Shipwreck 400 Years Ago Awakened Shakespeare’s Muse
Maev
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A Jamestown Shipwreck 400 Years Ago this Month Awakened Shakespeare’s
Muse
By Hobson Woodward
Hobson Woodward is the associate editor of the Adams Papers at the
Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston.
News of shipwrecks reached London regularly during the lifetime of
William Shakespeare. The frequency of travel by water and the
fragility of wooden sailing vessels made disaster at sea a relatively
common occurrence. Thus it is all the more striking that the
playwright chose one particular wreck—the loss of a Jamestown ship on
uninhabited Bermuda four centuries ago this month—as an inspiration
for his ethereal Tempest.
The Sea Venture was voyaging from London to the two-year-old colony on
the Virginia coast in the summer of 1609 when it encountered an
intense hurricane. After four days of punishing violence the ship came
to rest on a Bermuda reef. All 153 people aboard survived to be
remembered as the first to occupy the mid-Atlantic isle. A year later
when some of them returned home and told their story, Shakespeare
ensured they would also make literary history as a source for his last
solo play.
Timing had much to do with the castaways’ unexpected foray onto the
London stage. As Shakespeare neared retirement, plague had shut down
the theaters and curtailed the revenue of his King’s Men players. The
playwright needed a fresh story, and as usual he began by looking for
a contemporary topic that might be explored in a classical setting.
Few subjects were of greater interest to the people of London than
England’s fledgling colony in America. In fact, the overseas ambitions
of the country so dominated current conversation that it would have
been surprising if the city’s leading playwright had not written them
into a play. Colonial adventure would be a fine general theme, but he
needed specifics, and the Sea Venture story apparently provided them.
Shakespeare certainly recognized that the Bermuda wreck was no
ordinary event. The tale was thrilling—a leaking ship in an
unremitting storm, a rogue wave sweeping the vessel and filling it
with water, St. Elmo’s fire glittering on the masts at a time that
sinking seemed assured, land sighted in the middle of the ocean to the
shock of all on board, a miraculous wedging of the ship upright
between coral ridges in the Bermuda shallows, nine months on a
deserted isle, and the reappearance in London of castaways long
thought dead. Here was a story that an inventive playwright might
fashion into stagecraft that would excite the masses.
Another element that apparently attracted Shakespeare was Bermuda’s
history as an enchanted isle. The magical qualities of Prospero’s
island likely had their origin in stories told by generations of
Atlantic sailors who heard eerie cries in the night when sailing past
Bermuda. The Sea Venture castaways discovered that a nocturnal bird
called the cahow was responsible for the ghostly racket. Shakespeare
did not have to make too great a leap to transform the shrieks of the
seabirds into the Tempest isle’s “noises, sounds and sweet airs.”
As the battered Sea Venture headed for an island grounding on July 28,
1609, the voyagers guessed that they were landing on haunted Bermuda.
To their relief they soon discovered that their sanctuary was more a
realm of angels than devils. The very birds that had frightened
passing sailors were easy game for hunters. Giant sea turtles provided
feasts of meat when they came ashore to nest. Succulent prickly pears
grew on the rocky shore. Palmetto sap and cedar berries were available
for fermentation. Shakespeare seemed intrigued by this aspect of the
story, apparently incorporating it into his play as the spells
Prospero used to hide a bucolic isle within a conjured storm.
In addition to taking possession of general aspects of the Sea Venture
narratives, Shakespeare also seems to have transformed specific
elements. In his nimble mind the St. Elmo’s fire that voyager William
Strachey described as a “little round light like a faint star,
trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze half the height
upon the mainmast” became the luminous character Ariel. In a brilliant
appropriation of Strachey’s image, Shakespeare recast the sparkling
glow as a shimmering apparition who visited the Tempest ship and
reported to Prospero that “on the topmast, the yards and bowsprit
would I flame distinctly.”
The enigmatic Caliban also seems to have Bermuda roots. There is a
peculiar passage in Strachey’s narrative that combines human and
bovine imagery in a description of a sea turtle. Shakespeare joined
the same three elements when he fashioned the features of his wild
man, giving him arms like turtle fins and the nickname “mooncalf”—a
term meaning deformed child but one evoking heifers nevertheless.
