. However, the remaining character allusions to The Tempest are rather

insignificant when compared with the ones listed above. Therefore, Cathy, Edward

and Frank will only be briefly discussed in this section. Cathy, whose ‘alter ego’ is

definitely Shakespeare’s Miranda, is a more emancipated woman than Prospero’s

daughter. Even though both women are situated under patriarchal control, only Cathy

wants to move away from her father. Miranda, in contrast, is under Prospero’s spell.

It is actually Prospero’s wish to marry her to Ferdinand in order to recover his

dukedom on the one hand, and to form an alliance with Ferdinand’s father Alonso,

the king of Naples, on the other.

Edward, whose equivalent in The Tempest is Ferdinand, threatens Willy’s

authority. In Act II, Scene 2, Willy accuses Edward of taking Kit and Cathy away from


him. He states: “Something in you attracted Kit, then Cathy, and drew you to both of

them. The same thing that drew Tessa to your father and him to me. There’s a plot”

(Blood Relations: 73). Thus Edward is Willy’s main enemy. This is in contrast to The

Tempest, where Antonio is the antagonist, impersonated by Frank in Blood Relations,

and Ferdinand is only a token in Prospero’s game. In Malouf’s drama, Frank is not

the one who betrayed the protagonist but he was in fact cheated by Willy. In The

Tempest, Prospero is the victim of Antonio’s betrayal.

The remaining characters who have not been discussed in the previous

sections (Tessa, McClucky, Dash) do not resemble any of Shakespeare’s characters.

Tessa, however, can be referred to Prospero’s wife and Miranda’s mother, who

actually never appeared in The Tempest, but was briefly mentioned (cf. Tempest

I.ii.57-8).

P e t e r G r e e n a w a y - P r o s p e r o ' s B o o k s | 74

7 Peter Greenaway - Prospero's Books

7.1 Prospero’s Books – Background Information

7.1.1 Prospero’s Books – An Introduction

One of the most famous but also one of the most controversial film

adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is Peter Greenaway’s daring postmodern

movie production Prospero’s Books, which first appeared in cinemas in 1991. In this

chapter I shall first give a brief overview of this film and its astonishing features, then,

I will briefly introduce Peter Greenaway as the director and “brain” behind this movie

and then present a few facts about John Gielgud, who plays the main role in the film

(Prospero), and who is essential in many ways for Greenaway’s film. Third, I will

provide a short discussion about the technology behind Prospero's Books. The main

part of this chapter will be an analysis of the 24 books Peter Greenaway used in his

film and in which way he adapted The Tempest. However, this will neither be a

profound analysis of every single detail of the film nor every single difference

between the film and the Shakespeare's play as this would cover the workload of an

entire thesis on its own.

Peter Greenaway’s postmodern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The

Tempest offers a very vivid, innovative and unusual interpretation of the Renaissance

romance. Although the plot and the chronology of the scenes in the film follow

Shakespeare’s original very faithfully, the film offers other striking features which are

genuine for Peter Greenaway and were revolutionary for the time the film was

premiered. However, Greenaway did not actually have the idea to produce a film of

The Tempest in the first place. It was Sir John Gielgud – who plays the part of

Prospero in Prospero's Books – who persuaded Greenaway to make a film about

Shakespeare's famous play. He tried to convince other filmmakers, such as Orson

Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergmann, but only received refusals. (Cf.

Weidle 1997: 161-3)

The plot basically follows Shakespeare’s Tempest. Prospero has been

banished from Naples and is stranded on a deserted island together with his

daughter Miranda. Caliban and Ariel are also his servants. Prospero evokes the


tempest which leads the other main characters, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo,

Ferdinand, Stephano and Trinculo onto the island. They are at first confused, trying

to find each other, but later find out that Prospero rules over the island with the help

of his books, his magic staff and robes. Miranda and Ferdinand are brought together,

fall in love and finally get married. Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are punished and

driven away and Prospero reconciles himself with Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian and

helps them to return to Naples with their ship after freeing Ariel and giving up his

magic powers by breaking his staff and drowning his books.

Prospero’s Books is not only a faithful re-production of The Tempest. It has

numerous features which set the film apart from Shakespeare’s play. The striking

differences from the original text are, first, the film’s style, effects and makeup,

second, the performing style of the actors, third, Prospero being the hero and author

in one person, and finally and most importantly, the film’s main focus on the 24 books

Gonzalo furnished Prospero with. All these features considerably distinguish

Prospero’s Books from any other stage performance or screen adaptation ever

produced. I shall discuss the differences between Greenaway’s film version and

Shakespeare's drama more extensively in one of the following subchapters.

A very important point in Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books are the costumes

worn by the actors in the film. The major characters are dressed in a very colourful,

baroquesque style, wearing relatively huge ruffs, big hats and high heeled shoes

most of the time, which sometimes seems rather ridiculous, whereas the servants are

completely naked or almost naked, having only a piece of cloth covering their

genitals. Ariel and Caliban are central characters in the film as well as in

Shakespeare’s Tempest. Marlene Weseslindtner lists three different Ariels in

Prospero’s Books (cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 180) who are not presented as spirits but

as half naked, pale, angel-like human beings. Also Caliban is almost completely

naked and with his vigorous and handsome appearance not even close to

Shakespeare’s description of the “savage and deformed slave” (cf. The Tempest:

character constellation).

Another striking feature of the film is that everything which is spoken during

the film is directly borrowed from The Tempest, except the “documentary-style

descriptions” (Donaldson 2003: 175) of the 24 books. Certainly, not every line of

Shakespeare’s Tempest was transferred into the film as this would probably have

lengthened it another two hours. Greenaway made Prospero speak all the


character's parts during the film. Prospero also has a writing cell where he writes

down every word he speaks and thus creates literature. The writing cell was inspired

by of the most prominent paintings of Antonello da Messina called St. Jerome In His

Study which was created around 1456. This again indicates Peter Greenaway's

strong affection for the visual arts.

7.1.2 Peter Greenaway – The Director

Peter Greenaway was born on April 5th, 1942 in Newport, Wales. Soon after

Peter's birth the Greenaway family left Wales and moved to England where the

young Peter Greenaway grew up and went to school. In 1962 he commenced his

studies at the Walthamstow College of Art. Greenaway always wanted to become an

artist, more specifically a painter and also had a strong admiration for European

cinema. The first film he ever created was Death of Sentiment, a film almost entirely

filmed on graveyards featuring flying angles and numerous gravestones. (Cf. Peter

Greenaway Biography: online)

In 1965 Greenaway started working for the Central Office of Information (COI).

His main assignment at this company at the beginning was film-editing, a task which

turned out to be significantly important for his further life and profession (cf.

Weseslindtner 2009: 147). He stayed at the COI for eleven years and also became

its director. Further films followed his debut movie in the 1960s, as for example the

short films Train and Tree. In the 1970s Greenaway established himself as a

Figure 1: Prospero's Writing Cell in Prospero's Books Figure 4: Prospero's Writing Cell in Prospero's Books

Figure 5: 'St. Jerome In His Study' (c. 1456)


respected filmmaker with features such as Vertical Feature Remake and A Walk

Through H. His most successful and influential years as a filmmaker definitely were

the 1980s, in which he also produced the majority of his films. The Falls, The Belly of

an Architect, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

were the ones with the greatest mainstream success of the films he ever shot. (Cf.

Peter Greenaway Biography: online) His breakthrough, however, was the 1982 film

The Draughtsman’s Contract which is set in 17th century England and tells the story

about a young landscapist's downfall (cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 147). In 1991

Greenaway introduced the Shakespeare adaptation Prospero’s Books which was

followed by The Baby of Mâcon, The Pillow Book and 8 ½ Women and The Tulse

Luper Suitcases trilogy in 2004. (Cf. Peter Greenaway Biography: online) Recent

projects of the famous filmmaker are the 2007 movie Nightwatching, Goltzius and the

Pelican Company (2012) and Eisenstein in Guanajuato which will be released in

2014.

The filmmaker Peter Greenaway criticizes the “restrictive boundaries of

cinema” and following “the traditional characteristics of cinema” (cf. Peter Greenaway

Biography: online). Indeed, his films differ from the make-up of mainstream films.

Therefore, many fellow filmmakers and producers regard Greenaway as no

filmmaker at all and refer to his films as "anti-cinematic" (cf. Peter Greenaway:

online). He also highly criticizes 21st century cinema for having “no touch, no smell,

no temperature, short duration”. (Peter Greenaway Biography: online) Moreover, he

complains about today’s cinema being too real and, most importantly, being “subject

to the tyranny of the camera” (cf. Peter Greenaway Biography: online). Peter S.

Donaldson describes the works of Peter Greenaway as "a soft-core, high-culture

manifestation of [...] 'technoculture'" (a term coined by Constance Penley and Andrew

Roos in their book Technoculture) (cf. Donaldson 2003: 111).

In this way, Peter Greenaway cannot really be referred to as a traditional

filmmaker. He is rather an artist or painter who creates cinematic images with a

camera, although he has produced over 14 motion pictures and numerous short films

up to today. In an interview with Roland Weidle he confirmed this fact when he said:

“I still believe painting to be the supreme visual art beside which cinema is rather

pathetic, unimaginative, very conservative and rather dull” (Weidle 1997: 161).

Greenaway also once stated that “if you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a

filmmaker” (cf. Peter Greenaway IMDB: online).


