Nohrnberg, on Midsummer Night's Dream, in reply to an email I sent him about the Spice trade and its literary impact:

In 1583 Edmund Fenton of the Muscovy Company (one of the earliest adventurer companies founded in London for purposes of trade and exploration) visited the Moluccas and Spice Islands with the backing of Sidney and Lord Burghley. In 1592 Sir John Burrough captured an East Indian carrack laden with 900 tons of spices, cloth, and treasure from the orient. In the same year the Levant Company was created and permitted to trade with Turkey, and in 1592 or ’93 it combines with the Venice company. In the same year — 1592 — the plague strikes London, for which Oberon may take the blame in his speech on the causes of a weather in which "rheumatic diseases do abound": "We are their parents and original." In 1595 Cornelius de Houtman reached Java via the Cape of Good Hope – and thus began the Dutch exploration of the East Indies. England would not be far behind. The Honorable Company of Merchants and Traders to the East Indies is a-borning in Shakespeare’s play, which is so much about "trading places," as if "trading spices."