bermothes

Updated: May 8, 2025

I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative and in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither would I insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only suppose that Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of the Tempest, the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin, had many of the fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the "still vext Bermothes," and by the popular superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in circulation by that event.

Washington Irving - Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies