ABSTRACT
Antony and Cleopatra has at least forty-five small speaking parts, most of which claimed our attention in the last chapter. The Tempest has six. Two of them are spirits who, enacting Iris and Juno to Ariel’s Ceres, present a vision of happiness which suddenly vanishes into thin air; they could scarcely be more peripheral. Two others, the courtiers Adrian and Francisco, prove superfluous and even something of a theatrical embarrassment once the court party is in the grip of Prosperous enchantment. Shakespeare could not do without them. A pair of attendant gentlemen, together with an elderly counsellor, plus a not very competent butler and his bottle-washer, constitute the very smallest retinue that could accompany the King of Naples together with his brother and the tributary Duke of Milan on a sea voyage.1 On their first appearance (2.1) they bid fair to be well-contrasted small parts. The ‘cockerel’ Adrian is learning the art of courtiership from the ‘old cock’ Gonzalo: he picks his words precisely, hastens to efface Sebastian’s heavy sarcasm in a compliment, acts the eager ingénu who has to be told Carthage and Tunis are one. Francisco holds back till he can assure Alonso of the likelihood that his son is safe, which he does by a single striking speech that in its forceful verbs and insistent rhythm reproduces the effort it describes, of swimming in a rough sea. But in the last scene, since they are completely outside the emotional experience of the ‘three men of sin’, Francisco and Adrian can have no more than purelyand literally-supportive roles.
