Cultural

• New worlds were being discovered, like the Americas. The printing press was invented, this meant plays could be printed on mass
• This era was called the Renaissance period/ enlightenment. Lots of things were changing and becoming better



Examples of Renaissance revival of the classical culture

• It was a period of great creativity, added to by the revival of classical culture (which came from the Greeks and Romans), inventions of art, science, literature and philosophy. The world was developing, existing beliefs were being questioned and nothing was taken for granted. It was a vibrant and energetic period in history

Real events Shakespeare wrote The Tempest about

• Shakespeare's friend William Strachey was an English writer. He was an eye witness reporter of the 1609 shipwreck off the undiscovered island of Bermuda

• Strachey went from Plymouth to New James Town, Virgina on Sea Venture . It left port in June for the New World, carrying settlers. 2 months into the trip the ship was caught in a hurricane and wrecked in Bermuda. 150 people and a dog were saved, the survivors made two ships to get to Virgina during the 10 months they were shipwrecked on the island

A video of the wreck of the Sea Venture (feel free to mute the music)

• Shakespeare is thought to have read Strachey's pamphlet and Sylvester Jordain's A Discovery of the Bermudaa when writing The Tempest

• A quote from the book Jordain's A Discovery of the Bermudaa. This quote shows the echo in Shakespeare's language within The Tempest:

Safely in harbour is the King's ship

in the deep nook where once thou calls me up at midnight to fetch dew from the still vexed Bermooths there she's hid

Caliban

• Many critics argue that Caliban's name is a play on the word "Cannibal" (a term derived from the word Caribbean)

• Shakespeare may have been familiar with a book called Of The Cannibals by the French philosopher Montaigne

• Critics argue that Shakespeare based Gonzalo's speech directly on the book: In his book Montaigne describes the idea of the "noble savage" and asks questions such as "What is the justification for one person's rule over another?", for example Prospero has rule over Caliban, Ariel, the sprites, Miranda, and "Who is the civilised man and who is the barbarian?", for example is Prospero civilised because he rules over people or is he the barbarian because he has slaves

• In The Tempest Gonazlo imagines an "ideal commonwealth where there would be no private property, no magistrate, no labour and no inequality in rank", this shows how Shakespeare adapted contemporary ideas about utopian societies

• Gonazlo's speech and the speech from Of The Cannibals are very alike in their messages and language. The messages of both are that there shouldn't be a hierarchy, everyone should be living side by side, we should all  live off the fat of the land and get back to basics, we make living more complicated for us than it should be