7.1.3 Sir John Gielgud - Prospero

John Gielgud was born on April 14th, 1904 in London. He is referred to as one

of the best British actors of the 20th century on both stage and film. Moreover, he is

one of the most renowned players of Shakespeare-characters, which is probably the

reason why Peter Greenaway cast Gielgud for the leading role of Prospero in his

feature film Prospero’s Books. Gielgud had impersonated Prospero several times

before. (Cf. Sir John Gielgud ist tot: online)

Gielgud started his career in acting at the age of 17 at the Old Vic Theatre in

London where he later also became famous for the portrayal of several Shakespeare

characters such as Hamlet in the 1930s. For playing Cassius in a cinematic

adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar he received the British Film Academy

Award in 1953 for 'Best British Actor' for the first time (cf. Best British Actor: online).

In 1982 he was awarded an Oscar for the role of "Hobson" in the film Arthur (cf. The

Oscars: online).

In his later acting years Gielgud gradually drifted away from stage productions,

although not entirely. He still remained on stage and had great success in modern

stage productions, such as Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land in 1975. In 1990 he

proudly accepted portraying Prospero in Greenaway’s film Prospero’s Books. (Cf. Sir

John Gielgud ist tot: online)

Richard Mangan collected the epistolary correspondence of John Gielgud in

the book Sir John Gielgud – A Life in Letters in order to give an insight into the life of

the famous actor, his intentions, beliefs, views and opinions. In a letter to “George

Pitcher and Ed Cone” on June 4th 1990, right after Greenaway had finished filming

Prospero’s Books, Gielgud reflects on being the main part of this project. He

accurately describes how the film is constructed and thus provides a perfect

introduction to the next chapter:

“I finished the film work [Prospero’s Books] last week, after a very arduous but fascinating two months. Have seen nothing yet, but Greenaway promises to show me some sequences on a big screen in London fairly soon. He goes to Japan to edit it and develop all the magic tricks and so on, and hopes to finish it later this year and show it next year at the Cannes Festival. Rather a long time to wait. I had a thrilling experience making it – weighed down by enormous cloaks and costumes which were very exhausting to walk and stand in. But the sets are superb, also the lighting. I think it will be like a sort of moving ballet with me speaking all the text from the play which I am writing in my cell! Amazing assortments of players of both sexes, mythological crowds,


animals, Dutch clowns, children, Negroes etc. most of them stark naked, but one grows quickly accustomed to that! I tried not to stare too obviously at the tremendous display of genitalia. [...]” (Mangan 2011:486)

In Prospero's Books Sir John Gielgud played Prospero for the last time and he

deliberately referred to it as the end of Shakespeare's and his career (cf. Zabus

2002: 262). He was wrong, as we know today that The Tempest was not

Shakespeare's final play, and Gielgud himself appeared in films again until his death

in 2000 (cf. Sir John Gielgud ist tot: online).

7.2 Prospero’s Books – The Film

7.2.1 The Technology Behind the Film

In his article "The Far Side of the Mirror" from 1996 Herbert Klein describes

several revolutionary techniques Greenaway used for the first time in his film

Prospero’s Books: First, Greenaway did not shoot his film on celluloid, as common in

the late 1980s and beginning 1990s, but used videotapes instead. By filming onto

this medium he could also make use of the Hi-Vision technology, developed in

Japan. Hi-Vision is an early form of High Definition Television (HDTV) which offered a

greater resolution than standard PAL and NTSC norms but a lower resolution than

the current Full-HD resolution. (Cf. Klein 1996: online) (Cf. Zabus 2002: 256)

Second, by using Hi-Vision technology, a second technical device could be

applied, i.e. the (digital) Graphic Paint Box. Thus, Greenaway was able to alter the

film material in several different ways: He could, for example, overlap distinct cuttings

of the film in order to create totally new images; parts could also be merged together

or overlap. This can be observed numerous times in the movie. In one scene, for

example, the viewer sees one frame in which water is dripping into a pool overlapped

by another frame featuring one of Prospero’s books overlapped by a third frame in

which Prospero appears. All three frames are transparent (cf. Weseslindtner 2009:

156). Klein compares working with the Paint Box with painting a picture. Thus, Peter

Greenaway fulfils his real profession and “painted” his own film. (Cf. Klein 1996:

online)

However, the technology used in Prospero’s Books does not have only artistic

purposes. The sometimes weird images created by the Paint Box reflect Prospero’s


inner thoughts and elucidate that in the film Prospero creates everything from his

mind. The animations of Prospero’s 24 books, which Peter S. Donaldson calls “the

technical glory of the film” as well as “analogues of Prospero’s generative magic”

(Donaldson 2003: 106), draw a connection from the The Tempest to the age of the

digital cinema (cf. Donaldson 2003: 107). Prospero can alter everything as he

pleases just by using his imagination. Greenaway manipulates his shots in the same

way Prospero manipulates his world by imagining and writing in his cell. (Cf. Klein

1996: online) For this reason Prospero does not only act as a 'double' for

Shakespeare but also for Greenaway himself as he does not only compose The

Tempest but also ‘paints’ and models the scenes for the film (cf. Donaldson 2003:

107)

Music is also a very important feature of Greenaway’s screen adaptation.

Michael Nyman’s soundtrack perfectly highlights important scenes of the movie as for

example, the first appearance of Caliban which is characterized by a distinct melody

which is both heroic and threatening. Sound effects also contribute to Greenaway’s

film to constitute a piece of art. The dripping of water drops can be heard throughout

the film, which not only implies that water is the origin of everything and everyone

(almost every character in the film came to the island from the sea) but also that the

tempest out on the sea “tossed” the shipwrecked characters onto the island. In

connection with ‘water’ the film additionally offers “A Book of Water”. The scratching

of Prospero’s pen, which can also be heard most of the time during the movie,

symbolizes the immediate creation of the play.

7.2.2 Prospero’s 24 Books

7.2.2.1 Overview

In this subchapter I will not discuss every single book that occurs during the

film because this would go beyond the scope of this thesis. Rather I shall concentrate

on those which seem to me most important for the story and which are very

exceptional. Below this subchapter I will add a complete list of the 24 books used in

the film.


In Prospero’s Books the major part of the film involves the books which were

taken away from Prospero’s library and put into the vessel by his loyal friend Gonzalo

before Prospero had to flee from Naples. Greenaway has chosen to equip Prospero

with 24 books and presents every single one of them explicitly in the film. Judith

Buchanan describes these books as “the only moments of escape [...] from the

boundaries of Prospero’s oppressive imagination” and partly as expressions of

Prospero’s “inner workings” (Buchanan 2005: 175) The 24 books function as an

‘aside’ in addition to the storyline and explain where Prospero has gained his

knowledge and magic abilities from. They are presented by Prospero himself and

usually some pages of these books are opened for the viewers. Moreover, the 24

books provide the only ‘textual escape’ from the original text of The Tempest.

The first book appears right at the beginning of the film and is called “The

Book of Water”. Prospero describes the book as a “waterproof-covered book which

has lost its colour by much contact with water. It is full of investigative drawings of

every conceivable watery association.” (Cf. Prospero’s Books) The viewers

additionally learn that this volume might have been written by Leonardo Da Vinci as

well as that Prospero obtained the book as a wedding present from Milanese Dukes

(cf. Prospero’s Books). The "Book of Water" is one of the most prominent ones which

might be the reason why Greenaway positioned it right at the beginning of the film.

The book itself is introduced by drops falling into a pool of water. Water is almost

everywhere at the beginning of the film. Prospero stands inside a pool of water and is

thus surrounded by it. Rain can be seen in the background and a storm is

approaching. Prospero has built a model ship which floats in the pool and later is

overturned by the tempest and sinks. Chantal Zabus quotes from an interview with

Peter Greenaway that the model ship additionally refers to Noah’s Ark which,

according to the Old Testament, actually survived the tempest (cf. Zabus 2002: 258).

During the storm Ariel urinates into the pool and Caliban swims in the waste water

system of Prospero’s palace. All this is connected to the Book of Water and water

itself. Water is the origin of everything, hence, also for the play Prospero writes, the

world he lives in and the things he imagines.

Shortly after the "Book of Water" disappears from the screen, Prospero’s

second book, and also the most important one, is revealed. The "Book of Mirrors" is

“bound in a gold cloth and very heavy” and “has some eighty mirrored pages.” (Cf.

Prospero’s Books) It is also mentioned that the mirror-like pages of this book reflect


the reader how she/he is right now, how she/he was in the past and how she/he will

be in the future and furthermore as she/he would like to be. (Cf. Prospero’s Books)

This certainly does not only concern the readers of the play but also affects Prospero

himself as his mind is reflected and his inner thoughts are displayed via mirror

images that continually appear in the course of the film. Therefore, the mirror images

and the "Book of Mirrors" are strongly connected to each other. Herbert Klein

describes the mirrors as a “bridge between the two spheres: the book and the

mirrors, the external and the inner world.” (Klein 1996: online)

Mirror images emerge several times during the film. The first mirror image, for

instance, shows the desperate mariners right after they got shipwrecked, while

another one reflects some scenes involving Sycorax, Caliban’s mother, when she

made young Ariel her servant, confined him inside a tree and gave birth to a pig-like

creature which is supposed to be Caliban. Interestingly, Prospero acts as a delivery

nurse during Caliban’s birth in order establish himself as the “master-manipulator”

(Zabus 2002: 260). A third mirror image displays the marriage of Claribel in Tunis,

where the ship with the now stranded characters originally came from before the

storm. This mirror image also confronts us with Claribel’s brutal defloration which is

demonstrated by her upper legs covered in blood (cf. Prospero’s Books).

