Kathman refutation - The Oxford Authorship Site

FALSE PARALLELS IN DAVID KATHMAN’S ‘DATING THE TEMPEST’ 40
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(22) David Kathman writes:
A True Declaration calls the Bermudas "a place hardly accessable" (10) and "an
uninhabited desart" (11), but Jourdain says, "yet did we finde there the ayre so temperate
and the Country so aboundantly fruitful of all fit necessaries" (9)
In the play, Adrian says, "Though this island seem to be desert . . . Uninhabitable, and
almost inaccessible . . . Yet . . . It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate
temperance" (2.1.35-43).
David Kathman’s alleged parallel is false. If Jourdain says that Bermuda is 'abundantly
fruitful of all fit necessaries for the sustentation and preservation of man's life', Antonio
and Sebastian say the exact opposite of the island in The Tempest:
GONZALO
ANTONIO
Here is everything advantageous to life.
True, save means to live.
SEBASTIAN Of that there’s none, or little. (2.1.50-2)
Adrian, in calling the island ‘uninhabitable’, agrees with Antonio and Sebastian.
Although the True Declaration says Bermuda is uninhabited, Adrian says the island in
The Tempest is uninhabitable. Thus, while Bermuda is uninhabited, i.e., people don't live
there, Prospero’s island is uninhabitable, that is, people can't live there because, as
Antonio and Sebastian say, rather than having 'everything advantageous to life', the island
lacks 'means to live'.
David Kathman's false parallel can thus be analyzed as follows:
An uninhabited island which has everything necessary to sustain life.
Not true for The Tempest.
True for the Jourdain account.
Ergo: a false parallel.
There is yet another false parallel. David Kathman quotes the phrase ‘a place hardly
accessible’ from the True Declaration out of context. In context, the quotation is as
follows:
For behold, in the last period of necessity Sir George Sommers descried land, which was
by so much the more joyful by how much their danger was despairful. The islands on
which they fell were the Bermudas, a place hardly accessible through the environing
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