The play 'The Tempest' was about the Spanish Armada's destruction.

I know, you were probably told The Tempest was about a 1609 shipwreck on the Island of Bermuda but that is an assumption and as I recall this assumption was not made until about another 100 years had passed when someone decided that Bermuda shipwreck was what the play was about. Then the weight of time outweighed the truth.

..the play seem to derive from a report by William Strachey of the real-life shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda of sailors travelling toward Virginia. Strachey's report was written in 1610; although it was not printed until 1625, it circulated widely in manuscript and Shakespeare may have taken the idea of the shipwreck and some images from it Wikipedia

So stick around and your mind will be changed once and for all. 

I'll give you a taste right away. Bloody Mary was the African spirit Sycorax (down here) and she was crap, dross, shit, take your choice but everyone in England was glad to be rid of her. The name Sycorax came from Scoriaceous which in [Middle English was defined as, dross, from Latin scria, from Greek skri, from skr, excrement, dung. See sker-³ in Indo-European Roots.]  

It's a double entendre since Scoriaceous is the impurities left over from the refining of Gold. The gold being Queen Elizabeth who was refined or taught by the primative, called African, uncivilized example of Mary.

I was sent for by Queen Elizabeth one day and it was a nicely written invitation so I went without hesitating.

She ordered me to sit and pointed to the two paintings of the Spanish Armada that were above her head: 'It was very difficult' and I looked at her. 'They wanted to go south to Spain and the Armada actually wanted to sneak away at night. Are you aware that there are huge storms (hurricanes) in the new world that find their way up here in five days or a little longer from the time we learn about them? The gentle winds west of Cambridge shift back and forth when the storms are in the new world. They waver a little east and west from their normal flow. Back and forth they waver up to six times over a four day period. It seems so small a change but it's enough to know one is on it's way. Then the wiggle stops abruptly and then five or more days go by with the breeze calm, steady and straight. Then that storm arrives and brings high winds and terrible waves with it from the south.'

That's how our ships had done it! They knew a big storm was coming five days ahead of time! That's why we threw everything we had at their line of 100 ships at Calais and when we had nothing left we set our own ships a fire and sailed those against their Armada. Many Englishmen volunteered to give their lives to steer the ships into the Spanish Armada at anchor and they sailed in screaming (that fact was not known was it?).

Why was she giving me this information? Did she have a spy in the Spanish court and wondered if I would leak this to the Spanish? Maybe she also wanted the Spanish to learn of this? Everyone on the continent of Europe and some English thought that God created Spain's might and not the New World's gold. They thought God must be on their side, so anything they did was right.

Then suddenly God unleashes his wrath on the Spanish for making war with England by creating a massive storm when they tried to invade. It was one of the worst storm imaginable and it destroyed much of their fleet. The information was worth an incredible amount of money. However, the bard never shared the information with Spain or with any other of my countries enemies.

Then I realized that wasn't what she wanted at all. She wanted me to write a play with the destruction of the Spanish Armada as it's subject She told me she wanted to make it in jest so as to rub Spanish noses in it! But that would end up being such a waste, I could do so much more with it than that.

She leaned over and looked down at me. Then she said 'what are you doing making private war with England's enemies?'

Promptly I answered her, 'I was just...I wasn't..I mean I was...ah. What I mean is...'

'Dear child learn to think before you talk. It works much better, with men at least. Does the charter of your nation of actors allow you to involve other nations and real armies? Or are you just dead set on proving that you can do it all alone?'

My head was spinning at this point. 'I can.' I said, 'I mean I must do it all myself. If I involve other people then they will want to maintain the writing at their own limits and not let me establish it at the limits which I am capable of, if there are any limits to my capabilities. That in turn would limit the effectiveness of my attacks on the Spanish and in the long run with everyone.'

'Then it is about freedom.' She said.

Good for her I thought, she is of the correct attitude having gotten it right away, so she either lives freedom or at least she understands it. I was not expecting that since I thought she didn't like freedom. The first time I was in the castle I was only about eight years old and very shy. There seemed to be no bathrooms there so I could not pee. That had been a threat to my freedom and I never got my attitude canceled out even though I had been there several times and long since found out about where to pee. Until this time I saw the castle and those inside as promoting a slavery of sorts.