Caliban’s murderous disposition may also have arisen from the stories
of the returning castaways. As I show in my new book, A Brave Vessel:
The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there is fresh reason to believe that two
Powhatans from Virginia were aboard the Sea Venture and that the
English believed—perhaps falsely—that one of them murdered the other
on the island.
Even small touches were apparently transferred from the Sea Venture
chronicles to The Tempest. Strachey wrote of the castaways’ fermented
cedar-berry drink that was brewed to replace the beer of England. The
voyagers collected “berries whereof our men seething, straining, and
letting stand some three or four days made a kind of pleasant drink.”
Shakespeare was apparently taken with the image, for in The Tempest
Caliban makes the otherwise inexplicable statement that when he was
thirsty Prospero “wouldst give me water with berries in’t.”
Thus it may be said that July 28 marks two quadricentennials. One is
the unintended founding of Bermuda by castaways who came ashore on a
rain-whipped day in 1609. The other is the birthday of a sprite, a
wild man, and a mercurial magician, characters given life when a
Jamestown shipwreck captured the imagination of a literary master and
inspired an enduring tale called The Tempest.
Comments (2)
Oxfordians
by Caroline Hill on July 13, 2009 at 9:40 AM
and of course those who claim that the Earl of Oxford wrote
'Shakespeare's' plays deny the validity of this excellent account,
since Oxford died before 1610 and could not have known the Bermuda
castaways' tale. They also have to argue that the play was written
earlier. But facts, as presented here, are tough things. . .
Re: Oxfordians
by Michael Green on July 13, 2009 at 10:46 AM
I also would highly recommend the exhibit at the Jamestown Visitors
Center related to the subject of Mr. Woodward's book.
book...@yahoo.com
<M.Q.a...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
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>
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>
>A Jamestown Shipwreck 400 Years Ago this Month Awakened Shakespeare�s
>Muse
>
>By Hobson Woodward
>
>Hobson Woodward is the associate editor of the Adams Papers at the
>Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston.
>
> News of shipwrecks reached London regularly during the lifetime of
>William Shakespeare. The frequency of travel by water and the
>fragility of wooden sailing vessels made disaster at sea a relatively
>common occurrence. Thus it is all the more striking that the
>playwright chose one particular wreck�the loss of a Jamestown ship on
>uninhabited Bermuda four centuries ago this month�as an inspiration
>for his ethereal Tempest.
(snip)
(quote)
A Brave Vessel
The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired
Shakespeare's The Tempest
Hobson Woodward - Author
$25.95 add to cart view cart
eBook: Microsoft Reader | 288 pages | ISBN 9781101058671 | 09 Jul 2009
| Viking Adult
Additional Formats:
Hardcover: $25.95
eBook - eReader: $25.95
eBook - Adobe reader: $25.95
A gripping tale of shipwreck and survival that changed the fate of the
colonies and enriched our literary legacy
In 1609, aspiring writer William Strachey set sail aboard the Sea
Venture, bound for the New World. Caught in a hurricane, the ship
separated from its fleet and wrecked on uninhabited Bermuda, a
bountiful island paradise its passengers would inhabit for nearly a
year before reaching their intended destination, the famine-stricken
colony of Jamestown. Strachey�s meticulous account of the wreck, the
castaways� time on Bermuda, and their arrival in a devastated
Jamestown was read by his contemporaries and remains among the most
vivid writings of the early colonial period. Following the life of
this ordinary man, Hobson Woodward tells one of the neglected but
defining stories of America�s founding.
Strachey had literary aspirations and sought to capitalize on his epic
experience, but his writings did not bring him the acclaim he sought.
Only in the hands of another William would his tale of the wreck and
its aftermath make history as The Tempest. A Brave Vessel is the
fascinating account of a near-miss in the settling of Virginia, the
true story behind one of Shakespeare�s great plays, and the tragedy of
the man who failed as an author but who contributed to the creation of
a masterpiece.
(unquote)
Lynne
>
> - Show quoted text -
I see that Roger and I are mentioned in his book as the latest
detractors of the theory. Fame at last! Thanks to Tom Reedy for this
info.
Mouse
book...@yahoo.com
It seems the plot thickens as you publish a new novel based on the
Bermuda episode. When it comes out, we'll be looking for links to
your study of Tempest sources in researching for your novel, maybe in
ways similar to how Shakespeare did.
