HS.: *20th Century Adaptations of Shakespeare*
Table of Contents
0. Introduction 2
1. Jarman's Tempest 3
Derek Jarman 3
1.2. The Tempest 4
2. Jarman's The Tempest - Adaptation or `free version of the play? 5
2.1 The level of `Putting into concrete terms' 6
Structuring and Selection of / Addition to the text 6
2.1.2 Space-Time Structure 8
2.1.3 Conception and Configuration of Characters 9
2.2 Transformation 12
2.2.1 Mode of Transformation 12
2.2.2 `Raising of the Level of Depiction' 13
2.2.3 Presentation by the `Filmic Narrator' 14
2.3 Summary 15
3. Conclusion: Jarman's Tempest - A `Queer' Shakespeare? 15
4.1 Appendix:Original wordings of the translated quotations from Prümm 17
4.2 Sources: 17
*We must be careful with our words, after all - they are very important. In fact, they have brought
me here. [...] I ... have ... words ... for you.* (Tad Williams, Caliban's Hour, p.19)
0. Introduction
From the earliest days of film, Shakespeare's plays have been one of the favourite sources for filmmakers to draw back to. Shakespeare-based films range from stage performances merely filmed by a static, centred camera, through `direct adaptations' for the screen (still varying greatly in the degree to which they remain `true' to the text), to `free versions' like Forbidden Planet, in which plot and/or characters are taken to completely new settings and genres, and films which merely quote or allude to Shakespearean material. At the same pace, the studies of literary critics devoted to evaluating, justifying or condemning such films have also multiplied. While the conviction that one can never film a Shakespeare play and remain `true' to it, that the Bard is `unfilmable', has lost its predominance within the academic field, the idea that Shakespeare films can or must be judged in terms of their `faithfulness' to the original is obviously still present in the critics' minds.
But beside the fact that this approach is doubtable - and has been eloquently doubted, by scholars such as Charles Marowitz, for example - the question of where being `faithful' to Shakespeare begins and ends must be asked. Which of the changes that a film displays in comparison to the text are due to the director's interpretation, which to the change from textual to visual presentation (i.e. any kind of `staging'), and which to the medium of film itself?
In this paper, I want to apply some of these considerations to one particular adaptation, namely Derek Jarman's version of The Tempest.
After some introductory information on Jarman, his work in general, and The Tempest in particular, I will try to look at the film's distinctive qualities (casting, location, narrative technique, visual imagery, selection and re-structuring of the text) in terms of whether they can be accounted for by the change of medium from stage to film, or a particular `point' Jarman was trying to make, his own personal reading of the Shakespearean text. Finally, I will look at the ways in which critics have tried to explain the particularities of Jarman's film by way of his homosexuality and try to find out if, and to what extent, Jarman has really delivered a `gay' or `queer' reading of The Tempest, or if his `point' may be coming from a more generally political attitude.
1. Jarman's Tempest
1.1. Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman was born in Northwood, Middlesex on 31 January, 1942, into an upper middle class, army family. After visiting King's College, London, he was trained as a painter at the Slade school of Fine Art, and had his first exhibition in 1967, upon completion of his education, at the Lisson Gallery in London.
Jarman came into contact with the medium of film when he worked as a film designer for Ken Russel on The Devils in 1970. From 1971 onward, he worked in Super-8 film; in 1976, he directed Sebastiane, his first 16 mm feature. His major features include Jubilee (1978), Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1988), Edward II (1991), Wittgenstein, Blue (1993). However, throughout that time he also went on working in Super-8. In 1990, he received the British Film Institute Award. Beside film making, he continued painting; among his other areas of work were writing, scenery design, and gardening.
In 1987, Jarman was diagnosed as HIV+; at that point, he `came out' publicly and began speaking out in favour of AIDS research. He died of AIDS-related illnesses on 19 February, 1994.
