“He’s but a sot as I am”: On the Borders of the Human
in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
(MA thesis in English Literary Studies)
Annelies Boekestijn
Supervisor: Dr. Kristine Johanson January 2018
Declaration of Academic Integrity
I hereby confirm that I have read and understood the UvA Regulations on Fraud and Plagiarism. I am aware that failure to act in accordance with these regulations can result in severe penalties. I confirm that this thesis is entirely my own work and that contributions from other sources are fully acknowledged.
Acknowledgments
I would to thank my supervisor, Dr. Kristine Johanson, for her feedback on drafts and on the previous version of this thesis. Her illuminating ideas guided my research and helped me shape my arguments. Furthermore, I would like thank my girlfriend and my mother for comforting me every time this writing process was too stressful.
Table of Contents
Introduction... 5 Chapter 1. Shakespeare’s Worldviews: The Great Chain of Being, Hierarchies, and Their Influence on Society ... 11
Chapter 2. Without his books, ‘He’s but a Sot as I Am’: Language Capacity,
Names, and Power for Caliban, Alonso, and Prospero. ... 22 Chapter 3: ‘Thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child' ... 35 Chapter 4: ‘Were I human’: Souls, Temperance, and the Expression of Emotions .... 43 Conclusion ... 52 Works Cited ... 54
Introduction
In 1597, when James I was still King of Scotland, he published Daemonologie, in which he described Satan’s evil plots against him. James argued that witches “pretended to bewitch and drown his Maiestie in the Sea comming from Denmark with such other wonderfull matters as the like hath not been heard of at any time” (Daemonologie 64). Greenblatt summarizes this work: “Hundreds of witches, he believed, were involved in a 1590 conspiracy to kill him by raising storms at sea when he was sailing home from Denmark with his new bride” (“Shakespeare’s World” 30). If we replace the hundreds of witches by an extremely powerful magus, this conspiracy is very similar to William
Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Whether Shakespeare meant his play to resonate King James’s tale or not remains unknown, but the play definitely continued to live long after both the playwright and the king died. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is extremely rich and dynamic through its constant questioning of reality, identity, and morality. Its characters are unsure whether they sleep or dream, whether they hallucinate or see things clearly, and whether they are dead or alive. For instance, Sebastian cannot believe that Antonio is not sleeping and tells him that “this is a strange repose, to be asleep / With eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving, / And yet so fast asleep” (2.1.209-11), and the banquet that the spirits presented to Alonso and his entourage suddenly vanishes before the men reach the table (3.3.53). Furthermore, Trinculo wonders whether Stefano is alive or not (“And art thou living, Stefano?” (2.2.104-5)). The island seems completely foreign for King Alonso and his entourage, inviting the audience (who are visitors of this island as much as Alonso is) to be just as insecure as the entourage is. They encounter unknown creatures, yet none of these creatures is explicitly human or nonhuman. Furthermore, the characters that are clearly physically human are on the same brim of humanity as these unknown creatures are. The individuals in this group of Italians all possess qualities that make them human, yet they
simultaneously possess qualities that are explicitly nonhuman. Modern-day readers still question the tension between human and nonhuman in The Tempest as much as contemporary audiences might have wondered about this boundary. One reviewer on www.goodreads.com questions this border: “But who was magical, who was human, who was in between . . . that’s where I got lost” (Jason Koivu). This thesis argues that Shakespeare criticizes the intensely hierarchical early modern society by questioning the borders between human and nonhuman regarding three aspects: sex acts, emotion, and language. Departing from three key moments in the play, I examine Shakespeare’s obfuscation of the human category of being and its consequences.
By demonstrating the importance of language, emotion, and sex acts in the distinction between human and nonhuman in The Tempest, this thesis contributes to ecocriticism, Shakespeare Animal Studies, and studies in the history of emotion. This paper also draws from these scholarly fields and uses both contemporary and modern literary sources to compare early modern worldviews to Shakespeare’s play.
