Mini Episode: The Art of the Shakespearean Insult

Patreon Bonus: The Art of the Shakespearean Insult

The following episode contains adult language and themes. Listener discretion is advised.

Thanks to my brilliant Patreons, we hit our first goal! As promised, here is a mini episode on how to insult people Shakespeare style.

The bard was a wizard at the art of the insult.  As a general rule, his insults fell into some basic categories.  

The first is probably the most wide-spread throughout his works, and that is the act of simple name-calling.  Some were pretty basic, such as when Luciana in The Comedy of Errors snaps at Dromio with “thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!” Calling someone an animal, such as a snail or slug, is particularly insulting, for the Elizabethans, as a general rule, believed in the Great Chain of Being, where all of creation held a certain rank, such as plants being lowlier than the creatures that slid on the ground, and humans being superior to four-legged mammals. This ranking system permeated the literature of the day, and held a certain weight to it, which is one of many reasons being compared to some animal was particularly insulting.  

Pistol, for instance, does this when he addresses Nym in Henry V calling him an “Iceland dog! thou prick-ear’d cur of Iceland!” These animal insults could be combined with other terms that also refer to rank, such as calling someone higher up in the social pecking order a rank that was lower.  Additionally, name-calling could involve insulting another’s family. We see this when Petrucio calls Grumio “You peasant swain! you whoreson malt-horse drudge!” in the Taming of the Shrew.

Name-calling in Shakespeare’s works hit it’s apex in King Lear, when Kent blasts Oswalt with this breath-taking stream of names. Oswalt asks Kent simply, “What doest thou know me for?” to which Kent answers:

“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.”

There are so many examples of name-calling in Shakespeare’s work that I could honestly do a whole podcast on just that, but rather, I’m going to move on to the back-handed compliment.  I confess that my favorite play of Shakespeare’s is probably Much Ado About Nothing simply because of the snappy quips between Benedick and Beatrice. At one point in the play, Benedick pays Beatrice a kind of back-handed compliment when talking about her with Claudio. The two guys are watching Hero and Beatrice chat together, and Claudio asks Benedick if he thought Hero was pretty, to which Benedick responds, “I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such matter: there’s her cousin and she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December.” She is “possessed with a fury” and yet she is the most beautiful girl in the room.  Likewise, Parolles is another figure in Shakespeare who is quick-witted with the backhanded compliment, for he tells Helena “If I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court” in All’s Well That End’s Well. Nice.

Of course, Shakespeare perfects the backhanded compliment in Sonnet 130, in which he tells us how his beloved is not a conventional beauty.  This particular sonnet is making fun of the Italian sonnet tradition that painted women as caucasian angelic beauties, such as how Petrarch talks about Laura’s perfect golden hair and fair skin.  Shakespeare, however, purposefully throws this tradition on its head, but even after such a string of insults, he ends it with a couplet that makes this sonnet quite the compliment. He tells us this about his love:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,

Coral is far more red, than her lips red,

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks,

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

However, despite all of these less than perfect qualities, he tells us:

 And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,

 As any she belied with false compare.

She is still his beloved, and he elevates her as being one of a kind, to the point that even trying to compare her to the classically beautiful Laura in Petrarch’s Canzoniere is a fool’s errand; he loves her in spite of having “reeking breath” and “treading on the ground” rather than angelically gliding along. In a way, this demonstrates a stronger love than Petrarch, for Shakespeare’s love is grounded in reality whereas Petrarch’s love seems to be grounded in an impossible ideal.

Back-handed compliments aside, Shakespeare isn’t above the “kill yo’self” insult.  In Henry IV Part I, Falstaff tells Prince Hal to “Go, hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters!”  Gratiano, in The Merchant of Venice, tells the wicked Shylock, “Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself.”  Another example can be found in Part III of Henry VI when Margaret basically tells King Henry to “make thy sepulchre And creep into it far before thy time.”

The crowning glory of the Shakespeare put-down is, of course, the bawdy insult.  He wasn’t above the “your mama” joke, such as when Chiron tells Aaron in Titus Andronicus, “Thou hast undone our mother” to which Aaron quips back, “Villain, I have done thy mother.”  Of course, everyone loves a good whore insult, such as when Timon of Athens tells Timandra “Be a whore still; they love thee not that use thee. Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.” Iago also insults Desdemona along these lines in Othello when he tells her, “You rise to play, and go to bed to work.”  In as you like it, Touchstone the fool has an exchange with Audrey that plays upon this theme:

  AUDREY. Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me

   honest.

 TOUCHSTONE. Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were

   to put good meat into an unclean dish.

 AUDREY. I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.

 TOUCHSTONE. Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness;

   sluttishness may come hereafter.

The best part about Shakespeare is how he is constantly pushing the boundaries of real and fantasy, for even death can’t stop a good insult!  For instance, the ghost of Hamlet’s dad can’t help but take a dig at his wife the queen and brother. In a diatribe about how terrible it was to be betrayed by the queen as she cheated on him with his brother, the ghost says simply, “So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d, Will sate itself in a celestial bed And prey on garbage.”  He just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take one last dig at the betraying couple.

