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From Statecraft to Stagecraft: The Tempest in the Italian Arcadia

2012; Routledge; Volume: 8; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17450918.2012.679298

1745-0926

Lisanna Calvi,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

Abstract In a context of confrontation between early modern European theatres, the Italian commedia dell'arte proves to be a fruitful ground of interpretation for Elizabethan drama, specifically for the case of Shakespeare's The Tempest. As noted by pioneer early nineteenth-century studies, and more recently by Louise George Clubb, Richard Andrews, and Rob Henke, the play's plot patterns, or better theatergrams, reveal some affiliation with scenarios from the Italian comedic improvisation pieces and prompt an investigation of shared thematic strategies between the two traditions. This adds to the import of Italian influences on early modern English theatre and adds to the reading of the play as the staging of Italianate court politics, as some recent criticism has suggested, in particular by evoking the name of Machiavelli. My contribution aims at offering a further exploration of The Tempest's possible isomorphism with the 'arcadian enchantment' of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian improvised comedy scenarios. In fact, the article investigates how Shakespeare may have looked at a common repertoire of recurrent motifs (a powerful magician), settings (a deserted island), and actions (the shipwreck, the castaways' reunion and their comic scheming), working them out into a different dramatic context. Attention will be specially drawn on the play's ending which seems to find an unsuspected equivalent in the scenarios. Keywords: The Tempest commedia dell'arte theatergramsEuropean early modern theatreMachiavellipastoral Notes 1. These two definitions (all'improvviso and dell'arte) are intended and used as synonyms. 2. Even though in a different generic frame, the existence of political concerns in a pastoral/fantastic setting can be retraced in other contemporary works such as Sidney's Arcadia, originally published in 1593. Influenced among other sources by Sannazaro's pastoral romance Arcadia (1504), it tells of the voluntary exile of a ruler (Basilius); choosing exile proves not only unkingly, but also ruinous, in that it causes rebellion in the kingdom and the ultimate fulfilment of an oracle which Basilius had originally tried to elude by escaping. The responsibilities of kingship and the works of providence, together with the (wild) nature of love are investigated by Sidney under cover of romance. The Arcadian seclusion does not reproduce an idyllic withdrawal from the cares of life but is indeed an evading of responsibilities that brings ruin upon the state. 3. "Constant as a principle from the time of Ariosto on was construction by contamination, the meditated and usually explicit combination of pre-texts. But in addition to the mere fusion of borrowed plots, this demanded the interchange and transformation of units, figures, relationships, actions, topoi, and framing patterns, gradually building a combinatory of theatergrams that were at once streamlined structures for svelte play making from previous incarnations. The elementi drammaturgici that Ferruccio Marotti identifies as common building blocks of the commedia dell'arte that often frustrate attempts to make precise historical connections and attributions constitute a class of these resources" (Clubb Clubb , Louise George . " Pastoral Jazz from the Writ to Liberty ". Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare & his Contemporaries. Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning . Michele Marrapodi . Aldershot : Ashgate , 2007 . 15 – 26 [Google Scholar], "Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time" 6). See also Clubb, "Italian Stories on the Stage" and Clubb, "Looking Back on Shakespeare and Italian Theater". 4. "The commedia dell'arte, born in Italy, rapidly spread all across Europe. Not only did this event concern drama (it has been referred to as an authentic cultural revolution) but also social or better cultural issues." 5. See, for example, Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick , Robin . " The Italy of The Tempest ". 'The Tempest' and Its Travels . Peter Hulme and Sherman William H. . London : Reaktion Books , 2000 . 