Derek Jarman was *one of Britain's most original and highly controversial filmmakers [...] [v]ilified by the self-appointed guardians of the nation's morals, [...] hailed as a genius by others.* The outspoken treatment of homosexuality incorporated into a lot of his work, his attempts to trace the hidden `gay history' by re-viewing the lives of personalities like Wittgenstein, Edward II or Benjamin Britten, often made him a target for hostile campaigns from the `heterosoc' establishment (most notably after Sebastiane); the widespread reluctance to finance his projects forced him to consistently work on very meagre budgets. While constraining his options, this kept him largely independent from the demands of the mainstream cinema market - which enabled him to tackle controversial topics, but also to employ highly unconventional techniques, from filming on Super-8 and using video post production to turn the material into a feature film with a distinct Super-8 `feel' (The Last of England), to a full-length film of an unchanging blue screen, voiced over with his own meditations on his life, art, and disease (Blue).
1.2. The Tempest
Jarman's The Tempest opened in 1980, during a period when films of Shakespeare's plays were very rare except for the BBC's series on British television. In fact, it was *[t]he first feature length Shakespeare film to be made since Polanski's Macbeth (1971)* Like all of Jarman's films, it was made on a remarkably low budget ($325,000). The exterior scenes were shot on the coast of Northumbria, the interiors at Stoneleigh abbey in Warwickshire (the implications of these locations will be considered in part 2 of this paper).
As could be expected, the film received mixed reviews. While the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter called it *an outrageously invigorating breath of fresh air in contrast to the stale, safe atmosphere created by the BBC's series*, the Evening News praised its *inspired visual touches*, and The Guardian summed it up as *an excellent piece of fringe theatre put on the screen by a natural filmmaker*, the Observer Magazine declassed it as *a piece of Cinderella-like kitsch*; the German Die Welt found it *too coarse, too contorted,[...] Shakespeare's sweet dream becomes a nightmare*; and the Evening Standard, headlining its review `When Prospero goes punk', thought that Jarman had turned the magician into is *a cherub-cheeked hippie with a frizzy hair-do*.
But how `contorted', how `punk' - how `fringe' even - is Jarman's Tempest really? To answer these questions, it will be necessary to look at the way he handles the text of the play, the film's `visual touches', and to some extent, even the characters' hair-does, in some more detail.
Jarman's The Tempest - Adaptation or `free version of the play?
For some time now, the realisation that there is more to be looked at in a Shakespeare film than its `faithfulness' to the text of the play has made its way into the academic landscape. For example, in the introduction to Shakespeare, the Movie, Lynda E. Boose and Richard Burt point out that
*[S]ince recent textual work has compelled Shakespearean scholarship to divest itself of the belief that `the text' has any knowable original or is in itself a stable entity, to judge a film based on a Shakespeare play according to how closely or how well it adheres to the (presumed) Shakespeare text is to invoke a criterion implicitly dependent on a referent no longer there.*
Charles Marowitz is even more radical in his approach, pointing out that *A director [...] who chains himself to unwavering fidelity to the author [...] is unknowingly abdicating a director's responsibility. [...] `[F]idelity' is really a high-sounding word for `lack of imaginative output'.* While making this demand with regards to putting a play on stage, he considers it even more valid for films, as the latter have the *advantage [...] that the medium insists that the original play be rethought and then expressed differently*.
If one follows this approach, a `free version' of a Shakespeare play is not a bad thing at all. But still, the question of what makes a film an `adaptation', as opposed to a `free version', demands a system of categories which allows for an `objective' (if such a thing exists at all) classification.
In his comprehensive analysis of various film versions of Shakespeare tragedies, H.-J. Prümm introduces such a system; mainly drawing on and critically questioning those earlier approaches which introduced the concept of `media-dependent' differences (most extensively Skoller's and Jorgens'), beside those based purely on the director's whim. Prümm criticises the fact that
*whether held against the film or defended, all the changes involved in the filming are always put next to each other without differentiation; a scolding for the leaving out of a character next to a reproach for the realism of the pictures; a defence, e.g., of gaps in the dialogue next to the justification of `filmic' modes of expression.*
Consequently, he divides the characteristics which he examines into two main categories: those part of the `putting into concrete terms' of the original text, which are independent of the medium, and those caused by its `transformation' to the medium of film - in other words, the `media-dependent' ones. Among the first category, Prümm lists structuring, selection and addition of text; the space-time structure in relation to the original, the conception and configuration of the characters, and interventions in the plot structure; the second encompasses the mode of transformation, the `raising of the level of depiction', and the presentation of the plot by a `filmic narrator'. What exactly these categories mean may become more obvious when they are now applied to Jarman's Tempest itself.