And finally, it wouldn’t be Shakespeare without the “you so ugly” genre of insults.  Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing says my favorite ugly joke of all time when she tells Benedick, “Scratching could not make it worse, and ’twere such a face as yours were.”  Of course, we can’t forget how Domeo of Syracuse makes fun of the oily Nell, the kitchen maid, when he tells Antipholus of Syracuse in the Comedy of Errors,

 Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench,

 and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but

 to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.

 I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn

 Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she'll burn

 week longer than the whole world.

Bardolph and Falstaff also lay down some great insults in Henry IV Part II. Bardolph tells Falstaff, “Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, —out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.”  To which Falstaff quips back, “Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life” while additionally telling him, “I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.” And finally, Ajax tells Thersites in Troilus and Cressida that he is so ugly he “will beat thee into handsomeness.”  Now that’s ugly!

Want to tell me your favorite Shakespearean insult?  Send it to me on Twitter @literature_lady. This episode was only made possible by the generous members of the Court of Badassery.  Want to join us at court? Check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/literaturelady.  

Stay tuned for some more Shakespeare insults as I blast my generous patrons at court, for really, let’s face it, they are “a sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, a scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants, whom their o’er-cloyed country vomits forth.”

Alan, I bite my thumb at you, sir! [You] King Urinal.
Alice, Thou art a boil, a plague sore, or embossed carbuncle, in my corrupted blood!
Amber, You rogue!  I’ll make a sop o’ th’ moonshine of you. You woreson cullionly barber-monger!
Antonia, [you] pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!
Eleanor, your breath stinks with eating toasted cheese!
Erin, where wilt though find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage?
Heather, [you] unlettered small-knowing soul!
Hunter, thou disputes like an infant: go, whip thy gig!
Anonymous Patron, Thou art not noble; For all th’accommodations that thou bear’st are nurs’d by baseness!
Jacqueline, wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant?
Joanne, I think the devil will not have [you] damned, lest the oil that’s in [you] should set hell on fire.
Julie Beth, [you] are duller than a great thaw [...and…] merely a dumb-show.
Kimberly, [you are] an index and prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts!
Kristen, I would thou didst itch from head to food; and I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loathesomest scab in Greece!
Laurie, I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance [as you]!
Mary, [You are] a coward, a most devout coward, [for you are] religious in it!
Megan, A thousand knees Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, upon a barren mountain, and still winter in storm perpetual, could not move the gods to look that way thou wert.
Morgan, [you] shall stand in fire up to the navel and in ice up to th’ heart, and there th’ offending part burns and the deceiving part freezes!
Rebecca, you are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face!
Sandy, [you are] one that converses more with the buttock of the of the night than with the forehead of the morning.
Tamara, you are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave!
Tracy, [you] live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty!
Zara, [you have an] undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion!

Want more insults? Check out the book Shakespeare’s Insults: Educating Your Wit by Wayne F. Hill and Cynthia J. Ottchen as well as the Shakespeare Insult Playing Cards found at www.prosperoart.com, both of which were used for this podcast. (A former student gave me this deck of cards and I use it all the time! Thank you, Brianna!)

This is the Literature Lady, Dr. Janet Bartholomew, signing off, reminding all listeners to “live loath’ed, and long, most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, you fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies, cap-and-knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks!”  Fare thee well!

Oh, hey, I almost forgot to thank Kyster for their recording at the Bork viking fair of the medieval music.  This comes all the way from Denmark. Thank you, my friend, for “you are a rare parrot teacher;” however, “a bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours” so feel free to “eat my leek!”

Episode 2: Adventurer, Amber Elby, and Apocalypse

Episode 2: Adventurer, Amber Elby, and Apocalypse

In this episode, I tell the complex and unbelievable survival tale of Temperence Flowerdew, Lady Yeardley (1590?-1628) followed by an enchanting interview with Amber Elby, the author of Double, Double, Toil. My guest also graciously agrees to play Walking Dead: Shakespeare Edition.

You can listen to the podcast HERE.

The following podcast contains adult language and themes.  Listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to the Literature Lady Podcast! I’m Dr. Janet Bartholomew. This podcast is dedicated to telling the stories of badass women in history and literature.

Today’s episode was a bear to put together, but I’m excited to tell you a tale of a woman who survived the most incredible list of hardships.  However, I also hoped to bring a new dimension to her story by adding information that tends to be left out of the history books. Part one focuses on her incredible tale of fortitude.  The second part features an interview with the author of the Netherfeld Trilogy, and in the third part I ask her to tell me which Shakespeare characters she’d like to see on a zombie apocalypse team.  Ready? Let’s do this.

Part One: Some Females are Strong as Hell

When Temperance Flowerdew stepped onto Tsenacomoco soil in 1609, she had no idea what the heck she was walking into. The story of an idyllic land overflowing with food and riches occupied by some simple savages was complete and total crap. The Powhatans of Tsenacomoco were anything but simple. And that land overflowing with food and riches? Welp...that may have bit of an exaggeration too.

