In block letters, red, Felix covers his whiteboard with the class findings.
“You’ve done well,” he says. “You’ve spotted eight…” He pauses. “Eight unique incarceration events.” Let them swallow the phrase this time, he thinks, and they do: there are no scoffing comments. “There’s a ninth prison, however.”
Puzzled looks. Skepticism from 8Handz: “No plaguey way!”
Felix waits. Watches them counting, pondering.
“You gonna tell us?” PPod asks at last.
“After we’ve done the play,” says Felix. “Once our revels are ended. Unless, of course, someone guesses it before then.” They won’t guess, is his bet, but he’s been wrong before. “Now, let’s look at the jailers. Three characters are imprisoned by someone who isn’t Prospero: Sycorax, on the island, by the officials of Algiers; Ariel, in a pine, by Sycorax, and Prospero himself, by Antonio, with an assist from Alonso, first in the leaky boat and then on the island itself. Four characters if you count Miranda, but she was only three years old when she landed so she grows up on the island without feeling imprisoned by it. Then, seven individuals are imprisoned in events in which the jailer is Prospero. He would seem to be the top jailer in this play.”
“Plus he’s a slave-driver,” says Red Coyote.
“Not just with Caliban, he’s got his foot on Ariel too,” says 8Handz. “He threatens him with that oak tree. Permanent solitary. It’s inhuman.”
“Plus he’s a land stealer,” adds Red Coyote. “Suckin’ old white guy. He should be called Prospero Corp. Next thing he’ll discover oil on it, develop it, machine-gun everyone to keep them off it.”
“You’re such a poxy communist,” says SnakeEye.
“Shove it, freckled whelp,” says Red Coyote.
“No whoreson dissin’, we’re a team,” says Leggs.
Calm is called for. “I know you hold those things against Prospero,” says Felix. “Especially his treatment of Caliban.” He looks around the room: frowns.
Jaw-tightenings. Definite hostility toward Prospero. “But what are his options?”
“Options!” says Shiv. “We don’t give a—we don’t give an earth about his suckin’ options!”
“Watch it with the earth,” says Red Coyote. “Just sayin’.”
“Not everything’s about you,” says Shiv.
“Give Prospero a chance. Let’s hear about the options,” says Bent Pencil mildly. He likes to play the man of reason.
“I’ll spell it out,” says Felix. “Suppose the ship with King Alonso and Antonio and Ferdinand and Gonzalo had never showed up. It was blind luck that it sailed near the island on the way back from the wedding of Alonso’s daughter. Or, in the language of Prospero, it was the action of an auspicious star and Lady Fortune. But suppose that ship never arrived. There was Prospero, trapped on the island, with a young daughter and a young, stronger male who tries to have sex with her against her will. Even though Prospero has been kind to the wild-child Caliban, the grown-up Caliban turns against him.
“Nobody has a gun. Nobody has a sword. In a match of strength, Caliban could easily have killed Prospero. In fact, that’s what he wants to do as soon as he sees the chance. So, does Prospero have the right of self-defense?”
Mutters. Scowls.
“Let’s vote on it,” says Felix. “Yes?”
Most hands go up, reluctantly. Red Coyote holds out.
“Red Coyote?” says Felix. “He should allow Caliban to run loose and run the risk of being murdered by him?”
“Shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” says Red Coyote. “It’s not his island.”
“Did he choose to land there?” says Felix. “He’s hardly an invader, he’s a castaway.”
“He’s still a slave-driver,” says Red Coyote.
“He could keep Caliban penned up all the time,” says Felix. “He could kill him.”
“Says it himself, he wants the work out of him,” says Red Coyote. “Picking up the firewood, washing the dishes. All of that. Plus, he does the same thing to Ariel. Makes him work, against his will. Won’t give him liberty.”
“Granted,” says Felix. “But he still has the right to defend himself, no? And the single way he can do that is through his magic, which is effective only as long as he has Ariel running errands for him. If tethering Ariel on a magic string —a temporary magic string—was the only weapon you had, you’d do the same.
Yes?”
This time there’s general agreement. “Okay,” says WonderBoy, “but why put the others through all that? The harpy scene, the craziness. Why doesn’t he just kill the enemies and take their ship? Leave Caliban on the island, sail back to Milan or whatever?”
