{"id":7856,"date":"2010-10-07T03:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=7856"},"modified":"2012-11-04T01:17:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-04T01:17:35","slug":"the-tempest-illustrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2010\/10\/07\/the-tempest-illustrated\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tempest illustrated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tempest.jpg\"<\/p>\n

“Such stuff as dreams are made on”: Heathcote Williams and Toyah Willcox.<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD viewing earlier this week was Derek Jarman’s wonderful adaptation of The Tempest<\/em><\/a> which he directed in 1979. This is my favourite of Jarman’s films, partly because the play is my favourite Shakespeare (along with its polar opposite, Macbeth<\/em>) and also because it’s a film infused with an occult sensibility which comes directly from the director’s own interests, rather than being the usual film or theatre conventions of what magic entails. An example of this is the grimoire which Prospero (Heathcote Williams) is seen leafing through which Jarman reveals in his autobiography, Dancing Ledge<\/em>, to be his own 17th-century edition of Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy<\/em><\/a>. In his account of the filming he also describes his conception of Prospero as being based on Dr John Dee, the Elizabethan occultist who Shakespeare would certainly have known of, and may even have met since the pair both had business with Elizabeth I’s court. The most explicit reference to Dee comes in the shape of Prospero’s magical glass (above), based on Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica<\/a>, and a prop I’d dearly love to own. Dee was also a character in Jarman’s Jubilee<\/em><\/a> (1978), and his Angelic Conversations gave a title to Jarman’s later filming of Shakespeare’s sonnets.<\/p>\n

Seeing Jarman’s adaptation again had me thinking about the various representations of the characters. Ariel is generally depicted as a fairy type although he’s a lot more powerful than the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/em>. As for Caliban, like Grendel in Beowulf<\/em>, he’s an all-purpose monster whose predominant attributes seem to be whatever Ariel isn’t: ugly, earthbound, stupid, treacherous, and so on. I’d be tempted to propose the island’s quartet as representing the four elements\u2014Prospero: water; Miranda: fire; Caliban: earth; Ariel: air\u2014but I’m sure that’s not an original idea given the amount of academic trawling through the Bard’s corpus. Rather than dig for symbolism, what follows is a few pictures found during another trawl of my own through the Internet Archive<\/a>, where the books aren’t drowned but patiently await their rediscovery.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"valentine.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Artist unknown (1882).<\/em><\/p>\n

Ariel is one of my favourite characters so I tend to pick out his pictures but even so this was still the best plate in the book. From The Young Folks’ Shakespeare Series<\/em><\/a> by Laura Valentine, a short adaptation of the story into verse.<\/p>\n

\"crane.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Walter Crane (1894).<\/em><\/p>\n

From Eight Illustrations to Shakespeare’s Tempest<\/em><\/a>, a typically Pre-Raphaelite rendering by Walter Crane.<\/p>\n

\"ricketts.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Charles Ricketts (1895).<\/em><\/p>\n

Not from Archive.org but I had to include this, one of several Shakespeare illustrations that Ricketts produced for The Magazine of Art<\/em>. It’s a shame Ricketts didn’t produce a book edition of his own, he was ideally suited to the material.<\/p>\n

\"bell.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Robert Anning Bell (1901).<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert Anning Bell’s version<\/a> was the subject of a post earlier this year and it’s still the best I’ve seen, copiously illustrated throughout with many full-page drawings and vignettes on nearly every page.<\/p>\n

\"stratton1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Helen Stratton (1907).<\/em><\/p>\n

Another adaptation of the story for children<\/a> and with some distinctly childish drawings\u2014Caliban here becomes almost cuddly\u2014but there’s a nice Art Nouveau influence in some of Helen Stratton’s linework.<\/p>\n

\"stratton2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Helen Stratton (1907).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"rhead.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Louis Rhead (1918).<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m generally not too keen on Louis Rhead’s illustrations but this picture of Ariel riding a bat makes a nice piece to finish with, one of several drawings for the play from Charles & Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are many, many more illustrated editions, of course, these only touch the surface. And there’s another film version<\/a> due this December with Helen Mirren playing a female Prospero. I’ve no problem with revisionist interpretations\u2014Jarman’s film is revisionist to a degree\u2014but from the trailer this new adaptation looks like the usual Hollywood fare. And Russell Brand is in it… All the CGI in the world won’t summon a fraction of the magic that’s in Derek Jarman’s finale when Elisabeth Welch sings Stormy Weather<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Robert Anning Bell\u2019s Tempest<\/a>
\n\u2022 In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman<\/a>
\n\u2022 Derek Jarman at the Serpentine<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Angelic Conversation<\/a>
\n\u2022 The life and work of Derek Jarman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Such stuff as dreams are made on”: Heathcote Williams and Toyah Willcox. DVD viewing earlier this week was Derek Jarman’s wonderful adaptation of The Tempest which he directed in 1979. This is my favourite of Jarman’s films, partly because the play is my favourite Shakespeare (along with its polar opposite, Macbeth) and also because it’s … Continue reading “The Tempest illustrated”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,21,7,48,16],"tags":[1828,206,1825,511,186,4236,1823,1827,766,1826,78,1829,1140,1824,549,500],"class_list":["post-7856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-fantasy","category-film","category-illustrators","category-occult","tag-charles-lamb","tag-charles-ricketts","tag-cornelius-agrippa","tag-derek-jarman","tag-dr-john-musician","tag-elisabeth-welch","tag-heathcote-williams","tag-helen-stratton","tag-john-dee","tag-laura-valentine","tag-louis-rhead","tag-mary-lamb","tag-robert-anning-bell","tag-toyah-willcox","tag-walter-crane","tag-william-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-22I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}