You see, the Virginia Company had invested interest in putting the New World’s best foot forward to attract men, and later women, to join their expeditions and colonies.  Additionally, books such as Thomas Hariot’s 1590 A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia painted America as a land overflowing with edible plants, plenty of game, and copious riches. We know that later around 1609 the Virginia Company pushed an advertising campaign seeking “adventurers” - which may have been what had enticed Temperance Flowerdew’s husband, Richard Barrow, to sign them up as colonizers. Or at least, some think he was her husband at that time. Many scholars think she was married to George Yeardley instead. Or not. <sigh>

Like many discover when trying to research early modern women’s history, sometimes extant documents are incomplete or even contradictory, leaving modern scholars to make their most educated guesses. It isn’t clear Temperance was married to Richard Barrow at all, as there are conflicting accounts of Temperance Flowerdew’s life. What’s more, some records suggest that she was born closer to 1587 than 1590, making her older when she came to what is now Jamestown, Virginia. Others speculate that she may have been younger. Some claim that she was already married in 1609 to George Yeardley, but others say she married him later, after her first marriage, around 1618. We aren’t even exactly sure of the precise year of her arrival. One book I looked at has her arriving in the new world in 1608 on the Falcon, but naval records state that the Falcon was in England at that time. If she did come to the new world, she may have been on the Sea Venture, the same ship that Sir George Yeardley arrived on, or she may have been on another ship in the 1609 “Third Supply” such as the Falcon, not yet married to Yeardley, or perhaps she was just journeying separately from her husband. It is all very confusing.

Anyway, at the end of this podcast, I will give you a list of sources that I used in writing this, and you can decide for yourself what dates might be the most plausible. What we do know is that Temperance Flowerdew was from an elite family in England, and her great-uncle was Edward Flowerdew, Baron of the Exchequer, and her extended family had ties to the Elizabethan court through the infamous Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth’s favorite courtier.  Temperance’s family had other interests in the Jamestown colony, as both her nephew and brother being involved in its business. Of course, Fort James or Jamestown, Virginia was the English name for the location where she landed. The actual name of the nation she walked into in 1609 was Tsenacomoco.

Unlike what the promotional brochures might have led Temperance to believe, Tsenacomoco was a developed nation consisting of roughly 32 allied chiefdoms, covering about 6,000 square miles or 15,500 square km. Scholars guess that anywhere from 13,000 to 30,000 men, women, and children lived within its borders. They had a well structured government and a robust trade system in place. Just like in Europe, the leaders of Tsenacomoco used marriage as a way of unifying powerful families and ensuring peace. The empire was relatively stable and prosperous. Although a drought had hit the area before Temperance Flowerdew arrived, the citizens of Tsenacomoco had advanced foraging, hunting, farming, fishing, and food preservation techniques, making it possible to preserve large quantities of food for the winter and lean times.

Each chiefdom was ruled by its own chief, but all were united under one paramount chief, who would listen to the council of his chiefs before making big decisions. Like the vast majority of nations, Tsenacomoco used scouts to patrol their borders and gather intelligence; news traveled fast within its realm. The paramount chief himself moved from city to city throughout his territory, promoting peace and goodwill between his chiefs and checking on his citizens, who paid him tribute, sort of like a tax, for his leadership and protection. When he traveled, he would be escorted by an elite group of 50 bodyguards. These were the strongest and toughest men in Tsenacomoco.  No fewer than four were stationed outside his lodgings at any given time. He was not only well guarded but very well respected within his nation. You simply did NOT mess with this powerful guy.

Unless, of course, you had the arrogance of a white colonizer.  When Temperance Flowerdew stepped off her boat in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, unbeknownst to her, she was stepping into the aftermath.

You see, John Smith and others really fucked things up with the Algonquin-speaking natives of Tsenacomoco and had especially screwed things up with their leader, Powhatan. Yes, that Powhatan, Pocahontas’ dad, but unlike many of the whitewashed accounts we read about Powhatan, the real story about this paramount chief of Tscenacomo is more complicated, which is why I felt the need to dive back into the historical record and revisit this story.  What I found should not come as much of a surprise:

To put it bluntly, Smith and his English pals were pretty big assholes.

When the first English colonizers had arrived in Tscenacomoco and set up camp upon their shore, the Algonquin responded like any nation would to invaders: they defended their territory by sneaking in the English camp and took out their leader before fleeing, hoping that the colonizers would lose heart and leave. As the days continued, the colonizers continued to push into the interior of Tscenacomoco, finding and eating recently gathered foods they found abandoned by natives as they fled. Locals, of course, began to fight back when encountering these strange looking men who were sneaking into their fields and hunting grounds.

A few days later it finally dawned on Smith to actually try approaching the locals IN A NON CREEPY WAY with his hand raised in friendship. Only then did some open communication with the locals begin. The party was taken to the chief, who welcomed them with great ceremony and feasting.  Smith gave some beads as a gift for their hospitality. By June of 1607, Powhatan had sent an invitation to the English colonizers to set up a colony and farm the land (the land selected by the settlers, however, was swampy with brackish waters...not the best area for farming). It should come as no surprise that by September, however, the English ran out of provisions but survived thanks to the generosity of the locals who provided food.  