78 – 96 . [Google Scholar], who interprets Prospero's accomplishments on the island as "repeated coups the théâtre [which] might in this case be read as recurrent coups d'état (as indeed might Shakespeare's own if The Tempest is meant to celebrate a dynastic marriage)" (88). The dynastic marriage to which the author is referring is that of Princess Elizabeth Stuart to the Elector Palatine; the celebrations for their wedding, in 1613, occasioned a revival of the play. Another possible reference is to the diplomatic negotiations over the planned but never celebrated marriage of the Prince of Wales to Caterina, daughter of Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany in 1611, the same year of The Tempest's first recorded performance at Whitehall on 1 November. 6. In recent criticism, this line of reasoning has been strongly propounded by Michael J. Redmond Redmond, Michael J. 2009. Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy. Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage, Aldershot: Ashgate. [Google Scholar] who, quoting from John Wolfe's Italian edition of The Prince, published in London in 1584, indicates the Machiavellian metaphorical mention of the tempest as political turmoil to be "[i]n line with the storm imagery which opens the play, the title of Shakespeare's island drama employs the same metaphor of political crisis used in the chapter 'Perché i Prencipi d'Italia habbiano perduto i loro stati' […]. Machiavelli's storm imagery is contemptuous of aristocratic rule in the opening scene of The Tempest" (Redmond, 122–3). See also Schlueter Schlueter , Nathan . " Prospero's Second Sailing: Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and the Politics of The Tempest ". Shakespare's Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics . Stephen W. Smith and Travis Curtwright . Oxford : Lexington Books , 2002 . 179 – 95 . [Google Scholar]. Nevertheless, Prospero is the cause/creator of that imaginary event, not its victim, and it is not clear why the Machiavellian metaphor of the tempest for rough times should be literally adapted on stage at the very opening of the play without its symbolic import being further enhanced later on. Its function here appears to be dramaturgical rather than figurative, and is better explained if we take it as a device to have Antonio, Sebastian and the others shipwrecked on the island. If an historical origin for the element of tempest is to be found, a possible one is the historical event of an English ship, the Sea Venture, flagship of the Virginia Company, which was shipwrecked in the Bermuda islands in 1609 with more than one hundred people and a dog surviving and landing safely ashore; in the months following the event several narratives of it reached London and probably Shakespeare's ears, giving him the initial inspiration for the opening of the play. 7. "And here it should be noted that a prince must never ally himself with one more powerful than himself in order to attack someone else, unless necessity compels it […] for if he wins you remain his prisoner, and Princes must avoid as much as possible being at the discretion of others" (Machiavelli 96). 8. "[W]hen adverse times arrived, they only thought of fleeing and not defending themselves, and they hoped that the people, tired of the insolence of the conquerors, would recall them. This policy, when others are lacking, is good, but it is truly bad to have abandoned the other remedies for this one, for one should never wish to fall down in the belief that you will find someone to pick you up. This either does not happen, or, if it does, it does not make for your security, since that defence was cowardly and did not depend on your own forces. And only those defences are good, are certain, are enduring, that depend on you yourself and your ability" (Machiavelli 104). The historical situation Machiavelli was thinking of is Charles VIII's expedition into Italy in 1494, and the ensuing upheavals in the Italian principalities (Milan, Florence and Naples). The picture is therefore one of internal divisions in front of an external attack, which looks quite different from what happened to Prospero, whose "comune defecto" was his scarce eagerness for politics, but above all the excessive trust he placed in his evil-natured brother, rather than the grandees' or the people's hostility. 9. See also Petrina Petrina , Alessandra. . Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince . Aldershot : Ashgate , 2009 . [Google Scholar] ("Machiavelli in the British Isles") and, for a general overview of the European reception and fame of Machiavelli's writings, see Kahn Kahn , Victoria . " Machiavelli's afterlife and reputation to the eighteenth century ". The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli . John M. Najemy . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 2010 . 