Cheryll Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (xviii). Just as the definition of the term, the field of ecocriticism is extremely broad, and it ranges from studying “the environmental conditions of an author’s life” (Glotfelty xxiii) to “examining the symbolic construction of species” (Glotfelty xxiv). Even though I examine the contemporary worldview of the audience of The Tempest, I do not consider
environmental conditions of Shakespeare’s life. The symbolic construction of species, however, is extremely important to this thesis, because the human perspective on species defines human treatment of these characters in the play. Another way in which this thesis diverts from certain ideas of ecocriticism is in its motivation. Glotfelty argues that “most ecocritical work shares a common motivation: the
troubling awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits, a time when the consequences of human actions are damaging the planet’s basic life support systems” (xx). This thesis does not reject humanity’s negative effect on the environment, but its primary motivation is to argue that Shakespeare criticizes his society’s ideas about the borders between human and nonhuman. In Beginning Theory, an Introduction to Literary and
Cultural Theory, Peter Barry devotes one chapter to introducing ecocriticism. He highlights a different perspective in this scholarly field: that “any invocation of nature will have the side-effect of disguising politics and so legitimating inequalities and injustices (Barry 253). Thus, when Prospero exclaims that Caliban is “a devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick” (4.1.188-9)), he legitimates his cruel treatment of Caliban by stressing Caliban’s natural faults. Furthermore, Barry argues that the definition of nature is a site of struggle and highlights one position by Alan Liu (Barry 254). Liu argues that “nature is the name under which we use the nonhuman to validate the human, to interpose a mediation able to make humanity more easy with itself” (Liu 38), illustrating at once both humanity’s exploitation of nature and the symbolism as opposed to the physicality of nature. In her essay “Toward the Desertion of Sycorax’s Island: Challenging the Colonial Contract”, Rachel Bryant also focuses on man’s exploitation of nature and argues that in The Tempest, “Shakespeare challenges the corrupt and cruel imperial logic that would compulsively treat Natives, animals, and other beings as available and marketable resources” (98). As an example she employs Trinculo’s fantasy of taking Caliban to England and putting him on display for money (Bryant 98), but Prospero’s use of Caliban as log carrier (1.2.315) also shows how Prospero exploits this available resource. In his Man and the Natural World, Keith Thomas lists many different reasons for humanity’s unique superiority: “Thus man had been
described as a political animal . . . ; a laughing animal . . . ; a tool-making animal . . . ; a religious animal . . . ; and a cooking animal” (31). It is clear that there is a range of ideas
about what makes the human human and the nonhuman nonhuman. This thesis focuses on other distinctions between human and animal, such as the ability to reason and language capacity.
This thesis also draws from works in Shakespeare Animal Studies, such as Erica Fudge’s works on the distinction between human and nonhuman in early modern England (“Monstrous Acts: Bestiality in Early Modern England”, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality and Humanity in Early Modern England, “The Human Face of Early Modern England”, and “The Animal Face of Early Modern England”). Karen Raber and Gabriel Egan’s published introductions to this field (“Shakespeare and Animal Studies” and Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory respectively), and Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On the Cannibals” provides a contemporary point of view on the colonized and animals.
My chapter about early modern emotions draws from works by Gail Kern Paster and Kristine Steenbergh. Paster illustrates how early moderns experienced emotion and Steenbergh focuses on Joost van den Vondel’s 1646 play Mary Stuart, or Martyred Majesty to show how emotions expressed on stage were believed to alter the audience’s body.
Stephen Greenblatt’s general introduction to The Norton Shakespeare, his introduction to The Tempest, and Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan’s introduction to The Tempest help me situate the play in Shakespearean society and E.M. W. Tillyard’s The Elizabethan Worldview outlines The Great Chain of Being which I will expand on in chapter one.
The human/nonhuman dichotomy is much discussed in scholarly and less scholarly works from all ages in countless ways. For instance, some works examine the relationship between nature and man, such as Lynn White Jr.’s 1967 essay “The
Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”, in which he explores humanity’s transformation from being subject to nature toward being superior over nature. He concludes that due to agricultural innovations at the end of the seventh century, “man’s relation to the soil was profoundly changed. Formerly man had been part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature” (White 8). Others explicitly write about the relationship between animals and humans in Shakespeare’s works, such as Andreas Höfele. His Stage, Stake and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare’s Theatre, in which he compares animal spectacles such as bear-baiting to human penalties and the expression of both of these phenomena on Shakespeare’s stage. Höfele includes a discussion of Michel de Montaigne - Shakespeare’s contemporary - who wrote about the distinction between his own society and ‘savages’ as they were known in his time, for instance in his essay “On the Cannibals”.
In this essay, Montaigne criticizes the contemporary view on natives in the New World. He argues that “there is nothing savage or barbarous about those peoples” (231) and that his own society is different from ‘savage’ people through their customs, which are the only “criterion of truth or right-reason” (“On the Cannibals” 231). Furthermore, he states that artifice, which he associates with his society, is inferior to Nature - ‘our great and powerful Mother’ (232) - and uses the example of artificially grown fruit to transfer the savagery from the natives onto his own peers: “Those ‘savages’ are only wild in the sense that we call fruits wild when they are produced by Nature in her ordinary course: whereas it is fruit which we have artificially perverted and misled from the common order which we ought to call savage” (231). Höfele argues that “the elementary discursive function of animal and cannibal in the production of ‘anthropological difference’ is used by Montaigne not to confirm but to contest the anthropocentric and ethnocentric claims to superiority which animal and cannibal
conventionally serve to reinforce” (121). Montaigne thus illustrates the two contradictory functions of savages in his society and challenges prominent ideas of contemporary colonial
discourses. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben also discusses the function of beings on the border of humanity. He proposes an ‘anthropological machine’
(Agamben 37) and examines the Homo Alalus, a non-speaking man and the ‘missing link’ (Agamben 36).
