Contemporary exploration

• The Tempest is a play influenced by travel writing of the time and by early colonialism.

• At the time of writing, England was in the early years of settling the Americas and there was great curiosity about this "New World', and the people who were found to be living there.

• The play opens with a dramatic and realistic storm

~ Source for the storm: 'of True Reportary of the Wrack of the Sea Venture' by William Strachey

• May 1609 - a fleet of ships left for Virginia with supplies for the British colony established there, one ship was caught in a storm and was ship-wrecked on Bermuda, assumed lost.

• Once the passengers reached land there was an attempted mutiny: 'faction and conjuration afoot, deadly and bloody, in which the life of our governor, with many others were threatened.

• This coup was unsuccessful and the ship eventually set sail and reached the colony in May 1610.

• The arrival in Virginia was considered to be a miraculous survival of all on board.