239 – 55 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 10. "La tempesta che disperde i naviganti in un'isola lontana, per volontà di un Mago che guida tutta l'azione in un giorno d'incanti, dopo il quale spezzerà la sua verga; una terra selvaggia popolata di spiriti; due gruppi di personaggi, i nobili ed i plebei, rivolti i primi all'ambizione e all'amore (con le nozze finali), i secondi al godimento brutale e riserbati allo scorno; par bene sia questa la nuda trama dell'ultima commedia delle Shakespeare Shakespeare , William . The Tempest. The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works , 2nd . Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells . Oxford : Clarendon P , 2005 . 1222 43 [Google Scholar]" (Neri 33). As a matter of fact, by pointing out the the similarity between dell'arte pieces and the Shakespearean play, Neri disregards the latter's political dimension and underscores the predominant role of fantastic, pastoral and supernatural elements: "Questo saggio tratta d'una serie di scenari fantastici della commedia dell'arte, d'un tipo che lo Shakespeare, com'io credo, conobbe per la 'Tempesta'; esso appartiene alla storia del teatro fiabesco e pastorale ed illumina alcuni rapporti dell'Inglese, poeta di teatro, con la commedia italiana" (Neri 7). 11. Capocci supposes that Shakespeare's prose passages are in themselves direct evidence of the existence of what she labels as "English dell'arte theatre", and means to prove it by quoting, among other examples, the exchanges of Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol in Henry V, Falstaff's cues in Henry IV, or even Antony's description of a crocodile in Antony and Cleopatra (2.7.41–8). This hypothesis is quite imaginative and, as Steele Steele, Eugene. 1976. Verbal Lazzi in Shakespeare's Plays. Italica, 53.2: 214–22. Summer[Crossref] , [Google Scholar] puts it, the issue of first-hand contact is probably destined to remain unsolved: "Moving in London's theatrical society, Shakespeare almost certainly heard accounts of the Martinelli visit only a decade earlier. The effect of the comici on London audiences cannot be underestimated, though we have no exact measuring stick to go by" (Steele 214–15). 12. Steele; Andrews "Shakespeare, Molière et la commedia dell'arte"; Andrews "Shakespeare and Italian Comedy"; Andrews "Molière, Commedia dell'arte, and the Question of Influence"; and Henke Henke , Robert . Pastoral Transformations. Italian Tragicomedy and Shakespeare's Last Plays . Newark : U of Delaware P , 1997 . [Google Scholar] "Border-Crossing". In this essay, Henke Henke , Robert . " Virtuosity and Mimesis in the Commedia dell'arte and Hamlet ". Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare & his Contemporaries: Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning . Michele Marrapodi . Aldershot : Ashgate , 2007 . 69 – 81 [Google Scholar] defines the commedia dell'arte as "the perfect transnational machine" (19). 13. Interestingly enough, such theorization was somehow (poetically) anticipated by Winifred Smith Smith , Winifred . The Commedia dell'Arte: a study in Italian Popular Comedy . New York : Columbia UP , 1912 . [Google Scholar] in her 1912 study on the commedia: "If the commedia dell'arte is understood at all it must certainly be regarded as a repository of ancient themes and motifs some of which […] are often to be found in the English theater, – whether they came thither from the Italian stage or from native tradition. But as the scenarios already quoted have shown, the commedia dell'arte was little else than this literary and popular rag-bag, a kind of Harlequin's suit in itself" (Smith 198). 14. The scenarios included the list of the dramatis personae, and of stage props (robbe), as well as the description of the scene. The only collection of these texts ever published in early modern times is in 1611, that is, Il Teatro delle favole rappresentative by Flaminio Scala Scala , Flaminio . Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative . Ferruccio Marotti . Milano : Il Polifilo , 1976 . [Google Scholar] (a modern Italian edition is edited by Ferruccio Marotti and was published in 1976). At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ferdinando Neri selected four scenarios from the Locatelli collection and published them in his Scenari delle Maschere in Arcadia (1913). Thirty of the original 50 pieces included in Scala's edition have recently been translated into English by Richard Andrews Andrews , Richard . " Shakespeare, Molière et la Commedia dell'arte " La Commedia dell'arte, le Théâtre Forain et les Spectacles de Plein Air en Europe: XVIe–XVIIIe siècles, publiées sous la direction d'Irène Mamczarz . Paris : Klincksieck , 1998 . 