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DESCRIPTION: "Elizabethan explorers undertook lengthy expeditions to discover new worlds. Liza Picard considers some of the consequences of these expeditions: overseas colonies, imported goods and the slave trade".
The "New World"
The "New World"
William Strachey's (1572–1621) first-hand accounts of the 1609 wreck of the ship 'Sea Venture' off Bermuda, is considered to be the main source Shakespeare used when developing the "savage and deformed slave" character of Caliban in The Tempest.
Excerpts from The Tempest:
He could only ‘gabble’ before Miranda ‘took pains’ to make him speak (1.2.354–56)
Yet he sees it as a form of corruption rather than civilisation: ‘You taught me language; and my profit on’t is / I know how to curse’ (1.2.363–64).
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