The Liar and the Bard: David Ingram, William Shakespeare, and The Tempest

Abstract

A few of the men that John Hawkins stranded in Mexico in 1568 wrote chronicles of their escape or captivity. By and large they penned unremarkable works most of which were featured in Richard Hakluyt’s Principals of Navigation. The chronicles are not literary masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination but offer a marvelous opportunity to visit the minds of ordinary Elizabethan seamen. Besides the inclusions in Hakluyt, two other sources offer up even more unique narratives. Neither story was in the first person: both were oral testimonies. William Collins spoke with officials of the Inquisition regarding the state of religion and other wide-ranging social issues under Elizabeth. Collin’s amazing testimony numbers two hundred and fifty pages. The second individual, David Ingram, left a legacy that lives today. Ingram is still the darling of American historians consumed by the notion of the noble savage. Ingram’s quasi travel narrative was delivered before a British Admiralty Commission in 1586 some twenty years after his escape from Mexico. His testimony included descriptions of an ordered society that was technologically and politically superior to that of England. This meaty information, however, is surrounded by beasts as mythical as those conjured up by John Mandeville. It presents those who use his words in support of a utopian Native American culture with a conundrum: was Ingram lying? By synthesizing the English narratives, whether written or testamentary, a marvelous picture of an Elizabethan lower-echelon subject appears. Granted, their language lacks the wit and erudition of their literary contemporaries, but what they said probably influenced the Elizabethan concept of the New World, Spain, and the glory of discovery. The fact that some of the recollections are flawed —whether intentionally or not— sends a powerful message to those who rely on language to interpret motive or historical truth.

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