The Tempest is a play of knowledge, power, authority, forgiveness and reconciliation--a large canvass--where, in the first scene, a storm-threatened ship's Master abandons the bridge. Those Paley-conscious members of the audience will worry for five acts whether he will ever return. But we can not make too much of it. After all, at the time, the ship is trapped in the grasp of an even higher power.
The Tempest is said to be Shakespeare's last play. Its first recorded performance was All Hallows Day, November 1611 and it was performed at court in 1613 during the marriage celebration of James I's daughter, Elizbeth, the future "Winter Queen" of Bavaria.
The play was first published in the First Folio of 1623. It is one of five plays whose particular characteristics in stage digestion, punctuation, speech prefixes and the like were held in common and believed to be characteristic of the work of Ralph Crane, a clerk, scrivener and minor poet. He worked for The King's Men, nee The Lord Chamberlain's men during Elizabeth's time, where Shakespeare appears in the royal commission in 1603 along with Fletcher and Burbage and where Shakespeare worked most of his life.
The play's the thing, of course, but there are some interesting sidelights to it. When The Tempest was released, England was captivated by the story of an incredible adventure involving a ship which broke up under a horrific storm off the coast of Bermuda in 1609, The story was recounted by one of the survivors, William Strachey, in True Reportory, the short-title of a 24,000 word narrative that describes an astonishing effort to survive and eventually to form the a pivotal event in the New World's success..
A 300-ton merchant ship, the Sea Venture, was the flagship of a fleet of nine ships that was to bring the largest group of colonists and cargo yet to Jamestown. Among those aboard were Christopher Newport, captain; Sir Thomas Gates, lieutenant governor of Virginia; Sir George Somers, admiral of the fleet; William Strachey, future secretary of the Virginia Company in Jamestown; John Rolfe who eventually became the first planter of tobacco. The fleet left England in June of 1609, the third resupply voyage to the Jamestown colony, and took a slightly different and faster route than the original 1607 voyage to avoid the Spanish in the West Indies. Only a week from Virginia, the fleet sailed into a huge storm, probably a hurricane, which tossed the ships about on the open ocean. The Sea Venture became separated from the rest of the fleet; another ship was lost.
Most of the passengers and crew alike believed they were doomed. Nevertheless, all the men on board worked hard to save the dying vessel, pumping out water and even throwing their possessions and cargo overboard. On July 28, 1609, the fourth day of the storm, Sir George Somers spied land. Captain Newport sailed the limping ship as close to the islands as possible and, as he was unable to anchor, wedged the ship between two large rocks. All of the men and women aboard, about 150 in total, survived the wreck and escaped to the shores of Bermuda, known to the English as “The Devil’s Islands.”
Such a disaster on Bermuda was not new. A Portuguese vessel had wrecked on the dangerous reefs in 1543 and a French vessel was grounded in 1594.
After salvaging all they could from the wreck, the group began to construct two small new ships, the Patience and the Deliverance, to carry the survivors the final distance to Jamestown. It took nine months. The Patience was slightly larger than the Godspeed, one of the three ships that brought English colonists to Virginia in 1607, and the Deliverance was slightly larger than the Discovery, smallest of the 1607 ships. At last, on May 10, 1610, the two new ships set sail for Virginia, laden with supplies and all of the survivors but two, mutineers who remained on Bermuda and allowed the English to maintain a claim to the islands. Ten days later the ships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and made their way toward Jamestown.
They arrived in Jamestown in May 1610 and found a disaster. Famine and Indian attacks had reduced the 600 colonists to fewer than 70. It is known as the “Starving Time.” The Bermuda survivors soon decided that the situation was futile and chose to abandon Jamestown along with the few surviving Jamestown settlers. On June 7, 1610, they fired a final salute and sailed down the James River to make their way home to England. Before they could make open water, they met the newly arrived military governor, Lord de la Warr, with his three ships of new settlers and supplies. With new hope, everyone returned to Jamestown. That sequence, initiated by the Sea Venture--then de la Warr, was the real start of the Jamestown experiment.
Strachey stayed in Virginia and wrote his memoirs of the trip. His narrative was not published until 1624 but a version was available in England in 1610, or so it is said. That version--and the story of the wreck--is said to have been part of the stimulus of "The Tempest."
The wreck and the Strachey story has another small but fun implication: The authorship debate. Over the years several arguments have been made offering, sometimes passionately, alternative authors for the Shakespeare plays. Bacon, Derby and Marlow have all been put foreword as candidates. But the most interesting, and the most intense, of the campaigns have been in favor of the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. But The Tempest is the rub: Oxford died in 1604.
The Oxfordians have claimed The Tempest was performed earlier under another name. One of their imaginative supporters, with the unfortunate name of Looney, gave up the argument and campaigned that Shakespeare did not write The Tempest at all. The commonest claim is that the Tempest's scenes are generic shipwreck accounts; some argue that Strachey plagiarized much of his description from earlier wreck stories
One adherent offered this outline from the description of a previous wreck narrative with:
1. A voyage to Italy within the Mediterranean.
2. Discord among the participants; the crew against the passengers.
3. The ship driven by a ‘tempest’.
4. Loss of hope.
5. A spirit visits the ship.
6. Desperate maneuvers to avoid the lee shore of an unknown island.
7. Detailed description of nautical techniques.
8. The ship runs aground and splits.
9. Passengers and crew swim ashore on loose or broken timbers; (versus Stephano coming ashore on a butt of sack.)
10. The island has barbarous inhabitants.
11. Supernatural involvement.
12. A seeming miracle.
13. A safe trip to Italy after a stay on the island.
(From St. Paul's shipwreck in the Acts)
The Tempest is said to be Shakespeare's last play. Its first recorded performance was All Hallows Day, November 1611 and it was performed at court in 1613 during the marriage celebration of James I's daughter, Elizbeth, the future "Winter Queen" of Bavaria.
