Leontes must be compelled to recognise in his wife other qualities than charm and beauty. She is now sixteen years older than when he last saw her, and bears the marks of all that she has been through. Shakespeare hits on the idea of the kissed statue. If you ever want proof of his genius, this is it. Before revealing that Hermione is still alive she must be exhibited to the King as a marble statue placed on a monument - a statue of her not as she was sixteen years ago, but as she would be now had she lived on.
Leontes gazes a long time at the statue. Then overcome by emotion he cries out. No matter how mad he seem, he must kiss her lips.
Then, as we all know, the statue trembles. And Hermione steps down from her pedestal, and herself embraces Leontes.
It is a moment of pure magic. I should know, for I played it.
How so? Why did I not play Perdita? Not, I assure you, because John Spencer Stockfish was considered my superior for any part. It is just that by this time I was in fact too old for the roles of young girls. Consequently I was a natural for the part of Hermione. I believe, in any case, that Mr Shakespeare wrote that character with me in mind, wanting me to represent on stage his own wife Anne. He wished me to embody the way he was declaring he could still love her, and she love him, after their own little interval of sixteen years or more. And doubtless it appealed to his sense of irony, too, to have the once master-mistress of his passion now enacting the part of the forgiving and pacific wife. After our first performance of the Tale, permit me to mention, Mr Shakespeare and I played again at cards for kisses. This time there was this difference from the time when I had been his Rosalind. This time I did not let my master win.
The late Mr Shakespeare used to say that woman's point of view is not necessarily foreign to man's.
The late Mr Shakespeare used to say that words cool more than water, or are perhaps less likely not to.
The late Mr Shakespeare used to say that the void, the good void, the aching void of the good, which was his source and port and target, the wordless bourne of his every fugue, however sudden and eccentric, was the last place anyone would think of looking for him, the well-known long sweet home, the room where music plays itself.
Mr Shakespeare said that he was not here, being there, and having no whereness anyhow.
Mr Shakespeare said that music made his ears bleed.
Mr Shakespeare (as he lay dying) said that he really ought to try not to die, and that the light was badly painted on the wall.
Also, Shakespeare said his body was his grave;
That when it rained he fell;
That his scabby heart was unquiet if full of truth;
That his head was beginning to stink of innocence;
That he had St Catherine's uncouth wheel printed in the roof of his mouth;
And that he was over and above the dark, one of her dateless brood all right, but still serving his apprenticeship down here.
All these things were said by William Shakespeare as he lay dying. I do not know what they mean. I am only a comedian.
Chapter Ninety-Four A word about John Spencer Stockfish
The Tempest, the late Mr Shakespeare's last play, seems to me as perfect in its kind as almost anything we have of his. One may observe that the classical unities are kept here with an exactness uncommon to the liberties of his writing. It is a play about magic, and that magic has in it something very solemn and very poetical. I would draw your attention in particular to the character of Caliban. It is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon grotesques that ever was seen, but what is then remarkable is that it is to this uncouth, wild figure that Shakespeare gives the most delicate poetry in the play - I mean the speech beginning Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises ... Only a writer at the very top of his powers could have dared to do this. It seems to me that Shakespeare not only found out a new character in his Caliban, but also devised and adopted a new manner of language for that character.
The name Caliban is a phonetic anagram of CANNIBAL. Mr Shakespeare pointed that out to me himself, one day when showers had ruined our rehearsal. As for the name Ariel, he took that from his friend Thomas Heywood's rhymed catechism of the occult, the Hierarchy of Blessed Angels. In that work Ariel is named as the spirit who commands the elements and governs tempests. As for Setebos, the god adored by Caliban, that name was printed first in Thevet's Cosmographie, but I think it more likely that WS got it from a popular source, probably Eden's History of Travayle (1577). He only ever needed a few bits and scraps like this to set his mind in motion. And of course once he got going the whole play became profoundly autobiographical. In Prospero we look on Mr Shakespeare's likeness. The magician breaking his wand and retiring to Naples is the poet breaking his pen and retiring to Stratford.
We had a great metal bowl with a cannon ball in it. This was our thunder for The Tempest (and King Lear). Ben Jonson makes fun of our effects in the prologue to his Bartholomew Fair, offering ironic excuses for not having sought applause by staging monsters (an allusion to Caliban), and for hesitating to unleash nature, 'like those that beget Tales, Tempests'. Mr Jonson missed the point, as usual. It was not the stage properties that made The Tempest so moving and so memorable. It was the words.
Too old for Miranda, I took the part of Ariel. But there was more to this casting than the matter of my age. I think that Shakespeare wrote the part of Ariel for me, since Ariel is a spirit, something beyond man or woman. I had served my master well, and I had gone for him through the female and the male. In Ariel he recognised and rewarded my service in the sexual journey, the ways in which I had enacted on the stage the secret dreams and dramas of his heart. He set me forth now as a creature neither male nor female, and beyond either condition. Then, at the play's end, he set me free, even as he freed himself in the person of Prospero. No doubt it was his recognition that he had ruined my life, even as he had also made me.
If I could, would I fly backwards from the garden and up onto the wall, and unsing Polly Dear, and never know him?
I would not.
I am happy enough to be Ariel.
Call me a little epitome of the leavings of Dame Nature's workshop, a compound of all sorts and sexes, a wheyfaced hermaphrodite. I shall not care to quarrel with those callings. I am what I am, and William Shakespeare made me.
Note Ariel's last words to Prospero, my words to Mr Shakespeare in that part:
Was't well done?
That is the only question I care to ask. His answer to it, spoken aside, still more than contents me:
Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.
I always took that for my approbation. My master's approval of my career in his service. Not that I am free, not yet, not quite. Nor shall be till I have finished with this my book.
John Spencer Stockfish played the part of Miranda. John Spencer Stockfish had several qualities in common with Susanna Shakespeare, so shall we say that this part suited him down to the ground?
John Spencer Stockfish was my Caliban, madam.
John Spencer Stockfish was a shit, sir, yes.
Chapter Ninety-Five Pickleherring's list of things despaired of