As the action continues more books are introduced. Some are connected to

the plot in a very obvious way as for example the "Book of Love", which appears

when Miranda and Ferdinand meet each other for the first time, and the "Book of

Games", which is displayed right before Miranda and Ferdinand can be seen playing

chess. The meaning of other books, however, is not immediately clear as their titles

and descriptions make no real sense at first view, as for example "A Bestiary of Past,

Present and Future Animals", "An Atlas Belonging to Orpheus" or "An Alphabetical

Inventory of the Dead." Most of the time they refer to images or persons viewed in

the background, or explain several events happening in the film (cf. Weseslindtner

2009: 163)

When the aforementioned titles of the books appear on screen one can hardly

relate them to either Shakespeare’s The Tempest or Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books.

Why should Prospero own an atlas which belongs to Orpheus? How can a book

contain future animals or list the names of all human beings who died ever on earth?

The book’s description in the film and the images shown during its presentation help

to figure out the actual intention and function of the book. When, for example, “An


Alphabetical Inventory of the Dead” is illustrated, the description says that “It contains

all the names of the dead who have lived on earth. The first is Adam and the last is

Susannah, Prospero’s wife.” (Cf. Prospero’s Books) These lines are accompanied by

images of Prospero’s wife when she raised Miranda. The book in this way implies

that Prospero’s wife is dead by now as her name can be found at the end of the list.

The meaning behind this is ambiguous. It could amount to the fact that nobody else

has died, whose name follows the name of Susannah in the alphabet, or that the

author of this book stopped writing it after Prospero’s wife had died.

A part of Prospero’s ‘library’ refers to Greek mythology such as “An Atlas

Belonging to Orpheus”, “A Book of Mythologies” and “The Autobiographies of

Semiramis and Pasiphe”. The first of the aforementioned books appears in relation to

Antonio’s seizure of power, the second refers to Miranda’s and Ferdinand’s wedding

ceremony, where Prospero invokes the classical Greek goddesses Iris, Ceres and

Juno, and the latter emerges when Prospero warns Miranda and Ferdinand of

unchastity.

Another interesting book is the "Book of Earth", which can be seen right before

Caliban’s first appearance in the film and consists of pages “impregnated with the

minerals, acids, alkalis, elements, gums, poisons, balms and aphrodisiacs of the

earth.” (Cf. Prospero’s Books) Caliban is strongly connected to earth as he lives in

nature and wilderness and thus is in constant contact with all the substances earth

contains. His skin colour is also reminiscent of earth. "A Book of Travellers’ Tales"

appears when Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo travel on the island in order

to search for Alonso’s lost son Ferdinand, "A Primer of the Small Stars" and "A Book

of Universal Cosmologies" is introduced when Miranda and Prospero are on the

small vessel shortly before they arrive on the island. With the help of these books

Prospero was able to safely navigate to the island. In this way, the great majority of

Prospero’s books are directly related to the original story and only few titles and

descriptions hardly make sense in relation to The Tempest.

Towards the end of Prospero’s Books, after Prospero has decided to “break

his staff” and “drown his books” and after all the books as well as his clothes are

thrown into the pool of water, the final volume in Prospero’s collection is revealed: "A

Book of Thirty-Five Plays" (cf. Prospero's Books). It is very interesting that

Greenaway chose to use this book in the film. He leaves out blank pages at the

beginning of the book which contrasts with the original “First Folio” of Shakespeare's


plays from 1623, containing 36 of his plays, which was already mentioned in the

"drama" section in the subchapter "Overview of Shakespeare's Works". Greenaway

certainly refers to this Folio but leaves out one play: The Tempest. The reason why

this play is missing in the "Book of Thirty Five Plays" presumably is because

Greenaway’s Prospero had not even begun to write The Tempest when Gonzalo

gave the book to him. Instead of authoring The Tempest on the 19 empty pages at

the beginning of the book, Prospero simply wrote a new book which appears right at

the end of the film: “A Play called The Tempest”. This book and "A Book of Thirty-

Five Plays" are the only ones which are not destroyed by the water. They are saved

by Caliban shortly before Ariel is freed, runs towards the camera and then jumps off

the screen. This initiates the closing credits of Greenaway’s masterpiece.

7.2.2.2 A Complete List of Prospero’s 24 Books

This list contains all 24 books owned by Prospero in Peter Greenaway’s film

Prospero’s Books. They are arranged according to the order of their appearance in

the film. (Cf. Prospero’s Books)

1. “A Book of Water”

2. “A Book of Mirrors”

3. “A Memoria Technica called Architecture and Other Music”

4. “An Alphabetical Inventory of the Dead”

5. “The Book of Colours”

6. “A Harsh Book of Geometry”

7. “An Atlas Belonging to Orpheus”

8. “‘Vesalius’ Lost Anatomy of Birth”

9. “A Primer of the Small Stars”

10. “A Book of Universal Cosmologies”

11. “A Book of Earth”

12. “End-Plants”

13. “A Book of Love”

14. “A Bestiary of Past, Present and Future Animals”

15. “A Book of Utopias”


16. “A Book of Travellers’ Tales”

17. “Love of Ruins”

18. “The Autobiographies of Semiramis and Pasiphae”

19. “The Ninety-Two Conceits of the Minotaur”

20. “A Book of Motion”

21. “A Book of Mythology”

22. “A Book of Games”

23. “A Book of Thirty Five Plays”

24. “A Play Called The Tempest”

7.3 The Tempest vs. Prospero’s Books

7.3.1 General Notes

In this final part I will compare the plots and main characters of

Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books and demonstrate

the striking differences between the play and the film. As it is self-evident that the 24

books Greenaway incorporates in his film as well as title and medium of the two

works can be considered as the major differences between film and play, these

aspects will not be discussed in further detail.

The island Greenaway chose for his adaptation is not an island in the

Mediterranean Sea, which is the main setting for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but

“an island off the North African Atlantic coast, possibly colonized by the Romans in

the first century A.D., yet influenced by Arab and Moorish imports” (cf. Zabus 2002:

257) This island is not only ‘populated’ by the characters of Shakespeare’s play but

by numerous other people, who are servants to Prospero. It seems as if Prospero

has seized the island form its inhabitants, overthrown its queen or king and moved

into her/his royal palace. Prospero never could have built the huge palace with its far

reaching beautiful gardens on his own. Considering this, Prospero has treated the

island’s inhabitants exactly the same way as he has been treated by his brother

Antonio.

Concerning the original text of The Tempest, Greenaway has certainly not

used all of Shakespeare’s lines in the film, but the ones important for the plot

development. Thus, original lines are also repeated throughout the movie as for


example “Boatswain” or “Here Master. What cheer?” at the beginning of the film. A

few lines, which were originally spoken, are sung in Greenaway’s work. Furthermore,

some lines are not used in the same order as they were written down by

Shakespeare. The film’s first lines spoken are “Knowing I loved my books, he

furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”

(Cf. Prospero’s Books) The original Tempest on the other hand shows these lines

only in Act I,ii, 166-168 and begins with the Master crying for the “Boatswain” and the

Boatswain answering “Here Master. What cheer?” (I.i. 1-2) The only newly composed

texts in Prospero’s Books are the descriptions of Prospero’s 24 books. However,

there is one little variation concerning Shakespeare’s original text in the movie: When

Greenaway’s Prospero decides to destroy his staff and his books he says: “And

deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my books.” In the original Tempest

Prospero only plans to drown one book: “I’ll drown my book”. (The Tempest V.i. 57)

Probably the most important differences between play and film are first that

Prospero writes The Tempest while the action is still evolving and, second, speaks

each of the characters' parts until later in the film when Prospero sits in his writing

cell, breaks his pen and speaks to Ariel. The latter replies with his own voice, takes

Prospero’s book and even writes in it together with two other Ariels. After that point,

Prospero does not influence the storyline any longer but his characters do. Suddenly

everyone speaks his/her own words and a chaos emerges. Before this only songs

are sung by other characters (Ariel, Iris, Ceres and Juno) and whispering and crying

can be heard in the background. At the beginning of the film Miranda also speaks a

few lines during the conversation in accordance with Prospero as if she had learnt

them by heart from her father. Regarding the scene with Prospero and Miranda, in

the original Tempest Miranda asks her father how they originally came to the island

they are living on the moment. In Prospero’s Books, however, Miranda does not ask

at all, because she is fast asleep. Prospero speaks to her but she seems to answer

just out of a dream. In Shakespeare’s play, Miranda only falls asleep at the end of the

conversation right before Ariel appears for the first time. By giving Prospero

supremacy of speech, Greenaway uses him as a personification of Shakespeare,

who is the author of the The Tempest, and Greenaway himself, who created the

illusions in the form of the images in his film. Thus, Shakespeare as well as

Greenaway ‘procreate’ Prospero.