2.1The level of `Putting into concrete terms'
2.1.1. Structuring and Selection of / Addition to the text
In his review of Jarman's film, Samuel Crowl states that *with one notable exception (Arlen's Stormy Weather), all the words are Shakespeare's (we get something more than half the text and though it is often rearranged and reassigned, the play's essential plot divisions and developments remain)*.
While this is basically true, some of the rearrangements and omissions permit interpretative conclusions. For example, I think it interesting that the authority dispute between Gonzalo and the boatswain about the latter's `lack of manners', which has been seen as the first instance of the play's dealing with *legitimacy and usurpation*, has been omitted from Jarman's film. While this could be seen as a secondary effect of Prospero's `dreaming' the storm, it seems to me more like a sign that Jarman wanted to focus his look at power structures on Prospero's relationships with the other characters - Ariel, Caliban, Miranda and Ferdinand, and his shipwrecked enemies - and that dealing extensively with the intrigues and struggles going on within the Neapolitan group would have weakened this focus.
This would fit in with the fracturing and shortening of most scenes concentrating on Alonso and his followers (Act 2, Scene I, for example), as well as the fact that Prospero's confrontation with Ariel(Act 1, Scene II) is highlighted, both by its postponing to a later, more centred position in the film, and its extension (Ariel `practises' his *Let me remember thee what thou hast promis'd* (1,II, l. 244) before he confronts him with it).
The most striking omission of course is that of Prospero's final monologue. Instead, Jarman ends his film with the `Our revels now are ended'-speech (Act 4, Scene I). This structural change serves mainly to turn the plot full circle to the beginning, when the storm is depicted as Prospero's dream. This completed circle makes it plausible to view the whole of the film as a dream or fantasy, during which Prospero comes to terms with his inner turmoil. This view is further facilitated by Jarman's use of certain recurrent visual and acoustic elements (see 2.2.2). Moreover, by removing Prospero's plea for the audience's pardon, Jarman takes away from the magician a certain `weakness', which might have been hard to accept after the controlled and controlling impression he makes throughout virtually the whole of the film (except for the dream sequence itself, where he seems short of suffocating.)
There are other interesting instances of such re-structuring in the film (for example, I think that Caliban's realisation `What a thrice-double ass was I' becomes more plausible due to the extensive coverage of Trinculo's and Stephano's ludicrous behaviour - which, again, is achieved by splitting the scene up), but as an exemplification, the ones dealt with so far should do.
In strict adherence to Prümm's model, some of the examples I have given would belong to the category of `interventions in the plot structure'; I myself found that distinction hard to make. Moreover, since both concern the way a director handles the text of the play, apart from omissions of bits made superfluous by the `eye' of the camera, I do not consider it essential, either.
Space-Time Structure
Usually, the island in The Tempest is associated with a Caribbean, or at least Mediterranean, appearance. Not so in Jarman's version. As mentioned above, the film was shot at the coast of Northumbria and in an old Warwickshire abbey. This difference was in part due to simple matters of budgeting, but it was also a deliberate decision on Jarman's part, motivated by the wish to avoid a literalistic setting harshly contrasting with the language:
*For The Tempest, we needed an island of the mind, that opened mysteriously like Chinese boxes: an abstract landscape so that the delicate description in the poetry [...] would not be destroyed by any Martini lagoon. The budget was only 150,000. Britain was the magic isle. I sailed as far from tropical realism as possible* (Dancing Ledge, p.186)
If the location of the exterior scenes does a lot already to prevent a `Martini lagoon' atmosphere, the interior scenes (by far the larger part of the film) do so even more strongly. Colin MacCabe has pointed out that it is impossible for the viewer to *organise the space that is presented. We cannot connect room to room or inside to outside.* This point, he argues, is made even more explicit by casting a blind actor as Caliban, placing him *categorically outside Prospero's cultural space*. For MacCabe, this `fracturing of representational space' is what makes Jarman's film subversive, as it undoes the `divorce between representation and audience' which Brecht reproached in the cinema, and which MacCabe himself sees already in the kind of theatre that had developed by the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest.