Because there wouldn’t be a play, thinks Felix. Or it would be a very different play. But if he wants the characters to stay real for them, he can’t use that ploy.
“I’m sure he was tempted,” he says. “He probably felt like bashing their brains in. Who wouldn’t, after what they did to him?” Widespread nodding.
“However, if he enacted that kind of revenge he might get his dukedom back, but since Antonio made a deal with King Alonso whereby Milan is under the rule of Naples, then whoever inherits the kingdom of Naples will naturally bear a grudge. They wouldn’t take kindly to their King and his son mysteriously disappearing, and the sailors would talk. The new ruler of Naples would kick Prospero out again or else kill him, and bring in someone else as the Duke of Milan. Failing that, Naples would go to war against Milan. Naples is bigger.
Milan risks losing. What’s Prospero’s best plan?”
“Ferdinand marries Miranda,” says Bent Pencil. “That makes Miranda the Queen of Naples, and she brings the dukedom into a union with Naples. Peace with honor. It’s what was called a dynastic marriage,” he explains to the others.
“Got it in one,” says Felix. “But Prospero isn’t a tyrant: he doesn’t want to enforce a marriage for political reasons, the way Alonso has with his own daughter. He doesn’t want to marry Miranda off as part of a cold-hearted flesh- trade deal. Instead, he wants the young folks—Ferdinand and Miranda—to fall in love, genuinely. So he uses his magic to arrange it. Or at least to help it along.” Nods: they approve.
“I wouldn’t do that to my kid either,” says Leggs. “Marry her off. Sucks.”
Felix smiles. “Prospero also needs to create a situation in which Alonso will accept this marriage,” he says. “Ordinarily he wouldn’t, because Naples is a kingdom and Milan is only a dukedom. Alonso doubtless wanted to marry his son, Ferdinand, into a big, rich kingdom. He’d be more powerful that way. And Ferdinand would have had to marry whoever his father picked.”
“It was the law, in those times,” says Bent Pencil. “You had to go along.”
“Poxy law,” says VaMoose.
“So Prospero makes Alonso think Ferdinand is drowned, and then he does the big reveal,” says 8Handz. “Look! He’s alive! Cool.”
“And the King’s so blissed out he’d let Ferdinand marry a frog if that’s what he wanted,” says SnakeEye.
“Exactly,” says Felix. “On the one hand, Ferdinand’s pretend death is a punishment for Alonso—it’s revenge, it causes anguish—but on the other hand, it’s a calculated stratagem.”
“Two birds with one stone,” says Krampus the Mennonite.
“Not too dumb,” says SnakeEye. “Good con.”
“So, is Prospero justified in what he does, considering his narrow range of options? Let’s vote again,” says Felix. “Who’s for yes?”
This time all hands go up. Felix unclenches his shoulders: relief. Prospero is absolved, at least for the time being. “We’re agreed, then,” he says. “Now let’s
talk about the enforcers.”
“Enforcers?” says Bent Pencil.
“All authority ultimately rests on force,” says Felix. “The island is a prison, and where there are prisons there have to be enforcers. Otherwise everyone inside would simply get out and run away.” Emphatic nodding.
“But there are no enforcers listed in the cast,” says Bent Pencil. “In ‘The Persons of the Play.’ ” He opens his text to the page, consults it.
“They’re present nonetheless,” says Felix. “They do the pinching and the cramping when Caliban has been mouthy, and the hunting of Stephano and Trinculo, disguised as spirit hounds.”
“That’s not Ariel?” says 8Handz. “I thought it was him.”
“Look again. Ariel commands them,” says Felix. “It’s right here. My goblins.
That’s who they are: Prospero’s goblins. They aren’t listed in the cast because they were played by whoever wasn’t already onstage in that scene. You put on a mask and, bingo, you’re a goblin. So everyone in our play will have two roles: their own role and one of Prospero’s goblins. They’re the agents of control, but also they’re the enablers of vengeance and retribution. They do the hands-on dirty work.”
Ah yes. He can see how it could unfold: Tony and Sal, surrounded by goblins.
Herded by them. Menaced by them. Reduced to a quivering jelly. Hark, they
roar, he thinks. Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour / lies at my mercy all mine enemies. He looks around the classroom, smiling benevolently.
“Neat,” says 8Handz. “I get it. Goblins ‘R’ Us.”
