Tempest in a teapot

Recently I got around to reading William Strachey’s famous essay about the 1609 shipwreck of the Sea Venture, often cited as a direct inspiration for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. I then reread On the Date, Sources and Design of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, by Roger A. Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky, which argues that Strachey probably was not a source for the play. This matters, in part, because if The Tempest was written as late as 1611, as the use of Strachey would imply, then several notable authorship candidates, including the Earl of Oxford and Sir Thomas North, are effectively eliminated. (Oxford died in 1604; North vanishes from the historical record in the same year.)

What follows is a brief recapitulation of On the Date’s arguments, or at least the points that struck me as most significant.

First, some background. (For more detail, see this post.) Strachey was a passenger on the Sea Venture, part of a seven-ship English flotilla headed for the newly established Virginia colony, when it was caught up in a hurricane and separated from its fellow ships. After several desperate days spent fighting the storm, the Sea Venture ran aground on an uninhabited island in the Bermuda archipelago. The survivors lived in reasonable comfort for several months while building two new ships, largely from the wreckage of the Sea Venture itself. Eventually they set off for Virginia and landed there, only to discover that the colony was in dire condition – the natives were hostile, most of the colonists were dead, and the few survivors were starving.

Artist’s representation of the Sea Venture. (Source)

Luckily for Strachey and his friends, reinforcements soon arrived from England, and the colony recovered. In 1610, Strachey was asked to send a report to the directors of the London holding company that sponsored the expedition. For many years it was assumed that a 24,000 word document still known as “the Strachey letter” was this report. More recently, however, a 6,000 word version was discovered, which may predate the longer one. Stritmatter and Kositsky argue that Strachey penned the 6,000 word version in Virginia, but composed the 24,000 word essay only after he returned to England, when he had the leisure and resources available to do a more thorough, more literary job. He did not return to England until after the first recorded performance of The Tempest, so if this thesis is correct, the 24,000 word essay could not have been one of Shakespeare’s sources. This thesis does not rule out the shorter version as a source, though it is unclear how it would have gotten into Shakespeare’s hands.

The 24,000 word account by Strachey was not published until 1625, as part of this collection. The 6,000 word account was discovered in 1983 and published in 2001.

Regardless of which document arrived on English shores in 1610, the big question remains: What is the evidence that Shakespeare used any version of Strachey’s account, or, indeed, was inspired by the Bermuda shipwreck at all?

The most common argument relies on verbal parallels between The Tempest and Strachey’s report. The authors refer to orthodox Shakespearean scholar David Kathman, who wrote an influential essay called “Dating The Tempest.” Among other examples, Kathman cites the word “bosky” as shared by Shakespeare and Strachey, adding that it constitutes “Shakespeare’s only use of this word.” Stritmatter and Kositsky demur:

This is true only if one ignores the variant spelling “busky” (I Henry VI, 5.1.1), which the OED lists as the same lexeme. Kathman goes on to claim that “glut” (1.1.60) in the phrase “gape at widest to glut him” is “the only appearance of the word ... in Shakespeare,” implying that the usage must be derived from Strachey. Again the claim, although widely reproduced, is erroneous. What justification can possibly be offered for the inference that “glutted” (I Henry IV, 3.2.85) is not the same word as “glut”? It is the past tense form of the same verb, and both uses appear in the OED under a single entry.

Kathman’s claim that “hoodwink” (4.1.206) is used only three times in the canon contains another error. Actually the contracted past tense “hoodwink’d” occurs another three times. More importantly, Kathman’s claim of significance in finding “only” two or three previous uses of the word, even when his numbers are accurate, demonstrates the fallacy of statistical mumbo jumbo. It is illogical to argue that because Shakespeare infrequently used a particular word or phrase that Strachey employs, his subsequent use of it in The Tempest establishes that he must have borrowed it from Strachey. A single previous usage is enough to show that Shakespeare knew the word and did not need to derive it from reading Strachey—who, incidentally, does not himself use “hoodwink” in any of his previous work.

In short, quite a few of these alleged verbal parallels involve words that Shakespeare had used on prior occasions. Stritmatter and Kositky provide a helpful list of such terms.

Strachey’s longer account of the Virginia expedition, like most of his writings, was patched together from various sources. He was known as a compulsive borrower, to put it nicely, of other writers’ travel books. Our authors report:

Strachey borrowed from Smith’s 1612 Map of Virginia in composing Reportory [the longer essay], as well as from Declaration (published November 1610), and, probably, Jourdain’s Discovery …

In composing his work, Strachey drew extensively from Richard Eden’s 1555 compilation and translation of several classic works of the Iberian voyagers of the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

It is true that Strachey’s accounts include themes also explored by The Tempest, notably the opportunities and challenges offered by virgin territory that might prove to be either paradise or hell on earth. This trope, however, was hardly original with him. At least as early as the catastrophic failure of the Roanoke colony in the 1580s, in which all the colonists mysteriously disappeared, the dangers and rewards of the New World were a hot topic in England.