'Yes,' I replied. 'If I don't go to the limit with all issue of injustice and it's because I am not free to do so in my own homeland then I have not the right to attack the other side since it is no worse. Divine inspiration does not even come to me then.'

So I have to be able to speak my mind and do so freely about all subjects. Then I have to feel free and safe at least when I am writing. Then the best is support and help since those offset any wrongs done to me if they are not too great.

''Queen Elizabeth asked: 'Just how bad would it be for the English side if you wrote the play?'

I thought about for all of two seconds and replied 'It was never a problem before but of course it would have to earn money...' 

She interupted me by asking the most indicting question-statement-that-demanded-an-answer which could make me headless within minutes.

'And to make it all completely clear you now are the one that writes the words for the plays and you now have many people using mainly your words at the theater?'

My head was half cut off by then I was sure but she asked me straight out and I couldn't answer our queen with anything but the truth so I said, 'You are correct.'

Then she said, if I recall correctly. 'You are also the one who has recently made our church's parsons more upset at you than the Catholics are? How do you manage it? It took me so long to get the Catholic Church to hate me, Yet you can get them to hate you overnight. While you are in your sleep it seems, that's so uncanny. Did you know that you are a very popular and 'looked for' subject by the proper English clergy?

It was up to her. If ever Queen Elizabeth needed a good reason for killing somebody I guess I had made excellent ones and would have been the best scape goat since I was apparently responsible for every ill in England. It was only because I have everyone speaking useless nonsense in the plays that I was to be made into a martyr and I could not do anything about it.

Then I realized maybe it was different but what did all that she was saying really mean? Maybe it was to write a play. That was it. I was probably going to have to write her a play in order to get out of this mess I had gotten myself into.

'You make actors talk a lot. Like those Burbage brothers who used to make good ships for the English government but now can only seem to 'babble' words that you put into their mouth. Then there is John Falstaff your dog and a man named Kempe who used to have a sewing shop I used to go to but now you have him babbling away his life.' She turned out later to have been the one that got Falstaff for me as a gift.

And then it was so strange because it was just then that she started to smile. 'They all babble for you, yes?'

'Yes' but babble, what was she getting to?

Then she said looking around for the quill on her study. 'Oh my, I have to write this one down.' Then she started getting excited and turned to me and then turned away looking for her quill. 'Oh I do have better.' And she turned to me and she formally stated the following. 'You are' and then she was corrected as to protocol by a man in the room so she stated: 'Please come back in the afternoon and bring friends.' and this part was over:

To set the stage for what happened to me next (and so you don't think I am fibbing) please read this I located on the internet: 'The present Elizabethan building was the scene of James I's humorous knighting of a loin of beef in 1617. Apparently the king was so moved by the excellent beef he was served that he took his sword and knighted it "Sir Loin", giving us the term 'sirloin'.'

There were fifty people when I got there. There were clergy, lots of clergy. There were far too many I felt. They were all around me trying to make sure that I was not upset that they were there. Then why were they there? To see me pronounced a witch and then watch my head come off?

Then I was brought to Queen Elizabeth and instructed to kneel. It went something a bit like this.

'I, Elizabeth Tudor Queen of England, Wales and Scotland do decree on this day and each day forward, as those in this room do see and witness (and the date was somewhere in there).....that from this day forward you are to be known as The Great Whore of Babble-on'. And with her quill turned backwards she waved it over my head and tapped me on each shoulder and then said 'get up'.

And just like that it was over. She had knighted me or something but I don't know what she did but the church never once bothered me again. Not once. And I was never quite the same bitchy woman that I had been so a lot of the bite went out of my plays. That is where the unusual reference to the 'Whore of Babylon' and my dog Falstaff comes from in the serious play King Henry V which I explain fully here on this page.

It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me and 400 years later I still think it is one of the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, but it gold plated me and worked really well.

It gave me total freedom and so I hired Queen Elizabeth to co-author the writing of the play 'The Tempest'. Or was it the other way around and she hire me because she made a lot of money off the deals with trade expansion and such into other countries.

In the play 'The Tempest' I became the daughter of Prospero (as I usually put my self in the plays obliquely, (For example in the Merry Wives of Windsor I was Mrs. Ford, who was the one that held the purse strings. Since I was responsible for making the theater a financial success I made certain to remind them of this fact every chance I got. Since actors tend to blow up their ego's to humongous sizes they all needed that reminder even in the very words that I made them speak and profess before thousands that they themselves believed I was the reason that they were great. If they were not going to be gracious to me in private then I would bring it up in the middle of the plays and make them show respect for me in front of thousands.)