In Prospero’s Books, Prospero lives inside a huge palace with beautiful

gardens, a library and a swimming pool unlike in The Tempest in which he lives in a

small cell. In the film he keeps thousands of barely dressed servants around him and

Miranda, who maintain his premises, frequently dance and bring things in front of the

camera and carry them away again. In the original play on the other hand Prospero

and Miranda are completely by themselves apart from Caliban and Ariel and certainly

do not have additional servants. The only garden is the island itself, the only pool is

the sea and the books Gonzalo gave to Prospero in order to survive on their voyage

into the open sea make up his only library.

There are certainly further minor differences between William Shakespeare’s

The Tempest and Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books but they are rather

insignificant in comparison to the ones mentioned above and hence will not be

analysed further in this thesis.

7.3.2 The Main Characters in Prospero’s Books

The main focus of this subchapter will be on the three characters Prospero,

Caliban and Ariel as in the chapters “Une Tempête” and “Blood Relations” before. In

Peter Greenaway’s adaptation, however, Prospero is the prominent character who

does not only influence the action but creates it. Therefore the other characters

somehow fade from the spotlight. Much about the characters has already been

mentioned in this chapter, and Greenaway left the original text, the plot and the

characters of The Tempest almost unchanged in Prospero’s Books. For these

reasons, this character analysis will be considerably shorter than in the other

chapters.

7.3.2.1 Prospero

The Prospero of Prospero’s Books does not only play his ‘usual’ role but also

writes the play and speaks all of the other characters' parts up to the point where he

‘decides’ to dispose of his magic powers and thus lets the other actors influence the

outcome of the play. The other actors' emphasis lies on body language and dancing

performances. There are only a few scenes in which characters other than Prospero

speak and dialogue can only be observed after Prospero completes writing his play,

breaks his pen and plans to drown his books (cf. Prospero's Books). This happens


when Ariel confronts Prospero in his writing cell in order to gain his freedom and

continues writing The Tempest instead of Prospero. Henceforth, all the other

characters begin to speak on their own and Prospero himself only speaks the lines

Shakespeare intended for him.

With his “totalitarian eye” (transl. Weseslindtner 2009: 201f) Prospero uses his

imagination to create the action which becomes reality with the help of his speech

and his writing. Therefore, the action known from The Tempest is filtered through

Prospero’s vision and for the viewer of the film turns out to be fiction whereas the

process of writing in Prospero’s cell appears to be reality. The whole story becomes

Prospero’s story. Positions and views of other characters, such as Ariel, Caliban and

Antonio, are not considered and are excluded from the story. (Cf. Weseslindtner

2009: 175-6)

Weseslindtner names two different Prosperos – “Prospero the author” and

“Prospero the actor” (transl. Weseslindtner 2009: 177) – who are not easily

distinguishable from each other. Both are played by John Gielgud, speak in the same

manner and wear the same robes. However, “Prospero the author” almost

exclusively resides in his writing cell creating The Tempest. He only interacts with the

three Ariels inside his writing cell and no other character. “Prospero the actor”, on the

other hand, wanders through his palace, plays 'his role' and interacts with other

characters. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 177) "Prospero the author's" writing cell is

located inside "Prospero the actor's" palace. In this way, the spheres of “Prospero the

author” and “Prospero the actor” overlap in the same way as Greenaway’s images

via the digital Paintbox. At the end of the film, “Prospero the author” destroys all his

books and, hence, abandons his profession as a writer. Therefore, neither “Prospero

the author” nor “Prospero the actor” speak the famous ‘Epilogue’ but some kind of

“Meta-Prospero”. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 177)

7.3.2.2 Caliban

Caliban, who has a well-toned body, a handsome face and a very deep voice

(certainly spoken by Prospero) which sounds dark, powerful and mighty, rather

represents the opposite of the crippled Caliban Shakespeare intended for his

Tempest. Greenaway additionally challenges Shakespeare’s Caliban by casting the

white actor Michael Clarke. Clarke’s skin was painted with an earthy-brown colour in


order to refer to Caliban’s dirty home (sewer system) on the one hand and to his

black African origin (Sycorax) on the other hand. His genitals are covered by some

sort of orange jock strap, his blue scrotum can be seen and he also wears a small

black corset, which represents the ‘otherness’ of this character compared to the rest

of the characters in Greenaway’s masterpiece. According to Weseslindtner,

Greenaway wanted to disassociate himself from ‘colonialism’ and the concepts of

postcolonialism (cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 184). Interestingly, this standpoint strongly

contrasts with the view of many other authors and filmmakers who have adapted

Shakespeare’s The Tempest because of its obvious colonial theme.

In Prospero’s Books Caliban keeps a crouched posture most of the time and

also performs several different choreographed dances, which are considerably

elaborate and actually do not match with Shakespeare’s 'deformed' Caliban in any

way. Caliban’s constant artistic movement and dancing strongly contrast to

Prospero’s static behaviour, who, most of the time, only stands or sits.

When Prospero speaks Caliban’s lines, his voice becomes deeper and is

shaded with a mystic hall effect, which provides Caliban’s character with a touch of

the supernatural and the wild.

7.3.2.3 Ariel

In Prospero’s Books Greenaway integrates three Ariels instead of only

one. They were played by Emil Wolk, Paul Russell and James Thiérrée (cf.

Weseslindtner 2009: 180). They have curly blonde hair, are well-built and only wear a

loincloth. The youngest of those Ariels is only a child and appears at the very

beginning of the film. He represents the Ariel who was on the island when the evil

witch Sycorax arrived there from Algiers. He is playful and childish which can be seen

when he laughingly urinates into the pool after the ‘storm scene’. The second

adolescent Ariel personifies juvenile rebellion and unsubduedness. He confronts

Prospero in his writing cell in order to gain his freedom and is also the one who was

imprisoned inside a tree by Sycorax. The third Ariel is supposed to be the ‘present’

one whose lines directly originate from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In Greenaway’s

film he appears as a harpy in the ‘banquet scene’. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 181-2)

The three spirits do not always enter the screen individually. Many times they are

seen as a group of three as for example when the Ariels continue writing Prospero’s

final book “A Play called The Tempest” instead of him. By doing this, the three Ariels


emancipate themselves from being Prospero’s ‘puppets’ only and act as Prospero’s

muses and co-authors. (Cf. Weseslindtner 2009: 177)

8 Fred M. Wilcox – Forbidden Planet

8.1 The ‘Brains’ Behind the Film

8.1.1 Fred McLeod Wilcox – The Director

Fred McLeod Wilcox comes from a family with quite a turbulent background.

He was born on December 22, 1906 in Tazewell, Virginia, to an optician and owner of

a drug store. His father, James Wilcox, had six children with his first wife. He was

later married to four other women and was wedded a fifth time to one he had already

been married to before. Interestingly, his sister Ruth married Edgar Selwyn who was

one of the founders of the Goldwyn Pictures, which later became a part of the Metro-

Goldwyn-Mayer studios where he worked for several years and which also produced

his film Forbidden Planet in 1956. His sister Pansy had worked as a showgirl and

later married Nicholas M. Schenck who was the president of the Loew’s Theatres

Incorporated. (Cf. Hopwood: online) ‘Film’ was therefore omnipresent in the Wilcox

family although only Fred worked in the film business.

After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Wilcox started working as an

assistant to King Vidor at the Metro-Golwyn-Mayer studios in New York City. At the

time Vidor was filming Hallelujah which was quite successful when released. The

following years he acted as an assistant in many different departments of MGM, until

1943, when Wilcox directed his first film Lassie Come Home. Besides being the

director of the two ‘Lassie sequals’ The Courage of Lassie (1946) and Hills of Home

(1948), Wilcox also directed Three Daring Daughters (1948), The Secret Garden

(1949), Shadow in the Sky (1952), Code Two (1953), Tennessee Champ (1954) and

Forbidden Planet (1956). His only film as an independent filmmaker, after leaving

MGM in 1957, was the 1960 film I Passed for White which was about a mixed

marriage. He did not only direct the movie but was also producer and co-writer. John

Williams, who composed the soundtrack of many celebrated film series such as

Jaws, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Harry Potter, also created the film

score for this film. (Cf. Hopwood: online)


Fred M. Wilcox died in 1964, soon after he filmed I Passed for White, at only

57 years of age. (Cf. Hopwood: online)

8.1.2 Other Persons Responsible for the Film

Fred M. Wilcox did not only achieve that the film became a cornerstone of the

science fiction genre, there were numerous other people involved who contributed to

the film's success. Irving Block, a graphic designer who worked as a mapmaker in

Hollywood after the end of the second World War and later in the special effects

department of Twentieth Century Fox, came up with the idea for Forbidden Planet.

Together with the writer Allan Adler, Block wrote a story for the film in 1954. (Cf.

Wierzbicki 2005: 4) When the film was published two years later the movie was not

advertised as being an adaptation of The Tempest at all. The great majority of the

audience, who saw Forbidden Planet in the theatres, did not relate the film’s story to

that of Shakespeare’s drama. Discussions about the influence of The Tempest on

Forbidden Planet did not arise before the 1970s. Even Block himself did not mention

this important fact until 1975, almost twenty years after the film’s release, when he

claimed in an interview that it was his idea to base the film’s story on The Tempest.

