How Shakspere Came to Write the Tempest

In Short

This volume serves as a critical exploration of the creative spark behind Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Through an essay by a noted storyteller and supporting commentary by a scholar, the work argues that the play’s ethereal beauty is firmly anchored in the lived reality of the Elizabethan era. It rejects the notion of the writer as a cloistered visionary, proposing instead a dramatist who acted as a sharp-eared observer of the world. By grounding the play’s magical island in the actual reports of shipwrecked mariners, it demonstrates how transformative art relies upon a foundation of stubborn, irreducible facts.

The Story

The narrative begins with a central, provocative question: how did Shakespeare, a man of the theater, conjure the "baseless fabric" of an enchanted island? The traditional view suggests the playwright as an isolated genius, but this account redirects our attention to the bustling, noisy streets and taverns of London. The core argument rests on the arrival of news from the Americas—specifically, the wreck of the Sea Venture in the Bermudas. While scholars have long cited these voyagers' pamphlets as source material, the perspective offered here is more intimate and immediate.

The story posits that Shakespeare, acting as a busy, working manager of the Globe and Blackfriars theaters, stood at the intersection of high art and low gossip. He encountered a half-tipsy sailor, a man fresh from the trauma of the shipwreck, who sought drink and a listener. In this chance meeting, the sailor spilled a wealth of unfiltered detail—the smell of the sea, the terror of reefs, the "noises" of the wind, and the physical discomforts of a strange, swampy land. Shakespeare, always hunting for the "new word" or the authentic detail, listened intently. He did not need high-flown mythology to build his island; he needed the granular, physical reality of the sailor’s misery.

As the sailor descended further into drink, his narrative shifted from geography to the fantastic. He spoke of "monsters," of invisible forces, and of his own drunken delusions about claiming the island as a kingdom. This was the seed of the supernatural. The sailor’s own chemically-altered state—a mixture of alcohol, fear, and exposure—provided the "supernatural mechanism" of the play. The playwright understood that for a miracle to feel real to an audience, it must be "ballasted with facts."

The arc of the investigation concludes with an appreciation for the playwright’s process: discarding the dross of the sailor's rambling, retaining the sharp edges of his experience, and layering it over the established conventions of the court masque and the romantic comedy. It frames the play as a culmination of a career, where Shakespeare, having mastered the craft of the stage, finally reconciled his own "potent art" with the fading, ephemeral nature of the performances he created. The story is one of synthesis, where the rough, unpolished reality of a sailor’s anecdote is transformed into a meditation on the nature of human life and artistic legacy.

How It Unfolds

The mystery of origin The inquiry opens by questioning the romantic myth that Shakespeare’s vision of an enchanted island sprang from nothing. It posits that the most profound creative flights are often tethered to the most pedestrian human encounters.

The chance meeting A stage-manager, looking to refresh his repertoire, encounters a garrulous, half-tipsy mariner who has recently survived a shipwreck. The sailor provides a "profligate abundance of detail," describing wind, reefs, and the physical landscape of a distant shore.

The ballast of fact The dramatist listens for the authentic note, using the sailor's technical accounts of the sea to ground his stagecraft. By capturing the specific, gritty environment of the wreck, he creates a setting that resonates with a physical, tactile truth.

The descent into fantasy As the sailor grows more intoxicated, his stories shift toward the supernatural and the absurd. The playwright recognizes that these hallucinations, born of alcohol and exhaustion, provide the perfect texture for the island's magical atmosphere.

The synthesis of art The final movement shows the dramatist weaving these observations into the structure of the court masque and existing theatrical traditions. It places the play at the end of a long career, as a final, masterful balancing act between life, art, and the inevitable silence that follows both.

The People

The Playwright (Shakespeare) acts as the central consciousness—a pragmatic, working manager who is far more than a dreamer. He possesses an "instinct for new words" and an almost predatory hunger for authentic human experience. He is the alchemist who knows that even the most "miraculous" tale requires the ballast of cold, hard fact to hold the audience’s attention.

The Sailor is the involuntary muse of the story. Fresh from the horrors of the Bermudas, he is a man of "profligate abundance" in his speech, mixing technical nautical precision with the wild, confused ramblings of a man suffering from trauma and acute alcoholism. He wants only his next drink, but in his desperate attempt to describe the "pestilent country" he survived, he hands the dramatist the keys to the island.

The Courtly Dramatists (Beaumont and Fletcher) represent the changing fashion of the theater. Their success with thrilling, artificial tragi-comedies challenges the playwright to evolve his own style. They serve as the catalyst for his return to romance, pushing him to refine his craft and innovate within the rigid, classical "unities" of time and place that Ben Jonson so admired.

In Its Own Voice

"I do not believe, however, that his imagination was lockt up; rather it was open wide to many impulses, hospitable to countless influences."

The scholar summarizes the receptive nature of the artist’s mind, arguing against the image of the solitary, untouchable genius.

"The sailor's 'profligate abundance of detail at the beginning, when he was more or less sober, supplied and surely established the earth-basis of the play in accordance with the great law that a story to be truly miraculous must be ballasted with facts.'"

The storyteller outlines the foundational principle that high art must be rooted in the specific, tangible realities of human experience.

What It's Really About

This work is a treatise on the nature of creative synthesis. It argues that the "enchanted" quality of Shakespeare’s work is not a product of divine abstraction, but a result of rigorous, observant labor. The central question is how an artist navigates the tension between the "baseless fabric" of imagination and the hard, unyielding nature of the world. It suggests that the most enduring art is that which manages to preserve the grit of reality while transforming it into something universal. By focusing on the interplay between the sailor’s anecdote and the playwright’s craft, the book poses a deeper question about the responsibility of the creator to transmute the raw, often "profligate" debris of daily life into a coherent, meaningful experience for others.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate the "detective work" of literary criticism will find this a fascinating exercise in historical reconstruction. It offers a rare, intimate look at the playwright not as an academic subject, but as a harried, working professional in a competitive industry. The prose is clear, brisk, and entirely devoid of the stuffy reverence that often clings to studies of the Bard.

However, a modern reader must be prepared for the turn-of-the-century perspective; the text reflects the colonial and class-conscious attitudes of its time, particularly in how it characterizes the "savage" and the "mariner." The inclusion of supporting notes and scholarly citations adds weight, but it also means the reader must navigate a variety of academic voices from 1916. What remains most striking is the book’s central metaphor: the idea that the greatest works of our culture are built from the "driftwood" of common gossip and the accidental, offhand remarks of strangers. It leaves the reader with a heightened sense of awareness regarding their own surroundings, prompting the realization that the seeds of great stories are likely being spoken in the rowdiest corners of our own daily lives, just waiting for an ear sharp enough to catch them.