Critical Introduction

Written later in William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) life, The Tempest is one of his most famous “problem plays.” Although it contains many elements of a revenge tragedy such as Hamlet, the murders that mark this sort of drama are wholly absent, and the protagonist Prospero ends the play quite pleased with his situation. On the other hand, it cannot be considered a comedy in the vein of Much Ado About Nothing or A Midsummer Night's Dream since it lacks the commonplace of mistaken identity and since it deals with serious subject matter. Part of that serious subject matter is the status and fate of Caliban, the malformed son of Satan and an African witch, who ends the play chastened and accepting of his life of servitude. With the advent of postcolonial criticism and theory, we have begun to question what Shakespeare assumed. Redefining the relationship between Prospero and Caliban as that of colonizer/colonized makes Caliban a more sympathetic figure. Further, the play relies on relatively new information coming back to Europe about those living in the Americas: Setebos, the god of Caliban's mother, was described by Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar who provides accounts of Patagonian peoples he encountered when sailing with Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Caliban's name itself is a linguistic variation of cannibal, which was a variation of the Carib; this tribe, for whom the Caribbean is named, was frequently accused of cannibalism by European explorers. Rethinking Caliban's status and exploring Shakespeare's use of the New World reveals the cultural material that comprises Caliban as a monster. The more obvious elements of his monstrousness, such as physi-cal deformity and connection to Satan, may actually cloud a more complex issue.

Reading Questions

As you read, we invite you to consider the cultural elements of monster-making. Is Caliban a monster because he is a malformed spawn of Satan or is he is a malformed spawn of Satan because he is based on a Western European understanding of so-called “primitive” people and is, therefore, assumed to be inherently inferior to white Europeans?