However, many experts have had their doubts about this statement. No one could

actually prove Block’s claim as every other person involved in the production of the

film had already died by 1975. (Cf. Buchanan 2005: 97-9)

Before Block and Adler sold their concept ‘Fatal Planet’ to MGM, they tried to

sell it to Allied Artists, a studio which was renowned for producing low-budget science

fiction B-movies. When they finally sold it to MGM, the project of Block and Adler was

turned into a costly and elaborate production. Fred M. Wilcox was hired for directing

the film, Arnold Gillespie, Irving Reis and Warren Newcombe created the special

effects and Bebe and Louis Barron composed the score and rendered the sound

effects for the film. (Cf. Wierzbicki 2005: 5-13) Together they forged a science fiction

masterpiece, and, due to its allusions to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it also

provides a subject matter for literature enthusiasts.

F r e d M . W i l c o x - F o r b i d d e n P l a n e t | 92

8.2 Forbidden Planet – An Introduction

8.2.1 The Film

As already mentioned in the

previous section, the story for

Forbidden Planet was devised by

Irving Block and Allen Adler and

was presumably based on The

Tempest. Before the start of

production in early 1955, Block and

Irving hired Cyril Hume to transform

Block’s and Adler’s project ‘Fatal

Planet’ into a film script. After

casting the actors for the movie, the

actual production process began.

To create the illusion of being in an alien, world the art designers and the special

effects crew constructed a 350 foot model of the planet’s landscape and a 6x4 feet

model of a spaceship in the form of a saucer. Moreover, they created replicas of

underground tunnels, the lab of the alien species (Krell), which were the former

inhabitants of the planet, rail lines, the interior of the spaceship and a very gigantic

looking power generator. Via special filming techniques, the actors were incorporated

into the miniature set. (Cf. Wierzbicki 2005: 4-6) Forbidden Planet was the first movie

filmed in Cinemascope and Technicolor (cf. Zabus 2002: 182). The main

achievement of the film, however, was Dr. Morbius’ robot, which they named Robby.

Robby the Robot, which will be analysed in more detail in the following section, is the

servant of Dr. Morbius and his daughter Altaira. Morbius built him on his own after

gaining insight into the knowledge of the Krell. Robby was the main attraction of the

movie and even appeared in other film and TV productions. (Cf. Wierzbicki 2005: 4-6)

The film was originally budgeted far below one million US dollars, however, at

the end of the production of Forbidden Planet, the costs for the film approximately

amounted 1.9 million dollars. After six months of filming and another nine months of

editing and post-production, the film was finally released in March 1956. (Cf.

Wierzbicki 2005: 6) The first weeks after the release of the film showed disillusioning

box-office results. Wierzbicki suggests that the advertising campaign before the film

Figure 6: Fobidden Planet film poster (1956)


was to blame. The odd film poster (see Figure 6) shows a rather mean looking Robby

the Robot carrying a woman, who looks in no sense like Anne Francis, who portrayed

Morbius’ daughter Altaira in the film. This image, which presumably reminded the

audience of ‘King Kong in space’, did not promote the film well and many viewers

were disappointed by it.

Another reason why Forbidden Planet might not have succeeded at the box-

office was probably that the resemblance to Shakespeare’s The Tempest was

advertised neither on film posters nor in the film trailers. Even the film itself never

refers to Shakespeare’s play in its credits. (Cf. Wierzbicki 2005: 11-2) The film’s

special effects and the romance had priority, as can be seen in the following extract

from the ‘Motion Picture Herald’ from March 10, 1956:

See an electronic blaster vaporize an attacking tiger in mid-air! See an invisible demon hurl an earth man to fiery destruction! See an uninhabited beauty as she meets young earth men for the first time! See the fabulous flying saucer spaceship of 2200 AD – faster than the speed of light! See how the invisible demon smashes buildings and burns itself through steel! See Robby, the Robot, the most amazing technical genius ever devised! See two moons floating in a green sky! See the planet Altair explode into a fiery inferno! See the fabulous inventions of planet people of 2,000,000 years ago! See the thrilling romance of an earth man and a captive planet goddess! See how the final destruction of the invisible demon is accomplished! Never before on screen! . . . Unique! Different!

(Buchanan 2005: 101)

There were also no contemporary film reviews which suggested any allusions

to the play. Judith Buchanan discovered one comment indicating The Tempest’s

connection to the film which dates back to 1961. The film critic, who wrote this

comment, only found “very dilute and indirect influence” (Buchanan 2005: 98) of The

Tempest in the film but it was indeed a step in the right direction. In the following

decades, critics increasingly discussed Forbidden Planet’s references to

Shakespeare’s play. This is probably the main reason why the film is more popular

and discussed nowadays than in the 1950s. However, this is not the only reason for

the film's considerable level of awareness. The special effects and characters of

Forbidden Planet were groundbreaking and served as a model for many other

science fiction films that followed. (Cf. Buchanan 97-102) Apart from this, Wilcox’s

film is, till this day, the most successful film version of The Tempest (cf. Zabus 2002:

182).


8.2.2 The Cast of Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet featured several actors and one actress who, due to their

appearance in the film, became more famous. However, for one actor this does not

apply. Walter Pidgeon, who starred as Dr. Morbius in the film, at this time already a

well-established actor, known for numerous silent films made in the 1930s and

1940s. His daughter, Altaira (aka Alta), was played by Anne Francis, who was only

twenty four years old when the film production was started. The protagonist of the

film, unlike in almost every other Tempest adaptation, is not the character portraying

Prospero, but in the case of Forbidden Planet, it is the spaceship's commander John

J. Adams, whose equivalent in Shakespeare’s play is Ferdinand. Commander Adams

is impersonated by the nowadays well-known actor of Canadian descent, Leslie

Nielsen. However, only a handful of people know that Nielsen starred in Forbidden

Planet. He never actually became famous through his serious roles but by portraying

comical characters in films such as The Naked Gun series. (Cf. Wierzbicki 2005: 5-6)

The character who definitely had the greatest impact on the audience, as well

as on other movies, was Robby the Robot. He was considered an actual ‘living’ being

and even appears in the cast list at the beginning of Forbidden Planet, just as the

rest of the actors do. As already mentioned in the previous subchapter, the robot,

created by Robert Kinoshita, again starred in numerous other films and TV

productions including The Invisible Boy (sequel to Forbidden Planet, 1957),

Hollywood Boulevard (1976), Gremlins (1984), The Adams Family (TV, 1966), Lost in

Space (TV, 1966/1967) and an episode of Colombo in 1974. (Cf. Wierzbicki 2005:

13) Besides these appearances, Robby, as well as the film Forbidden Planet,

considerably influenced the genre of science fiction films released afterwards. It is

more than obvious that Robby was the model for the two famous druids, R2-D2 and

C-3PO, of the Star Wars series, Robocop and the vicious robot ‘Nomad’ from an

episode of Star Trek. The latter TV serial of the late 1960s might have also adopted

other concepts from Forbidden Planet, for example the ‘beaming machine’ displayed

at the beginning of the movie. The well-known Star Trek character Captain Kirk also

resembles Commander Adams in many ways especially when it comes to his

numerous romantic encounters with women from various planets. (Cf. Rosenthal

2007: 252) Robby was sold to Movie World of Buena Park by MGM in 1971 and is

still exhibited there (as of 2014, Mar. 12). (cf. Wierzbicki 2005: 13)


The remaining roles were filled by Warren Stevens as Lt. ‘Doc’ Ostrow, Jack

Kelly as Lt. Farman, Richard Anderson as Chief Quinn, Earl Holliman as the Cook

and George Wallace as the Bosun.

8.3 A Summary of the Plot

Forbidden Planet begins in open space. A spaceship floats through the screen

and a narrator starts to speak the first lines of the film:

In the final decade of the 21st century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon. By 2200 AD, they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first attained and later greatly surpassed. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonisation of deep space. United Planets Cruiser C-57D, now more than a year out from earth base on a special mission to the planetary system of the great main-sequence star “Altair”. (Forbidden Planet 00:01:32 – 00:02:08)

This sequence in Forbidden Planet introduces the main storyline to the

audience. Commander John J. Adams, who is in charge of the United Planets

Cruiser C-57D, and his crew are heading towards the planet Altair-4 on which they

believe another spacecraft has crashed twenty years ago. Their mission is to find the

lost ship and rescue possible survivors. When they approach the planet the ship’s

sensors do not detect any signs of civilisation. However, when they send out

communication signals to the planet, Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the survivors the

rescuers were searching for, responds. Morbius warns Commander Adams not to

land on the planet which Adams ignores. The ship disembarks on Altair-4 and the

crew alight the spaceship. They are astonished by the ‘beautiful’ green sky and the

nice climate of the planet. Suddenly, they spot a strange dust cloud on the horizon

moving towards them rapidly. The dust cloud turns out to be Robby the Robot. The

crew is delighted by the technical marvel. Robby speaks English and “187 other

languages along with their various dialects and subtongues” (Forbidden Planet). After

a short conversation, Robby drives Commander Adams, Lieutenant ‘Doc’ Ostrow and

Lieutenant Farman to Dr. Morbius’ residence.

