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Siddhartho Sankar Roy

Md. Samyul Huq

Eng 3201      

9 April 2011

Caliban and Racism in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

The Tempest is a play written by William Shakespeare which deals with the Racial

Tension. It is generally dated to 1610-11 and accepted to be the last play solely written by him,

although some scholars have argued for an earlier dating. While listed as a comedy in its initial

publication in the First Folio of 1623, many modern editors have relabeled the play a romance. It

did not attract a significant amount of attention before the closing of the theatres in 1642, and

after the Restoration it attained great popularity only in adapted versions. Theatre productions

returned conclusively to the original Shakespearean text in the mid-nineteenth century. In the

twentieth century, the play received a sweeping re-appraisal by critics and scholars, to the point

that it is now considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works.

Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the

basis of their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. Racism and discrimination

have been used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and

war, and even during economic downturns. We can say Racism is the belief that there are

inherent differences in people's traits and capacities which are entirely due to their race, however

defined, and which consequently justify those people being treated differently, both socially and

legally. Alternatively, racism is the practice of certain group/s of people being treated differently,

which is then justified by recourse to racial sterotyping or pseudo-science.

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In Shakespeare's day, most of the planets were still being "discovered", and stories were coming

back from distant islands, with myths about the Cannibals of the Caribbean, faraway Edens, and

distant Tropical Utopias. With the character Caliban (whose name is roughly anagrammatic to

Cannibal), Shakespeare may be offering an in-depth discussion into the morality of colonialism.

Different views are discussed, with examples including Gonzalo's Utopia, Prospero's

enslavement of Caliban, and Caliban's subsequent resentment. Caliban is also shown as one of

the most natural characters in the play, being very much in touch with the natural world (and

modern audiences have come to view him as far nobler than his two Old World friends, Stephano

and Trinculo, although the original intent of the author may have been different). There is

evidence that Shakespeare drew on Montaigne's essay Of Cannibals, which discusses the values

of societies insulated from European influences, while writing The Tempest.

Nearly every scene in the play either explicitly or implicitly portrays a relationship between a

figure that possesses power and a figure that is subject to that power. The play explores the

master-servant dynamic most harshly in cases in which the harmony of the relationship is

threatened or disrupted, as by the rebellion of a servant or the ineptitude of a master. For

instance, in the opening scene, the “servant” (the Boatswain) is dismissive and angry toward his

“masters” (the noblemen), whose ineptitude threatens to lead to a shipwreck in the storm. From

then on, master-servant relationships like these dominate the play: Prospero and Caliban;

Prospero and Ariel; Alonso and his nobles; the nobles and Gonzalo; Stephano, Trinculo, and

Caliban; and so forth. The play explores the psychological and social dynamics of power

relationships from a number of contrasting angles, such as the generally positive relationship

between Prospero and Ariel, the generally negative relationship between Prospero and Caliban,

and the treachery in Alonso’s relationship to his nobles.

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In the play we find some words- "Hag-born", "whelp," not "honoured with human shape."

"Demi-devil.", "Poor credulous monster" ,"Hag-seed", "Strange fish." These are just a few

descriptions of Caliban, one of the most debated figures in all of Shakespeare. Critical

interpretations of Caliban are wildly different and have changed dramatically over the years. In

fact, scholars get pretty fired up about how this character should be interpreted. Before we get

carried away, let's start with what we do know.

Caliban is the island's only native. As Prospero tells us, he is the product of the witch Sycorax's

hook-up with the devil and Caliban was "littered" (a word usually used to describe animals being

born, like kittens) on the island after Sycorax was booted out of her home in Algiers (1.2.35). So,

Caliban's life didn't exactly get off to a good start. So, was he born bad, or did something happen

in his life to turn him into a "thing most brutish" (1.2)? Prospero’s dark, earthy slave, frequently

referred to as a monster by the other characters, Caliban is the son of a witch-hag and the only

real native of the island to appear in the play. He is an extremely complex figure, and he mirrors

or parodies several other characters in the play. In his first speech to Prospero, Caliban insists

that Prospero stole the island from him. Through this speech, Caliban suggests that his situation

is much the same as Prospero’s, whose brother usurped his dukedom. On the other hand,

Caliban’s desire for sovereignty of the island mirrors the lust for power that led Antonio to

overthrow Prospero. Caliban’s conspiracy with Stephano and Trinculo to murder Prospero

mirrors Antonio and Sebastian’s plot against Alonso, as well as Antonio and Alonso’s original

conspiracy against Prospero.

