America was settled by Englishmen who were contemporary with the
greatest names in English literature. Jamestown was planted in 1607,
nine years before Shakespeare's death, and the hero of that enterprise,
Captain John Smith, may not improbably have been a personal
acquaintance of the great dramatist. "They have acted my fatal
tragedies on the stage," wrote Smith. Many circumstances in _The
Tempest_ were doubtless suggested by the wreck of the _Sea Venture_ on
"the still vext Bermoothes," as described by William Strachey in his
_True Repertory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates_,
written at Jamestown, and published at London in 1610. Shakespeare's
contemporary, Michael Drayton, the poet of the _Polyolbion_, addressed
a spirited valedictory ode to the three shiploads of "brave, heroic
minds" who sailed from London in 1606 to colonize Virginia, an ode
which ended with the prophecy of a future American literature:

"And as there plenty grows
Of laurel every-where--
Apollo's sacred tree--
You it may see
A poet's brows
To crown, that may sing there."

Another English poet, Samuel Daniel, the author of the _Civil Wars_,
had also prophesied in a similar strain:

"And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores . . .
What worlds in the yet unformed Occident
May come refined with accents that are ours?"