At the residence they meet Dr. Morbius, who was the philologist of the

spaceship Bellerophon, which crashed onto the planet. After introducing himself,

Morbius describes Robby in more detail. He mentions that he himself built the robot


with the help of the knowledge of the ‘Krell’, a species which died out more than

200.000 years before. Morbius describes Robby as a “simple tool” but “tremendously

strong” (cf. Forbidden Planet). Robby has a built in safety factor which prevents him

from killing “rational beings” (cf. Forbidden Planet). After he finishes his remarks on

Robby, Morbius reveals what has happened to the Bellerophon’s crew. He recounts

that everybody, except him and his wife, died shortly after the crash due to “some

dark, terrible, incomprehensible force” (cf. Forbidden Planet). He and his wife

developed a “special love for this world” (cf. Forbidden Planet) which made them

immune to this force. Morbius’ wife, the biochemist Julia Morrison, whom he met and

married on the way to Altair-4, died of natural causes only a few months after the

crew. Morbius also mentions a ‘creature’ which lives on the planet. If this creature is

invoked, it is absolutely lethal. Morbius claims that he always feels the creature

lurking in his mind (cf. Forbidden Planet).

After this initial conversation, Morbius invites Adams and his men to lunch.

Before they start eating, Morbius’ daughter Altaira enters the room. Adams and his

two companions are overwhelmed by the beautiful appearance of the young woman.

The space travellers learn that Altaira (aka Alta) has never seen another man except

her own father. She also seems quite impressed by the new company of the three

young men. Afterwards, Morbius shows them the extraordinary features of his house

and the beautiful garden. In the garden the crew observes Alta interacting with

several wild animals including a tiger. The animals seem to enjoy Alta’s presence. Lt.

Farman tries to court Alta but she seems to be more interested in Commander

Adams. When she kisses Farman later in the film, she does not feel anything at all.

However, kissing the commander afterwards apparently evokes romantic feelings

inside her. Once they have finished lunch, Adams, Ostrow and Farman return to

their ship.

The next day, the crew together with Robby maintain the ship. Robby carries

solid lead with only one arm. Alta is also present and watches the men working. After

a while, Cookie, the ship’s cook, approaches Robby and convinces him to generate

whiskey for him. Robby can create numerous different things out of his corpus, such

as clothes, food and alcoholic beverages. He promises Cookie that he will produce

60 gallons of whiskey. Meanwhile Commander Adams asks Alta to change her style

of clothing into something more appropriate as the dresses she usually wears are


quite short and almost transparent. Therefore, she asks Robby to create a nice robe

for her.

During the following night, the aforementioned creature has its first

‘appearance’. It is invisible and crawls onto the ship in order to sabotage it. Some of

the guards are aware of a breathing sound while others dream about the creature

while it is on board. The next day, Adams, together with Ostrow and Farman, visit Dr.

Morbius and question him about the events of the previous night. Morbius begins his

considerable extensive vindication by recalling the Krell. He depicts them as a

“mighty and noble race of beings [...] one million years ahead of humankind” (cf.

Forbidden Planet). They have even been to earth and took animals (Alta’s animals)

with them. Furthermore, Morbius lets Adams and his men into the secrets of the Krell,

i.e. their underground tunnels, their energy-absorbing indestructible metal alloy,

music recordings and finally one of the remaining laboratories of the Krell. In this

laboratory there is a machine to which Morbius refers to as ‘plastic educator’.

According to Morbius, the Krell used the plastic educator “to condition and test their

young” (cf. Forbidden Planet). Through this device Morbius gains insight into the

knowledge of the Krell. He can also create images out of his subconscious. However,

the plastic educator is dangerous and even killed crewmembers of the Bellerophon

who tried the machine out. After this ‘Tour de Krell’, Adams and his companions

return to the ship.

For safety reasons and due to the creature’s intrusion onto the ship the night

before, the spaceship crew erects an electric fence around the landing site which is

supposed prevent the creature from trespassing. However, when the creature haunts

the ship again that night, it moves through the fence without any problems and kills

one crew member, Chief Quinn. When they again confront Morbius, the latter only

says “it started again” and warns the space travellers of the creature, as he is able to

“visualize it” (cf. Forbidden Planet). The following night, the crew places a cannon

and directs it at the spot where the creature entered the night before. When the

creature appears again, they fire at it, and with the laser beams and the electric

fence, the creature becomes visible. This time it claims the lives of three more

crewmen including that of Lt. Farman.

After this incident, Adams and ‘Doc’ Ostrow rush to Morbius’ residence once

again. On their arrival, Robby prevents them from entering the house. Alta then helps


the men to get inside and dismisses Robby. Commander Adams begins to flirt with

Alta and convinces her to accompany him. Meanwhile, Ostrow walks into the Krell

laboratory and uses the plastic educator in order to surpass Adams’s intellectual

capacity. Before he dies of the consequences of using the device, he reveals to

Adams that the creature is a ‘monster from the id’, i.e. a monster created out of the

subconscious. It is Commander Adams who helps Dr. Morbius understand that the

‘Monster from the Id’, which attacked the ship and killed several crewmen, is actually

created by the evil part of Morbius' mind and awakens while the latter sleeps.

Furthermore, Morbius realizes that his subconscious is also responsible for the death

of Bellerophon’s crew and his wife Julia.

After a while, Robby reports the monster approaching the house. It gains

access violently by destroying the safeguards made of the Krell’s metal alloy that

protect the residence. Nothing can stop it unless Morbius sacrifices himself to his

own subconscious. In the end, Dr. Morbius initiates the planet’s self-destruct

mechanism and thus destroys the monster, the house, himself and the planet.

Adams, Altaira, Robby and the rest of the ship’s crew manage to escape before the

planet explodes. In the final minutes of the film, Adams holds Alta in his arms and

they both watch the planet’s extermination. With Adams’ final words the viewers of

Forbidden Planet might be reminded of Prospero’s famous epilogue at the end of

The Tempest. The film concludes with the following words:

“Alta, about a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. And your father's name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy. It's true, it will remind us that we are, after all, not God.”

(Forbidden Planet 01:37:09 – 01:37:43)


8.4 The Tempest vs. Forbidden Planet

In her discussion of Forbidden Planet, Judith Buchanan excellently depicts the

gist of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which perfectly matches the essence of

Wicox’s Blood Relations:

The Tempest is made up of a series of archetypal narrative elements: a bitter rivalry for power between brothers; a suitor being tested by his future father-in-law; an externalised tussle between the nobler and baser parts of a single person played out through the agency of distinct characters in the world beyond; a tale of familial loss and restitution.

(Buchanan 2005: 153)

Forbidden Planet contains several allusions to Shakespeare’s The Tempest,

however, the film probably had different aims than just referring to Shakespeare’s

play (see section 8.2.1). The parallels between the play and the movie were not

intended in the same way as in Une Tempête (see chapter 5), Blood Relation (see

ch. 6) and in the film Prospero’s Books (see chapter 7). Block and Adler adopted only

a few parts of the original story but ‘imported’ the majority of characters in Forbidden

Planet from The Tempest, thus, adapting the play was not the prime purpose, but

creating, for the 1950s, a mind-blowing science fiction film. The main purpose of the

other three adaptations of The Tempest discussed earlier, was to transform The

Tempest into another Tempest, which is not the case with Wilcox’s film. Miguel

Campos has described Forbidden Planet as a “commentary of The Tempest, an

alternative Tempest fully impregnated with the yearnings, desires and fears of the

time it was made” (cf. Campos 1998: online).

The only striking allusions to The Tempest occur on a very basic level in

Forbidden Planet. While the action of the play is set on a remote island, the plot of

the film takes place on the unpopulated planet Altair-4. The sailors in Shakespeare’s

play are exchanged with spacemen and the vessel becomes a flying saucer. The

island/planet is controlled by one man (Prospero/Morbius), who did not voluntarily

stay there and his power is threatened by intruders. When Morbius’ ‘Monster from the

Id’ sabotages the spaceship in Forbidden Planet, the ship’s crew is grounded on the

planet in the same manner as Alonso, Antonio and their fellow shipmates are

stranded on the island in the Mediterranean Sea.


The character constellation, as can be seen in the subsequent section, also

has numerous similarities with The Tempest. The majority of characters are indeed

based on those of the play but the character’s power balance was changed in Blood

Relations. Commander Adams, whose equivalent in Shakespeare’s drama is

Ferdinand, is the ‘hero’ in the film whereas Prospero, through Dr. Morbius, becomes

the ‘villain’ of the movie together with the Monster from the Id. Altaira as well as

Miranda portray the innocent, unknowing daughters and the Monster from the Id and

Caliban the “mindless primitive” (cf. Forbidden Planet).

The tempest, which rages at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, is also

realized in the film. Miguel Campos states in his review of Forbidden Planet that the

monster’s attack on the spacecraft is reminiscent of the storm in Shakespeare’s play,

as both events are created out of the minds of their conjurers. Morbius’ monster,

however, rather subliminally ‘happens’ to its master whereas Prospero’s storm was

conjured on purpose. (Cf. Campos 1998: online).

8.5 The Main Characters of Forbidden Planet

8.5.1 Character Constellation

Dr. Edward Morbius Altaira

Morbius

Dr. Morbius' daughter

John J. Adams

Commander of the spaceship C-57D

Lt. 'Doc' Ostrow

doctor

Lt. Farman

Robby the

Robot

Chief Quinn

Cookie

Cook

Julia Morbius †

Dr. Morbius' wife

The Monster

from the Id


8.5.2 Dr. Morbius/Prospero

Dr. Morbius was onboard the spaceship Bellerophon, which crashed on the

planet Altair-4 twenty years before Commander Adams and his crew land their

saucer on the planet. All of his crew members have died at the hand of the monster

Morbius created in his subconscious. Even his wife Julia might have been killed by

the Monster from the Id. In this way, Morbius indirectly killed his “symbolic brothers”

(Campos 1998: online) which points to Antonio’s treachery in The Tempest. In this

case Forbidden Planet combines Antonio and Prospero into one person. (Cf.

