Also I forgot to locate Mt. Oxford, probably named by Lok as "payment" for financial support for an adventure involving the Bermuda Isles, mentioned somewhere in Ogburn. Joe

Hello Atarica:

Returning to your initial question, which I’ve paraphrased (however inadequately) thus:

“Might “Bermoothes” indicate for the author a conflation of Berber and Moor?”

A few new questions, in response:

1. Do you mean to suggest that the author intended a new connotation to an already existing name?

2. If so, we’re back to etymology again: What was the first use of “Bermoothes”?

3. How did it evolve from “Bermuda”, named after the Spanish navigator, Juan de Bermúdez? Any Berbers or Moors involved?

If not, we still might not want to lose sight of the Berbers and Moors (see link & quote below). But I don't think the “dew” reference can help us decide anything about the island's locale. The fresh springs that Caliban so generously shows to all his new guests serves to un-moor the island from its occasional hints of parched Africa.

If Juan's surname, and the derived “Bermoothes” both possess no roots in Berbers or Moors, what we’re left with is the question of if the author chose that particular name for the locale of Ariel's midnight fetching because of the aural resonances it calls up.

Given that “Caliban” and “Sycorax” are such ingeniously indeterminate word puzzles, I wouldn’t nay-say your hunch. Perhaps he did hear the same Berber-Moor echoes that you’ve tuned into, in the background.

Why not? "The isle is full of noises; Sounds and sweet aires, that give delight and hurt not." Just one more of the "thousand twangling instruments humming about" our ears. Africa & Aaron the Moor: both haunt the dark backward of the play.

Thanks for the interesting suggestion.

Marie M.


Moors & Berbers in Shakespeare


"There are four characters in Shakespeare’s plays, Caliban, Othello, the Prince of Morocco, and Aaron, who are of distinctly African, or Moorish heritage. Whether these persons were of Negro, Berber, Spanish, or Arab descent is definitely in question. The use of the term Moor also is of importance. This word is used to describe Aaron and Othello, but not to describe Caliban or the Prince of Morocco, both who come from areas classically referred to as being Moorish. The origin of the word Moor comes from the word mauri. Mauri refers to the Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauritania, in North Africa (Everett 104). However, the English language expanded upon this word, making it more generalized and ambiguous, coming up with further descriptions such as blackamoor, a word which denotes darker skin color. Whether the term Moor had a definition of white or black, of pagan or Muslim religion, or area of origin seems to be interchangeable when one notes the differences between Shakespeare’s four characters. Sources of the Elizabethan image of the Moor most likely came from sources such as classical descriptions, actual encounters, travel narratives, and literary conventions (Bartels 433)."

Joe: This is intriguing, but I'm not sure I understand you.

1. Why would the author need a classical venue for this ratification?

2. Why did Oxford (or "Shakespeare") need a magus to personify his mortality?

3. How does the magus Prospero personify Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford?





"Our side" has made Strachey "impossible"? How so?

Thanks,

Marie M.

Marie,

Berber-Moor in all honesty it is a pure conjecture meant to illustrate how I feel the line in question with respect to dew might have more meaning than presuming dew is mystical stuff from a mystical far away land.

But in all honesty the etymology is problematic as I have not seen "the" necessary as suitable suffix that Shakespeare might have used. I thought I had once but I've never been able to find it again.

My real point was merely that I think we really should be considering alternatives to Bermuda. As it seems to me the link is not very tenable at best.

As to the your point 2, I don't really have that information. I think this issue has been confused for quite some time. Others are welcome to try and answer it.

As for the nature of the island in the play. I think you are right that it is removed from its presumed locale. I've always figured it meant to reflect its own mystical nature. I think certainly we can't view much in this play literally in any sense of course but I think the background information is probably more likely open to some level of logical analysis. But perhaps not.

But I appreciate you considering it.

I think these slips are important clues to our own subconscious workings with what the text implies. Not too long ago, someone kindly corrected me for writing "Antony" rather than "Antonio" or even more correctly, "Anthonio". Made me go back to Antony & Cleopatra, to find again where I'd half-worked out a subtle connection between a passage in The Tempest.



Glad to see my efforts weren't in vain!