15 – 27 . [Google Scholar] (The Commedia dell'arte of Flaminio Scala). An English translation of 16 scenarios taken from different manuscript collections is also appended to Lea's Italian Popular Comedy (Appendix G 555–674). Among the unpublished collections, the oldest one is Basilio Locatelli's early seventeenth-century manuscript selection Scenari della scena de' soggetti comici et tragici (ca. 1618–22). Another famous collection of scenarios is the coeval "Corsini Album" (Scenarii. Raccolta di scenari più scelti d'istrioni in due volumi). As Robert Henke Henke , Robert . " Virtuosity and Mimesis in the Commedia dell'arte and Hamlet ". Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare & his Contemporaries: Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning . Michele Marrapodi . Aldershot : Ashgate , 2007 . 69 – 81 [Google Scholar] points out "the fact that the scenarios post-date The Tempest does not exclude the possibility that this kind of play, with its constellation of typical theatergrams and lazzi, was a deep source for The Tempest as long as we do not limit ourselves to the traditional literary notion of a source, and remember that Locatelli as well as Corsini state that they are merely recording scenarios that have long been in existence" ("Transporting Tragicomedy" 51). As regards the nature and contents of improvisation, Richard Andrews underlines that "[t]he improvising actors themselves relied heavily on stylistic models taken from literature, both dramatic and non-dramatic: the way in which arte professionals 'learnt their part' was to ransack and memorize large stocks of material from written and printed sources. The deployment of words (rather than mime or gesture) was the focal point of their craft" ("Molière, Commedia dell'arte, and the Question of Influence" 445). 15. Lazzi (differently rendered as gags, shtick, improvised dialogues) could be variously defined as 'of fear', 'amorous', 'of terror', 'of physical contact', and so forth. 16. "The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men" (Hamlet 2.2.398–404). For a discussion of this passage and its relationship with the commedia dell'arte, also see Henke Henke , Robert . " Transporting Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and the Magical Pastoral of the Commedia dell'Arte ". Early Modern Tragicomedy . Subha Mukerji and Raphael Lyne . Woodbridge : Boydell & Brewer , 2007 . 43 58 [Google Scholar] ("Virtuosity and Mimesis"). 17. Yet, this might not have been the case with William Kemp and Richard Armin, the two famous clown performers of the Chamberlain's Men. In fact, their improvisational talent may have inspired Shakespeare's dramatic writing, and he possibly tailored some roles (of fools and clowns) to their stage skills (for example, Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Touchstone in As You Like It). See for example Wiles Wiles , David . Shakespeare's Clown. Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 1987 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Shakespeare's Clown. 18. Pantaloons and Zanies are actually present in the Shakespearean canon: see, for example, "The sixth age shifts/Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,/With spectacles on nose and pouch on side" (As You Like It 2.7.157–9); "'celsa senis,' that we might/beguile the old pantaloon" (The Taming of the Shrew 3.1.35–6); "Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany" (Love's Labours Lost 5.2.463); and "I protest, I take these wise men,/that crow so at these set kind of fools, no better/than the fools' zanies" (Twelfth Night 1.5.84–5). All emphases added. 19. "La scena si finge in Arcadia". I will quote the Italian original text in the footnotes; unless otherwise stated, the translation of the scenarios is mine. 20. The first four (The Great Wizard, pastoral comedy, The Ship, pastoral comedy, The Three Satyrs, pastoral fable, and Enchanted Arcadia) are taken from Neri (Scenari delle Maschere in Arcadia); the fourth (The Magic Tree) is taken from Scala Scala , Flaminio . The Commedia dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: a translation and analysis of 30 scenarios . Ed. and translated by Richard Andrews . Lanham , MD : Scarecrow P , 2008 . [Google Scholar] (Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative). All quotations are taken from these two editions, and will be indicated by page number in the text. 21. Henke makes a list of relevant thematic motifs, taken especially from Li Tre Satiri and Il Gran Mago, but he does not supply an analysis of their function in relation to The Tempest. 22. The scenario of Arcadia Incantata opens with a tempest and a shipwreck: "Mare tempestoso, con nave naufragandosi. Pollicinella, da mare: sopra la tempesta passata, la perdita, ed il naufragio de padroni, e servi suoi compagni" (Arcadia Incantata, 87). This translates as "A tempestous sea and a sinking ship. Punchinello, from the sea: tells about the late storm, the loss and shipwreck of his masters, and his fellow-servants". 