The Mayflower Pilgrims

A detailed Summary of The Mayflower Pilgrims

On June 2, 1609, five hundred colonists set out in nine ships from Plymouth in association with the imperial Virginia Company. It was the aim of this expedition to fortify John Smith's colony in Virginia. While eight of the party's vessels securely arrived at Jamestown, the flagship, aptly christened the Sea Adventure, was conspicuously absent. This ship--which carried the fleet's most valuable cargo, the admiral Sir John Somers and the future governor of Virginia Sir George Somers--was separated from the other eight during a fierce storm off the coast of Bermuda, the legendary Isle of Devils, dreaded by superstitious sixteenth-century sailors. William Strachey describes the tempest which precipitated the ship's "wracke" in a letter dated July 15, 1610: "a dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the North-east, which swelling, and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at length did beat all light from heaven; which like an hell of darkness turned black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror."1

The island, upon whose coast the ship ran aground, however, did not appear as menacing as the tumultuous storm that so terrorized Strachey and the crew. Rather, it proved a haven, like the isl

e of Caliban's dream, full of "sounds and sweet airs, that gave delight, and hurt not" [III. ii. 134], and provided the colonists with shelter, food and "wood enough" to repair the Sea Adventure 's wounded pinnacles. The flagship's late arrival at Jamestown, roughly a year after the Virginia Company fleet had originally set sail, was regarded as a miracle and prompted several written accounts, of which Strachey's letter (circulated in manuscript form until its publication in 1625) was one. Shakespearean scholars suggest that this nautical sensation and three of the pamphlets that detailed the adventure influenced Shakespeare's final play, written in 1613.

While colonial discourses have dominated critical discussions of the play, recent productions of The Tempest (although some are quite political) seem less interested in questions of oppression and more concerned with Prospero's climatic anagnorisis. Even George C. Wolfe's much talked about production for the New York Shakspeare Festival last summer ended in "reconciliation" and "symbolic release" despite the director's choice to cast African-American actors in the roles of Ariel and Caliban. Although Wolfe attempted to make a point about "the clash of cultures in the burgeoning age of colonialism," Patrick Stewart's "combustible" performance suggested that the play's real conflict lay within the bosom of Prospero.5

While this colonial narrative is in many ways compelling and is in several respects convincing, Schneider argues that such a framewor

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Category: History