“One of the most startling finds in the Jamestown earth was a brass signet ring embossed with an eagle … belonging to a secretary of the colony whose writings inspired a London playwright to create an ethereal work. The ring apparently slipped from the hand of William Strachey into the dust of Virginia, to emerge in the present as a gleaming reminder of a Jamestown colonist who helped create William Shakespeare’s New World masterpiece.” Hobson Woodward, ‘A Brave Vessel’, 2009.“The fierce storm that leaves a small band of travellers stranded on a magical island in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ the last of his great plays, probably written in 1610-11 was considerably more than a product of the playwright’s fertile imagination. Though scholars have squabbled over its exact source, there is general agreement that it is based on the hurricane that caused the wreck of the ship Sea Venture on Bermuda in 1609.’ Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post, July19, 2009.Four hundred years ago, midst the damp and fog of London, Britain’s greatest literary figure, William Shakespeare, got wind of the dramatic rebirth of the complement of the Sea Venture, assumed lost with all hands in a western Atlantic hurricane in the summer of 1609, bound for the fledging colony of Jamestown, Virginia, some weeks out of southern England.Word has it that Bill was hanging around some bars or coffee houses in the old city in later 1610, when he got wind of the extraordinary adventure that had been played out in the ‘still vexed Bermoothes’ over a ten-month period between late July 1609 and early May 1610. Perhaps he was running low on ideas for plays to fill the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, from whence his income derived, and lighted upon that account of the shipwreck tribulations at Bermuda for stage centre in a new production.The result was his last play, ‘The Tempest’ (soon to appear at a school near you). Well, at least that is what some scholars think, while others have tried to carve out some academic territory and reputation by attempting to repudiate that consensus by arguing that the play was based upon some other, non-Atlantic adventure of hapless sea travellers.In the oft-hostile world of academe, two scholars, for example, launched a 2007 attack on the defenceless William Strachey as being ‘a notorious plagiarist even by early modern standards’, he, Strachey, being the author of an account of the Sea Venture and a participant in the shipwreck of the vessel and Bermuda sojourn of its crew and passengers.What a bone old Bill the Bard has provided for the dinner table of scholarly, if sometimes vitriolic, debate. It can never be completely resolved, but we Bermudians are comfortable with the ‘fact’ that Will Shakespeare’s last play was largely based upon the epic tale of castaways and rescue that led in a couple of years to the permanent settlement of the island by the Virginia Company in 1612. That was but a mere three years after the Sea Venture foundered on a reef off the east end of Bermuda.The latest depiction of that classic shipwreck event is to be found in Bermudian artist Graham Foster’s masterpiece of a thousand-square-foot mural on the history of the Island at the Commissioner’s House at the National Museum. Unlike the persons he portrays abandoning the water-filled vessel for the dry land at the extreme east end of Bermuda, Foster was shipwrecked for three and a half years at Ireland Island in the far west, leaving home and hearth for days on end to complete a painting the like of which has never before been seen at this oceanic place.The ‘Hall of History’ mural was a gift to the people of Bermuda by longtime residents Richard and Helen Fraser, and was opened by Her Majesty The Queen in November 2009. Coming soon to a bookstore near you is the entire mural in an oversized art book, a present in part to the Island by Rob, Mary and Olivia Truland of Paget Parish.Now considered to be one of Shakespeare’s greatest works, ‘The Tempest’ has been represented in poems and song, in words of literature and in over 40 operas, with modern film weighing in with illustrations and allusions in ‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956) and ‘Prospero’s Books’ (1991).All this is to say that despite its minute land mass of 19 square miles, Bermuda took centre stage in the global imagination of early 17th-century Britain, soon supplanting its earlier reputation, inspired by Spanish commuters, as the ‘Isle of Devils’, a place full of screaming cahow birds and grunting swine.From the time of the wreck of the Sea Venture onwards, people marvelled at the pleasantness of the land, sea and climate, although early on we starting the process of extinction of various plants and animals and in the case of the near death of the cahow, we were early aided by Mr and Mrs Piggy from Spanish wrecks, who gobbled up the bird’s eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some, of course, are of the opinion I could not possibly comment that the place is still full of devils and other voracious mammals.Shakespeare is as much about theatre as he is about language, while giving views of the vagaries and uncertainty of life, love, friendship and governance. One of those values is undoubtedly appreciated by Bill Cosby, who rightly rails against the use of degraded language, as perhaps the creators in 2008 of ‘The Bermuda Shakespeare Schools Festival’ understood all of the values in the plays.This year the Festival is putting on, with the co-operation of a number of institutions of higher learning, teachers and student actors, a half-dozen of the Bard’s plays, including our own iconic one of now hurricane proportions in terms of the history of the English language and theatre, The Tempest.The chairman of the Festival, Conchita Ming, notes: “The stories that Shakespeare has told do resonate with our young people and since his works are a part of the GCSE curriculum, the Festival performances allow for a visceral understanding of his plays, which, in turn, has a positive effect on their exam results. We have also noted the enthusiasm and encouragement of seasoned thespians, who look forward to attending the Festival annually. Shakespeare is alive and well in Bermuda!”In this instance, congratulations are due in particular to the students who are willing to abandon the tempest-filled atmospheres of their iPods, iPhones and iPads for stage centre and the language of Shakespeare, that rock star of theatrical ages, and go face to face with the books of his wisdom, for a Twitterer he was not and never will be.Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director[AT]bmm.bm or 704-5480.