Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

could be earlier and that the title and the theme related to the detailed accounts of Sommers’s
wreck such as that of an eye-witness Silvester Jourdan, published in 1610, in which the
Bermudas are described as uninhabited because ‘under the influence of inchantment’. 28 This
might, Douce argues, be a likely source. (It is now known that the play does date from before
1612 and there was a performance at court on November 1 1611.) Similarly, on Caliban’s lines:
As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d
With raven’s feathers from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both! A south-west blow on you. 29
Douce glosses the raven imagery with a reference to Batman upon Bartholome his booke De
proprietatibus rerum, of 1582, in which it is said that ravens are fed on dew when they are young
and that ‘“the raven is called corvus or CORAX”’. ‘Corax’, Douce suggests, is the origin of
‘Sycorax’. 30
Figure 46 Pillories, from Douce's notes on Measure for Measure
From such solidly factual, text-based suggestions Douce moves out into arguments that
depend on an understanding of Shakespeare’s methods, his reading and so by implication his
character and biography. To Malone’s offering of ‘a very apposite passage from Catullus’ for
28
Douce, Illustrations of Shakspeare, I, p. 6.
29
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare, 1, p. 8 and Tempest, Act I sc ii.
30
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare, 1, p.8.
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