Prospero At Breakfast

Top-billed, you might expect a grand hotel
while cast and crew make do with B&Bs;
but no, you’re stuck in ‘Braemar’ (vacancies,
bathrooms en-suite). You wake to Prospero’s cell
spruced-up in Laura Ashley; Ariel
deflowering Miranda next door. Please
Do Not Disturb, some hope! Breakfast, you squeeze
two cups from one tea-bag, slick hair with gel,
then enter with rehearsed panache; a head
or two might turn and whisper to a friend,
‘Who's that?’ ‘Not Alan Bates.’ ‘I think he’s dead.’

Still, you tame the matinee; gradually

the sniggering kids grow hushed, and by the end
they clap and cheer to set an old magician free.

This was written towards the end of September 2004. I remember exactly what sparked it off. Sarah, my daughter, and her friend Maddy had gone to see a production of the 'The Tempest' at Buxton Opera House as they were studying the play for 'A' Level.

Buxton Opera House

They came back buzzing with enthusiasm and I recall talking to them about Prospero, Miranda and Shakespeare as a magician. Next morning I got up as usual before everyone else with the intention of clearing a few work emails but ended up instead thinking about where in Buxton the cast and crew might have stayed; I wondered about the life of the travelling actor who was the Duke of Milan one moment then the victim of weak tea and overcooked sausages the next. No emails got answered; I wrote this sonnet instead.

It was shortlisted for an Envoi Poetry Competition by Roger Elkin and Quincy and I decided to use it as the title piece for my first chapbook. Not all of it is fictional, the Braemar Guest House does exist, though I can't vouch for the brand of interior decoration.

The last three lines are reminiscences of trips to the University Theatre in Newcastle while I was at school. I remember a restless and noisy audience of kids finally being silenced by the power of Prospero's epilogue.

'Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.'