History of American Literature | Page 6

in 1631.
LITERARY ACTIVITY IN VIRGINIA COLONY
A POSSIBLE SUGGESTION FOR SHAKESPEARE'S
TEMPEST.--WILLIAM STRACHEY, a contemporary of Shakespeare
and secretary of the Virginian colony, wrote at Jamestown and sent to
London in 1610 the manuscript of _A True Repertory of the Wrack and
Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., upon and from the Islands of the
Bermudas_. This is a story of shipwreck on the Bermudas and of
escape in small boats. The book is memorable for the description of a
storm at sea, and it is possible that it may even have furnished
suggestions to Shakespeare for The Tempest. If so, it is interesting to
compare these with what they produced in Shakespeare's mind.
Strachey tells how "the sea swelled above the clouds and gave battle
unto heaven." He speaks of "an apparition of a little round light, like a

faint star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half
the height upon the main mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to
shroud." Ariel says to Prospero:--
"I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck,
in every cabin, I flam'd amazement: Sometimes I'ld divide, And burn in
many places; on the topmast, The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame
distinctly, Then meet and join."
Strachey voices the current belief that the Bermudas were harassed by
tempests, devils, wicked spirits, and other fearful objects. Shakespeare
has Ferdinand with fewer words intensify Strachey's picture:--
"Hell is empty, And all the devils are here."
The possibility that incidents arising out of Virginian colonization may
have turned Shakespeare's attention to "the still vex'd Bermoothes" and
given him suggestions for one of his great plays lends added interest to
Strachey's True Repertory. But, aside from Shakespeare, this has an
interest of its own. It has the Anglo-Saxon touch in depicting the wrath
of the sea, and it shows the character of the early American colonists
who braved a wrath like this.
[Illustration: GEORGE SANDYS]
POETRY IN THE VIRGINIA COLONY.--GEORGE SANDYS
(1577-1644), during his stay in the colony as its treasurer, translated ten
books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, sometimes working by the light of a
pine knot. This work is rescued from the class of mere translation by its
literary art and imaginative interpretation, and it possesses for us an
additional interest because of its nativity amid such surroundings. Two
lines telling how Philemon
"Took down a flitch of bacon with a prung, That long had in the smoky
chimney hung,"
show that his environment aided him somewhat in the translation. He
himself says of this version that it was "bred in the new world, whereof

it cannot but participate, especially having wars and tumults to bring it
to light, instead of the muses." He was read by both Dryden and Pope
in their boyhood, and the form of their verse shows his influence.
The only original poem which merits our attention in the early
Virginian colony was found soon after the Revolutionary War in a
collection of manuscripts, known as the Burwell Papers. This poem is
an elegy on the death of Nathaniel Bacon (1676), a young Virginian
patriot and military hero, who resisted the despotic governor, Sir
William Berkeley. It was popularly believed that Bacon's mysterious
death was due to poison. An unknown friend wrote the elegy in defense
of Bacon and his rebellion. These lines from that elegy show a strength
unusual in colonial poetry:--
"Virginia's foes, To whom, for secret crimes, just vengeance owes
Deserved plagues, dreading their just desert, Corrupted death by
Paracelsian art, Him to destroy . . . Our arms, though ne'er so strong,
Will want the aid of his commanding tongue, Which conquered more
than Caesar."
DESCRIPTIONS OF VIRGINIA.--ROBERT BEVERLY, clerk of the
Council of Virginia, published in London in 1705 a History and
Present State of Virginia. This is today a readable account of the
colony and its people in the first part of the eighteenth century. This
selection shows that in those early days Virginians were noted for what
has come to be known as southern hospitality:--
"The inhabitants are very courteous to travellers, who need no other
recommendation, but the being human creatures. A stranger has no
more to do, but to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good
housekeeper lives, and there he may depend upon being received with
hospitality. This good nature is so general among their people, that the
gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servant to entertain
all visitors with everything the plantation affords. And the poor planters
who have but one bed, will very often sit up, or lie upon a form or
couch all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself
after his journey."

[Illustration: WILLIAM BYRD]
COLONEL WILLIAM BYRD (1674-1744), a wealthy Virginian,
wrote a