I'm going to show that Prospero was Queen Elizabeth using just quotes, once that is established then I will expand on the information. I will show that Ariel was Sir Francis Drake by just his own actions first, then I will expand on that too. I will also show that the Tempest was about the destruction of the Spanish Armada using less than one page of this teachers aide summary of the play, then guess what? I will expand upon that too. Here's a great little summary of the Armada's defeat.

Why do it this way? With such stringent self imposed limitations? To show that it is an art. [And that is how I started it out but then I realized that there is a lot more information that needs to come out so guess what, I expanded upon it. Some things just need to be said in words. One thing was about Sir Francis Drake. Very few realize what effect he had on the world. When he robbed treasure from Spain they branded him as "the Master Thief of the Unknown World" and made certain that everybody thought he was nothing but a useless pirate. That none of his actions had any merit or should be considered as great. Then when he went around the world the Spanish were in a great conflict. They had made sure they were thought great for going around the world. Now they were stuck. Everybody said 'if Drake is a nobody and he sailed around the world invading Spanish territory' then lets do it too.

Why the play? If the Spanish had already been defeated then why bother castigating them in the play? They were going to come back every year until they took over England. That is what the real purpose was for the play. They did about eight or fifteen things wrong according to whether you listened to the King of Spain or General Parma. They fought many times and never let one defeat stop them before. They had long lost God's help in any of their actions and so were carrying themselves through life like Nazi's by force of will alone.

The Spanish went around and around with revolts in the Netherlands (this account will burn you out it's so long) so they weren't going to let being defeated by the English just one time stop them. Their intent was to come back in a year and not make the same 'mistakes' which I feel was God's intervention. So Elizabeth had to 'gut them' which was her way of saying she had to destroy their will to fight us English. Actually it meant something completely different from destroying their will to fight which we often hear on the news. That can only be termed a temporary solution. 'Gutting them' meant precisely that she change them completely so that at the 'gut level' they felt very uncomfortable about ever doing anything again to the English or even thinking it. The resolute change that this play created is permanent. She sure was the cats meow.

That was the real reason that the play was written.

Prospero and Queen Elizabeth

Being a Princesses is a fun job and was for Elizabeth. They are the one person that every man wants for his wife. A princess get lots of attention and they get invited to every party in Europe. The truth is that Elizabeth just wanted to study in Europe and was truly a big geek. She would have made a great college professor and she ended up teaching every English person to have respect for others.

Queen Elizabeth did not want to be a queen as it is just work 24/7 to do it right. To be a good queen you must love and the more love you have for the population the more you are their servant. How much love for the English did Queen Elizabeth have for her people? I quote:"Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves. And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat; yet you never had, nor shall have any that will love you better."

With that much love this is how she felt: 'I have already joined myself in marriage to a husband, namely the kingdom of England.' (Elizabeth to Parliament) Because of this great love she felt as though she was a prisoner on the island of England.

Ask any royalty about the job, it's not what it is cut out to be. When the emperor of Japan in about 1985 wanted to get married, many women turned him down and the job of being essentially a queen because they did not want the loss of their freedom. Here is what Elizabeth said about the job right at the end of her reign: 'Golden Speech of 1601' ' To be a King and wear a crown is a thing more pleasant to them that see it, than it is pleasant to them that bear it.'

She was fourth on the list so she thought she had it made as a princess for life. Since the top three siblings screwed up ruling the country it was them that made her queen of the island.

Why the name Prospero for Queen Elizabeth? Well first she was as much a man as she could pull off. As she stated herself: 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
(Tilbury speech, 1588.) '

Second she was magical. As I quote her: 'If I were turned out of my realm in my petticoat, I would prosper anywhere in Christendom.' Elizabeth transformed the island that had nothing into a very prosperous nation, in fact the greatest country in the world. So Prospero(us)!

Now that you have the key you can figure out this part in respect to the power plays that went on in the Tudor family as Elizabeth grew up.

