William Shakespeare
La Tempesta

Once upon a time, there was the village square: it was there for everyone, even I was there.

Like a kitten in spring exploring the flowering meadows, I wandered happily and receptively along with other kids like me; all eager to understand and be understood. I was my mother's bane, constantly hearing “Cris you're out too much, enough now!” or “Still in the square!? Study and don't waste time!”

No mom... I wasn't wasting time.

The square in my village when I was about twelve years old was a real social laboratory where different generations exchanged pieces of their lives. It was a sharing of time and space among the most diverse lives of the most diverse ages, and what, from time to time, happened could take the most improbable turns and feature the most absurd characters (it was memorable when the elders challenged us young squirts to a game of “lippa” where, naturally, they wiped the floor with us).

Loves were born and drunken acoustic jams, Rightists and Leftists shouted at each other ending the afternoon in camaraderie and wine and then more fights over a stolen sticker, water balloons, paternalistic advice, first encounters with drugs, doubts about God's existence...

In short, we were all together, from twelve to eighty, in a place that was a theater of the most diverse themes which, inevitably, intertwined with each other in a whirlwind that seemed endless.

“The Tempest,” written and first performed in 1611, is the last play written by Shakespeare (or at least, the last completely composed by him). It tells the story of Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, who, exiled from his possessions, lives a life of hardship on a remote island with his daughter Miranda and the wild Caliban (the only native of the territory). However, Prospero is also a master of the magical arts and, thanks to these and the help of Ariel (spirit of the Air and servant of the Duke, waiting to be freed), he manages to unleash a storm and wreck on the island the ship carrying his brother Antonio (usurper of his throne), Alonso (King of Naples) and his brother Sebastian (Antonio's accomplices), Ferdinand (Alonso's son), Gonzalo (an old and noble counselor), Trinculo (the court jester), Stefano (a drunken butler), and the entire crew. The true Duke of Milan's intentions are obviously of revenge, but, during the story, also thanks to the budding love between his daughter and Ferdinand (cunningly plotted by Prospero), he will change his plans, opting for a peaceful reconciliation with Antonio and Alonso in exchange for the return of his throne.

For a long time, perhaps because this fairytale drama was the Bard's last effort, “The Tempest” (and especially the character of Prospero) has been viewed as the great epitaph that Shakespeare composed for his life (both artistic and personal) which he felt slipping away. Prospero indeed is an old, wise, educated king who observes through a lens of serene bitterness the mystery of human existence and who, in his actions, is guided by the polar star of temperance ("I side with the most noble reason. The deeds of virtue are rarer than those of revenge").

But "The Tempest," like my village square, is a place where many things happen, and many topics are welded and intersected with each other: it would truly be limiting (if not wrong) to approach this work solely in that light.

Prospero (like Alonso, for that matter) is primarily a Duke, and even if the story unfolds mostly in other ways, Shakespeare puts the problem of how the Prince should reign and how he must continually seek a balance between the man and the ruler into play, if not centrally, at least across. A bit of regret and self-reproach is evident when the Duke of Milan recalls that: "I, poor man, my library was already a duchy too wide", thus leaving free rein to Antonio.

But Prospero, thanks to his unceasing studies, is also a prodigious magician. In a historical period when the boundary between science and magic was very thin, and a true transition from medieval beliefs to the scientific method was underway, the Duke of Milan seems almost to position himself in the middle: he uses the systematization and deepening of a scientist to arrive at the knowledge of a sorcerer.

Therefore, a Prince, magician, but Prospero is also a colonizer. Here, too, Shakespeare pays great attention to a typical problem of his time, namely the "management" of tribes and peoples from other continents subjugated by the great European powers (one of the most important "sources" of the drama is the essay by Montaigne, a humanist philosopher contemporary to Shakespeare, on cannibals). Therefore, Caliban (which the stage notes describe as "savage slave and deformed") and his relationships with the island's guests acquire a considerable importance in the levels of dramaturgy.

Another major theme is music, in various respects. First of all, Ariel, in all his interventions (according to the rules of the direction), is preceded or accompanied by music, now solemn now "bizarre," which underlines his extra-human nature, not to mention then that the island is continually imbued with the sounds of the sea, fauna, and elements that, on certain occasions, seem to prefigure ensembles of concrete music. And then the very structure of the drama, with its boisterous overture, with its variations, expansions, and progressions, and with its rarefied fade-out of the epilogue seems to form a true symphonic score.

Returning to Prospero, we have said of him as Duke, magician, colonizer, but we must add theater director and playwright. This "insertion" of theater within theater is certainly a constant throughout Shakespeare's production. Prospero assigns various tasks to Ariel (who is his leading actor and set designer) regarding "complex magic shows" that serve to unleash storms or enchant his enemies (not coincidentally, the Duke addresses him after each enterprise with unequivocal words: "Did you stage the tempest I ordered you well?" or “I need you for another show, summon the company that I put you in charge"). Not only that, the love between his daughter Miranda and Ferdinand is carefully and patiently prepared by Prospero with all the care of a wise playwright.

But, another Shakespearean constant, the theatrical research is embedded in the more general (and always transitory and partial) search for meaning in human life. Even in this drama, the characters do not reach such a level of understanding (which can neither be given nor will ever be), but Shakespeare guides each character through a path in which everyone gains a greater degree of awareness compared to the beginning of the story. Over all hangs the black specter of death so much that even Prospero in the last act, when everything has gone according to his plans, states: "My Milan, where one thought in three shall be for my grave".

I could continue (what to say, for example, about the characters of Trinculo and Stefano who seem lifted verbatim from the Commedia dell'Arte or the continuous references to Virgil’s "Aeneid" and Ovid’s "Metamorphoses"), but I'll stop here. One thing is certain, for all that "The Tempest" carries with it and for the difficulty of a truly "satisfying" staging, it is hard not to agree with the great Peter Brook when he said that “The Tempest is an enigma.”

This summer, I went to visit my parents in the village and an irresistible impulse brought me to that square at sunset, when, back in the days of my childhood, it teemed with life.

I sat on a low wall and lit a cigarette.

A cat looked at me curiously and a kid walked by with his nose buried in his iPhone.

It was then that I thought of Prospero's line: "All shall vanish into thin air. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep".