Page 32 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

I
1

!
:i
32 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST
*
.
merchant Fitch wrote for merchants, and he did not
‘
write in vain. His information about the trade of the
many Asiatic lands that he had visited aroused an interest
!•
in commercial development in the East which penetrated
to every class of Society.
/
Fitch himself must have been an interesting figure in ;
js
the little world in which he moved in the years immediately
following his return from his travels. It is quite con­
.1 ceivable that at some time or another he met Shakespeare
on terms of friendly intimacy. London then was quite
I a small place, not much more extensive than the “ one
square mile ” which constitutes the City of London as we
f
know it to-day. At its wine shops over the cup of sack
or Gascony the citizens of the time were wont to discuss
>
the latest news which filtered in from abroad and to listen
to the experiences of those who had first-hand knowledge
- of foreign lands. The great dramatist, ever on the look­
II out for local colour, would have quickly discovered Fitch
■
and drawn upon his vast store of out of the way knowledge
for those wonderful studies of human nature which still
: l • hold a unique place in the world’s literature. There is,
at all events, a direct suggestion that Shakespeare was
well acquainted with Fitch’s story in the passage in Act I,
1
i scene 3 of Macbeth, where a character is made to say
“ Her husband to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger.” It
1
was the Tiger on whicli Fitch and his companions voyaged
to the Eastern Mediterranean, and it was at Aleppo, as
» f
has already been stated, that they disembarked prepara­
tory to commencing their Asiatic wanderings. The com­
mercial significance of Fitch’s travels, however, completely
i
overshadows any literary interest that they may possess.
His narrative lifted the veil on the mysterious East, if less
r

i

i