Attempting to Describe a Penguin
Posted by Daria Davis on 2/27/2009The librarians see me coming from miles away at the Harold Washington Library. The first time I showed up on behalf of Steppenwolf’s literary department I had a research agenda for The Seafarer including: the history of the devil, the ins and outs of poker and Irish Christmas traditions. The reference desk employee looked up at me, and asked, “What is your research topic actually?” While I do get a modicum of satisfaction out of confounding librarians, I knew I needed all the help I could get trying to plumb the depths of scholarship waiting for me with The Tempest packet.
My new eclectic list of topics included the political structure of 16th and 17th century Italy, Alchemy, the Age of Exploration and New World Shipwrecks. And so I dove in to a sea of old English accounts of plague-ridden London, and missives from one ship Captain to another attempting to describe for the first time, something as exotic as a penguin. Surfacing periodically to see how far off course I had drifted, I once again find myself with an intriguing body of knowledge; some of these 17th century morsels I can’t help but offer up regularly during Steppenwolf lunch breaks, which are received with varying degrees of interest.
One tributary of my research that I’ve found worthy of lunchtime discussion covers Europe’s first attempts to map the world. In conversations I’ve had with Joy Meads, our Literary Manager, we’ve described it as an undertaking similar to the Human Genome Project. In the 16th century, the country with the best map won. The world was an unknown quantity, and as each new voyage gave way to a new map, the picture of the globe became clearer. This spurred growing tensions between European nations as they scrambled for dominion over newly discovered lands desirable for colonization and expansion. England was late to jump into the exploration game, they had been a little tied up trying to subdue the Irish and the Scottish when Magellan accidentally circumnavigated the globe in the mid-1500s. Galvanized into action by the encroaching Spanish who were claiming the most direct routes to the spice trade, Queen Elizabeth sent Francis Drake to circle the world and do what he could to stifle the Spanish Armada. Upon his return he was quietly knighted by another noble, lest the Queen get tangled up in Drake’s bloodthirsty tactics. No one told me about Government-sanctioned piracy in the fourth grade!
As the remainder of the 17th century unfolded, the world, after expanding in the minds and hearts of Europeans, began to grow smaller as the mystery of foreign lands was unraveled. As I finish up my Tempest research I am struck by the power of this moment in our human history. The blindfolded jump into the unknown that each of these sea travelers took, and the strange information they sent back over the waves, captivated nations and inspired poets, theater patrons, dignitaries and maybe even a certain playwright of note.