William Hogarth’s 1735 depiction of a Scene from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the foreground, left to right, are Ferdinand, Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban; the sprite hovering above is presumably Ariel.

But surely the fact that Prospero’s island was set in the Bermuda archipelago indicates that the 1609 shipwreck was on Shakespeare’s mind? Well, it might – if Prospero’s island lay there.

The only reference to Bermuda in the play is Prospero’s instruction to Ariel to “fetch dew” from the “still-vexed bermoothes” (Bermudas). Logically, if Ariel is being sent to the Bermuda islands on this mission, then Prospero’s island must be somewhere else. Stritmatter and Kositsky note that the Bermuda archipelago was described by contemporary author Richard Eden as “the furthest of all the Islands ... found at this day in the world” – in other words, the most distant place that Prospero could send his spirit helper in a casual demonstration of his power.

Speaking of Richard Eden, he was far better known as an authority on the ongoing colonization of America than Strachey ever was. In 1555 he published Decades of the Newe Worlde, its title famously echoed by Prospero’s daughter, who exclaims, “O brave new world, that has such people in't!” It is a tribute to the book’s popularity that it was republished in 1577.

There is no doubt that Shakespeare read this book. As Stritmatter and Kositsky point out,

As early as 1778 Richard Farmer … had observed that the rare word “Setebos,” which Caliban twice uses (1.2.374; 5.1.261)15 to name a divine power, is identified as a Patagonian deity in [the] 1577 reissue of Eden’s work (as well as in the original 1555 edition). Given the rareness of this word, which appears in only one other known English source, this obviously showed Eden’s direct influence on Shakespeare.

The similarities do not end there.

Frank Kermode’s 1954 Arden edition identified a large number of Tempest motifs derived from Eden … : the identification of the West Indies with Atlantis, the belief of the natives that the voyagers had descended from heaven; the elaborate description of “the golden world,” with land “as common as sun and water,” and the natives knowing no difference between “Mine” and “Thine”; the “horrible roarings of the wild beasts in the woods.” But he could also have found here pugnacious and terrible bats, compared to “ravenous harpies”; the Spanish custom of hunting natives with dogs; a Carthage in the New World to remind him of older colonial adventures; and an account of the manner in which natives “were wonderfully astoni[sh]ed at the sweet harmony” of music. …

Charles H. Frey sympathetically summarized Hallett Smith’s comprehensive argument as one in which Richard Eden’s accounts of the explorations by Magellan and others tell of St. Elmo’s fires in ship’s rigging, Indians who die before their captors can exhibit them in Europe, Caliban-like natives who seek for grace, Utopian, golden world innocence, strange roaring sounds heard in woods, dogs used to pursue natives, natives interested in music, mutinies suppressed, and so on. ...

Eden’s book (folios 1–166) … reprints English translations containing much of Gonzalo Ferdinando Oviedo’s The History of the West Indies (173v–214) and Antonio Pygafetta’s Brief Declaration of the Voyage or Navigation Made About the World (216v–232v). Predating by decades Hakluyt’s earliest accounts of English exploration, Eden’s translation became a foundational text of the early English colonial imagination.

As the authors note, the name Gonzalo Ferdinando Oviedo, cited by Eden, contains the names of two important characters in The Tempest, Gonzalo and Ferdinand. Eden’s book also includes the names Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, and Ceres, all of which turn up in The Tempest and none of which is found in Strachey. (Oviedo’s name, however, is mentioned by Strachey, following Eden, who was one of his sources.)

Eden’s “fairies or spirits ... called Dryads, Hamadryads, Satyrs, Pans, and Nereids, [who] have the cure and providence of the sea, woods, springs, and fountains” (46) not only recall Ariel, the spritely incarnation of alchemical tradition, but also the “nymphs of the sea” (1.2.302), “water-nymph” (1.2.SD), and “nymphs called naiads of the windring brooks,/With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks...” (4.1.128–129). …

Eden’s “devils incarnate newly broke out of hell” (33v) even anticipate Ferdinand’s anguished cry, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!” (1.2.214–15).

If both Strachey and Shakespeare relied on Eden’s book and other seminal works of New World literature, then any similarities between them are most likely traced to their use of common sources — sources that any educated Englishman of that era would have known.

1876 engraving of the Sea Venture crew amazed by St. Elmo’s fire.

