Mythical archipelago presented by
Shakespeare in
The Tempest.
"From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she's hid."
The Tempest, i. 2.
It's easy to read as an
Elizabethean twist on the more-familiar "
Bermudas" but notes from the time suggest that the
island meant was
Lampedusa.
As an item of side interest, some
scholars have suggested that the
setting of the play was based on the written accounts of
sailors who were
shipwrecked on a small island off the
Carolinas. Their account was widely read, and would have been familiar to
audiences of the time.
In a strange way, this would make
The Tempest the only
Shakespearean play actually set in the
New World.