Now, in the colonist’s defense, many may have thought that America was a land of plenty where food acquisition wouldn’t be a problem, thus why they didn’t plan very far ahead.  Another problem in 1607 that led to the colony’s running out of food was that the English started falling victim to a disease that killed nearly half of the men by the end of the summer.  With so many ill and dead, hunting and farming wasn’t successful enough to build up a food store for the winter. If it wasn’t for the generosity of the local chief Opechancanough and his people, Smith and the others would have starved.

It wouldn’t be until December that John Smith would meet Powhatan face to face. Smith was brought to see him, and he was greeted with great pomp and feasting. This was when the infamous “attempted execution” of John Smith took place...you know, the one where Pocahontas ran in and saved Smith from her father.  But did this really happen?

You see, Smith actually tells this story a couple of different ways. In a letter published in 1608 A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note, as Hath Hapned at Virginia, since the First Planting of that Collony by John Smith, he only mentions that he met with Powhatan, feasted with him and had an intense conversation. However, in his later General History of Virginia, published in 1624, that we get the story about his head being put between two stones with a looming warrior set to smite him. If the story is true, scholars think that it was most likely a ritual in which Powhatan was “adopting” Smith into his nation, hoping to make him one of his sub-chiefs.

We aren’t too sure why Powhatan decided to do this. Some scholars suggest that Powhatan was hoping to creating a strong alliance in the hopes of getting access to cannons and more firearms, which was definitely something that was being negotiated for. After rereading the documents, I am getting the sense that perhaps it was as much as strategy as it was generosity. Smith and his men probably looked pretty pathetic to the Powhatans. Here were these white guys who arrived on their land, without having a clue how to farm, forage, or hunt properly for local game. In battle, they were super clumsy. The Powhatans, you see, were very skilled in combat, and their weapons were faster and easier to wield than what the guns and cannon English brought.  Guns were cumbersome and took forever to load, so they probably looked very incompetent as they just knelt there to load their firearms. Not only did these white guys not know how things operated, but they were also dirty and half-starved. They didn’t pack enough food for their journey, and their hygiene was atrocious (as was most of Europe’s at the time) compared to the locals’ daily habit of bathing. Maybe Powhatan felt sorry for them, like a suffering group of refugees, and as the superior nation, generously granted them asylum. He even offered Smith a role in the local government. Could a starving, struggling group from another nation hope for anything more?

When it comes to white colonizers, the answer, unfortunately, is usually yes. Smith turned down the offer to become a part of the Tsenacomoco nation, citing that he was already loyal to the English crown. Instead, he tried to do the OPPOSITE.

This is where things really fell apart, which is what Temperance Flowerdew walked into.

By 1608, things were not going well for Smith. For one, Captain Newport and his men held Smith responsible for the death of two Englishmen who were killed in a raid. It wouldn’t be the first time Smith was almost killed by his own people. When he arrived in America in 1607 on the Susan Constant, captained by Newport, he was in chains and sentenced to hang...basically for being an asshole. He clashed with Newport and a number of others, and eventually was accused of trying to usurp the authority of the Captain. Smith only escaped execution after a few men convinced Newport to rescind his order.  

Smith was a cocky hothead by some accounts. As the son of a simple farmer, Smith’s confidence and arrogance pissed off many people around him. By the age of 21, he fought the Turks in Hungary, where he decapitated Turkish officers (for which he was proud and bragged about later).  He was then captured and sold as a slave, and was only able to escape after killing his own master. By 1604 he returned to England, with not only experience in combat under his belt but also in sailing. His survival skills impressed the Virginia Company, who hired him on as a leader for the new colony. His fellow colonizers didn’t like this at all. For one, he was young and arrogant, but he was also a crass commoner having been given equal footing as his social betters.

So when he managed to make it back to what would become Jamestown in 1608, after had been taken by the Algonquin natives in a raid that left two men dead, it was no surprise that the council of Jamestown were happy to demote and hang him. You know what saved Smith this time?  Dumb luck. It turned out that the first supply ship with Captain Newport arrived from England the very day Smith was to be hanged, and the excitement of the supplies and new men made them forget about the hanging and Smith lived to see another day.

When Smith and Newport led a party to see Powhatan in the February of 1608, they were greeted with an incredible feast. Newport arguably saw Powhatan as a fellow leader, but Smith couldn’t get past his viewing Powhatan as a “savage.”  While this particular visit went okay, Smith’s attitude and refusal to abide by Algonquin customs did not make the friendship easy. For instance, Smith refused to lay down his arms when visiting the paramount chief. It was not only a threat to Powhatan’s security, but also an insult that Smith and the others continued to act as though he were an enemy, for AS ANY SANE PERSON KNOWS, friends don’t pack heat when visiting friends.  

The other problem was that Powhatan had traded several bushels of food in exchange for metal tools, but Smith and the others never delivered them. History books paint the subsequent visit by Powhatan’s men to the Jamestown settlement as a raid, but the reality is that they came to collect what was owed to them, taking only the supplies promised.

