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Today I took a trip to London to see The Tempest at the Globe Theatre http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/. I was especially interested because it features the outgoing Artistic Director Mark Rylance, and this production uses just three actors, playing all the parts. As I had heard, it was indeed absolutely stunning. But first, as I waited for the 2pm matinee to start, I sat by the Thames to eat a sandwich and listen to the radio via the earpiece on my phone, anxious to hear whether the shuttle would land safely. I did not want to begin the story of a shipwreck in the knowledge of a recent space-wreck. But, as we know, all went well and the crew were safe. Why am I writing about The Tempest on this list? Because I find that again and again this play comes into my thinking about virtuality, from my second novel 'Water', over ten years old now, to my most recent essay. Because the issues it struggles with are familiar ones to those of us who inhabit cyberspace: the fascination with abstract thought versus an occcasional reluctance to accept that we still have bodies and earthly needs. In the programme notes Rylance explains how this production is inspired by the book 'Prospero's Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest' by Noel Cobb (now out of print) which takes a Jungian approach and describes the main theme of the play as 'the vital necessity of earthiness as a counterbalance to intellect'. So it is that we see Prospero painfully come to terms with his retreat into the life of the mind, books, philosophy, alchemy, at the expense of an acknowledgement of physical existence. Early in the play Prosperp is so desperate to deny the animal part of his nature (the 'savage and deformed slave' Caliban) that as he speaks he is at the same time struggling to cover Caliban with a carpet, throwing his whole body onto the writhing slave to still him, make him invisible, forget him. Here is an excerpt from a review by David Wootton - and if this isn't recognizable to the multiple virtual personalities amongst us I don't know what is: The play is about the power of words, about illusions, about the difficulty in telling the dream from the real. And that's exactly what we got. Over and over again I found myself thinking "This is magic" because I knew that something astonishing was happening in front of my eyes. One could say that Rylance has simply taken the play as an excuse to present a bravura version of his own preferred style of acting: instead of performing unstable, internally conflicted, characters who seem constantly about to slide out of character he gets to perform a whole series of characters and constantly slides into and out of each character. All of the characters become parts of the self, and the whole play becomes a performance within the dramatist's psyche. If you left Olivier's Othello thinking you had met Othello, I left the Globe with no sense of having met Prospero; but it did occur to me that I had met Shakespeare. http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000430.php In the end, order is restored and Prospero vows to throw away his alchemical staff and book - the equivalent of our vowing to turn off our computers, perhaps - with the implication that he is glad to be leaving the island and returning to 'real life': But this rough magic I here abjure, and, when I have required Some heavenly music, which even now I do, To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book. But one wonders whether that real life will be as deeply engaging as virtuality or whether he will soon, as Caliban describes earlier in the play, 'cry to dreame againe'. Sue ********** Vote on: - Should WDL switch from email to a blog? - Follow the link below to vote: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/surveys.cgi?A=hp&LMGT1=WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE Closing date: 14/08/2005 To alter your subscription settings, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html To unsubscribe, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE