Hospitality and Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Traces of Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid
Hospitality and Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Traces of Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid

Summary/Abstract: Building on the well-known connections between The Tempest’s opening storm scene and Juno’s storm in the Aeneid and Neptune’s storm in the Odyssey, this essay finds a special link between meetings of Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest and those of Ulysses and Nausicaa in the Odyssey and of Aeneas and Dido in the Aeneid, particularly their shared observance of the (ethical) proprieties of hospitality, courtship, betrothal, and dynastic marriage. That The Tempest was performed at Whitehall in 1612–1613 sometime during the betrothal and nuptial celebrations of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine, resonates with and validates emphasizing the dynastic overtones of the play’s royal betrothal.

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