Later in 1608, Smith and Newport attempted to smooth things over with Powhatan by “crowning” him king in a coronation ceremony. This was all kinds of messed up. For one, in order to do this ceremony, they wanted Powhatan to come to Jamestown. This was the equivalent of some random dude sailing up to England and demanding the Queen Mother to meet him at the dock. It just wasn’t gonna happen. When this plan failed and Powhatan declined Smith’s invitation, they brought the ceremony to Powhatan. When they did, it did not go well. Not only did the settlers refuse to lay down their arms...again…but the English custom for a coronation required the king to kneel to be crowned. Chiefs were the rulers, and Powhatan was the chief above all other chiefs.  You do not ask a man like that to kneel in front of you. It was always the other way around.

Needless to say, it did not go well at all. By the winter of 1608, Powhatan had ordered his people to stop trading with the colonists, starting the early phase of what would later be known as the First Anglo-Powhatan War.  Smith tried to renegotiate for food with Powhatan in early 1609, but once again he refused to lay down his arms in the presence of the chief, and so it was to no avail. Powhatan had had enough, and even tried to kill Smith, but the wily dude narrowly escaped.  

When the third supply mission from England arrived that summer in Jamestown, it was a mixed blessing for the colonists. On one hand, more men and women meant there would be more help in building up the fortifications as well as the gardens.  However, it also meant more mouths to feed. This supply run was the biggest yet, with nine ships having left London with somewhere between 500 to 600 passengers on board, including Temperance Flowerdew, a young 19 year old colonist. And there was another problem:

Two of the nine ships were missing.

The fleet had hit a hurricane when 7 weeks out to sea, which separated the ships. The seven ships that made it to Jamestown didn’t all make it back at the same time, the Virginia slinking back as late as six weeks after the others, which meant it arrived with depleted supplies. The supplies were also not evenly distributed among the ships, and with the largest flagship, the Sea Venture, missing, so were the largest chunk of supplies. The Catch, the other ship that never made it to Jamestown, had sunk, taking with her all her passengers and much needed cargo.

By the time the winter of 1609 hit, John Smith was already back in England on one of the returning vessels. He left, however, not because he was ousted by his men, nor was it to leave Jamestown in the hands of better negotiators with Tsenacomoco. Nope. He went back because he was injured. Badly. By his own damn gun powder pouch. Which he accidentally caught on fire. While he was wearing it. Because, as we all know here in the states, guns are totally safe to have around. (I’m rolling my eyes here, people.)

Anywho, a stray spark lit the pouch, which made it explode, which caught his freaking clothes on fire and damn near blew his leg off. As a cold, dirty, isolated colony was not place to heal up, Smith went back to England for treatment, leaving the colonists alone for what would be the deadliest winter ever, known now as The Starving Time.

Temperance Flowerdew, at this point, had survived two months at sea and three days in a hurricane. The colony was nothing that the Virginia Company had described. In a flyer advertising for colonists in 1609, they promised that every colonizer would have “houses to dwell in, with gardens and orchards, and also food and clothing” in addition to “lands to them and their heirs forever.”  It promised that all Adventurers who signed up would be “furnished with all means and provisions necessary” to make it in the new world and extend the English empire.

However, upon arriving at the colony, the multitude of structures promised were just not there; there were some buildings, but Fort James had accidentally burned down that January which made the men scramble to rebuild a defensible structure rather than a plethora of new winter-ready cabins.  Not only was housing a problem, but so were the lack of supplies. With the Catch sunk and the Sea Venture still missing, many supplies did not make it to the colony. The passengers of the Virginia had depleted much of their stores having been thrown off course for a month and a half. The land of plenty was not as hospitable as reports led them to believe, and Temperance, along with about 500 colonists, settled into a winter for which they did not have enough food or protection from the cold.

With Captain John Smith gone back to England and Captain Christopher Newport lost at sea along with the missing Sea Venture, Jamestown was left in the incompetent hands of Captain John Ratcliffe. As the winter progressed, Temperance watched the people around her get sick, starve, and die.

Ratcliffe tried to negotiate for more food with the Powhatans, but the relationship between the colonists and the locals was at an all time low, and he was brutally killed. The fact that the colonists were resorting to stealing food from the locals didn’t help any attempted negotiations.

As the winter of 1609 turned into the early months of 1610, Temperance and the others did what they could to survive. While stories of cannibalism circulated after the Starving Time in the news about the colony, it wasn’t verified until the remains of a skeleton of a 14 year old girl was unearthed by Jamestown archaeologists, bearing the scraping marks of tools normally found on the bones of butchered animals. We also know from these trash pits that colonists ate rats, their cats, and just about anything they could find that was edible. One early account of the Starving Time included a man who murdered his pregnant wife, cut out the fetus to discard, cut up her body, and salted it for food.

Those who dared to leave the settlement to hunt did not always come back. As the numbers continued to dwindle and the population weakened with starvation and illness, more buildings became empty, and since gathering firewood in Powhatan territory was no longer safe, structures were torn apart and used for fuel. Temperance, however, was one tough lady. While we don’t know if she ate the dead to survive, there is no doubt that she ate a number of unsavory things.  Her tenacity paid off in the end. Out of the original 500 colonists, she was one of the 60 who survived. A little more than 90% of the colony had died.