Chapter one outlines the historical context of the play and focuses on the Great Chain of Being and its influences on early modern society. Chapter two explores Caliban’s, Alonso’s, and Prospero’s categories of being. I examine Caliban’s language capacity as the difference between human and nonhuman and demonstrate the effect of naming in the play. In this same chapter, I illustrate how Shakespeare questions Alonso’s superiority through a collapse of the Chain and I focus on the origin and consequence of Prospero’s godlike power through language. Chapter three considers the attempted rape of Miranda and identifies bestiality and incest as
underlying dangers of this sex act. Furthermore, this chapter illustrates how both Ariel and Caliban are isolated from the other characters through their respective
relationships to sex acts. Chapter four analyses early modern emotions and the Aristotelian division of soul to argue that the suggestion of Ariel’s possession of a sensitive soul obfuscates his1 own category of being and that through the individuality of his emotions and his possession of the intellectual soul, Shakespeare renders
Caliban more human.
1
Ariel is often regarded as genderless, yet the male pronoun ‘his’ is used twice in the play: “Ariel and all his quality” (1.2.194) and in the stage directions in scene 3.3, where Ariel appears like a harpy (around 3.3.53).
Chapter 1. Shakespeare’s Worldviews: The Great Chain of Being, Hierarchies, and Their Influence on Society
There appear to be no simple natures, but all participate or consist of two: thus, man has somewhat of the brute, the brute somewhat of the plant, the plant somewhat of the mineral; so that all natural bodies have really two faces, or consist of a superior and an inferior species. (Bacon 337-38)
This chapter illustrates why Shakespeare’s society is intensely hierarchical by outlining overlapping worldviews and their influence on early moderns. I analyze a contemporary drawing of the Great Chain of Being to further explain this structure and argue that the Chain creates harmony in society and that it is used as a qualifier to chart behavior and appearance in the play. Furthermore, I argue that deviations from character’s categories of being are a source of plot in The Tempest, and that even though most of these deviations are resolved in the end of the play, Shakespeare leaves some endings open.
Shakespeare’s era is characterized by conflicting religions and worldviews. After Queen Mary I’s reign, her sister Elizabeth ascends the throne and in 1559, she reestablishes the protestant Church of England (“Timeline” 1760). A 1580 Jesuit mission aims to reconvert England to Catholicism (“Timeline” 1761) and radical Catholics plan and fail their
Gunpowder Plot in 1605 (“Timeline” 1763). During James I’s reign, the king decides to “establish his reputation as a peacekeeper by balancing a Catholic marriage for [his son] Henry with a Protestant alliance for [his daughter] Elizabeth” (Vaughan and Vaughan 38). Shakespeare’s own father was fined for not attending church in 1585 (“Timeline” 1761) and “he was one of nine Stratford men listed as absenting themselves from church”
(“Shakespeare’s Life and Art” 44) in 1592, illustrating Stratford’s need to register attendance. Changes in religion in early modern England were accompanied by the scholarly ideas of the Renaissance.
Living in the Renaissance, scholarly works were characterized by a revision of ancient ideas. As such, early modern England was influenced by Platonism. Neo-Platonism flourished in the third century when it combined Plato’s ideas with Christian doctrine. Furthermore, Aristotle’s ideas were implemented in the philosophical thinking. Plato and Aristotle’s ideas both include a system of ordering beings and non-beings in the universe. One of Aristotle’s prominent ideas is a hierarchical division of souls. Aristotle introduced the superiority of the intellectual soul over the sensitive and vegetative soul as a consequence of this division. In her work Bestiality: Animals, Rationality and Humanity in Early Modern England, Erica Fudge explains the Aristotelian model of souls:
“The vegetative soul is shared by plants, animals, and humans and is the cause of nutrition, growth, and reproduction: all natural - unthought - actions. The sensitive soul is possessed by animals and humans alone (plants have only the vegetative soul) and is the source of perception and movement. The rational soul houses the faculties that make up reason - including will, intellect, and intellective memory - and is found only in humans” (8).
Thus, human beings are unique through their possession of the rational soul and their consequent abilities of reason, will, and memory. This model, combined with The Great Chain of Being, causes a hierarchy and creates borders between plants, animals, and humans. I will now expand on The Great Chain of Being and discuss its importance in Shakespeare’s society.
