Mojo, The Bard, & Me

I am the best of them that speak this speech,

Were I but where ‘tis spoken.

How! The best!

-Ferdinand/Prospero

The Tempest                      Act I, scene ii      Line 432

That’s young Prince Ferdinand with the beginning part of today’s line and Prospero with the retort of How! The best! This of course from The Tempest and it’s the scene where Prospero and Miranda first meet Ferdinand. Miranda, who’s falling in love with Ferdinand at first sight has been marooned on the island with her father since she was a very small child. Now she’s a young woman and this is pretty much the first young man she’s ever seen or heard. He’s replying to her, and Prospero has begun to question his statement about being the best. The scene becomes sort of the classic deal of the father questioning the daughter’s first boyfriend.

Now I’ve seen this played out in zillions of sitcoms and movies where the father is the hard-ass making life difficult for the young guy. But I have to say, speaking from my experience as the young guy and my experience as the father, I can’t much relate to this scene. I never remember a father of any girl I dated (not that there were that many) trying to intimidate me or give me a hard time. And I don’t think I ever gave much of a hard time to any of the boyfriends of my two daughters. I dunno, maybe I’m just not remembering this stuff. But for all the good things I say about Will and what a good job he does of illustrating the human experience, this is one piece of it that I’m just not so sure about.

What do you think? Is it just me, or the way I’m remembering it? Do fathers of daughters generally intentionally intimidate boyfriends? The funny thing is that Will did have two daughters. I wonder how much of Prospero he drew from his own life experiences. Now that is a good question. I wish to heck we knew a little more about this guy so that we could do more than just wonder!

So that’s today’s question. Does this scene (and all the others since then) about the dad giving the hard time to the boyfriend have any basis in reality? Or is it just a concoction of Will and Hollywood? And if it does have basis in reality, how’d I miss that in my life? I guess only I can answer that last part. You worry about the first part.

In the meantime, tomorrow we can look forward to our first taste of Antony and Cleopatra.

This is an original drawing I just happen to have of this first encounter between Ferdinand and Miranda with Prospero looking on.