Storms in Shakespeare

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Storms in Shakespeare
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1. The CGI of the Elizabethan world?

• The Globe Theatre 1599 first Play staged Julius
  Caesar.
• Shakespeare needed a blockbuster to compete with
  the Swan and the Rose theatres.
• Globe and Rose 50 Yards apart - competition ?
  Jones
• Thunder was produced by rolling a cannon-ball
  down a wooden trough, the thunder-run, by drums
  or cannon-fire lightning, by some kind of
  fireworks. Martin Spevak

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2. Storms of separation

• If the storm in Shakespearean drama is to be
  thought of as functional, then its primary
  function is to separate characters. Most
  obviously, this separation is achieved when the
  storm causes a shipwreck, as in The Comedy of
  Errors, Twelfth Night, Pericles and The Tempest.
  In Othello, a storm splits the Venetian fleet
  without splitting the ships themselves, with the
  effect that characters are divided briefly.
  Furthermore, the sea is not necessary for a storm
  to separate in King Lear, the weather divides
  characters into indoor and outdoor groups. (Jones)

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The Tempest

• Metaphorical representation of the political
  turmoil of the past.
• Mark of transition a staging for the plays
  concerns of redemption, reconciliation and
  forgiveness to take place.
• Question posed early in play concerning the
  nature and limits of human authority.
• What cares these roarers for the name of King?
• If you can command these elements to silence-
  Use your authority
• We learn in 2.1 that the tempest is the work of
  Prosperos art (magic) rather than that of the
  gods or nature.
• (Play)

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• The Winters Tale
• Clown, who provides the story of the death of
  those on the ship. In his phrases, the immediacy
  is emphasised ?Now, now I have not winked since
  I saw these sights the men are not yet cold
  under water? (102-3).
• The

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Evidence of disorder
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Presence of the Supernatural?

• Aeschylus had the Chorus in Agamemnon say, "Why
  have the gods ordained that man must suffer to
  know?

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King Lear

• When the doors to Gloucester's castle slam shut
  behind the retreating king at the end of act 2,
  Lear is a man consumed with righteous
  indignation. He is in no mood to be told that he
  himself had unwittingly precipitated the
  situation that now grinds against every fibre of
  his being. What rules his consciousness is a keen
  awareness of the calculated, premeditated
  effronteries inflicted on him by those to whom he
  had been most generous. And we are inclined to
  agree with him he has been deeply wronged, and
  those who have wronged him are evil. Still, we
  cannot totally empathise with Lear. Though, now,
  perhaps, more sinned against than sinning, he
  remains the obstinate, wilful old man who
  disinherited Cordelia and banished Kent--only
  now, the tables have been turned on him, and the
  thought of it fills him with the rage and fury of
  unappeasable anger. "I will do such things--...
  they shall be / The terrors of the earth!"3 He
  enters act 3 the least introspective of
  Shakespeare's protagonists but leaves it a man
  who, immersed in the cauldron of internal and
  external turmoil, develops, or at least
  discovers, his soul.
• Charles Hallett 2008