“Th'indias of spice and mine”: An Overview of the Poetic Plundering of New Worlds by Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

Abstract

Exploration, discovery and colonisation were primarily mercantile in inspiration. We shall see in Bacon's “On Plantations” that plantations were expected to be profitable, and that a well-run plantation brought prestige to the mother country. Although Bacon recommends that natives be brought to England so that they can be impressed and in turn impress their compatriots, the reality was that many natives brought to England were reduced to side-show freaks both in their lives and deaths. Despite these realities, Shakespeare, Marvell, Herbert, Milton, and especially Donne did plunder the new world for new images and comparisons, and we shall examine some examples of this. Some of the explorers, too, found excitement and wonder as well as wealth and land: we shall see how Ralegh's Discovery of Guiana combines pragmatism and marvels. The enlargement of the known world made space for unknown areas in the not-yet-explored zones of
the world, and in these areas wonders and marvels might be hoped for. Shakespeare's Tempest, although set in the Mediterranean, participates in this idea that any voyage between two known places may be diverted to an area of unknown wonder. Since Shakespeare's time, our planet has grown too small to hold unknown wonders: modern makers of story and tellers of wonder need to go beyond the orbit of the moon, and even to new galaxies.

Shakespeare in Southern Africa Vol. 15 2003: pp. 1-10