Shakepeare's American Fable Summary and Analysis

Author Marx attempts to relate Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, to the experience of colonization of the New World. Specifically, "...an unspoiled landscape suddenly invaded by advance parties of a dynamic, literate, and purposeful civilization..." (p. 35). Marx presupposes that, most certainly, Shakespeare had read accounts of those who had traveled to the New World prior to his writing. Captain Arthur Barlowe, for example, upon his return from a trip to Virginia, describes America as a vast land of plenty and unspoiled nature with natives enjoying a simplistic, virtuous and idyllic existence, completely aligned with nature. America was thus portrayed as a huge beautiful garden in which man could enjoy the perfect pastoral existence—an actual "Arcadia," as described by Sidney in 1590.

Not all travelers to the New World shared Barlowe's view. To others, who experienced violent storms...