The Chain was fully developed in third-century Neo-Platonism (Bunnin 289) and it was still influential in the early modern period. Gabriel Egan states that “the dominant way of thinking about the ordering of the universe in Shakespeare’s time was a model described by E. M. W. Tillyard as the Great Chain of Being”
(Ecocritical Theory 100). Tillyard published The Elizabethan World Picture in 1943 and has since been discussed extensively. Egan argues that “the aspect of the
Elizabethan World Picture that American New Historicist and British Cultural Materialist critics most vehemently rejected in the 1980s and 1990s was the homogeneity of thought that Tillyard seemed to insist upon” (“Shakespeare and Ecocriticism” 8). The Great Chain of Being is only one of many Shakespearean worldviews, and the culmination of ontological ideas in early modern England caused the intense hierarchy in its society.
The Chain orders everything in the world according to a hierarchy. God is at the top of this Chain, followed by spiritual beings such as angels and archangels, humans, animals, plants, and minerals. Every category is subdivided into several other categories. In the animal category for instance, avian animals are placed higher than water animals, but lower than mammals. Each category has a ‘primate’: the highest being in that respective category. And so eagles are the primates of birds, just as kings are the primates of humans. Tillyard states that man “was the nodal point, and his double nature, through the source of internal conflict, had the unique function of binding together all creation, of bridging the greatest cosmic chasm, that between matter and spirit” (73). Humans are thus on the border of the physical and the intellectual, since (unlike the spirits) they are tied to their physical bodies, yet they also possess an intellectual soul. By alluding to the distinction between matter and spirit (i.e. where the sensitive and intellectual soul are housed respectively), Tillyard thus implements Aristotle’s division of soul into the Chain. Figure 1 is a drawing of the Great Chain of Being. In what follows, I analyze this image and highlight a contemporary portrayal of the Chain.
Robert Fludd’s 1617 drawing alludes to the circular worldview, with the Earth at its center. The large female figure portrays Nature, and is chained to God, whom Hugo Grotius calls ‘the Author of Nature’ (3), explaining God’s superior position over Nature. Nature is also chained to the ape-like figure sitting on the globe, illustrating Nature’s power over the animal kingdom. From the inside outward, Fludd first shows the arts of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms such as cultivating land and beekeeping, and then moves to liberal arts
such as music, geometry, and astrology. After the arts, the minerals follow, with gold and silver closest to God, and salt further removed. The plants have grapevines and wheat as their primates according to Fludd, arguably because they are most useful for wine and food. Man and woman are placed within the animal category, followed by the eagle and the lion. The water and earth elements are portrayed within the circle that Nature is standing in. Arguably this circle encapsulates everything that is close to the Earth, and the elements of air and fire encompass this circle, akin to the Earth’s atmosphere. Fludd then illustrates the positions of the planets as they were known in his time, which starts with the Moon’s sphere and ends with Saturn’s sphere. After the sphere of the heaven’s stars, the spheres of angels and archangels are closest to God. God is the sole occupant of the highest category in the Great Chain of Being.
The influence of the Chain on early modern society is large. The Chain sustains social order and legitimates prejudice and cruel treatment of lower beings. Beings that do not clearly comply with a category of being are feared by early moderns and the Chain can also be used to qualify someone or someone’s behavior. Furthermore, deviations from the social order of the Chain are a source of plot for Shakespeare, and even though most attempts to transcend one’s hierarchical positions are resolved in the closing of The Tempest, the playwright leaves some endings open, creating tension and room for interpretation. Tillyard states that “the metaphor [of the chain] served to express the unimaginable plenitude of God’s creation, its unfaltering order, and its ultimate unity” (33). The ‘unfaltering order’ and ‘ultimate unity’ suggest how the chain creates harmony. In his work The Elizabethan Worldview, Tillyard states that the emperor is the ‘primate’ among men (37). Analogous to the hierarchy of species in The Great Chain of Being, there is thus a hierarchy of occupations within the human category of being.
Figure 1 Robert Fludd's version of the Great Chain of Being. Fludd, Robert. “Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica, atque Technica Historia.” Hay Exhibits, http://library.brown.edu/exhibit/items/show/19. Accessed20 November 2017.
