<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By <\/span>Marc Frucht. <\/span>28apr09<\/p>\n \n \n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Safely in harbor \/ Is the King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ship; in the deep nook where once \/ Thou call\u00e2\u20ac\u2122dst me up at midnight to fetch dew \/ From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hid \/ The mariners all under hatches stowed \/ Who, with a charm joined to their suff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122red labor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>(The Tempest i.2.)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Many people suppose William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest<\/span> to be set in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Americas;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d still other British authors such as Andrew Marvell, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh may well have been strategically placing a more broad awareness of the New World into the mythology and literature of their day just the same. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n As John Cabot and his sons Lewis, Sebastian and Sancio did set out to explore the “new lands” they did this with the full written permission of a Tudor, most notably The Right Honorable Henry VII, King of England and all of Ireland; one might wonder if any of the literature in Britain reflects these journeys? If not, how soon after this does a growing awareness of the Americas enter the fancy of British readers and writers alike? Certainly it becomes a central discussion topic within the next hundred years. This essay tries to explore but a few of these footnotes in the literature with hopes that it might become a springboard of sorts for more comprehensive research at a later date. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes Christopher Marlowe in scene 1 of his Doctor Faustus<\/span>, published sometime around 1604, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So shall the spirits of every element be always serviceable to us three.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Doctor Faustus, I, 121)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Here Marlowe refers to dark-skinned native Americans. This is just over a hundred years after Cabot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first voyages but almost two hundred years before America will gain her freedom from Great Britain in a series of wars referred to at the time as merely the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153many headed hydra.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Rediker,1)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n At almost the same point in time, about 1596, Sir Walter Raleigh discusses the golden city of Manoa (which in Spanish is called El Dorado) in his The Discovery of Guiana<\/span>. (Norton, 923) Many of his informants during these years, including a Spanish soldier named Francisco de Orellana (who was credited as the first explorer of the Amazon) are already journeying throughout south and central America looking for resources to mine and people to enslave as well as passage routes between what they will soon call the West Indies and the already chartered East Indies. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n For the rest, which myself have seen, I will promise these things that follow, which I know to be true. Those that are desirous to discover and to see many nations may be satisfied within this river, which bringeth forth so many arms and branches leading to several countries and provinces\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 (Norton, 924)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Already these \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new found lands\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are becoming part of the collective imagination and spirit of the times as more and more people learn about Venezuela, Bermuda, and perhaps the Amazon river basin. El Dorado quickly becomes the ever so dangerous cliche \u00e2\u20ac\u0153streets paved with gold\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as sailors and merchants report back to moneyed people exactly what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll want to hear in order to excite them toward hopefully funding someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next expedition.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In 1497 Cabot made land far up the east coast of <\/span>the American continent in what soon came to be called Newfoundland. When news of this regional \u00e2\u20ac\u0153discovery\u00e2\u20ac\u009d traveled back to England the next few decades; countless other explorers followed searching places all over the coast.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Edmund Spenser pens these words about Peru, the Amazon and Virginia (and all points in between) in his <\/span>1590 Epic poem The<\/span>Faerie Queene<\/span><\/span>:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But let that man with better sense advise,<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>That of the world least part to us is read:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>And daily how through hardy enterprise<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Many great regions are discovered,<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Which to late age were never mentioned.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Who ever heard of th\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Indian Peru?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Or who in venturous vessel measured<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>The Amzons\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 huge river, now found true?<\/span><\/p>\n Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view? (Norton,928)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fruitfullest Virginia\u00e2\u20ac\u009d might even be the first \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jamestown\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which fails several times over many years before becoming officially termed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153original\u00e2\u20ac\u009d permanent English settlement. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Now, Shakespeare\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Tempest<\/span> no doubt refers to indigenous Algonquin people as the play juxtaposes that the English will not give even a small coin “to relieve a lame beggar,” with Trinculo saying, “they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian” (ii.2.32\u00e2\u20ac\u201c33).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The expression \u00e2\u20ac\u0153World Turned Upside Down\u00e2\u20ac\u009d shares a place in the collective conscience of people both sides of the pond from centuries of plagues, wars, depressions and other major events but its place and the time of its origin finds no authoritative agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Many believe this turn of phrase to be a lyric sung either to the tune of “When the King Enjoys his Own Again” or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Welcome Brother Debtors\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when Lord Cornwallis surrenders to Washington in 1781 at the Siege of Yorktown but some say it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an expression the British use earlier in reference to General Washington and his soldiers fighting in a style they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand or accept. It really is a matter of competing legends lacking any attribution where this music or the lyrics come from but it is published earlier than that as a broadside in 1643 protesting against Oliver Cromwell who replaced Britain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s King Charles after he was beheaded in a treason trial. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:<\/span><\/p>\n Since Herod, Caesar,<\/em> and many more, you never heard the like before.<\/span><\/p>\n Holy-dayes are despis’d, new fashions are devis’d.<\/span><\/p>\n Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet let’s be content, and the times lament,<\/span> you see the world turn’d upside down.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity:<\/span><\/p>\n The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.<\/span><\/p>\n Let all honest men, take example by them.<\/span><\/p>\n Why should we from good Laws be bound?<\/span><\/p>\n Yet let’s be content, and the times lament,<\/span> you see the world turn’d upside down.<\/span><\/p>\n (The World Turned)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Still earlier Chris Eyre\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s PBS documentary We Shall Remain<\/span> has Wampanoag people near coastal Massachusetts in 1618 saying that an epidemic that wiped out 9\/10 of their people felt like the ‘world turned upside down.’ <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Whichever direction that expression travels during these years, one can be sure both sides of the Atlantic Ocean know quite a bit about each other. <\/span><\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n Works Cited<\/p>\n \n \n Rediker, Marcus, and Peter Linebaugh. The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic<\/span>. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.<\/p>\n \n Shakespeare, William. The Tempest (Signet Classics)<\/span>. Signet Classics, 1998.<\/p>\n \n The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B: The Sixteenth Century\/The Early Seventeenth Century<\/span>. W.W. Norton, 2005.<\/p>\n \n “The World Turned Upside Down.” Blackletter Ballads.<\/span> 29 Apr. 2009. <http:\/\/www.lukehistory.com\/ballads\/worldup.html>.<\/p>\n \n We Shall Remain<\/span>. Dir. Chris Eyre;Sharon Grimberg (Executive Producer). Perf. Narrated by Benjamin Bratt. DVD. PBS (DIRECT),<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Marc Frucht. 28apr09 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Safely in harbor \/ Is the King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ship; in the deep nook where once \/ Thou call\u00e2\u20ac\u2122dst me up at midnight to fetch dew \/ From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hid \/ The mariners all under hatches stowed \/ Who, with a charm joined to their suff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122red labor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (The Tempest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic","category-mundane-or-sublime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}