'Twelve years ago, Miranda,' continued Prospero (Queen Elizabeth), 'I was duke of Milan, and you were a princess, and my only heir. I had a younger brother, whose name was Antoni, to whom I trusted everything: and as I was fond of retirement and deep study, I commonly left the management of my state affairs to your uncle, my false brother (for so indeed he proved). I, neglecting all worldly ends, buried among my books, did dedicate my whole time to the bettering of my mind. My brother Antonio being thus in possession of my power, began to think himself the duke indeed. The opportunity I gave him of making himself popular among my subjects awakened in his bad nature a proud ambition to deprive me of my dukedom: this he soon effected with the aid of the king of Naples, a powerful prince, who was my enemy.'

'Wherefore,' said Miranda, 'did they not that hour destroy us?'

'My child,' answered her father, 'they durst not, so dear was the love that my people bore me. Antonio carried us on board a ship, and when we were some leagues out at sea, he forced us into a small boat, without either tackle, sail, or mast: there he left us, as he thought, to perish. But a kind lord of my court, one Gonzalo, who loved me, had privately placed in the boat, water, provisions, apparel, and some books which I prize above my dukedom.'

This information about the Tudors and Spain's Royal family can be found in the Encyclopedia's and history books or here is a very short incomplete one.

Maybe I should add that Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) (Sycorax) was the half sister of Queen Elizabeth (Prospero). Hence the family that cause Elisabeth's isolation on that isolated island that all those English people call home.

Queen Bloody Mary had married Philip II, King of Spain and this is the family that crashes in 1588 as the Spanish Armada (on the island that Prospero is on). Philip II is played by the character Caliban in the play. The Caliban is the son of Sycorax in the play and Philip II was eleven years younger than Mary and she was often said to treat her like he was her son.

Got it figured out?

Ariel and the actions of Sir Francis Drake.

Ariel and Sir Francis Drake were both very nice and there was not a bit of meanness in either one of them. Ariel just gets extreme pleasure out of tormenting Caliban. In exactly the same way, Drake loved tormenting the Spanish. Do you know how much Sir Francis Drake went out of his way to torment Spain? He went around the world to do it right.* Why did he go out of his way to persecute the Spanish?

In the play Ariel begrudged Caliban because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax who had imprisoned him in a 'cloven pine' for a dozen years until Prospero freed him.

The 'cloven pine' has never been explained before. All wood was rough cut during the 1500's except for wood for ship building which had to be totally flat so water would not get in between the boards of the hull. That wood had to be cleaved or 'planed' into flat boards. Also the wood used to make the hulls (or box) of the ships was pine. The cleaved pine box that Ariel was in for a dozen years was an abandoned 'cloven pine' ship that the The Drake family had to live in for a dozen years since they.were protestant and had to hide in a ship junk yard to avoid the persecution of the Catholic Bloody Queen Mary Tudors (Sycorax).

All this information is straight out of the history book (here).

'In 1549 when the Roman Catholic peasants of the West Country rebelled against the new prayer book, the Drakes, who were Protestants, lost all their possessions and had to seek refuge first in Plymouth and later in Kent, where they lived aboard an old ship. There the elder Drake preached to the sailors. Because the family was persecuted for its religious beliefs under Mary Tudor, Francis grew up a staunch Protestant.'

So when Francis Drake grew up he went out of his way to seek revenge against Mary's son like husband, the King of Spain (Caliban). Most important was the fact that she taught him her evil ways.

Drake the gentleman could transform into a total animal to tease and torment the Spanish. Then he would transform into a skilled master of warfare and ambush them when and where they were most vulnerable (and he was almost infallible).

Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at Caliban. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet.

Ariel has the monster Caliban bring wood to Prospero. Drake had the monster Spanish King bring lots of wood to Queen Elizabeth like the above wreck.

Caliban and the Catholics

The Catholics and their Spanish Inquisition accused Queen Elizabeth of being a witch until people half believed it.

Of course only a few of the leaders actually believed it. Few of them really believed in anything other than gold. They just used the accusation of her being a witch as a tool to motivate people.

What did we (the English) do? First we affirmed it and even added that Elizabeth/Prospero actually utilized witchcraft and the magic of Sir Francis Drake to create the storm which destroyed the Spanish Armada. Nobody had ever admitted to controlling the weather and being a witch before.

Death and Survival in Ireland
Eyewitness account given by Don Alonso De Luzon, regimental commander on board 'La Trinidad Valencera' of the Levantine Squadron.

