SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Virginian Masque," in ELH, Vol. 53, No. 4, Winter, 1986, pp. 673-707.

In the essay below, Gillies argues that in the fourth act of The Tempest Shakespeare remoulded contemporary material regarding the Virginia Colony in North America into an Ovidian inspired masque

It is probably no more than coincidence that Shakespeare's spectacular and exotic play The Tempest was performed at court with Chapman's similarly exotic Memorable Masque for the marriage, in February 1613, of the princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine. But coincidence is sometimes hospitable to design, and we can imagine how interestingly these particular entertainments might have complemented each other. In the first place, each must have seemed to mirror what Jonson would have called their "present occasion," and also, conceivably, its political implications. This would have gratified Chapman, who is careful to assert that "all these courtly and honouring inventions … should expressively arise out of the places...