Staging the Southern Continent 1565-1606

Globe, The, Jan, 2003 by Mercedes Maroto Camino

   We haue vpon the side in a void place set
   the Mappe of the whole World, whereby
   the diligent student of Diuinity by
   conferring might easily see, what and
   how great a portion of the same, the holy
   history doth mention and comprehend:
   and at once, iointly with the same labour
   to find out the situation and position of
   two famous places mentioned in the holy
   Scriptures: namely of the situation of the
   country Ophyr and the earthly Paradise.
   Of the which although many men do
   write many and diuers things, and the
   opinions of the learned be different, yet
   we haue also set downe our iudgement,
   willingly giuing leaue to the learned
   Reader, his discretion, to take which him
   pleaseth: and he may read, if he thinke
   good, that which in our Geographicall
   Treasurie, we haue written more at large
   of Ophyr. Of Paradise also there is the
   like controuersie and question amongst
   the Diuines. (np)

[FIGURES 6-7 OMITTED]

The Ophirian legend informs and is informed by the journeys of exploration to the South Pacific at this time, and it articulates the overlapping of geography and chimera. This articulation takes the form of the stock theme of world-as-a-stage, which is, I am suggesting, part and parcel of the epistemology of the early modern period. By the time the Theatrum was published, the relationship between the Ophirian conjecture and the exploration of the Pacific had a long tradition, which started in the classical era and culminated in many sixteenth-century representations. In fact, Ophir was also confused with, among other places, the lands described by Marco Polo as Beach, Locach and Maletur. (15)

Contemporary maps and narratives therefore weave to varying degrees the Spice Islands with the islands of gold and silver, Chryse and Argyre, the biblical Ophir and Tharshish, Ptolemy's Golden Khersonese or his southern landmass, (16) Cipangu, the Southern Continent and Polo's Beach, Locach and Maletur. Journeys to the South Seas show these mythical or real places as their stated or implied objectives in an elusive merger of dream and reality. This alternation underscores the appearance of Argyre or Isla de Plata in the map of the Pacific, Maris Pacifici, included in Ortelius' Theatrum from 1589 onwards (Fig. 8, Fig. 9). From 1570 to 1587, in all editions of Ortelius' atlas, the Map of Asia has only the large island of Iapan and various smaller islands, including Fermosa (today's Taiwan) and Lequeio (Lequio in the Philippines). This map remains unchanged in later editions, but the new map of the Pacific, Maris Pacifici, includes an island, larger than Japan, north of this country and identifies it with the classical Argyre in the legend next to it. These versions alternate freely in various post-1589 editions. (17)

[FIGURES 8-9 OMITTED]

Reinforced by a view of life as representation, and of the world as a stage where humans follow the designs of divine destiny, these maps, like the narratives that often accompanied them, create a universe where fiction and reality are representation both for the actors and for the viewers. Much like the explorations on whose information they relied, the maps of the early modern Pacific merge not just fact and fiction but, more interestingly, beliefs, chimeras and theatricality. (18) By means of this alternation, these maps construct an epic history that uses myth for religious, imperial and state-building purposes.