It's ironic how you as fiction writer are keen on fundamental
assumptions attending the dating of Tempest, while Woodward in
focusing on historical bases in his non-fiction account repeats the
time frame centering on William writing Tempest after the shipwreck,
which you question.
Not sure who Woodward's publisher is, unless it's Massachusetts
Historical Society, but I bet your publishers would like to promote
book sales by having you and Woodward appear together, perhaps
discussing the fictional uses of historical accounts, or something.
Anyway, congratulations on your new book. Hope it excites interest in
questions raised in the study of sources by you and Roger. bookburn
Lynne
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thanks, bb.
Mouse
Lynne
Woodward, Hobson. Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who
Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest. New York:
Viking, 2009.
I
(Response to a comment) Ms. Hill seems to be unable to distinguish
between “fact” and speculation. Very little of Mr. Woodward’s account
is factual, and of his critical points none can withstand careful
scrutiny.
It is convenient that Mr. Woodward sees no necessity to defend the
claim that William Strachey’s 1625 narrative of the wreck of the Sea
Venture in Bermuda formed the inspiration for the Tempest with any
actual facts. By now this legend is so well ingrained in modern
scholarship that merely asserting it seems to be an acceptable
substitute for the kinds of factual and logical argument normally
considered requisite in historical scholarship. From its inception
this “just so” story of how Shakespeare got his Tempest has never been
supported by any convincing evidence. It has gained credibility only
in the absence of critical study of Shakespeare’s actual sources of
new world imagery, such as Richard Eden’s 1555 translation of Spanish
and Portugese travel narratives, Decades of the New World, from which
Shakespeare took the name “Setebos,” for Sycorax’ God and numerous
other elements of new world detail.
II
“Shakespeare insured that the [Bermuda survivors] would also make
literary history as a source for his last solo play.”
In order to make the association between the Bermuda wreck and the
Tempest seem inevitable, Mr. Woodward ignores the history of English
involvement in the new world, which long predates the Jacobean period.
Reports of new world shipwrecks had been reaching English readers at
least since the 1555 publication of Eden’s translation of de Orbe
Novo; since the disappearance of the first English colony at Roanoke
circa 1590, such readers had anxiously followed the fate and
circumstances of English colonists. Richard Hakluyt had been
chronicling these events, including the 1593 shipwreck of Henry May in
the Bermudas, since before his Principal Navigations appeared in print
1598-1600. At least by shortly after the turn of the 17th century,
English dramatists such as Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John
Marston, writing in Eastward Ho! were already parodying the colonial
vogue.
III
“Colonial adventure would be a fine general theme, but [Shakespeare]
needed specifics, and the Sea Venture story apparently provided
them.”
The claim that the Sea Venture episode provided “specifics” manifest
in Shakespeare’s play is by now a cliché. Yet it has never been
successfully demonstrated. In fact the “specifics” typically cited as
unique to Strachey had been available to Shakespeare, in some cases
for decades, in such works as Eden’s Decades, Tomson in Hackluyt,
Erasmus “Naufragium,” and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Many of these
sources, unlike Strachey, show unequivocal evidence, in the form of
specific language or idiosyncratic episode, which connects them to
Shakespeare’s play.
All of the salient characteristics cited by Mr. Woodward as signals
for the “extraordinary” nature of the Bermuda wreck were already
present in various permutations, in such commonplace Renaissance and
classical shipwreck literature as the Book of Acts, The Aeneid,
“Naufragium,” and Orlando Furioso as well as Eden’s Decades. None of
Woodward’s examples, moreover, is unique to any of the Bermuda
narratives or diagnostic of a real relationship between those
narratives and Shakespeare’s play.
IV
For example, Woodward places particular emphasis on the fact that both
Strachey’s account and the Tempest refer to the occurrence of St.
Elmo’s fire during the storm: “In [Shakespeare’s] nimble mind the St.
Elmo’s Fire that voyager William Strachey described as a ‘little round
light like a faint star, trembling and streaming along with a
sparkling blaze, half the height upon the mainmast’ became the
luminous character Ariel. In a brilliant appropriation of Strachey’s
image, Shakespeare recast the sparkling glow as a shimmering
apparition who visited the Tempest ship and reported to Prospero that
‘on the topmast, the yards and bowsprit would I flame distinctly’.”