*[The representational space] was much more constrained both aesthetically and socially. That is the crucial point of the masque [...] in Act IV. [...] In his instructions [...], his order that `No tongue! all eyes! be silent,' Prospero reproduces the new relationship to the audience [which] is excluded from the representational space.*
While thus acknowledging the subversive effect of Jarman's approach, MacCabe criticises the *nostalgic Utopia in which the ideal is a carnevalesque union of audience and representation* which he thinks it invites.
Whether or not one agrees with MacCabe's interpretation of Jarman's motives, the effect which the disrupted spatial structure has on the viewer remains: one of alienation and the need to question the things he or she might have taken for granted with regards to what happens where in the play.
Moreover, by setting most scenes inside the apparently unconnected rooms of the abbey, dimly lit and full of shadows (Jarman's use of lighting would be a point of its own to look at), he creates - as Samuel Crowl put it - *an imprisoning claustrophobia that I found an exciting and imaginative reading. The play, after all, has much to do with many forms of literal and figurative bondage.*
The concept of bondage, or rather the fact that there are many forms of it, also plays a role in Jarman's depiction (and casting) of the play's characters.
Conception and Configuration of Characters
Casting is usually one of the first things to be talked about when judging a film - especially if the work it is based on has already been filmed (or staged) as often as a Shakespeare play. What we associate with the actors and actresses cast for a Shakespeare film plays into our perception of the respective characters - as Lynda Boose and Richard Burt exemplify it, *Mel Gibson as Hamlet means Hamlet as Lethal Weapon Four.*
With regards to Jarman's film, these associations will only play a part for a comparatively small part of viewers. There are no `stars' in his Tempest; after all, as mentioned above, Jarman worked with a very low budget. Most of the people acting in his films, as Kate Chedgzoy explains, came *from his social circle, or from fringe and avant-garde workers in other media*
Yet, for those viewers who know the performers, character perception is influenced in this manner - the performers *bring to their roles both their own following and particular qualities which are associated with their other work* And although the film became one of Jarman's best-known, it can be assumed that he had this circle of informed viewers, and their associations, in mind when casting the characters.
For such viewers, Prospero probably becomes more convincing by Heathcote Williams, a professional magician, being cast for the part - despite the fact that in the film, his magic is not a stage-magician's sleight-of-hand type, but *the rougher magic of the mathematician*, manifested in his steadily growing chalk diagrams, which ties in well with the Renaissance notion of magic best embodied by John Dee, the protagonist of Jarman's debut feature, Jubilee.
What characterises Jarman's Prospero for those viewers who cannot draw back to such knowledge? - First of all, he is a lot younger than usual (compare, for example, John Gielgud in Greenaway's Prospero's Books), possibly the implicit statement that neither the knowledge and power he commands, nor the cathartic resolution of his inner and outer conflicts, need take as long to achieve as is commonly assumed.
Secondly, while this Prospero is less obviously distempered or cruel, more controlled, than some others, his control over the island and the people on it is at least as total. Ariel, his `eyes and ears', is everywhere - present even in scenes where, according to the stage directions of the play, he is not - and Prospero's punishment for the spirit's moment of defiance is harshly effective. This has led Colin MacCabe to view Prospero's reign as *one of terror* - as, he goes on, the Elizabethan state was, contrary to the popular belief in the period as an age of *social harmony*. Thus, Ariel can be seen as *an allegory for [Walsingham's] secret service, forced under pitiless conditions to spy on every corner of the island and bring to his master Prospero that information which underpins his power.*
It is interesting, in this context, to look at the impressions that the three most central characters apart from Prospero himself made on some critics. Samuel Crowl described Karl Johnson's performance of Ariel as *controlled, alert, intelligent, and haunting*, which makes a lot of sense if he is to stand for the `secret intelligence' employed to maintain existing power structures.
Both Caliban and Miranda, on the other hand, he perceived as too `camp' or `punk'; making the former *more eunuch than monster*, and the latter *curiously more infantile than Shakespeare's creature filled with wonder and innocence.*
Again, this may well have been deliberate, considering the respective performers' backgrounds.