In May of 1610, almost a year after the Sea Venture had gone missing, the occupants of the missing ship suddenly showed up in Jamestown. The Sea Venture had taken on water during the hurricane when it became separated from the other ships, and with its brand new caulk failing, the captain decided to run the ship aground in Bermuda to save its occupants and what it could of the supplies. The passengers wintered there on the island, using parts of the large ship to create two new smaller ones. They ended up using most of the supplies to survive, so by the time they made their way up the East coast to where Jamestown was settled, not much of the original cargo remained. Luckily, a new shipment of supplies arrived from England just as Temperance and the others were abandoning the settlement.

Now under martial law, the colony kept going. Temperence remained strong, and together with her other colonists, she managed to tough out several more years at Jamestown. The First Anglo-Powhatan included many atrocities committed by the English, and while life was brutal for the colonists, what they did to the Powhatans would be considered war crimes today.

George Percy, one of the colonists fighting the Powhatans, recalled the following attack on a nearby village, where they killed several warriors, and captured one of the chief’s wives and children:

my Lieftenantt bringeinge with him the Quene and her Children and one Indyann prisoners for the which I taxed him becawse he had Spared them. his answer was, thatt haveinge them now in my Custodie I mighte doe with them whatt I pleased. Upon the same I cawsed the Indians heade to be Cutt of, and then dispersed my fyles apointeinge my Sowldiers to burne their howses and to Cutt downe their Corne groweinge aboutt the Towne. And after we marched with the quene and her Children to our Boates ageine. Where beinge noe soener well shipped my sowldiers did begin to murmur becawse the queen and her Children weare spared. So upon the same a Cowncell beinge called itt was agreed upon to putt the children to deathe the which was effected by Throweinge them overboard and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water. Yett for all this Crewellty the Sowldiers weare nott well pleased and I had mutche to doe To save the quenes lyfe for thatt Tyme.

The queen would later be executed at point-blank range.  The English would continue to burn village after village, purposefully desecrating graves and defacing temples, killing men, women, and children as they went. The Powhatan would retaliate, and so it went back and forth until the kidnapping of the newly married Pocahontas in 1613 by the English. By 1614, an alliance between the English and Powhatan was made, and further solidified by Pocahontas’ marriage to John Rolfe.  

With the war now over, Temperance Flowerdew could focus on building a new life.

She married George Yeardley, one of the survivors of the Sea Venture, in 1618.  He was appointed governor by the Virginia Company, and empowered to do two things in the Great Charter given to him that would change America forever: set up the first Indian school and provide slaves and indentured servants, as well as land, to officers. This was also the year he was knighted by King James I, making Temperance Flowerdew, Lady Yeardley. Yeardley was also given a land grant for 1,000 acres (about 4km²), which would become known as the Flowerdew Hundred.  

We still have the deed for this, by the way.  It just so happens to be the oldest land deed in the United States. These are the years Temperance and her husband thrived. At least thirty people lived and worked at the Flowerdew Hundred, and the tobacco they grew made Temperance and her family a LOT of money. It was also the site of the first windmill in English America.

Temperance’s story is hard to track, as she is a marginal note in these documents written by and for men, but even harder to track were the names of the people who helped make Temperance so prosperous: the enslaved men, women and children who worked on the plantation.

There is so much scholarship needed to be done on the histories of those who came to America on slave ships. I tried to find out as much as I could about those upon whose backs Temperance and her second husband built their wealth. We know Sir Yeardley purchased slaves in 1619, after a Portuguese ship sailing from São Paulo de Luanda, in what is now the country of Angola, was attacked by privateers and had their cargo stolen. Fifteen of the first twenty five Africans were purchased by Sir Yeardley and Abraham Piersey, who would become the next owner of the Flowerdew Hundred. Scholars think that these early Africans were possibly Ndongo, because São Paulo de Luanda was near the Congo River, where the European colonizers took advantage of the fighting with locals and captured these men and women. Like all slave ships, the conditions were horrible, and these twenty five were survivors of a ship that started with 350 slaves, of which only 147 survived the crossing from Africa to the Americas.

In researching the names of these first African slaves in Jamestown, it became abundantly clear what a white privilege it is to know your own family’s history here in America.  Like many Americans, I am an international “mutt” from several families that originated throughout Europe, but for most of my life we didn’t know our ancestry byond about five or six generations, apart from some rumors of famous ancestors that had been passed down through the family.  When my brother married into a family of genealogists, however, within a year or so our family’s heritage could be traced back through the written record all the way to the 8th century.

For millions of people of color, however, this simply would not be possible due to the institutionalized racism that dehumanized non-whites and kept their names out of the written records.  In order to try to find the names of these Jamestown slaves, I searched Jamestown musters, a kind of census, starting with the 1622 and then 1624 records, but I couldn’t find the names of these Flowerdew Hundred Africans. Instead, on the 1624 muster, right after the Flowerdew Hundred changed hands from Yeardley to Piersey, four “Negro Men” and two “Negro Women,” one with a child were listed as servants. None of them were given proper names, their only identifying markers being their race and sex.  (The early records didn’t have a category for slaves, so all servants, from hired to indentured to slaves, were all listed under the same category.)

