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"Tempest" Breakthroughs What I suspect...& what I think Shakespeare suspected, was that the terms "England" & "English" had nothing to do with an imagined people who lived in what today is called "Schleswig-Holstein" who called themselves "Angles". These people were Saxon-speaking Saxons just like those from the rest of northern Germany. The word "England", I say, derives from the Saxon word for "Island", which is "Igland"....in other words "Anglo-Saxon" is the language of those Saxons who lived on the "Igland" rather than those who stayed on the Continent. "Prospero's Island", then, is not an island in the Mediterranean, as Academe tends to think. "Prospero's Island" is "Prospero's England". When the "King's Ship" is scuttled in a "deep nook in an odd angle of the island", the reference here is to the Thames estuary. When Prospero bids his magical messenger, Ariel to "fetch dew at midnight from the still-vexed Bermoothes" he is not sending him to the stormy Bermuda Islands for some kind of potion. "Still-vexed", as I say in my book, "The Shakespeare-Cervantes Code" means "vexed by distilleries". "Dew" means "booze". Prospero is sending Ariel at midnight to another locale to get booze, because where he is at the moment, the liquor stores have closed. In August, 1604, a Spanish ship, representing the Kingdom of Spain docked in London to sign what was called the "Somerset House Accords" which ended 17 years of Anglo-Spanish warfare. The most likely place the ship would have docked is Tower Wharf...the wharf at the base of the Tower of London. This would not only have been the most imposing place to bring in this ship of state...but it would have introduced the Spanish to the place where the English had kept pirated Spanish gold...which was one of the reasons for the conflict in the first place. Now London, back in 1604 was located entirely north of the Thames...& was subject to all London municipal laws. Directly across the river, however, was the city of Southwark in the County of Surrey, which comparitively was wide-open. All the brothels, distilleries, & bear-baiting events tended to be on the South Bank of the Thames. Directly south of Tower Wharf only a couple of hundred yards away was the village of Bermondsey. A "bermond" is Norman French for a "porter"...& "Bermondsey" means "Porters' Isle"...probably a hiring spot for longshoremen. The plot thickens. The Bermuda Islands get its name from one Juan Bermudez who discovered them. The name "Bermudez" derives from "bermudo", which means "porter"...& is the exact same thing as "bermond". The Spanish for "Bermondsey", then, is "La Isla de Bermudos". What you have then is a Spanish ship in London, which, at midnight, is rolling up the street, while a couple of hundred yards away, Bermondsey, Southwark, Surrey, things are just getting started...& a shipload of Spanish sailors who want to go to town. They don't know Bermondsey, but Ariel does, so they put down a lifeboat & off they go....remembering, of course, to bring back a couple of cases upon their return. Very simple

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