Jack Birkett, who plays Caliban, is a dancer, mime and drag artist; he belongs to a subculture defiant of the social and sexual conventions of modern day England, just as Caliban tries to defy the `state' which Prospero represents. Such links between past and present are made throughout Jarman's work. Though racially different from Prospero, Caliban is not - as he so often is - black. (Jarman had originally planned to cast a black Caliban, but refrained from it in the end, *because I thought it would load the whole thing in one way, make it more specific than general*.) By not making him black, Jarman eschewed a conventional and straightforward reading (the power structures of colonialism) in favour of a more open one - which was explicitly his general aim for the film: *I didn't want to impose an intellectual concept on the play... I wanted to bring the thing alive*
Miranda's character - played by Toyah Wilcox, a singer of the 70s punk movement - is a similar instance of that openness. On the level of casting, she is a representative of another defiant group of today (defiance, after all, was and is the essence of punk), allowing for another link between past and present. Her `infantility', on the other hand, which at first may seem like an unwanted side effect, opens the door to another reading. As Kate Chedgzoy notes, it can be interpreted as *a disturbing picture of a daughter who is entirely subjugated by her father* - an approach which, while not usually applied to Miranda, is well justifiable from a modern, feminist point of view.
If these are instances of Jarman's personal reading of the text, which he could put into his film at liberty, how then did he deal with the demands of the cinema - how did he handle the `media-dependent' aspects of filming Shakespeare's play?
Transformation
The main point of Prümm's analysis, which he makes repeatedly and elaborately, is to disprove the (apparently still existing) claim that Shakespeare plays cannot be `properly' filmed. To do so, he devotes considerable effort to their `epic tendencies'.
He argues that, although dramatic texts (and particularly Shakespeare's dramas) are characterised by their primary reliance on the spoken word for conveying images - which is why Shakespeare films have mostly been criticised as either `too visual' for the text, or `too textual' for the cinema - not only are there films apart from Shakespeare which appeal mainly because of the dialogues (e.g., the American screwball comedies of the 30s) and plays which do without words (pantomimes or Beckett's Act Without Words, for example), but also decidedly visual, `cinematic', elements in Shakespeare's plays. This has been acknowledged by earlier critics as well - he quotes Peter Morris, for example. The problem, Prümm goes on, lies less in the quantity of language in Shakespeare's plays, but in its quality - its ` poetically elevated, stylised' character, which stands in contrast to the visually realistic approach of the cinema. Since the viewers' `suspension of disbelief' works less consciously with regards to film than theatre, Shakespearean language is often an unwanted disruption of their illusion and a ground for criticism. Consequently, according to his approach (and that of scholars such as Marowitz or Jan Kott), a film maker would do better to adapt it to the cinematic principle of `talk naturally' than to preserve it out of `bardolatry'.
Mode of Transformation
If, as Prümm argues, Shakespeare films suffer from the clash between the cinematic demand for visual `realism' and completeness of the illusion, and the poetic language of the original text which undermines that illusion, then Jarman has tried to resolve this clash from the other end, as it were. Rather than make the language more realistic, he has made the pictures more poetic. Interestingly enough, Prümm mentions Jarman's Tempest as an exception to the rule, saying that:
*[Contrasting the assumption made so far], some Shakespeare films use techniques of alienation, which do not let this illusion of reality come up at ll. [...]; Derek Jarman, too, through optic and acoustic effects, makes his Tempest film (GB, 1980) a fantastic dream structure right from the beginning.*
Jarman's `non-realistic' choice of location, the anachronistic and pastiched setting and costumes (Prospero's `frizzy hair-do' is such an anachronistic element, as is the Georgian decor of the part of the abbey the film was shot in, or the sudden appearance of modern-day sailors at the wedding masque ), the fractured space he presents us with - all these are ways of preventing the illusion of a `real' world which we so often succumb to when going to the cinema. Temporarily, this illusion may work, but - as a good magician should - Jarman regularly reminds us that we are being deceived, that we are in a `dream'. Within these deliberately dream-like, `magical' surroundings, Shakespeare's poetic language is perfectly in place.