Stephen Greenblatt argues that “social mobility was not widely viewed as a positive virtue, and moralists repeatedly urged people to stay in their place”
(“Shakespeare’s World” 5). A fisherman would never become a nobleman and a peasant would never become king in early modern society. As such, everybody knew where they stood, whom to look up to, and whom to look down upon. Furthermore, one’s position in the social hierarchy determines their interaction with others. The prejudice associated with positions in the human hierarchy causes the justification of either positive or negative treatment in social interaction. Thus, when the Boatswain alludes to the limited power of the king, Gonzalo warns him to “remember whom thou hast aboard” (1.1.17). Gonzalo attempts to prevent the Boatswain from assuming a position of authority, yet eventually he has to acknowledge the Boatswain’s superior skills in seafaring and he returns to the cabin (1.1.29). Early moderns also approached beings on the borders of categories of the Chain with superstition and prejudice. In what follows, I examine a 1568 pamphlet to illustrate early modern fears of strange beings, beings who threaten the human category of being.
‘Monstrous’ babies were regarded as inferior, not only through their youth, but also through their appearance. Yet most importantly, they were believed to be warnings from God. Kevin Stagg argues that monster texts “clearly equate bodily deformity with sin” (27). Figure two is a 1568 pamphlet reporting the birth of a deformed child. “The Forme and Shape of a Monstrous Child / Borne at Maydstone in Kent, the .xxiiij. of October” is divided into three parts: a drawing of the child, a report of its birth, and a warning to England. In the report, the author describes the child’s mother as “being unmaryed” and thus playing “the naughty packe”. OED.com defines ‘naughty pack’ as “a promiscuous or licentious woman; a prostitute” (“Naughty Pack”). The unknown author of the pamphlet equates the mother’s sinful occupation with her son’s deformity.
Figure 2 “The Forme and Shape of a Monstrous Child, Borne at Maydstone in Kent, the .Xxiiij. of October. 1568.” Early English Books Online,
The birth and subsequent death of the ‘monstrous’ child “may be a terrour aswell to all such workers of filthynes & iniquity”, yet the child’s deformity is also a warning to England. The lower third of the pamphlet ascribes each deformity of the child to a sin. As Stagg notes, “the child’s disfigured bestial ‘gaspyng mouth’ stood as a warning against blasphemy with its ‘filthy talke, and poysoned speech’” (Stagg 28). The work also asks its readers to be lead by God:
The leg so clyming to the head, What meaneth it but this -
That some do seeke not to be lead, But for to leade amis.
For the author, the child’s deformed leg alludes to the inability to follow God. He summarizes the child’s strange shape into a final warning – if his readers do not improve their way of living, they will face endless death.
Wherefor to ech in England now, Let this Monster them teach;
To mend the monstrous life they show, Least endles Death them reach.
The repetition of ‘monster’ equates the monstrous quality of the child (‘this Monster’) to the lives of ‘ech in England’ by warning them to “mend the monstrous life they show”. Thus, strange beings can contribute to the Chain’s strength. They are presented as
consequences of sin and function as warnings to all of England to remain in their social order and to stay virtuous. However, they also illustrate a strong hostility towards ambiguous beings and they are used to legitimate cruel treatment of lower beings.
Furthermore, another example of the Great Chain of Being's influence on early modern society is its qualifying function. Gabriel Egan argues that “the commonest reason to compare humans to beasts is to condemn the humans for sinking to the beasts’ level of existence, typically in showing a lack of compassion, or in giving in to base desires (lusts and
appetites) rather than overcoming them by dint of Reason” (Ecocritical Theory 118). Even though Egan only refers to beasts, his argument also applies to other beings in the Chain. For instance, Ariel associates Caliban, Trinculo and Stefano with cows when he tells Prospero that:
Then I beat my tabor,
At which like unbacked colts they pricked their ears, Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears That calf-like they my lowing followed, through
Toothed briars, sharp furzes, pricking gorse, and thorns, Which entered their frail shins. (4.1.175-81)
By comparing the three conspirators to colts and calves, Ariel refers to their stupidity and implies their lack of constraint in following his beautiful music. Caliban also uses animals to offend Trinculo when he tells him that “Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou” (3.2.43) alluding simultaneously to Trinculo’s occupation and his similarity to monkeys. Antonio offends Adrian and Francisco when he tells Sebastian that “they’ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk” (2.1.284), using the cat simile to imply their lack of loyalty to King Alonso.
However, the Chain can also be used to praise positive qualities. For instance,
Prospero compliments Miranda: “ O, a cherubin / Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile, / Infus’ed with a fortitude from heaven” (1.2.152-54), comparing her to an angel; a higher being on the Chain. Ferdinand believes her to be in an even higher category when he first encounters her: “Most sure the goddess / On whom these airs attend” (1.2.425-26). Miranda, in turn, regards Ferdinand as “A thing divine, for nothing natural / I ever saw so noble” (1.2.422-23). Furthermore, Alonso repeats Ferdinand’s belief that Miranda is a goddess:
What is this maid with whom thou wast at play? Your eld’st acquaintance cannot be three hours. Is she the goddess that hath severed us,
By associating Miranda to angels and goddesses, Prospero, Ferdinand, and Alonso ascribe qualities to her that transcend the human category of the Chain, in appreciation of her behavior and appearance respectively.
