The Mock Tempest
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''The Mock Tempest, or the Enchanted Castle'' is a Restoration era stage play, a
parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...
by Thomas Duffet; it premiered in 1674, and was first printed in 1675 by the bookseller William Cademan. In creating his
farce Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical comedy, physical humor; the use of delibe ...
, Duffet's target was not Shakespeare's famous play, but the adaptation of it that
John Dryden John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration (En ...
and Sir William Davenant wrote in the 1660s. According to critic Michael West, "There are frequent nautical metaphors, and 'more noyse and terrour than a Tempest at Sea'...."


Background

The first
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and listed building, Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) an ...
burned down on 25 January 1672. Its occupant, the
King's Company The King's Company was one of two enterprises granted the rights to mount theatrical productions in London, after the London theatre closure 1642, London theatre closure had been lifted at the start of the English Restoration. It existed from 166 ...
, suddenly faced a major problem, and a great disadvantage compared to the rival
Duke's Company The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During that period, theatres ...
. One way in which the King's troupe responded to their situation was by staging parodies of their rivals' popular successes. One of those successes was '' The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island'', the Dryden–Davenant adaptation that had first been staged in 1667. In 1674 that work had been mounted in a new musical or "operatic" version, prepared by Thomas Shadwell. Duffet, a minor dramatist and songwriter, produced his lampoon before the end of that year; ''The Mock Tempest'' likely premiered on 19 November 1674. "The Design of this Play was to draw the Town from the Duke's Theatre, who for a considerable amount of time had frequented that admirable reviv'd comedy called ''The Tempest''."


The Plot

Duffet's ''Mock Tempest'' is set not in any exotic location, but securely in the London familiar to its audience, specifically the lower reaches of contemporaneous London society. The storm that opens the play, in both the Shakespeare and Dryden–Davenant versions, is replaced in Duffet's by a riot in a brothel. Mother Stephania, a bawd, leads her cohort of pimps, prostitutes, and aristocratic customers in a valiant but vain effort to drive off an assault from the town's apprentices. Holland's Leaguer''.">Holland's Leaguer (play)#The brothel">Holland's Leaguer''.The local watch carries off all the participants to Bridewell prison (the "enchanted castle"); there, the jailkeeper Prospero Whiffe reveals that the raid on the brothel was inspired by his ethereal spirit Ariel, a pickpocket. The parody goes on to mangle the romances of Prospero's two daughters (called Dorinda and Miranda, in Dryden and Davenant's adaptation). Dryden and Davenant made Miranda and Dorinda ignorant of the opposite sex; Duffet's "Dorinda and Miranda" are ''very'' familiar with men, but get confused by the concept of a "husband": :''Dorinda:'' Husband, what's that? :''Miranda:'' Why that's a thing like a man (for aught I know) with a great pair of horns upon his head, and my father said 'twas made for women, look ye. :''Dorinda:'' What, must we ride to water upon't, sister? :''Miranda:'' No, no, it must be our slave, and give us golden clothes, pray, that other men may lie with us in a civil way, and then it must father our children and keep them. :''Dorinda:'' And when we are so old and ugly that nobody else will lie with us, must it lie with us itself? :''Miranda:'' Aye, that it must, sister. Along the way, Duffet mocks Davenant's musical adaptation of ''
Macbeth ''The Tragedy of Macbeth'', often shortened to ''Macbeth'' (), is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, estimated to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambiti ...
'', staged in 1664 but first printed in 1674. (Duffet also ridicules Davenent's ''Macbeth'' in his Epilogue to his burlesque of Elkanah Settle's '' The Empress of Morocco'', another work of 1674.) The Duke of Mantua has a son who is a member of the
Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
, satirically named "Quakero." The play is wide in scope, touching on "drunkenness, violence, mutilation, cannibalism; of pimping, prostitution, adultery, incest; of hypocrisy, cowardice, torture, execution; of urine, vermin, venereal disease; of deviance, dissolution, and death". The last act of Duffet's play features a parody of Ariel's song "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" from the final scene of ''The Tempest''. Duffet's version is "Where good ale is, there suck I". The parody version was sung by Betty Mackerel, an orange vender who was promoted to the stage. ''The Mock Tempest'' may have been revived in 1682.


A modern version

A modern adaptation of ''The Mock Tempest'' was mounted by Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 2007.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mock Tempest, The English Restoration plays Restoration comedy 1674 plays Plays and musicals based on The Tempest Plays set in the 17th century West End plays Plays by Thomas Duffet