One source figured out the names of four of these African men based on the 1623 muster.  Their names were Anthony, William, John, and another Anthony. No last names or even ship of origin was mentioned, even though these were given for nearly all of the white settlers. As part of the “processing” of slaves, when captured Africans were baptized en masse and given Christian names.  Whether the names or the religion stuck, however, was an entirely different matter. While four of these men were able to be identified as they were tagged with the moniker “Negro,” the other Africans were either not given names on the muster at all or were listed by their Christian names, making them indistinguishable from white servants on the list. We know, however, that more than four Africans were there, and I think it is important to discuss this part of the colonization process, as the names and numbers of Africans in America are often overlooked in the history books. Slave names usually only appear later in our textbooks when slavery was happening on a much larger scale, but even then, only a very small handful of names are given.

As the lady of the estate, Temperance would have overseen quite a lot of the activity at the Flowerdew Hundred while there, helping her husband direct the many workers on her plantation; records indicate that she played an active role in the financial part of the business, indicating not only a strength of will but also intellect.  It was through the labor of these tradesmen and African slaves that her tobacco crops and livestock did well enough to earn her and her family a large income. Many ships went from Jamestown to England, and every bushel of slave-harvested tobacco went to line her pockets. It was during this time Temperance gave birth to two children: Elizabeth in 1615 and Argoll in 1617.

However, her few years of tentative peace and prosperity, albeit on the backs of her workers, would come to an end. The paramount chief Powhatan died around 1618, leaving his brothers in charge. In 1620, Temperance had her third child, a baby named Francis. By 1621, Opechancanough was the paramount chief, and unlike his older brother, he did not see the English as helpful allies. The white settlements had grown in number and continued to push into their lands. Additionally, more settlers kept coming, and with them came more diseases and potential for violence.  

What’s more, the English continued to offend the people of Tsenacomoco with their aggressive campaign to convert the locals to Christianity. This effort was spearheaded by George Thorpe, who came to the colony in 1620 with the purpose of converting the natives. He supported cultural genocide, even expressed an interest in kidnapping Tsenacomoco children and raising them in England for the good of their souls. While Thorpe tried to maintain good relations with Opechancanough for conversion purposes, Thorpe’s Christian zealousness and attempts to poach the loyalty of the Powhatan people did not ingratiate the settlers to the new chief.

On March 22, 1622, Temperance’s day began just like any other.  She rose from her bed and began her morning routine, looking after the kids, giving her servants and slaves and instructions for the day.  She was most likely staying at their Jamestown city home then and not at their plantation; just a few days prior, Temperance had signed John Rolfe’s will as a witness, and with her husband Sir Yeardley acting as governor, it would make sense that the family would be staying in the more densely populated town at this time.

The Flowerdew Hundred, by the way, was not like the wide open plantations we see today in the American South. Rather, it was an enclosed, fortified structure with several buildings within its protective walls. It was not quite a fort, but it was definitely more than a fenced-in compound. Like most plantations during this time, a number of people, both Powhatans and colonists, would be coming and going throughout the day. While tensions were mounting with the Powhatans, there was still a regular amount of trade between the two. Her residence in Jamestown was

On this day, a number of Powhatans came into the settlements, visiting trading partners and chatting up new ones.  The brought furs, food, and other goods to trade. No one thought anything of it. Then suddenly, some kind of signal was given, and these visitors began killing as many English as they could. Across the entire colony, more than 30 English settlements were ambushed in this way, and within a span of a few hours roughly 347 colonists were killed, which was one third of the colony.  This was the start of the Second Anglo-Powhatan war.

Somehow, however, the Flowerdew Hundred lost very few in this attack. Only six men were killed.  Temperance, her husband, and children also somehow survived. In the 1625 muster, the Yeardleys had multiple properties and African slaves, with three African men and five African women serving at their house in Jamestown proper and the four African men, two African women, and her child out at the Flowerdew Hundred. Like the plantation, her household in town also had many additional servants and hired help.

The effect the 1622 Massacre would have on the colonists was not what the Powhatan intended.  Instead of scaring them back to England, it braced their resolve to stay.

This meant war.

The Second Anglo-Powhatan war that followed the 1622 attack on Jamestown was brutal.  The colonists focused their efforts on attacking the weaker outlying Powhatan communities, especially when their corn crop was ripe for the taking. The settlers also worked on forming alliances with chiefdoms just outside of Tsenacomoco, as this put pressure on the Powhatan chiefs to be more diplomatic with the English or risk further wars. The atrocities went both ways as the Powhatan fought to take back their lands and the English fought back to keep them.  

In 1623, the English invited delegates from Tsenacomoco over for a truce, but ended up poisoning their drinks and executing the Powhatans. The English then cut off their scalps, a practice that would later be monetized by the English in the 1670s as a way to incentivise the further killing of natives.

