Thread by @bfletcherwatson

About a decade ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in honour of Shakespeare's birthday, here's what I found.

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https://twitter.com/memilies/status/1782751566165942751

Some context: in June 1949 at Worcester College, Oxford, Nevill Coghill (1899-1980) co-directed 'The Tempest' with Graham Binns, and a student cast. Coghill’s production has gone down in history due to one particular directorial decision at the close of the play.

🧚‍♂️ According to Stoppard, when Ariel finishes his last speech, he runs to the edge of the lake and keeps going, pelting over the surface of the water. He disappears up into the trees. A firework shoots into the sky, where it showers sparks over the scene. 🎆 Blackout.

Tom Stoppard has made this scene famous, retelling it many times, including in his 1988 Whidden Lecture titled 'The Event and the Text' at McMaster University, Ontario and in this blog: moreintelligentlife.co.uk/blog/maggie-fe…

“Stoppard retells this story with some frequency to draw the distinction between 'drama' and 'theatre' and to emphasize that he is forever aware of the fact that the drama he writes is a text meant to be staged as 'theatre'.”
Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard (2012, p.25)

“Stoppard’s biographer, Ira Nadel, wrote that for him this was ‘the essence of theatre – imagination and the freedom to create a scene that makes the text an event.’”
Loving and Writing, Writing and Loving (2011, pp.85-86)

But Stoppard wasn't at the lakeside.

He was 11 in June 1949. He admits it was "a production which I never saw myself" ('Tom Stoppard in Conversation', 1994, p.200) although it clearly inspired him when he heard about it from theatre colleagues.

From the same book: "Surprisingly often, over the years, the memory of this production would come up. The director I worked with, the designer... – it was something which had stayed in their memory. This was now 30 years ago, and it’s still a vignette which comes up..."

When I wrote to Stoppard, he was very clear that "I’m afraid I wasn’t there. Peter Wood (director, now retired) described it to me... The way he described it, Ariel ran across the water towards the opposite shore where the dusk swallowed him just as the firework rocket went up."

So I wrote to Peter Wood. Sadly, a reply from his carer said he was suffering from dementia and could not respond. So I decided to track down surviving cast and crew to get a first-hand account. As you can imagine, this wasn't easy 70 years later.

CAST
David William as Prospero
Ralda Nash as Miranda
Charles Hodgson as Ariel
John Schlesinger as Trinculo
A. William J. Becker as Caliban
Nigel Davenport as Gonzalo
Mary Moore as Ceres

The cast also included Bill Gaskill, Jack May, and Sir Thomas Willes Chitty.

William, Nash, Hodgson, Schlesinger, Davenport and May had all died. Chitty passed away just before my letter arrived, but Lady Chitty kindly replied.

So it's not quite as Stoppard tells it: Ariel runs out into the lake to wave farewell, then runs back to the same shore in darkness, not straight across the lake - before the firework goes up? The plot thickens...

And if you look at the text, of course Ariel doesn't have a last line before he exits, nor is this the final scene of the play. From Act 5, scene i: folger.edu/explore/shakes…

So what was going on dramaturgically? Did Coghill make some judicious edits to allow Ariel the final line, or did the play carry on after this moment? How did Hodgson cross the lake - in one straight line ending in the firework, or back and forth?

Time to ask a critic, perhaps.

Irving Wardle, long-time theatre critic for the Observer, Times and Independent, told me he was cast "in the dance of the sunburnt sicklemen [probably Act 4's masque] but my tutor intervened and put a stop to it as I'd already wasted too much time on univ theatricals."

But he remembers "Ariel running weightlessly across the lake into the distance while Bill Becker, as Caliban, arose from his lair – a tank sunk into the lake at the closest point to the spectators – and waved a farewell to his fellow spirit..."

"As Charles Hodgson was graceful and fast moving, while Bill was twisted and clumsy, this moment of parting contact, as if between equals, was very touching – as though they were making contact for the first time at the moment of lasting separation."

So Wardle, like Stoppard, says that Hodgson ran across the lake, but adds a beautiful detail about Becker's additional appearance as Caliban, waving "farewell to his fellow spirit". Let's contact 'ban, ’ban, Ca-caliban!

Becker, a critic and film producer after Oxford, emails me: "Indeed, I did play Caliban (and made my first appearance by climbing out of the lake from a submerged tank) and I remember very well Ariel's dash across the water..."

"Neville Coghill (who directed) had caused a long dock to be built about an inch below the surface of the lake and it was on this that Hodgson ran, kicking up little splashes and lit by a large spotlight on the shore behind him."

No new details here, and even the myriad mentions of the play in Schlesinger's biography, Hodgson's obituary, Kenneth Tynan's diaries, John Gielgud's letters, Shirley Hughes' memoirs and Coghill's Festschrift don't clear up the mystery of how it was achieved.

But one more letter arrives, from Bill Gaskill, and all falls into place (as you might expect from such a keen-eyed director.

He even includes a map!

There's so much more to say, but I'm working on an article about this very special moment in Shakespeare.
Thanks for reading!