Campos 1998: online)

In the twenty years since he came to Altair-4, Morbius has acquired a

considerable amount of knowledge from the remains of the planet’s former

inhabitants, the Krell. The lab and the machines the Krell left behind when they

extinguished themselves which were Morbius’ main source of knowledge. They can

be compared to Prospero’s books, which his faithful councillor Gonzalo equipped him

with. In a broader sense, Gonzalo in this way also becomes the Krell.

Whoever came up with the name Dr. Morbius, probably based it on the

'morbidus' disease and the Latin term ‘morbus’ meaning ‘illness’ (cf. Zabus 2002:

183). Thus, his name indicates that Morbius suffers from a certain disease which he

inherited indirectly from the Krell via their instruments. This ‘disease’ Morbius has

obtained, is actually the infinite knowledge of the Krell and their ability to create

images out of their subconscious. However, this ability has spun out of control in both

the case of the Krell, who exterminated themselves, and the case of Morbius, who

finally destroys his monster, the planet and himself. Morbius' involuntary skill to

create a monster alludes to Propero’s magic abilities which both characters decide to

abandon in the end. Prospero does this by breaking his staff and drowning his books

while Morbius has to destroy everything in order to get rid of his ability. Before he

dies, Morbius screams at the monster: “I deny you! I give you up!” (cf. Forbidden

Planet). By surrendering to the monster he figuratively renounces his powers just as

Prospero does in The Tempest.

Morbius’ subconscious mind represents his aggressions and his instincts and

is therefore part of his dark side, which materializes the monster. This can be

observed in the film: When the monster disappears after its attack on the spaceship,


Morbius wakes up at the same time. Buchanan calls the relationship between

Morbius and the monster “two conflicting expressions of the same person, id and

super-ego of the same troubled psyche” (Buchanan 2005: 154). In The Tempest

Prospero similarly addresses his slave Caliban in front of Antonio: “[...] This

mishappen knave / I acknowledge mine” (Tempest V.i.275-6). Morbius’ conscious

mind represents the rational scientist who possesses an enormous intellect and a

vast knowledge in various areas. This light side of Morbius’ mind controls his

daughter Altaira, his robot servant Robby and the world in which he lives in. (Cf.

Campos 1998: online) (Cf. Buchanan 2005: 97)

Sleep and dream are very important parallels between film and play as

Prospero’s words “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on” (Tempest IV.i.156-7)

already suggest in The Tempest. In Forbidden Planet Morbius invokes the Monster

from the Id in his sleep, when his subconscious is activated. In The Tempest,

Prospero enforces sleep on Miranda, after his monologue about their past (Tempest

I.ii.186). Through Ariel he makes Alonso, Gonzalo, Adrian and Francisco fall asleep

(Tempest II.i. 188-91). Sleep and dream in both, play and film, therefore are

expressions of power over others. (Cf. Zabus 2002: 187)

Concerning his daughter Altaira, Morbius has denied her any form of

information about the Bellerophon and the Krell. He controls her and keeps her close

to him until Commander Adams takes Alta with him. This, together with the Monster

from the Id and the destruction of Altair-4, kills Morbius at the end of Forbidden

Planet.

8.5.3 The Monster from the Id/Caliban

In Forbidden Planet Commander Adams describes the Monster of the Id as

“the beast, the mindless primitive” (cf. Forbidden Planet). Unlike most of the

portrayals of Caliban on stage and in film productions, Wilcox’s version of Caliban

looks neither like a native nor like a typical alien. According to Chantal Zabus’

description of the monster it “has the fangs of a roaring lion, the flat, large nose of

Morris’s ‘naked ape’, and its concentric yellow eyes suggest the deep inferno of the

lurking and pouncing beast” (Zabus 2002: 187). Thus, the monster from Morbius’

subconscious looks rather like a giant ape in space. During the greater part of the

film, the monster is invisible. It only becomes visible when it is shot at with laser


beams and when it touches the electrical fence. However, through its invisibility, the

monster also incorporates one of Ariel’s abilities. In The Tempest, Ariel becomes

invisible after Prospero orders it with the lines “Be subject to no sight but thine and

mine, invisible / To every eyeball else” (Tempest I.ii.302-3).

As mentioned before, the monster emerges from Morbius’ subconscious. ‘Doc’

Ostrow calls it the ‘Monster from the Id’ for the first time shortly before he dies.

Morbius then mentions that the ‘Id’ is the “elementary basis of the subconscious

mind” (cf. Forbidden Planet). In Siegmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of Id, Ego

and Superego, the Id refers to the psychic content which a person mainly acquires by

birth. This includes instinctive behaviour such as sex and aggressions (cf. Id: online).

Of all the plays and films discussed in this thesis, the Monster from the Id is

the only ‘Caliban’ who dies at the end. In Une Tempête, Blood Relations as well as

Prospero’s Books, Caliban – aka Dinny in Blood Relations – survives and, moreover,

becomes the successor of Prospero’s legacy. In this way, Miguel Campos

characterizes the monster as a “representation of what could have happened if

Caliban’s conspiracy had succeeded and Prospero’s magical power had been at the

disposal of human primitive instincts” (Campos 1998: online). This makes Forbidden

Planet an alternative Tempest rather than an adaptation.

8.5.4 Robby the Robot/Ariel

Robby was built by Dr. Morbius and looks after the Morbius household and

takes care of Alta. Furthermore, he produces various objects, such as clothes and

alcoholic beverages. In the same way as Ariel, Robby is an all-in-one device ready to

perform every duty. According to Morbius, Robby looks after them "like a mother" (cf.

Forbidden Planet). Thus, the robot also substitutes Morbius’ deceased wife Julia.

However, allusions between Ariel and Robby are much more frequent. After the

saucer has landed on the planet and the crew made their first steps on the planet’s

surface, they discover a dust cloud floating towards them. When the ‘cloud’ arrives,

they recognize Robby. This smoke cloud is an allusion to the ‘airy’ spirit Ariel.

However, Robby does not only perform tasks for his master, but also for the crew of

the ship. During the ship’s maintenance, Robby carries solid lead plates. In The

Tempest Caliban carries wood at the beginning of Act II. (cf. Tempest II.ii.stage dir.).


In this way, Robby has equivalents to Ariel as well as to Caliban and the Monster of

the Id shows parallels to Caliban and Ariel (see section 8.5.3). (Cf. Campos 1998:

online)

A striking difference to Ariel occurs in the final minutes of Forbidden Planet.

After Morbius destroys the planet, Robby is taken along with Adams, Alta and the

rest of the crew. Thus, he changes his master and now has to undertake different

tasks for example the navigating the saucer. Robby, unlike Ariel, does not gain his

freedom at the end.

While the Monster of the Id represents Morbius’ subconscious mind, Robby,

who only obeys his master and performs good deeds, may be considered a creation

of Morbius’ conscious mind. (Cf. Campos 1998: online)

8.5.5 Commander Adams/Ferdinand & Altaira Morbius/Miranda

As already mentioned earlier in this chapter, unlike Ferdinand in The Tempest,

his equivalent, Commander Adams, is the main character of Forbidden Planet. His

relationship to Altaira is the main parallel to Miranda’s romantic attachment to

Ferdinand in Shakespeare’s play. Apart from that Adams differs slightly from

Ferdinand. While the latter ‘only’ is the son of the King of Naples and is quite

submissive when Prospero has him bear logs (cf. Tempest III.i.stage dir.), Adams is

in charge of his saucer and responsible for his crew. He is also the one who

confronts Morbius with the truth about the Monster of the Id. As a result of being such

a prominent character, Adams is the heir of Morbius’ legacy. He not only gets his

servant Robby, but also his beloved daughter Alta.

Altaira, just as Miranda, is the “sole woman in a male-dominated world” (Zabus

2002: 188). It is Dr. Morbius’ greatest desire to keep his daughter close to him. In

Shakespeare’s own words, Morbius does “nothing but in care of [...] [Miranda]”

(Tempest I.ii.16). However, unlike Prospero, Morbius does not want to give away his

daughter to either Farman or Adams. When the ship’s crew sees Altaira for the first

time, Ferdinand’s “Oh you wonder!” (Tempest I.ii.427) in The Tempest becomes a

wolf whistle in Forbidden Planet. Also Lt. Farman does not ask Ferdinand’s question,

C o n c l u s i o n | 105

“If you be maid or no?” (Tempest I.ii.428), but approaches the young woman

quite banally as if he were in a bar (cf. Zabus 2002: 190).

Alta’s friendship with the animals, which is displayed at the beginning of the

film, represents her innocence. This innocence is destroyed after she kisses Adams

and develops romantic feelings for him. When Alta and Adams stand in the garden

holding each other, Alta’s tiger friend, who was tame before, attacks the two lovers

and Adams kills the beast with his laser gun. This symbolises the breaking of Alta’s

“virgin knot” (Tempest IV.i.15). (Cf. Zabus 2002: 190)

9 Conclusion

The four reinterpretations of Shakespeare's The Tempest discussed in this

diploma thesis have very distinct approaches to the original. They not only originate

from four different countries and therefore offer completely different cultural

backgrounds, but also vary in degree of faithfulness to Shakespeare's original.