The battle of 1624 may have been the worst, the English destroying such large swaths of cornfields that it devastated the Powhatans. Records indicate that it was enough to feed 4,000 people for a year. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War continued for many years, but the English knew they were outnumbered and kept on the defensive. Most of the attacks spearheaded by the English focused on stealing food and burning Powhatan settlements.

Despite all the bloodshed, Temperance and her family survived these dangerous years. She even made yet another dangerous voyage to England with her husband and then back to Jamestown in 1625.

When Sir Yeardley died in 1627, Temperance inherited the entire household in Jamestown. The rest of his investments, including the Flowerdew Hundred, were to be sold as the will stipulated, with Temperance inheriting a third of it. As a shrewd businesswoman, Temperance not only sold these properties for a hefty sum, but she also went after those who had outstanding debt with her late husband. By the time she married Governor Francis West in 1628, she was arguably one of the wealthiest women, if not the wealthiest, in English America.  

She died in 1628 at the age of 38 years old.  While she didn’t leave behind any writing by the way of letters or journals, her signature appears on documents and she is mentioned by others in their writing about the settlement. Her story is intertwined with many others who are undoubtedly more well known and discussed in detail in the historic record, as well as many others whose history was completely and deliberately erased.

Temperance Flowerdew was a survivor. She survived at least 3 harrowing voyages between England and America and even a freaking hurricane while out at sea. She then survived the Starving Time, somehow outliving 90% of her colony. And if that wasn’t enough, she survived the First Anglo-Powhatan War. But then again, she also survived the Massacre of 1622 that killed a third of her colony.  She then survived a full ten years of the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.

We aren’t sure exactly where her grave is located, many assume it is in the Jamestown Church graveyard, but as of last year, we now know where her husband, Sir George Yeardley, was buried, thanks to archaeologists working on excavating the original church structure.  And thanks to a grant recently awarded to The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, materials relating to the Flowerdew Hundred will be digitized and made public, in addition to documents related to another 80 slavery sites along the Atlantic and Caribbean, which will help researchers find more information about the first Africans brought here by the Europeans.

While the story of Temperance Flowerdew’s survival may not have inspired many, the story of the Sea Venture, the missing ship in her 1609 fleet that shipwrecked in Bermuda carrying her husband Sir George Yeardley, did inspire one particular author whose work inspires many to this day. You may have heard of it. It was the little play known as...The Tempest.

PART 2 AND 3 OF THE TRANSCRIPT IS COMING...PLEASE CHECK BACK SOON!

This has been the Literature Lady Podcast. Thank you for listening. You can follow me on Twitter @Literature_Lady or email me at literatureladyonline@gmail.com. Our music, the anonymously written “My Lady Carey’s Dompe” from 1524, was beautifully performed by Jon Sayles. I have a website now, although it is still in its early stages.  A full transcript for this podcast along with the bibliography will be posted on literatureladypodcast.blogspot.com.

If you would like to listen to the sources I used for this podcast, please stay tuned.

I confess that this particular story was one hell of a ride.  There was so much I wanted to include but had to cut. I used John Smith’s 1608 A True relation of such occurrences and accidents of note, as hath hapned at Virginia, since the first planting of that Collony.  I also read from George Percy’s “Observations gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia” found in Samuel Purchas’ 1625 Hakluytus Posthumus.  I also mentioned the Virginia Company of London’s 1609 tract called For The Plantation in Virginia.  R.F. Walker’s transcription of the “Lists of the Livinge and Dead in Virginia, February 16th, 1623” and “The List of Those Massacred March 22,1622” in his Colonial Records of Virginia were helpful.

I am greatly indebted to Encyclopedia Virginia, a massive online collection of articles, images, and primary texts found at encyclopediavirginia.org. I’m especially thankful for Martha McCartney’s entry on John Smith, Margaret Williamson Huber’s writing on Powhatan, and John Salmon’s work on Tsenacomoco and Christopher Newport.

Numerous articles also helped me with this article, such as Avery Kolb’s essay “Early Passengers to Virginia: When Did They Really Arrive?” that appeared in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, as well as James Southall’s article “Concerning George Yardley and Temperance Flowerdew: A Synopsis and Review.”  I am also grateful to James Deetz whose article “Archeology at Flowerdew Hundred” appeared in I, Too, Am America: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life and edited by Theresa A. Singleton.

James Deetz’s book, Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864 was a riveting read and invaluable find.  Virginia Bernhard’s A Tale of Two Colonies: What Really Happened in Virginia and Bermuda? was another great source.  I couldn’t put down Helen Roundtree’s The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture, which helped me unpack some of the colonists’ stories in a new light.

For more on the discovery of “Jane,” the cannibal victim of Jamestown, please visit www.historicjamestowne.org.  Be sure to check out the CNN article on the discovery of George Yeardley’s remains just last year by Jamestown archeologists.

My biggest thanks, however, has to go out to the Royal Shakespeare Company.  If I hadn’t been digging around on your website and stumbled across your entry on the sources that inspired Shakespeare’s Tempest, I would have never have followed the threads that led me to Temperance Flowerdew. Keep up the great work.

Thank you again for listening to the Literature Lady Podcast.  This is Dr. Janet Bartholomew, signing off until next month! Talk to you soon!