On the 14th September 1588 the 1,100 ton ship 'La Trinidad Valencera' entered Glenagivney Bay, County Donegal, Ireland in a sinking condition. Around four hundred and fifty men were brought ashore before the ship broke up and sank. The crew who remained on board drowned.

"After the shipwreck we landed as many as we could in a broken boat of our own, some swam to the shore and the rest were landed in a boat provided by O'Doherty (an Irish Chieftain), for the use of which we gave money and apparel to the value of 200 ducats...

We were about two days landing our men... finding no other relief of victuals in the country than of certain horses (which we bought of poor men for money) which we killed and did eat...

I and my whole company yielded ourselves, within six or seven days after our landing to the captains that carried the Queen's ensigns... upon condition that our lives should be saved... whereupon we laid down 350 muskets and calivers and some few pikes to her Majesty's use... after which one promise was not kept with us for the soldiers and savage people were allowed to spoil us of all we had."

Don Alonso de Luzon and the other officers were separated from their men, stripped of their clothing and then marched a hundred miles to the English headquarters at Drogheda.

Now compare that paragraph from the history books with this partial page of the play's summary. You judge for yourself if the play is patterned after the Defeat of the Spanish Armada or after some shipwreck in the Bahamas in 1609.

Having so said, Prospero (Queen Elizabeth) gently touched his daughter Miranda (the bard, I put myself in all the plays*) with his magic wand, and she fell fast asleep; for the spirit Ariel (Sir Francis Drake) just then presented himself before his master, to give an account of the tempest, and how he had disposed of the ship's company, and though the spirits were always invisible to Miranda, Prospero did not choose she should hear him holding converse (as would seem to her) with the empty air.**

It is clear that this next part is not about some far off ship wreck in the Bahamas but an

This next part included the on going hostage negotiation with the Spanish Royalty for one of the hostages that England held. You can ask an FBI agent or a police officer if this sounds like a note from a kidnaper. Ask them if all the usual elements are in it.

'Well, my brave spirit,' said Prospero (Queen Elizabeth) to Ariel (Sir Francis Drake), 'how have you performed your task?'

Ariel gave a lively description of the storm (The hurricane) and of the terrors of the mariners; and how the king's son, Ferdinand (one of the royal family that was captured) was the first who leaped into the sea; and his father thought he saw his dear son swallowed up by the waves and lost (the king got a report that he had died but he was fine). 'But he is safe,' said Ariel, 'in a corner of the isle (well hidden on the Island of England), sitting with his arms folded (sitting with arms folded means that he is being treated well and does not have to even stand up or even work with his hands), sadly lamenting the loss of the king, his father, whom he concludes drowned (he says his own father must be dead or he would have 'bailed him out' by now). Not a hair of his head is injured (he is completely unharmed), and his princely garments (a description of his clothes for identification and probably the clothes had been dirty), though drenched in the sea-waves, look fresher than before.'(whoever he was he has awful hair! I'll have to look through paintings.)

'That's my delicate Ariel (Sir Francis Drake),' said Prospero (Queen Elizabeth). 'Bring him hither: my daughter must see this young prince(whoever he was I wanted to meet him). Where is the king, and my brother?'

'I left them,' answered Ariel (Sir Francis Drake), 'searching for Ferdinand, whom they have little hopes of finding, thinking they saw him perish. Of the ship's crew not one is missing; though each one thinks himself the only one saved: and the ship, though invisible to them, is safe in the harbour.'(they split up the hostages and the play makes the point very clear that if the Spanish try to make a rescue attempt all they will get is one person at the most since nobody knows where the other hostages are being kept.)

You can tell that the British were holding Spanish Royalty in prison from both the play and the actual account of Don Alonso De Luzon. At the bottom of the body of this excerpt of the play is what can only be described as a ransom note for the family of this important hostage. It is the same list of things any kidnapper sends the family of their hostage.

The play describes the clothing and the circumstances in which the person was taken hostage. It then states that he is safe, healthy, that he is not being abused and that any attempt to free him will fail because nobody knows where the any of the hostages are being kept. This is very clearly a clever but typical hostage demand integrated into the fabric of the play 'The Tempest'.

This play has nothing to do with some obscure wreck that occurred 20 years later in the Bahamas.

