QUERIES AND NOTES IgI SHAKESPEARE AND SCIENCE FICTION ROBERT E. MORSBERGER Viewers of MGM's 1956 motion picture Forbidden Planet probably did not recognize that beneath all the trappings of futuristic science fiction, much of the basic plot comes from Shakespeare's early seventeenth-century play The Tem­ pest. Forbidden Planet's screenplay by Cyril Hume, from a story by Irving Block and Allen Adler, presents Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), a scientist whose powers seem as magical as Prospero's, and who with his young daughter Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/12/2/161/5125315 by guest on 29 September 2021 is the only survivor on an unknown planet where his space ship was exploring. Here he has built an astral paradise with the aid of Robby the Robot, a servant of his own creation, who combines the good services of Ariel with the ponder- ousness and grotesque appearance of Caliban and who at tlie end revolts against his master as Caliban does. Meanwhile, another ship of aerial argonauts lands on the planet, and its captain (Leslie Nielsen) provides the love interest for Dr. Morbius' now grown-up daughter Altaira (Anne Francis), who like Prospero's Miranda has never seen any man but her father. The screenplay even provides a counterpart for Stephano, the drunken butler, in the person of the spacemen's cook, who persuades the robot-Caliban to supply him with booze. While the motion picture story omits the treachery of Antonio and Sebastian and adds a pseudo-Freudian horror at the climax, it seems quite clear that whether by conscious or unconscious influence, the main situation is almost iden­ tical with Shakespeare's old play. But a moment's thought brings the idea that The Tempest was science-fiction or at least fantasy-fiction for its seventeenth- century audience, to whom the far Bermoothes were the outer realms of space. And as some modern critics complain of motion picture monsters and marvels, so classicist Ben Jonson complained of Shakespeare's presentation of wonders and objected that with Caliban, Shakespeare graced the stage with monsters. Utah State University "SIRRAH, GO HIRE ME TWENTY CUNNING COOKS" GUNNAR SJOGREN Commenting on this order of Capulet's,1 Furness writes in his Variorum edition of Romeo and Juliet: "Steevens turns up his nose aristocratically at Shakespeare for imputing 'to an Italian nobleman and his lady all the petty solicitudes of a private house, concerning a provincial entertainment' and he adds, very grandly: 'To such a bustle our author might have been witness at home; but the anxieties could not well have occurred in the family of Capulet.' Steevens had not well read the history of society, either in Italy or in England, to have fallen into the error of believing that the great were exempt from such 'anxieties'...." 1 Romeo and Juliet IV. ii. 2. 162 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY Steevens is defended in an article by Tucker Brooke entitled "Shakespeare remembers his youth in Stratford", first published in 1940 and reprinted in a collection of essays in 1949.2 Brooke seriously considers the idea that old Capulet may be a portrait of John Shakespeare and that the depiction of the Capulet household is based on the poet's memories of his early days in Stratford. "The Elizabethans, and Shakespeare among them, habitually saw Italy as a land of high social civilization, where the wealthy classes—however their morals might fester—could at least be sure of suavely perfect service in their homes. The an­ tithesis of all this which one observes in the household of the Capulets at Verona is striking enough to suggest several questions about the play of Romeo Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/12/2/161/5125315 by guest on 29 September 2021 and Juliet." Brooke draws the conclusion that the behavior of the Capulets must be due to Shakespeare's not knowing any better. He was using the material which would lie within his own experience—his own family background. But is the Capulets' behavior really so improbable—if we disregard the exaggera­ tions inherent in the dramatic form in which they are presented? In Italy, snobbery and class distinctions were by no means so marked as in England. Nobles and princes took part in trade, a thing which their counterparts in England considered to be beneath their dignity. Fynes Moryson noted this dif­ ference: "Not only the Gentlemen, but even the Princes of Italy openly prof esse to be Merchants (which our gentlemen, with leave may I say it, foolishly disdain) and onely permit the retailing of their goods to men of inferiour sort, keeping all trade in grosse or whole sale to themselves."3 Moryson had small opportunity to observe the Italian aristocracy in their homes but he saw them