6 April 1999: The Tempest

Yesterday after work and a stop at the ATM, I took the shuttle to the other end of the mall and ambled to the Tattered Cover. I was cuddled in an armchair with Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger by the time RDC showed up, and I was glad of an excuse to close the book.

It won the Booker Prize and as such I suspect I should read it, but I didn't like The Stone Virgin very much. The art history and art restoration, yes; the gangling plot, no.

I was only waiting for RDC anyway. We strolled up to the Chop House and split an appetizer and an entrée; we should have only had the entrée. We started with shrimp wrapped in prosciutto with tomato and basil and ended with tenderloin tips and mushrooms. I'd forgotten proportions at the Chop House. There were five jumpo shrimp, a regular size for an app, but the steak arrived after a huge salad and a dinner plate of cornbread and with a quanity of french fries.

We were mistaken to order that much food when we couldn't eat it all. I don't know how one person could have eaten it all, but one of us should have remembered the bounty that is a Chop House meal. Nor did we ask to take any of it with us, another mistake. Two blocks from the restaurant we passed a man who probably would have appreciated eating with us and who probably wouldn't have turned up his nose at the three quarters of a circle of cornbread, warm peppery fries, tender Angus steak and mushrooms in sauce, or salad with cucumber, peppers, and croutons, even if they came in today's version of a doggy bag.

We, with the disposable income, wasted food; he, on his bench with his possessions in a plastic bag and melanoma on his legs, needed food. We acted wrongly. Today I am going to buy someone a sandwich at lunch in addition to bringing the brownies and cookies we baked and the eggs we boiled and dyed on Easter to a shelter.

What makes me an even worse person is that I didn't even think about the waste of food until this morning, as I began to write about yesterday evening's pleasures.

After the bookstore and the restaurant, we walked (past the homeless man) to the Space Theatre at the arts complex (across from the auditorium where we heard the Bach) to see The Tempest. I have seen few of Shakespeare's plays on stage. Now that I think about it, shockingly few: UConn did a comedy every fall but I've seen nothing but "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night" and whatnot. Movies of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," "My Own Private Idaho," "Prospero's Books," "West Side Story." "Moonlighting" doing Atomic Shakespeare.

Anyway. The Space Theatre is an octagon with audience on all sides, on the floor around the stage and on levels about. It's odd, but not as twisted as UConn's Moëbius theatre. And fitting for Shakespeare, with audience around and above on all sides.

To our right sat a father with two boys; the younger one could be heard murmuring lines throughout. The only line I know is Miranda's "O brave new world that has such people in it" but the nine-year-old gave Prospero's whole "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" speech.

I had never before heard the theory that Shakespeare wrote this as a farewell to the theatre; several of Prospero's speeches support that theory. As we left, I told RDC I'd have to reread A Wrinkle in Time to find out why Mrs. Who quotes The Tempest all the time. "Is she retiring?" asked RDC.

He has startled me more than once with this insight of his. Also I always expect him to be so clever. "Yes," I told him, "she's a retired star." He wanted to know more about why she quotes Tempest, and I told him she quotes because it's easier for her than to invent her own words. Dante. Cervantes. And a little Greek, a little Portugese: L'Engle showing her various interests. So I skimmed Wrinkle when we got home; it was easy to pick out Mrs. Who's quotes because even when in English, they're italicized.

She quotes The Tempest twice; both quotes are about captivity more than retirement. You don't need to read a lot of L'Engle to know how much she loves Shakespeare, although The Other Side of the Sun makes it the most obvious with the spinster aunts playing Shakespeare and not only attempting to out-quote each other, act and scene, but baiting each other with impertinent pertinent lines.

990419: I've been meaning to copy out the Tempest quotes Madeleine L'Engle uses in A Wrinkle in Time:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on explains how "our three ladies" can manage on a two-dimensional planet.

…For that he was a spirit too delicate
To act their earthly and abhorr'd commands
Refusing their grand hests, they did confine him
By help of their most potent ministers
And in their most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned, he didst painfully remain

...is Mrs. Who's hint about how and why Mr. Murry was imprisoned.

That's funny, isn't it, just two. I had the impression there were many more than that. L'Engle also uses Macbeth, but there's not as much Tempest as I thought. And neither quote is about retiring.

Over dinner I mentioned that since a profile of Alfred Hitchcock I read recently said Phoebe Caulfield's favorite movie was "The 39 Steps," I'd therefore reread the bit when Holden sneaks home, but Phoebe doesn't peep about the movie then. I first saw "The 39 Steps" in 1997, and I haven't read Catcher in the Rye since. When I first read Catcher, I didn't know anything about VCRs; in subsequent readings, I missed that cultural reference as much as I did the song "Little Shirley Beans." So I have to reread Catcher and find out what Phoebe thinks of it. (990408: I've skimmed bits of it, which is why "and all" found its way into my writing the other day.