Having started in October, with a brief hiatus, I finished my #Tempest #SlowShakespeare daily blog yesterday. Roughly 90K words (that includes the text of the play!) and 180 entries. Random observations about the play will follow... https://twitter.com/starcrossed2018/status/1265177923864100864

I've never really liked Prospero. I'm not sure I like him now. But he's *fascinating* - so messed up, so vulnerable, conflicted. Desperate to love and be loved; enduringly wounded by his brother's betrayal. And all of that with almost no soliloquies...

It's tempting to lump Alonso in with Antonio, as having enabled Prospero's deposition and therefore Bad. But the King of Naples ends up being one of the play's most sympathetic characters, a moving study in grief, and paternal love, who swiftly repents of his past misdeeds.

And it quickly becomes apparent that Antonio, P's brother, is weak, selfish, & easily led, but not outright evil? Sebastian, Alonso's brother, is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, however, slippery and sneering. The characters remain distinct, even if they're both 'the villains'.

You'd think that the goddesses in the masque would all sound the same, but no: Ceres doesn't sound like Iris doesn't sound like Juno. They describe landscape differently, swooping from above, or at ground level. (And *how* Miltonic is the masque, and Tempest generally?!)

Masques. Finding a contemporary idiom is hard; the #Tempest masque isn't the full court spectacular, but we have to imagine much music, much dancing, and much spangling & gauze... (Modern analogue for court masques, and only a little exaggerated: Olympics opening ceremony)

Also, just because: the amazing @JadeAnouka as Ariel, with attendant spirits, @DonmarWarehouse - adored the fishy masks here.

It seemed important, as well as really enriching, to write about Ariel as they/them. Initially I found it hard to remember but I got used to it, and 'he' (or indeed 'she') jars a bit now. Collecting Ariel pictures has been extremely fun! Love Ariel, their strangeness, pathos, wit

Ferdinand's a *nice* boy, isn't he? he and Florizel in Winter's Tale (surely written for the same actor?) are the open-hearted opposites of Claudio, Bertram, & esp. Posthumus. Loves & is loved by his father, one reason why he and Miranda 'match'... ( @TheRSC 2016; @JSTheatre 2020)

Pictorial tradition of Miranda is interesting (& others know much more than me, @sally_barnden) much C19 some-day-my-prince-will-come gazing out to sea. Now wilder, tougher, bright, curious, loving, wondering.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1865); Mariah Gale & @SirPatStew @RSC 2006