Free The Tempest by William Shakespeare Page A

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    In the first half of the twentieth century it was still common to portray Ariel and Caliban as the antithesis of each other, opposites in size, sex, attitude, and color—Ariel as loyal female, a white creature of the air, happy to please her master; Caliban as resentful subversive male, dark and earthy. The casting of men in these roles encouraged a parallel between Ariel and Caliban and their relationship with Prospero.
    In the past fifty years the portrayal of Caliban evolved from a comic grotesque characterization of a missing link, to the “noble savage.” David Suchet was memorable as Caliban in 1978 when he played the role sympathetically:
    Modern convention dictates that Caliban must be a sympathetic emblem of imperialistic exploitation, and that is how he is played here: a noble black innocent of magnificent physique speaking the language with the too-perfect precision of an alien. 63
    In Suchet’s words, “the monster was in the eyes of the beholder.” 64 Caliban’s monstrosity was not attributed to deformity or from being an animalistic hybrid, but centered on his “otherness.”
    We must look seriously at how we in the western world perceive the “other”—how we relate to it and how we talk about it in terms of ourselves. The whole sense of Caliban being taught language is cultural. Caliban is “the other” and Prospero has power over him through language. 65
    Caliban’s otherness is often represented by his color. In Michael Boyd’s 2002 production, Geff Francis was the first black actor to play the part on the RSC’s main stage 66 (previously, white actors had blacked-up when they tackled the part). This reading of Caliban confronted the issue of colonialism and race head-on:
    His gabardine is an impressive garment, suggesting the rather worn cloak of a tribal chieftain very much in keeping with the production’s emphasis on his dispossession. 67
    Boyd makes sure that we spot the colonial problems that arise in this exotic realm. Malcolm Storry’s white sweaty Prospero is domineering towards Kananu Kirimi’s black, implicitly abused Ariel while Geff Francis’s cruelly enslaved (and also black) Caliban pointedly cries more than once, “This island’s mine.” The ex-pat Europeans can certainly seem less civilised than the natives, as Simon Gregor’s upstart Trinculo makes entertainingly clear, reeling around like a drunk chimpanzee. 68
    The casting in this production of
The Tempest
pulled together a multitude of threads and issues that have dominated the portrayal of these characters for the last century. Kananu Kirimi was the firstwoman to play Ariel on the main stage at Stratford since 1952. In 1970 and in 1988 the director Jonathan Miller used black actors in the parts, but this production, which cast a black actress as Ariel, opened up a “chance to explore parallels between colonisation of blacks by whites and of women by men.” 69 Caliban and Ariel were described as “Caribbeans, seduced and exploited by Malcolm Storry’s commanding Prospero.” 70 It brought to
The Tempest
the politics of gender and race prevalent in contemporary criticism:
    Throughout, the production shows how the urge to power can turn a paradise into a hell. In his harness and metal slave collar, Geff Francis’s dignified and moving Caliban (who speaks the most haunting poetry in the play) is clearly a man more sinned against than sinning, and at the end, as Prospero begs the audience to set him free, the manacled Caliban remains, like a lingering rebuke to his cruel master. 71
    At the end of the play Prospero acknowledges responsibility for the damage he has done. Frankenstein-like, his rejection of this prodigious being as “human” and his subsequent neglect awakens the “monster” in Caliban. Instead of nurturing what he doesn’t understand, and raising Caliban as he would his own child, he identifies him as something “other.” Prospero’s harsh treatment breeds resentment, anger,