Woodward does not appear to be aware that St. Elmo’s Fire was a very
common shipwreck motif in both imaginative and historical sources well
known before the close of the 16th century. Even a partial list of
accounts of this dramatic phenomenon must include Pliny, Eden,
Erasmus, Ariosto, De Ulloa, Cortes, Columbus, and Haies. In
Strachey’s case, the St. Elmo’s description -- like many other storm
elements in Strachey that are apparently derived from literary sources
rather than experience -- is not found in the other accounts of the
Sea Venture wreck and therefore appears to be a literary elaboration
rather than a factual account. This is confirmed by the fact that
Strachey’s description seems to originate in Tomson and De Ulloa (who
in turn appear to have based their descriptions of the phenomenon at
least partly on Erasmus’ “Naufragium,” a dialogue widely circulated as
a grammar school text). By contrast, Shakespeare’s account shows clear
evidence for an association, like so much else in the play, with the
accounts translated by Eden in 1555. Shakespeare may have had a
nimble mind, but he is not, in fact, responsible for “recasting” the
“sparkling glow” as the first person apparition, Ariel. He found this
motif already preformed in Eden’s translation of Antonio Pygafetta’s
narrative, which describes ‘certeyne flames of fyre burnynge very
cleare…. uppon the masts of the shyppes…which sum ignorant folkes
thynke to bee spirites or such other phantasies’ (217v). Although
Shakespeare seems to have known more than one account of St. Elmo’s
fire, only from Eden could he have taken inspiration for the idea,
embodied in his play, that the phenomenon may be caused by “spirits,”
an idea Woodward, unaware of Shakespeare’s actual source in Eden,
superfluously attributes to Shakespeare’s own creative fancy.
V
“The enigmatic Caliban also seems to have Bermuda roots…”
It is ironic to claim that Caliban has “Bermuda roots,” since there
were no inhabitants on Bermuda when the English were shipwrecked there
in 1609. In fact the name is a fairly obvious anagram of the common
16th century word “canibal,” first popularized in English via Eden’s
translations. Indeed, it is evident to any unprejudiced reader
familiar with Eden’s narrative that the roots of the “enigmatic”
Caliban have nothing at all to with Bermuda, but everything to do with
Eden’s ethnographic narratives of the complicated power relationships
between the Spanish Conquistadores and the Carribean natives enslaved
by them during the first decades of European conquest of the “new
world.”
VI
According to Woodward, “even small touches were apparently transferred
from the Sea Venture chronicles to The Tempest. Strachey wrote of the
castaways’ fermented cedar-berry drink that was brewed to replace the
beer of England. The voyagers collected ‘berries whereof our men,
seething, straining, and letting stand some three or four days made a
kind of pleasant drink.’ Shakespeare was apparently taken with the
image, for in the Tempest Caliban makes the otherwise inexplicable
statement that when he was thirsty, Prospero “wouldst give me water
with berries in’t.”
Just why Caliban’s reference to “water with berries in’t” should be
“inexplicable,” Woodward does not say. Even David Kathman, who uses
the same quotations and example, does not dress up the facts with
superfluous argument-by-adjective. Woodward’s implication that
putting berries in water – something human beings have been doing as
long as wine has been brewed – is some kind of unique event in human
culinary history does little to enhance his credibility. In fact, as
our online reply to David Kathman pointed out in 2005, the motif is a
commonplace in the literature of the voyagers (no doubt because mixing
water with berries was a refreshing recipe, traditional to the natives
of the new world, for making a drink in a land without brew pubs or
winepresses). It is mentioned five times, for example, in Harriot’s
Brief and True Account of The New Found Land of Virginia (1588), viz.:
The fifth sort [of berry] is called Mangúmmenauk, and is the acorne of
their kind of oake, the which beeing dried after the maner of the
first sortes, and afterward watered they boile them... (29).
Nor was the habit limited to the new world, as the reader of Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso soon learns. In this influential Tempest source (as
our manuscript article, “Where in the World? Geography and Irony in
Shakespeare’s Tempest”
demonstrates) a hermit on a Mediterranean island, midway between
Tunis and Naples (Lampedusa) offers Rogero, a shipwreck survivor,
berries and water.
VII
Woodward confidently ascribes the Tempest theme of music to Strachey:
“Shakespeare did not have to make too great a leap to transform the
shrieks of the [Bermuda] seabirds into the Tempest isles ‘noises,
sounds, and sweet airs.’”