Maybe I will turn the world on it's ear with this next information and maybe you might not want to believe this. However, all the Spanish that crashed were captured. Not a single one was killed as was reported. One did try to make an escape later on and died in an attempt to jump from the 65 foot wall. His eyes could not adjust to the outside light and he thought it was only about a 20 foot jump down. He did not even see the men below him and almost jumped on them (Oh, maybe he was trying to jump on one of the soldiers to break his fall. I never thought of that possibility in that life. By the way the more valuable hostages were all kept in the Tower of London.)

If the English had killed those Spanish as it was reported it would have done nothing for England or Elizabeth. It would have given the Spanish leaders a reason to urge their men to go back to England for revenge.

Yes, you will read in the history books that the English or the Irish killed all those Spanish that crashed on their shores.

The Spanish were planning to invade a second time. So England had told all the Spanish sailors and soldiers that their friends were killed. That information was very upsetting to the Spanish soldiers and sailors. They did not want to have anything to do with a second invasion after they learned that they would be killed.

As much as the Spanish Sailors hated the idea of invading and being butchered, their own officers hated what really happened to the prisoners which was absolutely nothing. Queen Elizabeth had all the Spanish from the wrecks rounded up and not a single one was killed. She kept them in multiple locations as hostages so that Spain would not invade. Queen Elizabeth made certain that the Spanish leaders knew their men were all alive but they would not be if they invaded. She was prepared to make a huge drama if it came to that.

She would wait until they besieged a castle and then bring the prisoners out and from the tops of the walls announce what she was going to do. She would tell the Spanish Army that their leaders were already warned of this. Then she would have all their throats slit and then have the bodies thrown down on top of the Spanish Army. A total high drama guaranteed to bring down the house, in this case the Spanish rulers.

Those Spanish who had served in the New World and worked to death the native Americans in the gold mines were put to work in the coal mines of England (and I think the Orkney Island copper mines). I also think that Drake stepped forward and said 'I know from my experience how the Spanish use miners and I will see to it that they get the same treatment. Elizabeth liked that too.' The Armada brought along many men that already been trained as engineers in the mines. They were a lot more experienced in mining than the English were. I think the number of mines and mining engineers tripled in a month in England.

Queen Elizabeth got the best of many worlds. She frightened the Spanish soldiers and sailors into thinking they would die (and a few Irishmen too). She frightened the Spanish officers into thinking their friends and Royals would be killed and then the dead men's families would be upset. Then she got free miners and mining engineers out of the bargain. Oh, and don't forget all the wood that 'Caliban' fetched for her from all those ships.

Many of the men who had wrecked and ended up captive had profited in the New World. There were hundreds of them that came along with the soldiers and sailors just to be the first of the invaders to rape, pillage and murder the English as they had done the Native Americans. Five of the these men had literally shipped back tons of gold from the new world and were far richer than any Englishmen. There was not one chance in a million that Elizabeth was going to allow them to be killed nor were they going to be shown any mercy either. Not with the amount of money they could come up with. Five kings ransoms.

If the English had killed any men they would have sent their bodies home to their relatives in Spain as was often the custom. One Spanish body would have fetched ten years wages easily but you never heard of any having been sent back because there simply was not a single body to send back. So the English did not kill them.

[Mr/1/04, This play really got involved. I'm remembering it too fast to write it all out. The family of the hostage, the young prince, assumed that we 'savage English' would torture him and perhaps threaten to kill him if they did not pay the ransom.

Remember that all these men came with the Armada just to enslave and murder Englishmen. So we felt little or no need to show any mercy at all. We were not involved with Spain in a war and were not taking sides with another country against them. England then was an established neutral country and very much like Switzerland is. Since there was not a war on it was just Spanish piracy and piracy carries with it the death penalty in all countries. The Spanish simply had it in their head to come murder Englishmen like they did others elsewhere. Elizabeth simply wanted that kind of thinking stopped and when she asked me to help her do it I just started saying 'blaa, blas.and blaa and blaa' until she said 'now you know just how I felt when I sat down on the throne (the first time) but I had not a single friend and nothing in the treasury to buy one with.'

So we thought it out together. I had a new friend.

The young prince must have been a relative of the Duke of Parma who was the regent for the Spanish Netherlands. The young prince was the heir I assume. The young prince who was "sadly lamenting the loss of the king, his father" means that his father was taking his time paying for some reason.