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Caliban both mirrors and contrasts with Prospero’s other servant, Ariel. While Ariel is “an airy

spirit,” Caliban is of the earth, his speeches turning to “springs, brine pits” (I.ii.341), “bogs, fens,

flats” (II.ii.2), or crabapples and pignuts (II.ii.159–160). While Ariel maintains his dignity and

his freedom by serving Prospero willingly, Caliban achieves a different kind of dignity by

refusing, if only sporadically, to bow before Prospero’s intimidation.

Surprisingly, Caliban also mirrors and contrasts with Ferdinand in certain ways. In Act II, scene

ii Caliban enters “with a burden of wood,” and Ferdinand enters in Act III, scene i “bearing a

log.” Both Caliban and Ferdinand profess an interest in untying Miranda’s “virgin knot.”

Ferdinand plans to marry her, while Caliban has attempted to rape her. The glorified, romantic,

almost ethereal love of Ferdinand for Miranda starkly contrasts with Caliban’s desire to

impregnate Miranda and people the island with Calibans.

Finally, and most tragically, Caliban becomes a parody of himself. In his first speech to

Prospero, he regretfully reminds the magician of how he showed him all the ins and outs of the

island when Prospero first arrived. Only a few scenes later, however, we see Caliban drunk and

fawning before a new magical being in his life: Stephano and his bottle of liquor. Soon, Caliban

begs to show Stephano the island and even asks to lick his shoe. Caliban repeats the mistakes he

claims to curse. In his final act of rebellion, he is once more entirely subdued by Prospero in the

most petty way—he is dunked in a stinking bog and ordered to clean up Prospero’s cell in

preparation for dinner.

Despite his savage demeanor and grotesque appearance, however, Caliban has a nobler, more

sensitive side that the audience is only allowed to glimpse briefly, and which Prospero and

Miranda do not acknowledge at all. His beautiful speeches about his island home provide some

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of the most affecting imagery in the play, reminding the audience that Caliban really did occupy

the island before Prospero came, and that he may be right in thinking his enslavement to be

monstrously unjust. Caliban’s swarthy appearance, his forced servitude, and his native status on

the island have led many readers to interpret him as a symbol of the native cultures occupied and

suppressed by European colonial societies, which are represented by the power of Prospero.

Whether or not one accepts this allegory, Caliban remains one of the most intriguing and

ambiguous minor characters in all of Shakespeare, a sensitive monster who allows himself to be

transformed into a fool.

We know that after Prospero and Miranda washed up on shore, Caliban seems to have had a

pretty decent relationship with the old magician. To Prospero Caliban says:

When thou camest first,

Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in't, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile-- (1.2.3)

In other words, Caliban showed Prospero how to survive on the island and Prospero took Caliban

under his wing and taught him to speak. (Apparently, Caliban had no language before this.) For a

while, things were hunky dory. Or, as hunky dory as things can possibly be on a remote island.

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We even learn that Prospero treated Caliban "with human care" and let him stay at his pad.

Regardless of how repulsive Caliban may be, he's also the character who delivers some of the

most beautiful and stunning speeches in the play. Here's a sample:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again .(3.2.18).

For a lot of critics, Caliban is symbolic of what happened to victims of European colonization in

the centuries after Shakespeare wrote The Tempest. We think Virginia Mason Vaughan and

Alden T. Vaughan do the best job of summing up this argument:

Caliban stands for countless victims of European imperialism and colonization. Like

Caliban (so the argument goes), colonized peoples were disinherited, exploited, and

subjugated. Like him, they learned a conqueror's language and perhaps that conqueror's

values. Like him, they endured enslavement and contempt by European usurpers and

eventually rebelled. Like him, they were torn between their indigenous culture and the

culture superimposed on it by their conquerors. (Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural

History, 145)

This interpretation of Caliban can be pretty powerful and socially relevant, especially in film and

stage productions where Caliban is portrayed as a colonized, New World subject. Yet, it's also

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important to remember, as Vaughan and Vaughan point out, that this "interpretation of Caliban is

symbolic for what he represents to the observer, not for what Shakespeare may have had in

mind."