But a June 2008 Notes and Queries article by David McInnis points out
that the Tempest music motif is almost certainly inspired by Eden’s
translation (1553, 1572) of Sebastian Munster’s Treatise of the New
India, more commonly known as Cosmographia. More specifically, McInnis
compares Caliban’s famous speech, “Be not afeard. The Isle is full of
noises,/ Sounds and sweet airs that give delights and hurt
not” (III.ii.135-36), to a corresponding passage from Eden’s 1553
translation: “There is often tymes heard in the ayre, as it were a
noyse of musicall instrume[n]tes; but more often like the sounde of
drumslades or timbrels.” The 1572 translation even more closely
approximates Tempest language: “there be hard some times in the ayre
the consents and harmonye of musicke instruments.” As McInnis
observes, this language “anticipates Caliban’s ‘sounds and sweet
aires’ from ‘a thousand twangling instruments’ and Ariel’s use of the
pipe” (212). This study, conducted independently from ours,
strengthens the vital link already posited between Tempest and Eden’s
later translation, De Orbe Novo (1555), revealing a Shakespearean
imagination shaped by the popular travel literature of the period
1553-1600, not by the Bermuda narratives of 1610-25.
art
*SAINT ELMO* was also the reason to launch the imaginary
ship "SEE VE(ntu)RE" on *SAINT ELMO's Day* of 1609.
..........................................................
<<On June 2 (St.Elmo's Day), 1609, nine ships set out from England,
carrying around 600 people altogether, to strengthen the new
English colony in Virginia. The *Sea-Venture* was the lead ship,
& carried Sir Thomas *GATES* , the newly-appointed Governor of the
colony, & Sir George Somers, the Admiral of the Virginia Company.
.
For most of the voyage all went well, but on
*St. JAMES'S DAY* a violent storm (probably a hurricane)
overtook the ships and raged for several days.>>
---------------------------------------------------
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?p=103
.................................................
And straightway we saw upon the *shrouds of the Trinity* as it were
a candle, which of itself shined, and gave a light,...it was the
light of *SAINT ELMO* which appeared on the shrouds, (Account of
Francis de Ulloa, p. 405 in original ed.; p. 228 in 1904 reprint.)
..........................................................
Henry May's account of the last voyage
. of the *Edward BON-AVENTURE*
.
Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques
& Discoveries, Volume III (London, 1600; Glasgow, 1904, Vol. IX),
..........................................................
in the night, there came upon the top of our mainyard & main mast,
a certain little light, much like unto the light of a little candle,
which the Spaniards called the Cuerpo santo, & said it was *ST. ELMO*
... This light continued aboard our ship about three hours, flying
from mast to mast, and from top to top: and sometime it would be in
two or three places at once. (Account of Robert Tomson, 450; 345.)
-----------------------------------------------------
http://www.virtualjamestown.org/TR%20modern.doc
.
A TRUE Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates,
Knight, upon and from the *ISLANDS* of the Bermudas: His Coming
to Virginia and the Estate of that Colony Then and After,
under the Government of the Lord La Warr, July 15, 1610,
(July 25 NS) written by William Strachey, Esquire
.
A most dreadful *TEMPEST* (the manifold deaths whereof
are HERE to the life described), their WRECK on Bermuda,
and the description of those *ISLANDS*
.
*EXCELLENT LADY*, Know that upon Friday late in the evening we
brake ground out of the sound of Plymouth, our whole fleet then
consisting of seven good ships and two pinnaces, all which, from
the said 2nd of June [ *St. Elmo's day* ] unto the 23rd of July,
kept in friendly consort together, not a whole watch at any time
losing the sight each of other. Our course, when we came about
the height of between 26 and 27 degrees, we declined to the
northward, and according to our governor's instructions, altered
the trade and ordinary way used HEREtofore by Dominica and Nevis
in the West Indies and found the [ *doldrums* ] wind to this
course indeed as friendly, as in the judgment of all seamen
it is upon a more direct line, and by Sir George Somers,
our admiral, had been likewise in former time sailed, being
a gentleman of approved assuredness and ready knowledge in
seafaring actions, having often carried command and chief charge
in many ships royal of Her Majesty's, and in sundry voyages
made many defeats and attempts in the time of the Spaniard's
quarreling with us upon the *ISLANDS* and Indies, etc.>>
--------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer