‘The sea itself in its varied working tides, waves, currents, storms and calms, never goes out of [Shakespeare’s] work’, as Falconer rather poetically observes.1 It is true that in every single play – as far away as it may be situated from the sea2 – there is at least one metaphor or phrase about the sea or the ships navigating it.
Many authors have commented on the frequent use of ‘sea phrases’ before: a ‘ubiquity of the sea in Shakespeare’s work’.3 Yet biographical deductions should not be drawn from this fact, and similarly it would, in my opinion, be a stretch to conclude that Shakespeare ‘loved the sea’. From comments along these lines, the projection from romanticism’ jumps right out of it in my viewpoint.
Döring has made the important argument, that ‘Elizabethan playhouses in Southwark were waterway constructions, built on … the river’s edge’.4 So, Shakespeare worked in the harbour area of London. To put it
differently, he was situated in the ‘maritime centre’ of a ‘maritime city’,5 that was the capital of a ‘maritime country’. How could his language not be teeming with references to the sea?
However, when a ‘centrality of maritime experience in and for Shakespearean theatre’6 is postulated, I have to object with all due respect. I cannot prove it with numbers, but the many mentions of flowers, trees, herbs and other plants appear to me at least as frequent as the sea and ship references.
As a witness in this case, I call Caroline Spurgeon, who did all the counts. She presents some charts in the end of her book, ‘showing the range and subjects of images in five of Shakespeare’s plays’ (Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, As You Like It, Macbeth and A Winter’s Tale), and ‘showing the range and subjects of Shakespeare’s images in their exact proportion’,7 which I reproduce in my book with kind permission of the publisher.
From these charts it can be recognised, that the sea is not more ‘central’ for Shakespeare’s work than many
other things. Other authors found Shakespeare ‘very much aware of gardening, its joys and disappointments’ of gardening, for instance.8
But even if not ‘central’, the sea remains important in the plays.
- Falconer, 1964, Shakespeare and the Sea, p. xii. ↩︎
- Mentz, 2009, At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean, loc. 98.
‘The sea … inspired a rich symbolic language even in plays set on terra firma.’ ↩︎ - G.W. Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest, 1932, quoted in Brayton, 2018, Shakespeare’s Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration, p. 12. My emphasis. ↩︎
- Döring, 2012, All the World’s the Sea: Shakespearean Passages, p. 11
(in DSG Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Band 148). ↩︎ - Sprang, 2012, “So Weak Is My Ability and Knowledge in Navigation”: Navigating the Stage in Early Modern London, p. 33 (in DSG Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Band 148):
‘galleys and large convoy vessels sailing up and down the Thames, and sea captains, pilots and sailors walking the streets of London’. ↩︎ - Ibid., p. 12, my emphasis. ↩︎
- Spurgeon, 2001, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us, Annex [Reprint from 1935]. ↩︎
- Christ, 2002, Shakespeare for the Modern Reader: A User-Friendly Introduction, p. 140. ↩︎
Shakespeare's Shipwrecks 