Shakespeare certainly influenced literature and media considerably and represents

'Britishness' like no other author, which has set the stage for numerous adaptations

and postcolonial rewritings.

In this thesis, I have compared two postcolonial rewritings and two cinematic

adaptations to Shakespeare's original in order to provide a small insight into the

broad expanses of Shakespeare adaptations and The Tempest reworkings. Aimé

Césaire's Une Tempête and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books follow the

structure of the original very closely. Une Tempête retells the plot of The Tempest

with great detail, shifting the focus of the play to the characters Ariel and Caliban,

who are slightly more prominent than in Shakespeare's play. Césaire not only

emphasised these two characters in order to refer to postcolonial issues in the

French colony Martinique, he also related Ariel and Caliban to the two African-

American civil rights activists, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who were both

greatly discussed personalities when the play was published in 1969. Greenaway's

cinematic masterpiece is not a postcolonial reworking but a postmodern interpretation

of The Tempest. The text and plot of the play, however, are very faithful to the

original. The emphasis of Prospero's Books lies on one hand with the artistic revision

of the drama, and on the other with the books, which Gonzalo gave to Prospero.


Greenaway's film is therefore a parallel to The Tempest. Plot and characters are

imported from the original but additional information about Prospero's twenty-four

books was added to the film.

The other two reinterpretations of The Tempest discussed in this thesis are

rather loosely based on the original. David Malouf's Blood Relations is set in North-

Western Australia in the 1980s and deals with protagonist Willy's struggle with his

Aboriginal son Dinny, his daughter Cathy and his adopted son Kit. The basic power

relations and the storm of The Tempest occur also in Malouf's play, and the majority

of Shakespeare's characters have their equivalents in Blood Relations. In this way,

Willy, Dinny and Cathy allude to Prospero, Caliban and Miranda, and Hilda and Kit

both relate to the spirit Ariel. The decisive differences between Malouf's and

Shakespeare's drama are in the variations in the plot and the fates of the two

protagonists. While Prospero frees Ariel and leaves the island and his slave Caliban

behind, Willy does not abandon control over his family. He is the most obstinate

Prospero figure of all the works discussed in this thesis. He neither takes Dinny's

problems regarding his painful past seriously, or wants to lose control over anything.

At the end of the play, when Willys family increasingly confront him with resistance,

he dies while Prospero lives on.

The last of the four re-creations of The Tempest I have analysed in this thesis

is the science fiction film Forbidden Planet. The film, which was directed by Fred M.

Wilcox, is an interesting interpretation of Shakespeare's play. The film's plot is very

loosely based on the original, whereas the characters are strongly related to those of

The Tempest. However, Wilcox has changed the power relations between the

characters in the film. Ferdinand, who has rather a 'weak' position in the original,

becomes Commander Adams, the main character of the film, and Prospero is

transformed into the film's antagonist, Dr. Morbius. Caliban is 'reborn' in the Monster

of the Id, which is a creation of Morbius' subconscious, and the film's Ariel figure is

Robby the Robot, who was assembled by Morbius in his conscious state of mind.

Altaira, Morbius' daughter, represents a character who is modelled along the lines of

Shakespeare's Miranda. Both daughters are quite naive and ignorant of what is

happening outside their own worlds. Their fathers have complete control over them,

but only Prospero voluntarily lets go of Miranda whereas Altaira surrenders to her

feelings for Adams and breaks loose from her father at the end of the film. Just as in


Blood Relations the ultimate destiny for the Prospero of Forbidden Planet is death.

What is new in the film is that 'Caliban' also dies together with his master, and 'Ariel'

is not freed but has to serve on 'Prospero's' ship.

All four reworkings of The Tempest discussed in this thesis are completely

different from each other and re-establish the play's plot and characters in their own

distinct fashion. However, the two rewritings and the two cinematic adaptations I

have chosen for this comparison are only a small selection of the numerous different

reinterpretations of Shakespeare's magnificent piece of literature, which has been

turned into dramas, poems, novels, short stories, comics, films and even computer

games.

W o r k s C i t e d | 108

10 Works Cited

10.1 Primary Sources

Césaire, Aimé (2011). A Tempest. [2000] Ed. Philip Crispin.

London: Oberon Books.

Greenaway, Peter, Director (1991). Prospero’s Books [Film]. Allarts. Malouf, David (1987). Blood Relations. Sidney: Currency Press. Shakespeare, William (1987/2008). The Tempest. [1623] Ed. Stephen Orgel.

New York: Oxford University Press. Wilcox, Fred M., Director (1956). Forbidden Planet [Film]. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

10.2 Secondary Sources

Akerholt, May-Brit (1987). “Introduction”. In: David Malouf. Blood Relations. Sidney: Currency Press.

Akerholt, May-Brit (2000). “New Stages: Contemporary Theatre”. In: Elizabeth Webby. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge: CUP.

Anderegg, Michael (2003) “James Dean Meets the Pirate’s Daughter” In: Richard Burt and Lynda Boose, eds. Shakespeare The Movie II. London/New York: Routledge.

Arnold, James (1981). Modernism and Negritude. London: Harvard University Press.

Buchanan, Judith (2005). Shakespeare on Film. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Campbell, Neil and Alasdair Kean, eds. (2006). American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

Césaire, Aime (1969). "Introduction". In: Aimé Césaire. Une Tempête. Paris: Éditions

du Seuil. 3.

Crispin, Philip, ed. (2000). "Introduction". In: Aimé Césaire. A Tempest. London: Oberon Books. 10-12.

Donaldson, Peter S. (2003). “Shakespeare in the Age of Post-Mechanical Reproduction: Sexual and Electronic Magic in Prospero’s Books”. In: Richard Burt and Lynda Boose, eds. Shakespeare: The Movie II. London/New York: Routledge.

Hulme, Peter & Sherman, William H, eds. (2004). “Rewritings and Appropriations”. In:

William Shakespeare. The Tempest. pp 301-350. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.


Fischlin, Daniel & Mark Fortier, eds. (2000). “Introduction”. In: Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. London/New York: Routledge.

Fotheringham, Richard (2000). “Theatre from 1788 to the 1960s”. In: Elizabeth

Webby. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge: CUP. Gilbert, Helen & Joanne Tompkins (1996). Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice,

Politics. London/New York: Routledge. Kelley, Robin D. G. (1985/1992). "Introduction". In: Aimé Césaire. A Tempest. New

York: Theatre Communications Group. vii-xv. Löschnigg, Maria (2013). "Shakespeare's Post-Colonial Legacy: The Case of

Othello." Anglia: Journal of English Philology. Vol. 131 (1). Apr. 1, 2013. Mangan, Richard, ed. (2011). Sir John Gielgud – A Life in Letters. New York: Arcade. McRae, Heather, et al. (1991). Aboriginal Legal Issues. North Ryde: Wm Gaunt &

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Methuen. Schabert, Ina, ed. (1992). Shakespeare Handbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner. Schabert, Ina, ed. (2009). Shakespeare Handbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner. Strohscheid, Elisabeth. (2002). “Auswirkungen der britischen Eroberung auf das

Leben von Aborigines und Torres Strait Islanders”. In: Rudolf Bader, ed. Australien: Eine interdisziplinäre Einführung. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.


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Tempest und Peter Greenaways Prospero’s Books. Leine: Coppi. Wells, Stanley (2003). Shakespeare For All Time. New York: Oxford University

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10.3 Web Sources

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austn-theatre-history. [2014, Mar. 02]

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“Id”. (n.d.). Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Online]

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[2013, Oct.20]

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“Sir Gielgud ist tot”. (2000, May 22). Spiegel Online. Culture Section. [Online] http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/buenenlegende-sir-john-gielgud-ist-tot-a-77761.html [2013, Mar. 22]

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17/12/2005 : Les 40 ans de la Concession Aéroportuaire" Aéroport International Martinique Aimé Césaire. Histoire Section. [Online] http://www.martinique.aeroport.fr/Histoire.asp. [2013, Nov. 07]

Société Présence Africaine Editions (2012). "La Maison d'edition" Présance

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"The Oscars 1982". The Oscars. Oscar History section. [Online]

http://oscar.go.com/oscar-history/year/1982 [2014, Feb. 26] Van Helden, Albert. "Galileo" Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Online]

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/224058/Galileo. [2012, Nov.29]

10.4 Figures

Figure 1: "Title page of the 1st Folio (1623)". http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/images/shakespeare_large.png [2014, Mar. 16]

Figure 2: "Title page of Une Tempête (1969)". http://www.librairie-theatrale.com/5987-10838-thickbox/une-tempete-aime-cesaire.jpg [2014, Mar. 16]

Figure 3: "Cathy (Heather Mitchell) & Willy (John Wood) 1987". http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/media/5830/Blood%20Relations,%201987.jpg [2014, Mar. 16

Figure 4: "Prospero's Writing Cell in Prospero's Books".

http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-

content/uploads/prospero_s_books_sir_john_gielgud.jpg [2014, Mar. 16]

Figure 5: "'St. Jerome In His Study' (c. 1456)".

http://www.ajhw.co.uk/books/book178/stjerome.jpg [2014, Mar. 16]

Figure 6: "Fobidden Planet film poster (1956)".

http://tytempletonart.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/forbidden-planet-poster.jpg

[2014, Mar. 16]

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