February 15, 2026
Bardgate: pics or it didn’t happen
A Visual Source for Shakespeare's 'Tempest'
Did Shakespeare Borrow The Tempest from a Woodcut? Fans Split, Storm Ensues
TLDR: A scholar floated that striking illustrations in a 1591 edition of Orlando Furioso may have sparked The Tempest’s shipwreck and wizard-in-a-cave imagery. Fans are thrilled by the fresh, visual angle, skeptics demand proof, and the internet is memeing “Shakespeare used Pinterest” while arguing access and evidence.
Literature Twitter just walked into a hurricane. In a buzzy Substack, writer-scholar Adam Roberts suggests Shakespeare might’ve sparked The Tempest not just from texts like William Strachey’s shipwreck account or Montaigne’s cannibal essay, but from pictures: dramatic illustrations in John Harington’s 1591 English edition of Orlando Furioso. One shows a shipwreck; another, a wizard in a cave—hello, Prospero vibes.
Cue the comments: Team Magpie loves it. “Writers steal from everything, including images,” they cheer, pointing to how the play’s Mediterranean island and magical cell feel more visual than documentary. Artists pile in: “Of course a striking woodcut can birth a plot.” Meanwhile, Team Footnote says the theory is “cool fanfic” until someone finds a smoking-quill citation. They argue ships and wizards were everywhere, and Harington’s pricey book wasn’t exactly a paperbacks-in-the-tavern situation.
Then the drama spikes. One camp insists Shakespeare could’ve browsed a patron’s library; others joke he “library-card speedran” the 1590s. Oxfordian truthers crash the thread; mods respond with meme cannons. The meme of the day: “Shakespeare invented Pinterest.” Also trending: “Prospero’s man-cave” and the “Sea Venture Cinematic Universe.” Whether you buy it or not, the crowd agrees on one thing: it’s a fun, provocative lens that makes the Bard feel alive again.
Key Points
- •The Tempest lacks a clear literary source, unlike many of Shakespeare’s other plays.
- •William Strachey’s 1609 Sea Venture shipwreck account, published in 1625, is often cited but remains debated as a source due to access timing and disputed verbal parallels.
- •Montaigne’s On Cannibals, translated by John Florio in 1603, may have influenced Caliban, yet the play’s overall plot and characters remain unattributed; Anne Barton emphasizes this uncertainty.
- •Adam Roberts proposes that visual images, not just texts, may have inspired The Tempest.
- •Roberts specifically cites illustrations in Sir John Harington’s 1591 translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso—frontispieces to Cantos 41 and 42 depicting a shipwreck and a wizard—as potential inspirations.