23. The wizard is usually identified with the generic name of mago; yet, he is Elisabatto in Il Gran Mago, Falsicon in La Nave and Sabino in L'Arbore Incantato. 24. "Si ralegra dicendo che li suoi incanti hanno hauto effetto". 25. "Dice del suo sapere, et valore […] et che gli spiriti in forma di selvaggi lo servano" 26. "Dice, che non partiranno [i forastieri] senza suo volere". 27. Here is the original Italian from Scala's L'Arbore Incantato: "Salvatico vede la sua ninfa, la vuol pigliare; ella corre per la scena; alla fine ella viene trasformata in un arbore. Arbore apparisce nel quale è trasformata Cloride. Salvatico dice quella essere opera di Sabino per disturbar l'amor suo, sdegnato va via". 28. "Gratiano [e] Coviello di A: […] vedano la Ninfa che dorme alla fonte, la vagheggiano facendo azzi di goderla; la vogliono destare, non si arrischiano, dicono volerla godere dormendo […] in q.o Mago di D, accortosi delli forestieri, che voglio godere la Ninfa, et molestarla, li grida, dicendoli che la lascino stare, […] sdegnato contro di loro […] tocca poi con la verga la terra e apparisce fuoco; Grat.o e Cov.o spaventati fuggono per la strada". The alphabetical indications ("di A, di B, di C", and so on) are often used as a code that denotes which of the four or five entrances are being used, in relation to a standard visualized plan of the stage. 29. Prospero himself seems to confirm Caliban's words, when, in the previous scene, he associates the carrying out of his magic pursuits to the consultation of his books: "I'll to my book,/For yet ere supper-time must I perform/Much business appertaining" (3.1.95–7). 30. "Pantalone di A: dice del Naufragio, et della perdita dei compagni, fa disgrazie, non sapere dove sia, né in che paese" ("Li Tre Satiri" 78). This translates as "Pantaloon from A: tells about the shipwreck, and about the loss of his mates, and delivers laments over the fact that he does not know where or in which country he is". 31. Literally they make "azzi of fear". 32. In the Italian original braghiere is literally a belt to hold up briefs. 33. "Pantalone and Zanni dalla grotta [canc. dicono] con un libro, dicono di averlo rubbato al mago et con quello essere usciti dalla grotta; fanno azzi della paura degli spiriti, et delle bastonate, et del luogo oscuro; alla fine si risolvono aprire il libro per vedere le virtù di quello; aprono il libro; in q.o Satiri di D: dicono che comandi: essi si maravigliano che siano venuti così obedienti; Pant. e comanda che porti un braghiere; è portato; Zan. i comanda una cosa, Pant. e un altra; Satiri portano et fanno ciò che essi comandano; alla fine dimandano robbe da mangiare, poi dimanda un piatto di maccaroni". 34. "Mago di A: dice di haver preveduto il tradimento et la congiura contro di lui che si fa da pastori, et forestieri per virtù del suo libro incantato; dice volere rimediare al tutto con l'incanto; invoca Pluto, fa il circolo in terra con la verga fingendo l'incanto; ballando entra nella grotta". 35. "Mago della grotta […] fa l'incanto et battendo la verga a terra tutti si (af)fermano; di poi ordina a Burat.o Grat.o et Cov.o che bevino al fonte, che torneranno nelle loro prime effigie; essi bevono e ritornano come prima; ringratiano il mago, et poi si riconoscono tra di loro". 36. The scenarios often had the players close the performance by revealing the moral, the aim of the story they had just been acting upon (this is signalled by the expression "dichiarando la favola" that literally means "to declare the fable") and, as happens in Il Gran Mago, but also in Li Tre Satiri and La Nave, by leaving for some common although not always declared destination. Besides, "dichiarando la favola" may also allude to the disclosure of the fantastic nature of stage action, in that "favola" is also a synonym of drama or even of fiction as opposed to fact. In the commedia dell'arte, it was the players' skills that attracted the audience, and this "final lesson" sounds in fact like a meta-theatrical address which, on the one hand, makes known the fictionality of the action, and, on the other, seems to announce the actors' eagerness for new dramatic adventures. 37. "Mago di D, batte la verga, impaurisce tutti; alla fine dice di aver previsto quello che essi vogliono fare, li perdona, et conferma le nozze; tutti fanno allegrezze […] si dichiara la favola et si dà fine all'opera facendo far paci". 