Deviations from the Chain are a source of plot for Shakespeare, and most of these deviations are resolved in the end of the play. Prospero regains his dukedom and legacy, Miranda will marry Ferdinand, heir to Alonso’s kingship, and Antonio loses most of his power. However, some of these attempts to ‘climb the social ladder’ are not entirely resolved. Antonio’s usurpation and his brother’s consequent punishment do not seem to teach him to be virtuous or apologize to Prospero. Caliban’s murder plot is prevented by Prospero, and even though Caliban is convinced that his master will ‘chastise’ him (5.1.266) and ‘pinch’ him to death (5.1.279), Prospero does not reveal Caliban’s fate after the Italians’ departure. Vaughan and Vaughan argue that Caliban’s ability to learn from the events in the play and to ‘seek for grace’ contrasts to Antonio (Vaughan and Vaughan 36). Antonio has only one line in scene 5.1 of The Tempest, in which he comments on Caliban’s strange shape and potential marketability (5.1.268-69). Whereas Alonso shows remorse (“Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat / Thou pardon me my wrongs” (5.1.120-21)), Antonio remains silent. The mystery of Caliban’s fate generates even more narrative. Vaughan and Vaughan suggest that Caliban might be left “to fend for himself when the Europeans return to Italy” (Vaughan and Vaughan 26), whereas Harold Bloom argues that Caliban “is grumpily re-adopted by a reluctant
Prospero . . . and will go off with his foster father . . . to Milan to continue his interrupted education” (672). The opposing views from Vaughan and Vaughan and Bloom respectively exemplify the interpretative space of the ending and contribute to the lasting suspense of The Tempest.
This chapter has outlined several early modern worldviews and described The Great Chain of Being and its influence on early modern England and on The Tempest. The
accumulation of ancient and Christian hierarchies and divisions illustrates the intensely hierarchical early modern society. I showed how the Chain creates harmony, but also how ambiguous beings face hostility and its use to qualify human behavior. Shakespeare exploits the Chain to create tension in his open ending of the play. The next chapter will identify language as a defining factor in the distinction between human and nonhuman and I will argue that Shakespeare humanizes Caliban through his language capacity and names and that the playwright dehumanizes Prospero by attributing him godlike power through language.
Chapter 2. Without his books, ‘He’s but a Sot as I Am’: Language Capacity, Names, and Power for Caliban, Alonso, and Prospero.
There thou mayst brain him,
Having first seized his books; or with a log Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, Or cut his weasand with thy knife. Remember First to possess his books, for without them He’s but a sot as I am, nor hath not
One spirit to command - they all do hate him As rootedly as I. Burn but his books. (3.2.83-90)
Whereas modern media such as film are able to communicate without verbal language due to e.g. visual and sound effects, and the performances of The Tempest use costumes and music to contribute to the mood of the play, Shakespeare’s play-scripts themselves heavily rely on written language. This chapter highlights the ambiguous humanity of Caliban, Alonso, and Prospero by examining language as a factor on the border of the human and the nonhuman. I argue that – through his language capacity and unique name – Shakespeare renders Caliban more human, yet the names that other characters attribute Caliban obfuscate his humanity because they stem from different categories of being. Furthermore, I argue that Ariel’s song “full fathom five thy father lies” and Antonio’s opinion of Alonso make the king less human, just as Prospero’s godlike power through language dehumanizes the usurped duke.
