ABSTRACT
Although in several of his plays Shakespeare shared with Cervantes the play within the play, the similarity of structure and even of certain characters and situations do not imply a similarity of purpose. These two diverging tendencies in Cervantes and Shakespeare have in common sources and treatments. This chapter compares the episode of the 'island' of Barataria with Shakespeare's Tempest. To the topic of the island one must inevitably associate the broader topics encompassed in the new humanism, due to the influence of More's Utopia in Shakespeare's Tempest and in Cervantes's Barataria. Both The Tempest and Barataria identify a process of education which rejects bookish humanism, a process made evident in both the governorship of Sancho and the spontaneous love between Ferdinand and Miranda. The topic of the island and its relationship with the Utopian genre, a literary output that was influenced by the Spanish exploration and conquest of the New World, these things highlight Cervantes's influence on Shakespeare.