But what about the most dramatic part of Strachey’s narrative, the shipwreck itself? Again, common sources would seem like a plausible explanation of any parallels with Shakespeare. Stritmatter and Kositsky write:

The sources of Shakespeare’s imagery seem more likely to be the same ones that informed Strachey’s own narrative — such Renaissance shipwreck commonplaces as those found in Erasmus, Tomson and De Ulloa in Hakluyt, Ariosto, and Eden, all available no later than 1600. …

Of these alternative sources the two most significant appear to have been Erasmus’ “Naufragium” or “Shipwreck,” and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, both among the most widely available works of early-modern literature. The “Naufragium” contains the most widely influential of all renaissance storm descriptions, with many elements of what has been variously termed the “storm formula” or “storm set-piece”: waves which reach to the sky, praying sailors, St. Elmo’s fire, the splitting or overturning of the ship, provisions and baggage thrown overboard, the cutting or blowing down of the mainmast, and a helmsman pale with fear.

Interestingly enough, most of the above elements are not found in accounts of the storm by other Sea Venture survivors. They are unique to Strachey.

Strachey’s is the only contemporaneous account of the Bermuda wreck that includes reference to St. Elmo’s Fire, the decision to cut down the main mast, the throwing overboard of all the luggage, and the possible splitting of the ship, not to mention that his account reflects the known imprint of a conventional “storm formula.” … Strachey “borrowed freely and unashamedly” from other sources — including both John Smith and George Percy — in order to enhance the literary appeal of his narratives.

Strachey apparently was an unreliable narrator, who sacrificed accuracy for drama. When faced with the choice of reporting what he actually witnessed or following an established formula, he chose the latter.

As an example of the “storm formula,” take the matter of St. Elmo’s fire, which Strachey dwells on at length, and which, as noted, was not mentioned by other passengers or crew. If Strachey did borrow this detail, he had no shortage of writers to use for inspiration.

Cawley … gives an impressive résumé of the numerous ancient and Renaissance sources on this popular topic:

“Douce (Illustrations of Shakespeare, London, 1839, p. 3) cites [St. Elmo’s Fire] in Pliny, Seneca, Erasmus, Schotti, Eden, and Batman. It is mentioned also by Hakluyt, Purchas, Thevet, Le Loyer, and as illustration in prose or verse it was used by Chapman, Phineas Fletcher, Gomersall, Bacon, Fulke Greville, Drayton, Thomas Watson, Drummond, Lodge, and Thomas Heywood.”

To put it plainly, there was almost a subgenre of shipwreck stories in the extant literature, with Strachey’s shipwreck narrative following established conventions. It appears that Strachey shaped and molded his account to fit expectations, even at the expense of truthfulness, using older, generally well-known sources that would have been equally available to Shakespeare.

All of this goes a long way toward establishing that The Tempest need not have been written in 1611 on the heels of Strachey’s letter. It could have been written earlier, perhaps a good deal earlier. But is there any evidence that it actually was composed at an earlier date?

Stritmatter and Kositsky point to a German play, Die Schöne Sidea (Comedy of the Beautiful Sea), written by Jakob Ayrer, which has long been recognized as having significant similarities to The Tempest. Though the German play was not published until 1618, Ayrer died in 1605 — so if he was imitating The Tempest, Shakespeare’s play must have existed by that time. Our authors note that it was by no means unusual for German dramatists of the period to copy English plays:

Brennecke reprints no fewer than five 17th century German productions written in imitation of Shakespearean plays: Titus Andronicus, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. To these Cohn adds early German imitations of Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, and Merry Wives of Windsor.

If Ayrer was not copying Shakespeare, then either Shakespeare somehow came across the German play and borrowed liberally from it (unlikely) or the two works shared a common source, now lost (for which there is no evidence).

Another key piece of evidence is the comedy Eastward Ho!, written by George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston, and first performed in 1605. Noting that “passages in the … play are known to parody Hamlet and Richard III,” Stritmatter and Kositsky argue that a shipwreck sequence lampoons The Tempest.

In the play, the hapless characters are crossing the Thames in a rowboat when a storm comes up, wrecking them on the Isle of Dogs in the middle of the river. Comically disoriented, they believe they have come ashore in a foreign land. Specific passages appear to ridicule memorable passages in The Tempest. Stritmatter and Kositsky note that much of the humorous value of the sequence is lost if the connection to The Tempest is severed.

If these arguments are valid, then The Tempest must have existed by 1605 at the latest.

What, then, remains of the conventional wisdom that the Strachey letter, whether in short or long form, served as an inspiration for The Tempest? I would say, not much. The verbal and thematic parallels seem to derive from earlier and better known works than Strachey’s manuscripts, neither of which was published in Shakespeare’s lifetime. There is no particular reason to think The Tempest takes place anywhere near Bermuda. And The Tempest appears to have been adapted by a German writer and parodied by English playwrights, in each case setting the date of Shakespeare’s play at 1605 or earlier.