Word: prospero
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...abjuration soliloquy--which many have thought to be the playwright's own valedictory, although Shakespeare went on to collaborate on Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, the lost Cardenio, and perhaps Sir Thomas More. Haigh has a long way to go before he matches Carnovsky's 1960 Prospero...
...often claimed that Prospero is omnipotent, but he is not. He can do certain things when he wears his magician's robe, but other things depend on the willingness of his superhuman servant Ariel, who hopes to store up enough brownie points to earn freedom from his master. The very name Ariel suggests the "airy spirit" Shakespeare described him to be, though the name is actually a Hebrew one found in the Old Testament, one of whose meanings apparently was 'hearth...
...Ariels one might cite Kitty Clive in the 18th century, Maria Foote, Priscilla Horton and Kate Terry in the 19th, and Fania Marinoff, Agnes Carter, Rachel Kempson, Elsa Lanchester and Margaret Leighton in our own. For the most famous American production of The Tempest (in which only Arnold Moss' Prospero attained distinction, but which still ran a hundred performances on Broadway in 1945), director Margaret Webster engaged as Ariel the ballerina Vera Zorina, who moved beautifully but could not handle the lines...
...most engrossing--and most gross--of the characters in The Tempest is Prospero's "savage and deformed slave" Caliban, the subhuman offspring of a witch and a devil. It is incorrect to regard Ariel and Caliban as polarities. They are undeniably contrasted; but they also share a number of traits, such as distaste for physical labor, a yearning for freedom, a delight in pranks, a love of nature, an appreciation of music, and a fear of their master. Ariel has some coarse language and Caliban some ethereal lines...
...tract. They need to examine the play more carefully. For one thing, King Alonso is on his way home from marrying his daughter to an African king. More important, Caliban is far from the most evil character in the play. It is true that he has tried to ravish Prospero's daughter, but he was not born to reason or to know right from wrong; he is not immoral, but amoral. It is also true that he plans a rebellion against Prospero. But Prospero, of all people, having been driven out of his rightful dukedom, ought to appreciate that Caliban...