The island

[A MM]

Greetings to any Shakespeare scholars out there:

Is there a name for the island where Prospero and daughter are introduced?

As far as I know WS is not known to have ben a traveller. How did he make up the island image? Is it based on a report of somebody else's travels? Who was it?

Has any one tried to make a map of the island as it might have been visualized by WS? Can such a map be seen on the Internet?

Thanks if you have an answer.

[whiteangel]

There was no name for the island (but it is often reffered to Prosperos "cell")...and as far as i know...WS did not make a map which is avaliable on the internet....and the island is simply a object of his imagination....he did after all conjur up some of the most amazing plays in the world...it was a fragment of WS imagination .....just as all the other locations WS has created....in his other plays

[byquist]

Isle of Man maybe. Pg. 208 of "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" by John Michell shows a picture and says, "A view across the Calf towards the main island of Man. As a former hermitage surrounded by dangerous seas, the Calf of Man is very like Shakespeare's description of Prospero's island."

[A MM]

Thanks very much to both of you for your ideas.

When I get some time I may try to draw a map of the mythical/imaginary island for myself.

[A MM]

Isle of Man maybe. Pg. 208 of "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" by John Michell shows a picture and says, "A view across the Calf towards the main island of Man. As a former hermitage surrounded by dangerous seas, the Calf of Man is very like Shakespeare's description of Prospero's island."

The Introduction to the play in Complete Works... ed. by W. G. Clarke and Aldis Wright, p. 971 has the following:

A few months before the play was probably written, had appeared an account of the wreck of a ship "in a tempest off the Bermudas.. written by Sylvester Jourdan. Shakespeare ( Act I., Scene II., L. 229) makes mention of "the still-vexed Bermoothes;...".

If the story of the Bermudas ship wreck was part of the inspiration, the cimate to be imagined would be tropical, unlike in the Isle of Man.