Though I've heard some good arguments for Elizabeth as Sycorax, Queen Mary I as Caliban's dam is a new one on me. What makes you think the author had her in mind?



Dee and Prospero do seem mirror images, in some ways. And yes, Oxford crossed paths with him in the early years. But Dee lived until 1608 or 09, and other writers besides Oxford certainly knew him, and benefited from his celebrated library, or came under the spell of his Enochian magic and Cabalistic studies.



Again, though Oxford indeed went to Italy, we can trace the influence of Commedia dell'arte on other writers who never got further than the Lowlands. Can you show how this influence on The Tempest relates to the general absorption of Italian influences by English writers, from Oxford's early years (where you posit the origin of the play) through Wm. Shakespeare's sunset years, where scholars traditionally place The Tempest, (i.e., around 1611)?

Same thing goes with the masque - how does the author's use of masque elements in The Tempest correspond with masques of 1570, or 1580? Oxford may have been exposed to these ideas at this time, but to use this as an indicator for date of composition, one would need some survey of the general trends, it seems to me.

Perhaps we can agree, however, that the particular way in which the author made use of masques, and the Commedia dell'arte, might provide an authorial "fingerprint," so to speak?

Marie M.

Thanks so much for this info. Do you have the OED on CD or subscription? OED in any form has been on my wish list for thirty years...





I know you're busy with house-moving, so again, thanks for this information.

The "cubit" immediately catches the eye, being a rare word found in The Tempest but not elsewhere in Shakespeare's canon. Undoubtedly, the author read from one or all of these sources.

Though both passages seem drawn from a similar source, the rhetorical effects seem quite different. Theseus adds music, enchantment, affection and prowess to his dew-lapp'd hounds. Gonzalo calls up dew-lapp'd freaks and monsters to dispell fear and incredulity by plain talk. There's distinctive aesthetic palettes employed in these brief vignettes, I'd say.

Marie M.

Right you are, Prospero is a busy conjurer, entrapping and maddening his enemies with spells and charms. And of course you're also right about the alchemy - if nothing else, the word "project" tips us the wink. Come to think of it, I'm also in agreement with what you said to Atarica:



But Prospero doesn't use dew in his spells or charms. At least, I haven't yet found where he does in the play, though maybe it's there but I'm too close to see it. From what he tells us, Prospero's "magic" derives, among other things, from his treasured library, from the "liberal arts" and from "my book". He's also got a rather devilish host of "weaker ministers" he can call upon - though it's not quite clear why these Harpies and Hounds answer his summons.

If he doesn't ever need the dew for spells or charms, we might safely conclude he simply wants the dew, as a refreshing, midnight libation.





Were the natives using these words as curses? "Saint Mary help us" (if I'm assuming correctly) would be praying, right? Though the idea is similar, i.e., natives learning language, and may well derive from Eden, Caliban's fluent and poetic English suggests the author may have had a different native speaker in mind for his faux-cannibal Tortoys.


Marie M.

If one seeks environmental alignment, Bermuda does not cut it with the play's language. Nor does any island I have seen in the Med (1943-5). I have made a list (intermixed) of words and phrases taken from the play and the three accounts of Gosnold's voyage as a puzzle. Cuttyhunk, the Elizabeth Islands, and the Vineyard are the only ones with which Oxford had any connection that have the flora, fauna, and optimum conditions for incidental moisture needed for Prospero & Co.

Did you know that Oxford and Gosnold were related in tgwo generations - and that Southampton and (possibly) Elizabeth financed Gosnold - and that Gosnold shipped with Southampton and Essex in their assault on the Azores? One account has the gentlemen adventurers loading sassafras and cedar onto Gosnold's ship - the Concord - only to have Ralegh commandeer the sassafras because he thought he owned Virginia. With Southampton in he Tower in 1602, Gosnold would have turned to Oxford to out-rank Ralegh. The price of Ralegh's cooperation was a copy of one of the "Relations" and a mention in its publication. There is no question that these documents were available to Oxford as both graphic and event-related sources (as well as anything that Bass and Mouse have found) - but it really leaves the Bermoothes where they belong - either in London or a few clicks east of my fair Island. Henry Hough always thought that the now extinct Heath Hen was one of the models for Caliban's jungly noises, Joe