38. Another political turn of the action, although slightly different in its arrangement, is to be found also in La Nave. There Falsicon Mago holds the Queen of Thessaly hostage on a remote island and in this he obeys the orders of the King of Boeotia who commanded her seclusion for dynastic reasons. A Captain arrives at the island riding a dolphin and rescues the Queen, at which the wizard raises a tempest against them, but they fortunately survive and eventually marry. In the meantime, Pantaloon and Gratiano, who ended up on the island "by chance" ("La Nave" 69), reveal to shepherds and nymphs the harmful tricks Falsicon has been playing on them, and they all pray Jove to punish "the wizard's wickedness" ("La Nave" 75). They are answered and Falsicon is punished by being turned into stone. In this scenario a malicious wizard plays an active political role and, although he is not the victim of a treacherous plan, as is Prospero, his action still alludes to an evil design aimed at usurping a legitimate right, proving once again that such themes could very well inhabit an Arcadian/pastoral setting. 39. The circle has its ancestry in the widespread belief that witches used to draw circles on the ground to evoke both evil spirits or the devil itself. James James I and VI . Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogie . Edinburgh : Printed by Robert Walde-grave, Printer to Kings Majestie , 1597 . [Google Scholar] I's Daemonologie (1597) offers a rather detailed catalogue of the many uses and "shapes" of this procedure: "Then laying this ground, as I have said, these conjurationes must have few or mo[re] in number of the persones conjurers (alwaies passing the singuler number) according to the qualitie of the circle, and forme of apparition. Two principall thinges cannot well in that errand be wanted: holie-water (whereby the Devill mockes the Papistes) and some present of a living thing unto him. There ar[e] likewise certaine seasons, dayes and houres, that they observe in this purpose: These things being all readie, and prepared, circles are made triangular, quadrangular, round, double or single, according to the forme of apparition that they crave" (James I and VI 17). Indeed, in The Tempest, Sebastian suspects Prospero's intent to be devilish: "The devil speaks in him!" (5.1.131); nevertheless, the duke's actions, despite being the work of magic, are never driven by evil or malice, but are always justifiable on rational grounds: Caliban is punished because of his (sexual) aggressiveness, Ariel has to repay his debt of freedom, and the castaways are kept on the island to atone for an ancient wrong. An interesting perspective on the "power of magic" and its relationship with kingship, also with regard to the play's Jacobean context, is to be found in Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador von Rosador , Kurt Tetzeli. " The Power of Magic: From Endimion to The Tempest ". Shakespeare Survey . 43 . Stanley Wells . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 1991 . 1 – 13 . [Google Scholar]'s 1991 article "The Power of Magic". 40. "Maze". Def. I.3a and II. Oxford English Dictionary. 41. "With mirth they say they want to embark on a voyage to Venice; they unravel the moral and end the play" ("Li Tre Satiri" 86). The original Italian reads "Dicono volersi imbarcare alla volta di Venezia facendo allegrezze; dechiarando la favola danno fine all'opera". 42. Dignity also means "the quality of being worthy of something; desert, merit" See "Dignity" Def. 1.†b. Oxford English Dictionary Third edition, 2001. 43. Karol Berger Berger, Karol. 1977. Prospero's Art. Shakespeare Studies, 10: 211–239. [Google Scholar] interestingly alludes to the political value of reconciliation in the play which once again opposes Prospero to his shrewd and ill-natured brother: "From his brother Prospero had to learn that the active life cannot be neglected by a politician. But there is nothing else he could learn from Antonio, who is a politician with a built-in obsolescence, interested only in the acquisition of power, blind to the need of reconciliation, and therefore doomed. Prospero proves to be more subtle, and potentially at least, more successful" (Berger 229). 44. See "Rare". Def. 5a. Oxford English Dictionary Third edition, 2008. 45. "But those who study the records of ancient times will understand, that after a change in the form of a government, whether it be from a commonwealth to a tyranny or from a tyranny to a commonwealth, those who are hostile to the new order of things must always be visited with signal punishment. So that he who sets up as a tyrant and slays not Brutus, and he who creates a free government and slays not the sons of Brutus, can never maintain himself long" (Machiavelli 196–7). Antonio had indeed followed this strategy when he usurped Prospero's power and virtually condemned him to death. 46. "Now 'tis true/I must be here confined by you/Or sent to Naples" (Epilogue, 3–5). Prospero does not mention here his early intention of travelling back to Milan and spending his (last) years there in pensive retreat (5.5.306–7). 47. See 5.1.1 ("Now does my projet gather to a head").