The Spanish Prisoner - Short Play - Review
David Mamet's Study in the Art of Manipulation
Apr 8, 2009
Having characters fall for the oldest trick in the book is David Mamet’s bread and butter. By using the confidence game as a blueprint for plots, Mamet has plugged into a wide array of dramatic scenarios, including politics (Wag The Dog); capitalism (Glengarry Glen Ross); and monogamy (Sexual Perversity in Chicago).
David Mamet's Confidence Game
David Mamet’s works are essentially about manipulation; with poetic profanity; in stuttering speech patterns; and broad proclamations of grandeur.
Much of Mamet’s modus operandi regarding his character’s motivations revolve around a scheme, a scam, a con; a set-up anticipating a pay-off. There is no better example of this than The Spanish Prisoner; as a play; as the film based on the play; and as the original true life scam upon which both are based.
In other words, the confidence game; one sly character has a plan and a clever way to carry it out; all he needs is an honest, vulnerable character to manipulate, with clever wordplay and emotional empathy. Mamet uses only letters to name his characters in The Spanish Prisoner; which reads like a con man's algorithm.
Amorality Play, On Words
The opening scene in The Spanish Prisoner involves one character, A, pontificating before the other character, B, about his belief that every man’s primal need to succeed and excel in life is rooted in a basic longing to self-indulge his base desires.
Scene Two: C forgets in mid-thought where he is, D puts him back on track, thus ensuring C has D hooked; the subject being: The Escorial, a Spanish map, of which there is only one; to a hidden treasure perhaps; and a lady in peril.
In the final scene, F, immediately begins to play on G’s sense of guilt and responsibility, by explaining that no matter how well intentioned your actions, you cannot combat human misery. And if G falls for F’s moral ambiguity, exposing cracks in his own sense of right and wrong, F will have the opening he needs.
Life Imitates Art, Mamet's The Master
But, the manipulator in this scenario must now somehow find a way to maneuver his victim all the way back around to the starting point, where the victim will feel morally obligated to do whatever is asked of him. And this can only be accomplished by a master storyteller; one who knows how to enrapture someone with words; and this is David Mamet.
If art can imitate life, David Mamet is a master imitator. In recent years, three confidence schemes have infiltrated the American consciousness: the theory of moral relativity used by politicians to convince it’s citizenry to go to war; the farcical email scam perpetrated by a fictional Nigerian businessman; and a not-so-funny Ponzi scheme inflicted upon thousands of unlucky Wall Street investors.
In 1997, David Mamet, as writer/director, expanded The Spanish Prisoner into a very entertaining full-length feature film starring Campbell Scott.
