ABSTRACT
Unlike Anthony Munday's treatment of his players, when Shakespeare's characters embark on an inner play that activity is made to relate to and reflect on the rest of the play in a complex of associations that often makes direct evidence of contemporary performance practice difficult to disentangle, as for instance in the case of Ariel and his fellow spirit-actors in The Tempest . There are a number of references to them in terms of contemporary performers. Prospera talks of Ariel's 'quality', as in Hamlet, the term for the profession. Despite his magical abilities, Ariel goes off to change (I.ii. 304) like any stage actor, and re-emerges (I. 316) dressed as a water nymph, and later he undertakes two other boy-player roles, as the harpy and as Ceres in the masque. Though Ferdinand sees the results as 'a most majestical vision and/Harmoniously charming', Prospera as author and stage manager takes a more prosaic view, of a 'trick', 'vanity of mine art' performed by 'the rabble' and 'his meaner fellows'. Ariel too is occasionally truculent, as well as obedient, like one bound in indentures and chafing to be released. If Prospera is Shakespeare's own valediction, and the focus shifting from the inadequacies of actors to the problems of the playwright, it is tempting to see Ariel as a portrait of an apprentice and a celebration of the boy player 's positive capacities as a highly skilled vehicle for the poet's intentions, interposing the minimum of irrelevant personality, in contradistinction to the adult player, as say Lucianus in Hamlet with his 'damnable faces' . Prospera says of his performance as the harpy -
a grace it had, devouring. Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated In what thou hadst to say.
