as translated by Florio, we have the following:  “It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal:  the very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon, were never heard amongst them.”

Here the borrowing is too plain to be questioned; and this fixes the writing of The Tempest after 1603.  On the other hand, Malone ascertained from some old records that the play was acted by the King’s players “before Prince Charles, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine, in the beginning of 1613.”

For any nearer fixing of the date we have nothing firm to go upon but probabilities.  Some of these, however, are pretty strong.  I must rest with noting one of them: 

Some hints towards the play were derived, apparently, from a book published by one Jourdan in 1610, and entitled, A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Isle of Devils.  The occasion was as follows:  A fleet of nine ships, with some five hundred people, sailed from England in May, 1609.  Among the officers were Sir George Somers, Sir Thomas Gates, and Captain Newport.  The fleet was headed by the Sea-Venture, called the Admiral’s Ship.  On the 25th of July they were struck by a terrible tempest, which scattered the whole fleet, and parted the Sea-Venture from the rest.  Most of the ships, however, reached Virginia, left the greater part of their people there, and sailed again for England, where Gates arrived in August or September, 1610, having been sent home by Lord Delaware.  Jourdan’s book, after relating their shipwreck, continues thus:  “But our delivery was not more strange in falling so happily upon land, than our provision was admirable.  For the Islands of the Bermudas, as every one knoweth that hath heard or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or Heathen people, but ever reputed a most prodigious and enchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, storms, and foul weather.  Yet did we find the air so temperate, and the country so abundantly fruitful, that, notwithstanding we were there for the space of nine months, we were not only well refreshed, but out of the abundance thereof provided us with some reasonable quantity of provision to carry us for Virginia, and to maintain ourselves and the company we found there.”  About the same time, the Council of Virginia also put forth a narrative of “the disasters which had befallen the fleet, and of their miraculous escape,” wherein we have the following:  “These Islands of the Bermudas have ever been accounted an enchanted pile of rocks, and a desert inhabitation of devils; but all the fairies of the rocks were but flocks of birds, and all the devils that haunted the woods were but herds of swine.”