PicoBlog

Today I’m excited to begin a little series I wanted to call ‘Antonio August,’ but there are just a few too many Antonios, so we’ll be bleeding into July and September a little bit… but the aim is to spend a few consecutive newsletters exploring the characters named Antonio, who are often noted as sharing similarities in their roles within the plays, and an association with queerness. This is a bit of an experiment in whether reading across plays character by character can be illuminating… or whether we’ll just get confused by having the same subject line for several weeks in a row. Commenter Steven Levy (always feel free to leave your own thoughts in the comments!) pointed out last time that Antonio in Twelfth Night’s silent presence at the end of the play is easily overlooked and very compelling, so one of the areas I want to zero in on is how the Antonios end their respective plays.

First up: Antonio from The Tempest.

Antonio is the younger brother of Prospero, the one who deposed and exiled him, in the process ending up as a kind of vassal to the King of Naples. He’s working on that one, though, over the course of the play scheming with said King’s younger brother, Sebastian, to murder him so that Sebastian can take the throne and they can pretend it all happened because of the storm and subsequent shipwreck. Prospero torments his captives with magical reminders of their guilt, until he is persuaded by Ariel to release them: ‘Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, / Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury / Do I take part. The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance’ (5.1.33-6).

Prospero reveals himself and embraces the King, Alonso, while Antonio stands by and remains conspicuously and strangely silent. Antonio is the last of the group to be directly addressed, after Prospero reminds him and Sebastian in an aside that he knows all about their regicide plans.

For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault, all of them, and require
My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know
Thou must restore (5.1.150-4).

Once again… Antonio doesn’t speak. It’s Alonso who replies, redirecting attention to his son Ferdinand, and thus the remaining loose ends of the plot. Sebastian speaks up to comment on Ferdinand’s miraculous rescue, and the other main lord, Gonzalo, gives and speech and explains that he didn’t speak before now because he was overcome with tears. Antonio still says nothing.

When Antonio finally, finally speaks up— it’s to make a joke, prompted by Sebastian, about the arrival of the comic servants, Stephano and Trinculo, accompanied by Caliban.

SEBASTIAN: Ha, ha!
What things are these, my Lord Antonio?
Will money buy ’em?
ANTONIO: Very like. One of them
Is a plain fish and no doubt marketable (5.1.317-21)

It’s a wildly anti-climactic way to break this ongoing and apparently deliberate silence. But it’s Antonio’s only line in the scene. The fraternal relationship that set the entire play in motion is unilaterally resolved, and Antonio doesn’t get a say in it. Apparently silenced by the threat to have his regicide, Antonio does not appear to have learned anything, or to be experiencing any true remorse for his role in his brother’s banishment or for his plans to kill the king. Structurally, the guilt for Prospero’s fate has shifted onto Alonso, who has much longer speeches of guilt and grief, despite the fact that Antonio is established as the more important culprit in the play’s first scene, and plays a more active role—though admittedly through plotting that unrelated murder—over the course of the action. He is quick with his wordplay and has powerful persuasive talents that he turns on Sebastian. He generally makes a stronger impression as a character… but in the end, this silver-tongued gentleman is left with no real textual resolution.

As I already hinted up top, this is a bit of pattern with characters named Antonio. I’m not quite sure what it means in this instance—maybe just that he’s a victim of Shakespeare dividing the revenge and guilt plot between Alonso and Antonio, with Antonio getting the brains and Alonso the heart—but I’ll be interested to see how these same-named characters reflect on one another as we proceed.

Which Antonio are you looking forward to?

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