`Raising of the Level of Depiction'
The way Jarman employs light and sound also works to make the dreamy character of the film more complete. As Crowl noticed, the sounds of heavy, gasped breathing underlying the initial dream-scene *periodically recur in the film [...] and serve as a reminder that the film conceives of the play as a product of Prospero's nightmare/dream vision.*
Similarly, the `real' shore of the island, which Ferdinand arrives at, is set in the same tone of blue as the `dreamt' sea of the storm at the beginning.
There are more examples; after all, one of the things always attributed to Jarman is *the deftness and lightness of a painter's hand*. Again, these examples are merely meant to exemplify the point.
Presentation by the `Filmic Narrator'
Before analysing the films he looks at, H.-J. Prümm elaborates in some detail on the possible `narrative situations' of Shakespeare films. He shows that, being at least partly `epic' in nature, they can be told from different cinematic `narrative perspectives', just as narrative texts can. The camera assumes the role of `narrator', and it can be `neutral' (the centred, static camera recording a staged performance, as in the BBC's Hamlet), explicitly `auctorial' (e.g. Welles' Othello), or `external' - directing what the viewer perceives and how, but not presenting itself through a `voice from the off' or other techniques, as in most modern Shakespeare films (Polanski's Macbeth, Brook's King Lear, etc.).
Although one of the requirements for an `external' filmic narrator, according to Prümm, is *a sign system which does not destroy the illusion [...] a realistic space, [...] realistically drawn, `believable' characters and a language which [...] comes close to everyday language*, Jarman's camera clearly assumes the same position - his `sign system' is not realistic but, one might say, `realistically dreamy'.
The filmic narrator drifts through the plot, keeping up its basic structure, but shifting back and forth between apparently unconnected locations and events - just as consciousness can and does in dreams. It can even take us where Shakespeare did not, into Ariel's enforced memory of the time before Prospero came to the island, when he was bound by Sycorax, and Caliban needed to do nothing but lie contentedly at his mother's breast. (While many critics reproached this added scene for its `unnecessary' shocking-value, I think it does fulfil a purpose in making the harshness of Prospero's reminder way more comprehensible.)
Otherwise, it employs the same means as in more conventional externally narrated Shakespeare films: close-ups for focus on single characters, total shots for scenes when the whole is more important, rapid cuts for associative connection (as in the dream scene at the beginning), etc.
2.3 Summary
While being much less extensive and exact than Prümm, I hope I have been able to show, by applying them to Jarman's film, that his categories hold valid. Even in a Shakespeare film which is a `free version' rather than an `adaptation' - which I think this one is, but, as should also have become plain, that does not make it `bad' - there are aspects to this `freedom' which are not really free, but demanded by the change of medium from text and stage to film. Only by separating them from those changes which are definitely deliberate can one classify the degree of a film's distance from the original text in halfway `objective' terms; and only on the grounds of such terms can the discussion about where this distance ensues from, if and how well the film works despite (or because of) it be fruitful.
Personally, I think Jarman's Tempest works precisely because he dared to make it different, to encourage new readings of Prospero and his relationship to the other characters in the play.
Some of these readings are surely attributable to the avant-garde, `camp', and `queer' background Jarman comes from. But I think it oversimplified to read his film merely in this light, which some critics have done.
Conclusion: Jarman's Tempest - A `Queer' Shakespeare?