Regardless of whether or not we read Caliban as a victim of colonial injustice, he's most

definitely a slave and, in some ways, the play suggests he was born to be one. Miranda (or

Prospero, depending on which edition of the play you're reading) says as much when she points

out that she helped teach Caliban language:

[...] I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes

With words that made them known. But thy vile race,

Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures

Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou

Deservedly confined into this rock,

Who hadst deserved more than a prison. (1.2.24)

In other words, Miranda suggests that Caliban's "vile race" and lack of language makes him

deserving of his status as a slave. (This, of course, is exactly what European imperialists said

about the people they colonized.) What's interesting is that even Caliban seems like he lives to

serve. When he conspires with Stefano and Trinculo to kill Prospero, he promises to serve

Stephano:

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I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island;

And I will kiss thy foot: I prithee, be my god. (2.2.11)

Shakespeare's The Tempest emerged at a very significant time in English history. English

imperial ambition was just beginning to take hold, English settlers were attempting to survive in

the new colony in Virginia  and stories of the savages of the New World were beginning to

make their way into the collective English consciousness. In his article "The Tempest in the

Wilderness: The Racialization of Savagery," Ronald Takaki sums up the play's historical

situation:

"The timing of the first performance of The Tempest was crucial. It came after the

English invasion of Ireland but before the colonization of New England, after John

Smith's arrival in Virginia but before the beginning of the tobacco economy, and after the

first contacts with the Indians but before full-scale warfare against them. In that historical

moment, the English were encountering "other" peoples and delineating the boundary

between civilization and savagery." (893

The dichotomy of savagery and civilization is present throughout the play. Shakespeare invites

both his characters and his audience to explore and form their own opinions about it. In the

words of Daniel Wilson, "Shakespeare has purposefully placed the true anthropomorphoid

alongside these types of degraded humanity, to shew the contrast between them." (Murphy, 20).

Shakespeare uses the reactions of his characters to the character of Caliban and the issue of race

in general to differentiate those who are evil or stupid from those who are basically good and

just. Those within the play who react negatively or exploitatively toward Caliban are among the

most evil or stupid in the play.

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The debate between civilization and savagery was a popular one in Europe at the time. Some,

like Spanish lawyer Juan Gines de Sepulveda, argued Aristotle's view that some people were

"natural slaves" and  therefore incapable of being educated or existing alongside the civilized

people of Europe. Others, including Pope Paul II, thought that Indians, as well as "other people,"

"should not be deprived of their liberty and property, even though they were outside the

Christian faith." (Takaki, 899).

The Tempest invites readers and playgoers to explore this dichotomy for themselves. As Takaki

puts it: "The play invites us to view English expansionism not only as an imperialism but as a

defining moment in the making of an English-American identity based on race. For the first time

in the English theater, an Indian character was being presented." (893)

Shakespeare himself seems to take great pains to present both sides of the issue. In Act 1, Scene

2, the reader gets two conflicting stories of how the island came to be under the control of

Prospero. The first, Prospero's version delivered in a series of speeches to Miranda, sees the two

castaways coming ashore and subsequently ruling the island "by providence divine." The version

delivered by Caliban is quite different. In his account "Prospero is the usurper in his

dispossession and enslavement of Caliban." (Graff, 203). Shakespeare resists the temptation to

make a simple caricature of Caliban, instead, "Shakespeare gives him some of the best lines in

the play, lines that show him protesting eloquently and convincingly about what Prospero has

done to him." (Graff, 93).

This dichotomy plays out in interesting ways within The Tempest. Some characters, like

Stephano and Trinculo, see Caliban solely as something to be exploited and seem to agree more

with Sepulveda's view of so-called "savages." Others like Gonzalo seem to take a more

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sympathetic view of native peoples more in line with the opinion of Pope Paul II. Stephano and

Trinculo repeatedly refer to Caliban as a "monster." When Trinculo first comes across Caliban in

Act 2, Scene 2, his first thought is of finding a way to exploit him for profit:

Were I in England now,

as once I was, and had but this fish painted,

not a holiday fool there but would give a piece

of silver: there would this monster make a

man; any strange beast there makes a man:

when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame

beggar, they will lazy out ten to see a dead

Indian. Legged like a man and his fins like

arms! (2.2.28-36)

When Stephano comes across the four-legged monster of Caliban and Trinculo, he too

immediately thinks of the possible benefits of exploiting the "monster.

This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who

hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil

should he learn our language? I will give him some

relief, if it be but for that. if I can recover him

and keep him tame and get to Naples with him, he's a

present for any emperor that ever trod on neat's leather. ! (2.2. 66-72)

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Later on, in Act 3, Scene 2, Stephano delights in talking down to his new servant. He seems to

have no concept of Caliban as a human being. Rather, Stephano only sees him in terms of what

he can get from him.

