He was in a shipwreck. He was at Jamestown. He was on the Mayflower. And maybe, just maybe, he’s in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Documentary filmmaker Andrew Buckley’s ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, was the only passenger on the Mayflower who had previously been to the Americas. Eleven years before the Mayflower landed in what is now Massachusetts, Hopkins sailed aboard the Sea Venture, a ship bound for Jamestown that was blown off-course by a hurricane and wrecked in Bermuda. Among Hopkins’s fellow passengers on the Sea Venture was William Strachey, a poet and playwright whose account of the ill-fated voyage may have inspired Shakespeare’s "The Tempest."

Buckley’s new documentary, "Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck," traces Hopkins’s travels in England and the Americas and links him to The Tempest’s drunken, mutinous butler, Stephano. We talk to Buckley about the documentary, walking in his great-grandfather’s footsteps, and what the story reveals about the early colonization of North America. Buckley is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

Andrew Buckley is the creator and host of the public media series Hit and Run History. "Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck," premiered on Rhode Island PBS in January 2021. Learn about broadcasts, screenings, and video-on-demand opportunities to watch the film at hitandrunhistory.com.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published March 16, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “How Now, Stephano!” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.