Enter ARIEL.

ARIEL             All hail, great master; grave sir, hail! I come

To answer thy best pleasure, be’t to fly,

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curled clouds. To thy strong bidding, task

Ariel and all his quality.

PROSPERO                                         Hast thou, spirit,

Performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?

ARIEL             To every article. (1.2.189-195)

The big question here is, what does Ariel look like? And how do they enter? Do they fly? Emerge from what appeared to be a fire in a bin, as Julian Bleach did with Patrick Stewart, in Rupert Goold’s production for the RSC? Waft in as a hologram-like projection? Lycra now seems standard, something lithe, androgynous, other-worldly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen wings. Ariel isn’t summoned as spirit, although Prospero will often address them as such, as here. They will shortly identify themself as a shape-shifter. Whatever they wear, it probably needs to be clear that they are not an evil spirit, a fiend (like the ones summoned by Joan La Pucelle in 1 Henry VI, for instance, or the devils in Doctor Faustus, whom Prospero might all too easily recall. But it’s a good twenty years since Faustus, and the theatre has moved on, not least through elaborate court masques, in which gods and stars and spirits and elaborate and exotic personifications often featured). Ariel is characterised above all by lightness and movement, swift and flowing, flying, swimming, diving, ridingin the clouds. Their name suggests air – that is their defining element – but they are as comfortable in water, and even in fire. What they emphatically are not, is earthy. Ariel is not, I think, Puck 2.0.

Hail is a standard greeting, although it might recall, here, the fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream and, especially, the witches in Macbeth. Ariel addresses Prospero as great master – establishing the master-servant, hierarchical, unequal nature of their relationship, but also Prospero’s power, his mastery. But he is also grave sir, dignified, respectable, authoritative. It’s as if Ariel is recognising Prospero’s power as both magus and scholar (great master), and as duke (grave sir). Most significantly, it is made explicit that Prospero indeed raised the tempest, and that Ariel was his agent, performingit to point, to every article, to the last, smallest detail.

I’m going to refer to Ariel as they, incidentally.