often enough out of doors. He comments: "The women of Italy know not the price of any thing, or ever go to the Markets, neither do they trust their servants to make their market, but the richest of all Italy, and most noble (especially in Venice) daily buy their own victuals and other necessaries. The very Gen­ tlemen of Venice (which notwithstanding arrogate to themselves a preeminence above all Gentlemen of Italy with the singular title of Clarissimi) carry home what they buy to eate, either in the sleeves of their gownes or in a cleane hand- kercher" (p. 96). Here we get a glimpse of a pattern of living where a type like Capulet, while admittedly extreme in his household worries, would not be re­ garded in principle as departing from the norm. It was clearly far from unusual for the master of the house himself to do the buying and to take charge of the household affairs. The Italians themselves were aware that it was not so in other countries. In his well-known account of his travels to France in 1577 the Venetian Lip- pomano comments on the fact that in France the married women had a liberty and an authority which they did not have in Italy, and that their husbands en­ trusted the administration of the household to them.4 In England, too, the wives had the same independent position as in France. Not only did tliey have the free management of the house, they commonly left the care of household matters to their servants, writes the Dutchman van Meteren in 1575.5 There was 2 C. F. Tucker Brooke: Essays on Shakespeare and other Elizabethans (London, 1949). 8 Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary. (Glasgow 1907-8), IV, 88. 4 Albert Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France (Tours, 1928), p. 45. 5 Nederlandsche Historie (1575), as quoted in J. D. Wilson, Life in Shakespeare's England, p. 26. QUERIES AND NOTES jg? thus an obvious difference between Italy and the Western European countries which did not fail to strike foreign travellers and which was much commented upon by them. Nearly two hundred years before Shakespeare's time a merchant called Francesco di Marco Datini lived in Prato in Tuscany, and by a lucky chance his very extensive correspondence has been preserved.6 Datini was the richest man in the town, and among the guests in his house were many of the leading personalities of the time, such as the Duke of Mantua, cardinals and foreign ambassadors, and even Louis II of Anjou, who styled himself "King of Sicily and Jerusalem". Yet Datini could never overcome his anxiety when he was Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/12/2/161/5125315 by guest on 29 September 2021 expecting guests. His lawyer, a close friend, refrained from visiting him at such times, "for when you have guests, I well know what turmoil you are in." When the French ambassador in Florence was to pay a visit the whole house was turned upside down. Datini wrote to his agent: "I must clear out the whole loggia, which is full of wood and tables from the warehouse and scrap iron.... And furthermore the plates and bowls have been scalded, which will be needed for the table; and I must have bread baked, and cannot do it ere Monday; and I must buy some red and white wine " (p. 333). He often complains that the servants do not treat him with sufficient respect —even his slaves are insolent. He is beside himself with anxiety lest something will be wasted and he pries into the smallest matters. But he can also do things well; when he marries off his natural daughter Ginevra, whose mother was a slave, he gives a grand wedding for her; a special cook is engaged for the occasion and is paid a princely sum for this single meal. Six extra servants, besides those of his regular household, wait at table, and are supplied with new tunics of scarlet cloth, and new hose (p. 190). Datini engages cooks, he sees to it that bread is baked, he brings home wine —in other words he has the same troubles as Capulet and he fusses just as much as Capulet does. He is a clever and successful business man but at home he appears as a petulant, niggardly, fussy and rather ridiculous tyrant. It is easy to see how closely he and Capulet resemble each other. From the observations of Moryson and Lippomano we gather that later Renaissance Italian noblemen still had this feeling of direct responsibility for the household as in Datini's time, and we can readily imagine that this concern may have expressed itself in the same way as with him.7 For those among Shakespeare's audience who had been in Italy or were acquainted with Italian ways of life, Capulet must have appeared as an easily recognizable caricature of an Italian nobleman with an attitude to household affairs very different from the one obtaining among the English upper classes.