Using geosciences and mythology to locate Prospero’s Island

Abstract

The last work entirely attributed to Shakespeare, The Tempest, among the other important themes, is also a poem on natural hazard. At the very beginning, even if provoked by a magician, a “tempest” takes place and the main characters shipwreck to reach a mysterious island. It is the island where the main character, Prospero, lives with his daughter Miranda and Ariel, a spirit of the air. But is it a fantastic island or the author when writing was thinking of a real location? Literary scholars have done several hypothesis throught the years based on historical sources. Indeed reading again the verses describing the tempest to the light of geosciences and mythology can add value to the hypothesis that Shakespeare when writing the Tempest was thinking to the Mediterranean. I believe that the verses describing “the tempest” suggest volcanism placing the island in the Sicilian sea. This not only underlines once again how deep was the knowledge of the English bard about Italy but also adds further evidence to the volcanism of the area. It confirms that this part of the Mediterranean was surely theatre of important volcanic events able to destroy towns in the Sicilian coast. One implication would be that the playwright could have used sources precious to reconstruct geological events occurred out off the Sicilian coast.