Hi, I'm Patrick Page.
I'm currently in Avalon, New Jersey, and I'm
here for the Brave New Shakespeare challenge.
For The Public Theater, I most recently played
the title role in CYMBELINE, in Central Park
at the Delacorte Theater.
The speech I'm going to do today, is from THE TEMPEST, it's Prospero, the great magician.
At the end of the play, or near the end of
the play, he's brought his daughter, Miranda,
and the son of one of his enemies together.
And he's going to marry them.
And he creates a magical kind of pre-marriage
ceremony with lots of spirits and lots of
beauty and it's a wonderful, wonderful kind
of pageant.
And Ferdinand even says, "This is like paradise."
And just after he says "This is like paradise"
Prospero remembers no, it's not paradise,
the monster Caliban and a couple of morons
Stefano and Trinculo are coming to try to
cut his throat.
He remembers that and so he breaks up the
whole magical ceremony very suddenly and very
angrily and Ferdinand doesn't know what's
going on.
And so Prospero says to him
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismayed.
Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Sir, I am vexed.
Bear with my weakness.
My old brain is troubled.
Be not disturbed with my infirmity.
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose.
A turn or two I’ll walk
To still my beating mind.
Now you go make some art.
You write a poem about that speech.
You work on that speech yourself, you read
the play, you make a painting, a drawing,
something.
Make something.
It helps.
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets during plague
years when he was sheltered in place.
He wrote KING LEAR and MACBETH during plague
years when he was sheltered in place, there's
a lot we can do.
Go do it.
You'll feel better.
