Patrick Stewart on Prospero (Shakespeare on Stage)

By Patrick Stewart

In each volume of the Shakespeare on Stage series, a leading actor takes us behind the scenes, recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles. They discuss their character, working through the play scene by scene, with refreshing candour and in forensic detail. The result is a masterclass on playing the role, invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare - and fascinating for audiences of the play.
In this volume, Patrick Stewart discusses playing Prospero in Rupert Goold's arctic-set 2006 production of The Tempest for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
This interview, together with the others in the series (with actors such as Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Jude Law), is also available in the collection Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles by Julian Curry, with a foreword by Trevor Nunn.
'absorbing and original... Curry's actors are often thinking and talking as that other professional performer, Shakespeare himself, might have done' TLS

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780012087

Patrick Stewart

Sir Patrick Stewart is a distinguished stage and screen actor whose illustrious career spans six decades. A classically trained theater artist who got his start at England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, Stewart’s legendary performances have garnered him three Olivier Awards, Emmy and Tony Award nominations, and a Grammy Award, among countless honors. His beloved screen work, known to audiences worldwide, includes his iconic portrayals of Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard and X-Men’s Professor Charles Xavier. Follow him on social media at @SirPatStew. 

Book preview

The Tempest is the last of Shakespeare’s four late romances. It is one of his best-loved, and strangest plays. It tells of the sorcerer Prospero, an exiled duke, who exacts revenge upon his usurpers by calling up a tempest that shipwrecks them on his island. Elements of the story have the weirdness and wonder of a fairytale. It has inspired numerous diverse analyses. Some have considered it an allegory of divine learning, with the forces of evil conquered by Prospero, using his celestial authority to restore the power of good. Usurpation is a recurring theme. Recent focus has been directed at The Tempest’s depiction of an island colonised by white Europeans, who enslave and exploit its native inhabitants. Contrasting themes of revenge and forgiveness are discussed by Patrick Stewart in the interview that follows. It can be seen as Shakespeare’s swansong: at the play’s end Prospero abandons his book and staff, the tools of his magic – Shakespeare was to leave the theatre and retire shortly afterwards. The Tempest is rich in theatrical illusion and allusion. Prospero abruptly halts the masque in Act 4, Scene 1, saying ‘Our revels now are ended; these our actors… Are melted into air,’ and immediately segues into an astonishing meditation on theatre, illusion, decay and the transitoriness of life itself, culminating with:

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest has never been my favourite Shakespeare play. I’ve admired different productions this way and that, but it has seldom previously grabbed my entrails. However, this was a staging with a difference. An opening radio gale warning led to a stunningly choreographed storm scene and shipwreck. The desert island setting was brazenly perverse, revealing a frozen polar