A dramatic romance, The Tempest represents the last complete composition written by Elizabethan playwright and poet WiLLiAM Shakespeare.
First performed at Whitehall on November 1, 1611, The Tempest was among the entertainments for the celebration of the betrothal and marriage of JAMES I’s daughter, Elizabeth, in the winter of 1612-13. No one source for the play has been discovered. Rather, it appears the author drew a rich confluence of elements from both past and contemporary events. Concerning the latter, Shakespeare was no doubt influenced by the burgeoning English interest in overseas exploration. A storm at sea intensified by St. Elmo’s Fire, mutiny, and insurrection on an island, unfamiliar wildlife of a newly discovered world, and an unexpected rescue represent elements within the play culled from contemporary sources. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare had read the recently published “Burmuda Pamphlets,” including Sylvester Jordain’s Discovery of the Burmudas, the Council of Virginia’s True Declaration of the State of the Colonie Virginia with a Confrontation of Such Scandalous Reports as Have Tended to Disgrace of so Worthy an Enterprise, and a letter by William Strachey, the True Report of the Wracke—all written or published in 1610.
It is also quite possible that Shakespeare based the character of Caliban on the description of the Patagonian giants in Peter Martyr’s Decades, a tract translated by Englishman Richard Eden in 1555. Shakespeare’s use of contemporary materials related to exploration provides a link to the New World for The Tempest, although he used a deserted Mediterranean island as the setting of his play. Beyond contemporary source material, scholars have connected The Tempest to the Bible, including Paul’s arrival on the island of Malta, various Spanish romances, and Virgil’s Aeneid. Some have argued that the play closely paralleled Die Schone Sidea, a 1605 play by German Jacob Ayrer.
Further reading: Harold Bloom, ed., William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Modern Critical Interpretations (New York, Chelsea House 1988); Trevor R. Griffiths, “‘This Island’s Mine’ Caliban and Colonialism,” Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983), 159-180; Meredith Anne Skura, “Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in the Tempest,” Shakespeare Quarterly 40 (1989): 60-90; Eugene Wright, “Christopher Columbus, William Shakespeare, and the Brave New World,” in Peter Milward, ed., The Mutual Encounter of East and West, 1492-1992 (Tokyo: Renaissance Institute, 1992).
—Matthew Lindaman
World History