The play was first published in the First Folio of 1623. It is one of five plays whose particular characteristics in stage digestion, punctuation, speech prefixes and the like were held in common and believed to be characteristic of the work of Ralph Crane, a clerk, scrivener and minor poet. He worked for The King's Men, nee The Lord Chamberlain's men during Elizabeth's time, where Shakespeare appears in the royal commission in 1603 along with Fletcher and Burbage and where Shakespeare worked most of his life.
The play's the thing, of course, but there are some interesting sidelights to it. When The Tempest was released, England was captivated by the story of an incredible adventure involving a ship which broke up under a horrific storm off the coast of Bermuda in 1609, The story was recounted by one of the survivors, William Strachey, in True Reportory, the short-title of a 24,000 word narrative that describes an astonishing effort to survive and eventually to form the a pivotal event in the New World's success..
A 300-ton merchant ship, the Sea Venture, was the flagship of a fleet of nine ships that was to bring the largest group of colonists and cargo yet to Jamestown. Among those aboard were Christopher Newport, captain; Sir Thomas Gates, lieutenant governor of Virginia; Sir George Somers, admiral of the fleet; William Strachey, future secretary of the Virginia Company in Jamestown; John Rolfe who eventually became the first planter of tobacco. The fleet left England in June of 1609, the third resupply voyage to the Jamestown colony, and took a slightly different and faster route than the original 1607 voyage to avoid the Spanish in the West Indies. Only a week from Virginia, the fleet sailed into a huge storm, probably a hurricane, which tossed the ships about on the open ocean. The Sea Venture became separated from the rest of the fleet; another ship was lost.
Most of the passengers and crew alike believed they were doomed. Nevertheless, all the men on board worked hard to save the dying vessel, pumping out water and even throwing their possessions and cargo overboard. On July 28, 1609, the fourth day of the storm, Sir George Somers spied land. Captain Newport sailed the limping ship as close to the islands as possible and, as he was unable to anchor, wedged the ship between two large rocks. All of the men and women aboard, about 150 in total, survived the wreck and escaped to the shores of Bermuda, known to the English as “The Devil’s Islands.”
Such a disaster on Bermuda was not new. A Portuguese vessel had wrecked on the dangerous reefs in 1543 and a French vessel was grounded in 1594.
After salvaging all they could from the wreck, the group began to construct two small new ships, the Patience and the Deliverance, to carry the survivors the final distance to Jamestown. It took nine months. The Patience was slightly larger than the Godspeed, one of the three ships that brought English colonists to Virginia in 1607, and the Deliverance was slightly larger than the Discovery, smallest of the 1607 ships. At last, on May 10, 1610, the two new ships set sail for Virginia, laden with supplies and all of the survivors but two, mutineers who remained on Bermuda and allowed the English to maintain a claim to the islands. Ten days later the ships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and made their way toward Jamestown.
They arrived in Jamestown in May 1610 and found a disaster. Famine and Indian attacks had reduced the 600 colonists to fewer than 70. It is known as the “Starving Time.” The Bermuda survivors soon decided that the situation was futile and chose to abandon Jamestown along with the few surviving Jamestown settlers. On June 7, 1610, they fired a final salute and sailed down the James River to make their way home to England. Before they could make open water, they met the newly arrived military governor, Lord de la Warr, with his three ships of new settlers and supplies. With new hope, everyone returned to Jamestown. That sequence, initiated by the Sea Venture--then de la Warr, was the real start of the Jamestown experiment.
Strachey stayed in Virginia and wrote his memoirs of the trip. His narrative was not published until 1624 but a version was available in England in 1610, or so it is said. That version--and the story of the wreck--is said to have been part of the stimulus of "The Tempest."
The wreck and the Strachey story has another small but fun implication: The authorship debate. Over the years several arguments have been made offering, sometimes passionately, alternative authors for the Shakespeare plays. Bacon, Derby and Marlow have all been put foreword as candidates. But the most interesting, and the most intense, of the campaigns have been in favor of the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. But The Tempest is the rub: Oxford died in 1604.
The Oxfordians have claimed The Tempest was performed earlier under another name. One of their imaginative supporters, with the unfortunate name of Looney, gave up the argument and campaigned that Shakespeare did not write The Tempest at all. The commonest claim is that the Tempest's scenes are generic shipwreck accounts; some argue that Strachey plagiarized much of his description from earlier wreck stories
One adherent offered this outline from the description of a previous wreck narrative with:
1. A voyage to Italy within the Mediterranean.
2. Discord among the participants; the crew against the passengers.
3. The ship driven by a ‘tempest’.
4. Loss of hope.
5. A spirit visits the ship.
6. Desperate maneuvers to avoid the lee shore of an unknown island.
7. Detailed description of nautical techniques.
8. The ship runs aground and splits.
9. Passengers and crew swim ashore on loose or broken timbers; (versus Stephano coming ashore on a butt of sack.)
10. The island has barbarous inhabitants.
11. Supernatural involvement.
12. A seeming miracle.
13. A safe trip to Italy after a stay on the island.
(From St. Paul's shipwreck in the Acts)
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