If he had no other sons he would have paid anything as fast as possible to get him back before the peasants revolted. There must have been other son's or it would have worked best to threaten his life. To simply execute his son for piracy as they all deserved just meant another son would grow up to take his place and he would grow up angry at England.

We had to figure out things. I had to figure out how to make a play out of this mess and the queen had to figure out how to do the most possible damage to the Spanish interests. So here is what we did. The Spanish thought Queen Elizabeth was trash, a tramp, a whore and of course the Whore of Babylon, etc. so obviously she could have had an illegitimate daughter named Miranda three years before she moved to the castle as the queen, or as stated in Act 1: Canst thou remember a time before we came unto this cell (dreary castle)? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not out three years old.)

Nobody paid any attention to Elizabeth then (except an invented man/men who got her pregnant) so anything could have happened before she was queen!

In the first act we gave the world an heir apparent (just an apparent heir that was apparently made from air) to the throne of England. By two thirds of the way through the first act the young prince to the Parma family was hopelessly in love with her.

FERDINAND
I am in my condition
A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king;
I would, not so!--and would no more endure
This wooden slavery than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it; and for your sake
Am I this patient log--man.

It appeared that our love affair had gone too far by the first act because he was actually doing physical work to please Prospero. This person never did any thing with his hands except hold his ... while peeing.

So it was very serious and if his family could just get the money very soon then he and they could be free of the curse of the English Protestant witches. It lit a fire under the father and he got real friendly towards England. They had to do something before I became a 'queen wife of Parma'.

With another twist of the sword we stabbed the Parma family with a horrible wound and it was fatal. The play was written according to the Queens wishes to appear as though this is not the first information that was sent to the family. If you read 'the hostage letter' it appears as though it's an on going negotiation for the son and of course without the knowledge of the Spanish Royalty headquarters in Spain.

The King of Spain never trusted the Parma family after that but his sister or wife didn't believe the love affair or the negotiations, so it split the rulers of the entire Spanish empire, right through the center of the royal family. The love affair was Queen Elizabeth's idea after I finished the play. So I thought it out and wrote the love affair into the background of the play. I thought first I was crazy to do this rewrite for the queen and that went on for two weeks and then I thought she was crazy for about two seconds and then I thought the right thoughts again about me being crazy to do it and boy did that love affair work magic in everybody mind in Spain. That Queen Elizabeth sure knew her quarry didn't she?]

I got most of the leaders of Europe believing that Queen Elizabeth had indeed manufactured the storm and that was the plays purpose. However I wondered if I had put enough info in there about her having been responsible but I did not have to worry. I over did it. One sentence and the Spanish would have run with it, all the way to the Pope. With what I put in there with her magic and spirits was overkill because a lot of the leaders got real quiet. Since they did not have any defense against real witchcraft they stopped saying anything about her in the hopes that she would not curse them.

Many of the Spanish clergy railed against Elizabeth because of her making the storm and that really upset half of Europe. The Catholic half of Europe. It totally backfired since we planned for a lot of propaganda to be unleashed on the queen.

The Finale

After the correct amount of time had passed according to Queen Elizabeth's calendar she issued commands to start the next part of the plan. Then the English politicians and ambassadors got into the act. They told every one that would listen to them and many others as well that Elizabeth was a saint and not a witch. It is those of God such as Jesus, Elijah and Moses who can command the weather. The Bible never ascribes natural phenomenon to the devil. Evil and the devil have no power at all over forces of nature. They can only deceive humans.

So Queen Elizabeth was indeed the first Protestant Saint and had God on her side. That meant that the Spanish Catholic leaders had to be devils and witches. The murderous way of Spain in the New World was just being found out by other countries and it was scandalous. It was the obvious cause of God's wrath against them in the form of a great hurricane in the Atlantic which destroyed them in 1588. This information caused everyone including much of the population of Spain to give the Spanish leaders a wide berth.

This was not a simple play, it was Elizabethan power politics at it's finest. It rocked Europe as more and more information leaked out of the New World about how they had murdered or worked to death almost a million and a half people for just gold and silver. It had just the same effect on Europe as when the allies entered the concentration camps after W.W.II and discovered piles of bodies. The destruction of the Spanish Armada swayed over half of Europe to favor England, as did God, over Spain. Queen Elizabeth was the first person of either sex to stand up to the Spanish Inquisition and the Catholics backed down. It showed other nations the way to their freedom. Here is another example of her manufactured sainthood.