Stephano and Trinculo are easily the biggest buffoons in the entire play. They're seemingly

drunk from the moment we meet them until the play ends, they make no effort to seek shelter or

devise a way off the island, they're simply content to wander around until they meet Caliban and

Stephano declares himself the king of the island. They easily fall for Ariel's simple ruse in Act 3,

Scene 2. All Ariel has to do is speak a few words while imitating the voice of Trinculo to get

them fighting. Stephano strikes Trinculo at the very suggestion of a challenge to his self-granted

authority, a challenge that doesn't' even come from Trinculo himself. The whole of Act 3, Scene

2 plays out like a scene from The Three Stooges. They are constantly getting distracted from

their plot against Prospero, and when they finally arrive to perform the deed in Act 4, Scene 1,

they are so preoccupied with playing dress up that they miss their opportunity completely.

Instead of murdering Prospero and taking over the island, they're driven off by Ariel's

apparitions. It's no accident on Shakespeare's part that two of the most racist characters in the

play are also the least intelligent.

Sebastian and Antonio are the most treacherous characters in The Tempest. Antonio's original

plot against Prospero is alluded to many times, and he himself confirms it in his conversations

with Sebastian. When Alonso falls asleep in Act 2, Scene 1, Antonio easily convinces Sebastian

to murder his brother in order to usurp the crown of Naples the same way Antonio stole

Prospero's dukedom. In Act 3, Scene 3, the two discuss their plot again, and Antonio actually

expresses happiness over Ferdinand's death: "I am right glad that he's so out of hope." (line 13).

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Of course, no analysis of the role of racism in the play would be complete without addressing the

main character, Prospero. Prospero's relationship to Caliban is less black and white than others in

the play. We don't see Prospero's initial reaction to him; instead we have to gather what we can

from the conflicting narratives of Caliban and Prospero. Caliban himself admits that Prospero

treated him well at first:

When thou camest first,

Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in't, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,(1.2.397-402)

Prospero and Miranda teach Caliban to speak, and even allow him to live with them until his

attempted rape of Miranda. During the play Prospero treats Caliban harshly, but Shakespeare

gives the reader reason to think that perhaps it is justified. By the end of the play, however,

Prospero comes to accept Caliban.

"This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." (5.1: 330-331).

The existence of Racial Tension is evident here. These two utterances of the two characters

below will show a clear evidence of Racism. Prospero’s words about Caliban :

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,

Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;

And as with age his body uglier grows,

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So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,

Even to roaring.(4.1.188-193)

On the other hand, Caliban’s speech about Prospero and Miranda:

As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a

sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island. (3.2.40-41)

This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou takest from me.(1.2.393-394).

You taught me language; and my profit on't

Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

For learning me your language!(1.2.362-364).

Racism and the character Caliban are closely connected. Caliban is often referred to as a

“monster” by the other characters in this play. Racial Tension pervades throughout the

play as Prospero and Caliban are two most important characters in this play who are the

two components of our discussion. After discussing all these things it is evident that

The Tempest is an allegory where Racism is the main theme.

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Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1974.

The First Folio of Shakespeare, The Norton Facsimile, ed. Charlton Hinman. New York: W. W.

Norton, 1968.

Hazlitt, William. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. Project Gutenburg. Vers. 01. May. 2011.

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5085>.

Slights, Jessica. "Rape and the Romanticization of Shakespeare's Miranda." SEL Studies in

English Literature 1500-1900 41.2 (2001) 357-79.

Altick, Richard Daniel. Paintings from Books: Art and Literature in Britain, 1760-1900.

Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1985.

Dolan, Jill. The Racist Spectator as Critic. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1991.

“Gender Impersonation Onstage: Destroying or Maintaining the Mirror of Gender

Roles?” Racism and Performance 2.2 (1985): 5-11.

Mabillard, Amanda, Caliban. Shakespeare Online. 4 May. 2011.

< http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/tempest/Calibancharacter.html >

Weber, Harold (1986). The restoration rake-hero: transformations in sexual understanding in

seventeenth-century England. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299106904.

Forbes, D’Anna. Niki Sarich as Miranda. 1997. First Folio Shakespeare Festival, Oak Brook. 2

May 2011 <http://www.firstfolio.org/1997. htm>.

6 May, 2011.Shakespeare’s Caliban <http://www.shakespeare-online.org>