Did Shakespeare ever go to sea? Is this how he spent his “lost years” – taking in the topsail and tending to the master’s whistle, like the sailors in the opening scene of “The Tempest”? On balance it seems unlikely, yet in around one third of Shakespeare’s plays, the sea has a part to play. At times it merely connects the various locations of the play, as it does in “Othello”. At others it is the lair of pirates – as in “Hamlet” – or the locus for a decisive battle, as in “Antony and Cleopatra”. No fewer than four of Shakespeare’s plays open with a shipwreck – “Twelfth Night” for example, and the late play “Pericles”. Numerous characters are undone by the sea (from Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice” to the French King in “King John”), yet John of Gaunt can still sing its praises, dubbing it a moat to guard “this scepter’d isle”. Even so, some caution should be exercised with Shakespeare’s grasp of geography, given that in “The Winter’s Tale” the infant Perdita sails from Sicilia to Bohemia – a landlocked, middle-European kingdom.
Shakespeare evidently believed that a shipwreck gives a dramatic opening to a play. In “The Tempest” the storm brewed and released by the magically-powered Prospero will bring his erstwhile enemies onto his island and into his clutches. In this project the instructions of the Boatswain cited above prove successful, and the boat is saved along with its illustrious cargo. Elsewhere, it is natural forces that cause ships to founder: in “Twelfth Night” Viola is separated by shipwreck from her brother Sebastian, but at least she is saved; Pericles may feel similar relief, with the added consolation that among the personal items saved is a handy suit of armour; meanwhile Egeon’s fate in the opening scene of “The Comedy of Errors” – landing in a foreign port where he is unwelcome – takes him back to the day when a storm sank his boat and divided his family. The play will reunite them.
Interestingly, none of these shipwrecks proves fatal, but fatalities at sea are quite common in Shakespeare’s plays. In “Henry VI Part Two” for example, Suffolk is banished from England for maintaining too close an affection for the King’s wife Margaret of Anjou, and having previously been warned that he will “die by water”, he is indeed murdered by pirates and his head is sent back to the Queen, minus his body. In almost every respect “Hamlet” is a very different play, but once again pirates play their part: having been exiled by his exasperated uncle Claudius, Hamlet discovers that the letter he is to pass to the King of England contains instructions for his death. He quickly re-writes the letter, naming his companions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the intended recipients of the sanction, and when pirates attack his boat, he escapes and returns to Elsinore. Later the news emerges: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”.
Others suffer from the sea’s caprices in different ways. Antonio’s fleet of ships in “The Merchant of Venice” will make him rich so long as they survive the waves. But the rumours repeated by Salarino to Salanio in Act 3 Scene 1 prove true: the Goodwin sands have sunk Antonio’s boats and sealed his fate, leaving him bankrupt and unable to pay Shylock what he owes. Similar misfortune governs the affairs of King Louis of France in the closing act of “King John”, where reinforcements sent over the channel are lost at sea, frustrating his attempt to invade. By contrast, Othello, sent from Venice to protect Cyprus from the Turk, discovers on disembarking that the enemy fleet has been scattered by the winds (like the Spanish Armada, perhaps), and victory has been gained without the loss of a drop of Venetian blood. Maybe this is the kind of outcome John of Gaunt has in mind when in “Richard II” he describes the channel as “a moat defensive to a house, / Against the envy of less happier lands”. But this is a rare encomium. More often the sea is the scene if not the cause of distress: in “Antony and Cleopatra”, for example, it is at the Battle of Actium that the couple’s fortunes begin to founder.
Elsewhere the sea may simply have a pragmatic function, connecting the various locations of the play. “Pericles” is a play with a wide arc, ranging from Antioch through Tyre and Tarsus, on to Pentapolis and Ephesus, then Mytilene before a return to Ephesus. Pericles is the wanderer holding the locations together and his means of travel is by boat. Indeed the sea might be called his home: his wife Thaisa is buried at sea (though she subsequently revives), and it is at sea that he is reconciled with his daughter, the aptly-named Marina.
It seems from these examples that Shakespeare had something of a preoccupation with the sea. In some ways this must be simply because it is a useful dramatic tool, perhaps to open a narrative and follow the fortunes of a stranger in a strange land. But the location of the Globe, by the side of the Thames, must have given him plenty of opportunities to meet with sea-faring types at a time when the seas were opening up and the promise of riches and romance may have seemed alluring. Equally, it is as well to remember that Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford, close to the centre of England and far from the coast. It is quite likely in these circumstances that Shakespeare may never in practice have once set eyes on the sea.