With someone as obviously personal in most of his films as Jarman, it is tempting to view his version of The Tempest as, first and foremost, a `queer' or `gay' reading of the play. To some extent, this is justified. After all, it was an explicit project of his to work at *reclaiming the queer past* through his films, constructing, as Kate Chedgzoy puts it, *a contempory gay cultural politics by means of a dialogue with the history of gay cultural production.* Thus his films on gay personalities of history; thus, too, his reading of the love expressed in Shakespeare's sonnets (presented in The Angelic Conversation), as homosexual love. But he also made it plain that he did not mean to prove Shakespeare a homosexual, concentrating instead on *the traces of homosexual desire which he finds inscribed in the poems, rather than on the lived experience often presumed to have generated them.*
Such `traces of homosexual desire' can also be found in The Tempest and, with regards to Prospero and Ariel at least, they have been worked into Jarman's film to some extent. On the other hand, he did not work all those traces into the film, contrary to his earlier plans *to present Antonio and Sebastian as `hysterical Queens' and to bring out the `homosexual overtones' of Trinculo's `misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows'.*
Yet, some critics have read Jarman's Tempest predominantly in this light. Colin MacCabe, after drawing the analogy between Ariel and the secret service of the Elizabethan state, goes on to say that:
*Jarman's homosexuality is what leads him to concentrate on the repression at the heart of the English state from which all other repressions follow. The complete containment of sexuality within sanctified heterosexual marriage, the rigorous policing of desire [...]*
Although Jarman did indeed feel that *the whole of the modern British state is founded on the repression of homosexuality*, I think it overly simplistic to see the film as promoting merely this idea. (His version of Edward II focuses on it much more strongly.) The (albeit brief) look at Caliban's and Miranda's characters are but one instance of the film's invitation to be read in various ways - all of them critical of established concepts, but not all of them gay or even `queer'. The ideas presented on magic (which I have not looked at in detail although they would have been worth it) and the psychological aspect of resolving personal conflicts by `dreaming' their resolve are two more such instances. What Jarman mainly wanted to convey, and I think has been very successful in conveying, is that *The Tempest* is a very open play, and it is up to the reader (or, in this case, viewer), to pick his or her personal reading(s) - for reception, or new production.
*Then, all feelings of victory replaced by exhausted emptiness, I returned to the hut and slept a long, black, and dreamless sleep.* (Tad Williams, Caliban's Hour, p.69-70)
4.1 Appendix: Original wordings of the translated quotations from Prümm
Footnote page Original Wording
9 37 Ganz gleich ob abgekreidet oder verteidigt,stets werden diese Veränderungen bei der Verfilmung undifferenziert nebeneinandergestellt, tritt Schelte etwa für den Verzicht auf eine Figur neben Tadel für den Realismus des Bildes, die Verteidigung z.B. von Lücken im Dialog neben die Rechtfertigung „filmischer“ Aussagemittel.
31 111 Nicht nur der expressionistische Film [...], sondern auch manch Shakespeare-Verfilmung bedient sich verfremdender Mittel, die diese Illusion von Realität gar nicht erst aufkommen lassen [...]; auch Derek Jarman macht seine Tempest-Verfilmung (GB, 1980) durch optische und akustische Effekte von Beginn an zu einem phantastischen Traumgebilde.
35 140 Wesentlicher Bestandteil dieser vorgetäuschten Wirklichkeit ist ein Zeichensystem, das die Illusion nicht zerstört. Dazu gehören vor allem ein realistischer Raum [...], realistisch gezeichnete, „glaubhafte“ Figuren und eine Sprache, die, wenn schon nicht vom Inhalt, so doch von der Form der Alltagssprache zumindest nahe kommt.
4.2 Sources:
- Bies, Werner: *Derek Jarman's The Tempest A Selected Bibliography.* Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, VI: 1(Jun. 1981), 9/ 12./ VI: 2(Dec. 1981), 3..
- Boose, Lynda E. and Richard Burt, eds.: Shakespeare, the Movie. London/New York: Routledge, 1997
- Chedgzoy, Kate. Shakespeare's Queer Children: Sexual politics and contemporary culture. Manchester/New York: Manchester UP; 1995
- Clapson, Nick: *Preserving a Harlekin.* (Internet)
- Crowl, Samuel: *Stormy Weather. A New Tempest on Film.* Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, V:1 (Dec 1980), 1/ 5/ 6/ 7.
- Drakakis, John, ed. Alternative Shakespeares Vol. 1. London/New York: Routledge, 1996.
- MacCabe, Colin: *A Post-National European Cinema: A Consideration of Derek Jarman's The Tempest and Edward II*. Duncan Petrie, ed.: Screening Europe: Image and Identity in Contemporary European Cinema. London: BFI, 1992, pp. 9-19.
- Marowitz, Charles. Recycling Shakespeare. London: Macmillan, 1991
- Petrie, Duncan J: *Jarman, Derek.* International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. (V. 2, pp 487-91)
- Prümm, Hans-Joachim. Film Script: William Shakespeare: Eine Untersuchung der Film-Bearbeitungen von Shakespeares Dramen am Beispiel ausgewählter Tragödien-Verfilmungen von 1945-1985. Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner, 1997. (Münchener Studien zur neueren englischen Literatur, Bd. 3)