Shakespeare humanizes Caliban by giving him language, which Agamben identifies as “what distinguishes man from animal” (36). In his work The Open: Man and Animal, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben contemplates Haeckel’s homo alalus – the non-speaking man – and he proposes two versions of the ‘anthropological machine’; one is ancient, the other modern. 'Homo alalus' is an imagined
(36). Julia Reinhard Lupton ties in to this ‘intermediate’ stage of man and argues that ‘Creature’ Caliban “takes shape beneath the arc of wonder that moves throughout the play between ‘creatures’ and ‘mankind’, between animate beings in general and their realization in the form of humanity” (2), denoting the ‘becoming’ of Caliban’s humanity. Thus, man only becomes human when he acquires language capacity. The superiority of speaking beings over non-speaking beings can also be seen in early modern society, where prelingually deaf people were looked down upon. In her essay “Experiences of the Deaf in Early Modern England”, Emily Cockayne argues that “there could be no thought without words and no words without speech. A child born deaf would not develop speech, and consequently the ‘deaf and dumb’ were considered to be unable to think, and to express only base emotions” (504). The inferiority of deaf and dumb people in early modern society is repeated in The Tempest, where Miranda regards prelingual Caliban as “a thing most brutish” (1.2.360). She tells Caliban that:
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 endowed thy purposes With words that made them known. (1.2.356-61)
Miranda argues that Caliban used to express himself like a 'thing', suggesting that she developed Caliban into a speaking being. She thus implies that she has made Caliban human, illustrating at once Caliban's former status as animal being and his present status as human being. Furthermore, she argues that Caliban did not 'know his own meaning'. In
her essay "The Human Face of Early Modern England", Erica Fudge states that the conception that language distinguishes man from animal
"continues to do two inseparable things: to construct the human as the only meaning-making species, and to relegate animals to a place of silence" (97). Miranda argues that Caliban used to be in this place of silence, and that she has lifted him to her own – meaning-making –
level. However, she also acknowledges that Caliban already had 'purposes'. This means that Caliban must have already 'made meaning', but that he did not have the means to express himself to Miranda and her father. However, after being taught by Miranda, Caliban is able to express himself in the same language as all of the other characters of the play. At times his language is even rather poetic, for instance when he tells Stefano and Trinculo about the island:
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 a long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again. (3.2.130-138)
Caliban's poetic abilities illustrate his extremely well-developed linguistic skills. In contrast to other creatures that are only referred to in the play (such as the howling wolves (1.2.290), the ever-angry bears (1.2.291), and the 'spirits in shape of dogs and hounds' that Shakespeare mentions in the stage directions of scene 4.1), Caliban has his own voice and his own lines, illustrating at once the distinction between these animal beings and Caliban, but also the similarity between Caliban and the ‘human’ characters.
Even though Caliban's language capacity renders him more human, the names that other people assign to him portray him differently. The characters of the play refer to Caliban with names that embody the animal, the supernatural, and the human. Prospero calls him 'thou tortoise' (1.2.319), Trinculo believes him to be 'strange fish' (2.2.26), and when Stefano gives Caliban wine, he tells him: "here is that / which will give language to you, cat" (2.2.78-9). Trinculo and Stefano mostly refer to Caliban as ‘monster’ (over 40 times in scene 2.2, 3.2, 4.1 and 5.1), with different variations. For instance: "A most scurvy monster!" (2.2.147), "Lead monster; we'll follow" (3.2.145), and "Coragio, bully-monster, / coragio!" (5.1.260-1).
Characters also refer to Caliban with distinctly human names, such as 'viceroy' (3.2.103), 'lieutenant' (3.2.14), and 'sirrah' (5.1.295). The ambiguity surrounding Caliban's place in the category of either the animal, the supernatural, or the human is strengthened when Stefano and Trinculo combine these categories. Stefano calls Caliban ‘my man-monster’ (3.2.11) and ‘Monsieur Monster’ (3.2.16), illustrating the union between the human and the supernatural. Trinculo tells Stefano: “I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed / monster”
(2.2.146-47), uniting animals with supernatural beings.
Caliban’s humanity seems extremely ambiguous through the various names that characters assign to him, yet the fact that he has a unique name – ‘Caliban’ – illustrates his individuality. In her essay “The Animal Face of Early Modern England”, Erica Fudge shows how individuality humanizes cattle in early modernity. She argues that for cattle, “longevity of contact … is the necessary context for naming because time breeds intimacy and
knowledge” (“The Animal Face” 186), and that cows “were regarded as individuals not unlike the human members of the household” (“The Animal Face” 189). Caliban was originally treated as a human member of the household, but now he is a slave that serves Prospero and Miranda. Prospero and Miranda both detest Caliban: Prospero refers to him as “filth as thou art” (1.2.349), and Miranda tells her father that “’Tis a villain, sir, / I do not love to look on” (1.2.312-3). However, Prospero does not want to lose Caliban, and acknowledges that he needs him:
But as ‘tis,
We cannot miss him. He does make our fire, Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices That profit us.” (1.2.313-16).
Caliban here assumes the position of cattle – Prospero and Miranda use him for his physical strength – yet his individuality and value also suggest his humanity. This
and Miranda’s community. Caliban’s names question his humanity because they portray him as animal, but also as supernatural, as human, and as a combination of these three categories. His physical labor for Prospero makes him more animal (he is treated as cattle), yet Caliban’s individuality reveals his accepted position within the play’s world.
Apart from obfuscating Caliban’s category of being through attributing him names of several different species, Shakespeare also questions Alonso’s state of being through
language. Ariel’s song “full fathom five thy father lies” and Antonio’s equation of Alonso to earth (2.1.276-77) threaten Alonso’s human status. Their respective portrayals of Alonso conflict, since Ariel suggests the king’s strength, and Antonio stresses Alonso’s fragility. Furthermore, Alonso’s kingship distances him from the other characters in the play through his unique embodiment of the body politic.
