Tempestuous

I avoided reading the review of Sam Mendes's production of The Tempest in yesterday's paper as we're off to see it on Saturday afternoon. In doing so I was struck by the very obvious fact that so much of what we experience artistically is mediated, one way or another, through the eyes of others. It's hard to see things innocently, as it were. Not that this is a terribly bad thing. I suppose it's the result of the natural development of what we might term artistic communities - in the loosest sense. The important thing is that we develop an independent framework through which we can make our own genuine assessments. If we don't we'll always be at the mercy of the latest artistic fad.

The best artistic community in that respect is the immediate audience of the work. Being in a good audience can be a learning experience in itself; being in a lousy one can be disastrous in all sorts of ways.

My guess is that the first audience for The Tempest, groundlings and all, was as good as you can get in a theatre, and that in itself feeds into Shakespeare's genius. Wouldn't it be wonderful going to the play without a clue of what you were going to experience?