You can perhaps see how controversial the Bard's plays were at the time and why nobody dared put their name on it. If Queen Elizabeth ever made a treaty with Spain they might have made the Bard's head part of the deal. Queen Elizabeth of course had no idea (officially) who the Bard was.

A play about the defeat of the Spanish Armada was actually Queen Elizabeth's idea in the first place as I tell about on this page.

Who got to tell this hidden plot about it being the Armada? Every show had a member of the Royal Family, or a duke, oran earl who paid for the privilege of yelling out the subplot and thereby helping England (without getting shot at on a battlefield). Sometimes the honor went to a soldier that had been crippled in battle but still wanted to fight for the crown. The Chamberlain who endorsed us got the information and the money raised went into England's treasury.

*One thing about Sir Francis Drake that few people realize is what effect he had on the world.

Drake went to the Caribbean and attacked the Spanish there where they felt they were secure. He even attacked their main city in the New World which was Panama and tormented the Spainish because they thought they were secure there. All that Drake really had to do was sit in the middle of the ocean and take away all the Spanish Gold that they stole from the native American's.

So Spain branded him as "the Master Thief of the Unknown World" and made certain that everybody thought Drake was nothing but a pirate. That nothing he ever did had any real merit or should be considered as great. However, the Spanish had made sure that everyone thought they were the greatest nation on Earth for going around the world. So what does Drake do? You know the story of his circumnavigation (as seen on these maps map, map) but not the effect it had.

The Spanish were stuck because according to them the 'nobody' Drake had just done the near impossible. He had done the same thing they did with far less problems and losses. Every nation said 'if Drake is a nobody and he sailed around the world and traded or stole whatever he wanted from the Spanish without any resistance then lets go do the same thing.'

And that is exactly what every nation in Europe did from then on until the Spanish lost the entire world. Now do you see how badly Drake tormented the Spanish 'Caliban'?

When Spain was getting ready to attack England in 1588 Drake went into a bunch of Spanish towns along their coasts and tormented them there by capturing and sinking 30 ships!

Then the Spanish Armada was in the channel all tied together and he sent the fire ships. This is a newspaper account from the time and it confirms what I have said before. The Spanish Ships were like battleships and the English ships were like cruisers. There was that much difference between them in size and power. Just read page two. The ships Spain had were described as 'floating castles and of a size that had never been seen before near England'. Later England really played down the size and how powerful the Spanish ships were but why?

Drake had no sadistic streak whatsoever and neither does Ariel but Drake sure did like to torment the Spanish like Ariel loved tormenting Caliban.

** Queen Elizabeth I was a medium and talked with spirits, but she was very careful to not do it in front of people! I was made a 'lady in waiting' in her court for several months so that I get an understanding of England from another perspective and for information about her for the play. She introduced me to some of the men as a woman writer and I almost s..t right then and there but they all thought that meant I wrote love letters for a living.

I got even with her as I must. It was so comfortable there and I felt so safe that I would often fell asleep in her presence but since she thought of me as her 'child' it was OK. Once when I was the only other person around I nodded off and when I awoke I saw her talking to the wall! She was actually talking to the spirits of her ancestors but I could not see them. She was getting really great advice from them and I could not resist putting it all in this play. She was horrified at first but she liked it later on. When the court and other leaders of England saw the play about half of her friends had the same secret ability to talk to the spirits of their ancestors and that pleased her immensely.

The men in the court were always wary of the women in court since a few were totally mercenary. So men never knew who they could trust (although the queen was pretty good at getting rid of the bad ones).

However a professional 'love letter writer' could never be that kind of person or it would come out in their letters. So they were usually honest to a fault and as 'innocent in thought as a virgin' was assumed to be.

I think it was said at the time that a man falls in love with an average of three letter writers before he finds a woman who is half way like the letters of her writer.

Boy did I get hit on by the men after that! The men often had the saying: 'I'm in love with my wife's letter writer.' The women often kept it a secret who their love letter writer was. If they didn't the man might marry her or else her 'friend' might hire her letter writer and then win her for herself.

Previous Page

All rights reserved. © J Pinil, Inc. 2004