THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



the voyagers. The name Caliban is almost certainly 

 a distortion of Cannibal, and Setebos is a divinity 

 of the Patagonians, described by Master Francis 

 Fletcher, in his account of Drake's great voyage, as 

 'Settaboth, that is, the Divell, whom they name their 

 great god/ But it was the reports brought home by 

 the Virginian adventurers that set Shakespeare's im- 



Firgtnia. agination to work. The colony was planted in 1609; 

 and the first Governor, Lord Delaware, was diligent in 

 building towns and forts, and in bringing the Indians 

 under control. Sir George Somers, deputy-Governor, 

 was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, which were in ill 

 repute as the haunt of wicked spirits and foul weather, 

 but were found by the castaways to be temperate, 

 fruitful, and pleasant. The tale of these adventures, 

 brought by word of mouth, or published in The Dis- 

 covery of the Barmudas^ otherwise called the He of Divels 

 (1610), — a tract by Sylvester Jourdain, one of Sir 

 George Somers' company, — gave the finest and subtlest 



The wit in the world a theme for a play. The Tempest is a 



'Tempest: fantasy of the New World. It is too full of the ether 

 of poetry, and too many-sided to be called a satire, yet 

 Shakespeare, almost alone, saw the problem of Ameri- 

 can settlement in a detached light; and a spirit of 

 humorous criticism runs riot in the lighter scenes. The 

 drunken butler, accepting the worship and allegiance 

 of Caliban, and swearing him in by making him kiss 

 the bottle, is a fair representative of the idle and dis- 

 solute men who were shipped to the Virginian colony. 



Miranda. The situation of Miranda was perhaps suggested by 

 the story of Virginia Dare, grand-daughter of Captain 

 John White, the first child born in America of English 



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