Shannon Kelley’s paper “The King’s Coral Body: A Natural History of Coral and the Post-Tragic Ecology of The Tempest” argues that Ariel’s song “full fathom five thy father lies” (1.2.400-6) and Alonso’s consequent relation to coral dehumanizes but simultaneously elevates him. She states that coral is “simultaneously animal, vegetable, and mineral” (116), which illustrates that the existence of coral threatens The Great Chain of Being by belonging to three different categories of being and thus collapsing the hierarchy of the Chain. The lyrics of Ariel’s song equate Alonso with coral:
Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. (1.2.400-6)
Rather than fading, the king’s body becomes coral. Ariel’s song imagines Alonso’s corpse transforming “into something rich and strange” (1.2.406), paralleling Alonso’s change from vice to virtue and Prospero’s consequent forgiveness of the king of Naples.
Furthermore, the song also alludes to the ‘body politic’. Kelley argues that “a sovereign exists in a separate category from that of the average human” (134) because the king’s body consists of the “mortal and material ‘body natural’” (134) and the “immortal and immaterial ‘body politic’” (134). The king’s body politic was transferred from his own ‘body natural’ to the ‘body natural’ of his successor “to signify a legitimate and uninterrupted succession from one sovereign to the next” (Kelley 134). Alonso is thus completely different from the other characters in the play through his simultaneous possession of Aristotle’s three soul’s and his embodiment of the ‘body natural’ and ‘body politic’. Whereas – according to Ariel’s song – the king’s material body transforms “into something rich and strange” (1.2.406), his
immaterial ‘body politic’ does not alter and will be passed on to his successor. Alonso is thus even more immortal than the other characters through his coral ‘body natural’ and his eternal ‘body politic’.
However, Shakespeare also questions Alonso’s immortality and superiority and causes a collapse of The Great Chain of Being by comparing Alonso (who is at the top of the human category of being) to beings at the bottom of the Chain. In the opening scene of The Tempest, the Boatswain diminishes Alonso’s power when he asks Gonzalo: “What cares these roarers for the name of king?” (1.1.15-16). For the Boatswain, nature is more powerful than the king, and the sea-storm is more dangerous than disrespecting the king. Antonio also offends Alonso when he tells Sebastian that “here lies your brother, / No better than the earth he lies upon” (2.1.276-77), comparing Alonso to earth, the lowest of the elements, or to dirt, the lowest of the minerals in the Chain. Antonio’s comparison of Alonso and the ground resonates with Hamlet’s famous lines about Polonius:
KING CLAUDIUS. Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius? HAMLET. At supper.
KING CLAUDIUS. At supper? Where?
HAMLET. Not where he eats, but where a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us,
and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.
KING CLAUDIUS. Alas, alas!
HAMLET. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
KING CLAUDIUS. What dost thou mean by this?
HAMLET. Nothing but to show you a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. (Hamlet 4.3.17-31)
In this passage, Shakespeare cunningly creates another collapse of the Great Chain of Being. He equates kings with humans, beggars, cattle, and worms. The king is equal to man because the man in line 4.3.26 eats of the fish, who ate of the worm, who ate of the king. Hamlet connects the ‘fat king’ to the ‘lean beggar’ by arguing that they are two dishes at one table (Hamlet 4.3.24) and he even suggests the beggar’s superiority over the king when he summarizes that “a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar” (Hamlet 4.3.31). By eating the king, the beggar is higher than the king. Moreover, Hamlet also relegates humans to a cattle state of being since humans fat themselves only to be eaten by worms, just like humans fat their cattle for meat. Worms here assume a human position because “we fat ourselves for maggots” (Hamlet 4.3.23). If humans are equal to cattle, maggots – eating the cattle – thus become the humans. Again, the act of eating creates superiority, and the worms – eating the humans – are placed higher in the category of being. This analysis of Hamlet’s analogy has shown a tension between the equating of different categories of being and the ascending of lower beings onto the ladder of the Great Chain of Being. Shakespeare attacks the Chain by collapsing and consequently making it horizontal rather than vertical in Hamlet and Antonio’s comments on Polonius and Alonso respectively. For the playwright, dirt, worms, cattle, beggars, and kings are all the same in these passages.
Shakespeare also criticizes the intensely hierarchical early modern society by
obfuscating Prospero’s category of being through language. I argue that Prospero transcends the human category of the Chain through his godlike powers. I first illustrate how Prospero’s
power manifests itself in language and then argue that his power places Prospero outside of the human category of being. Prospero has power through language: he learned his magic through books; he controls his servants through commands; and he occasionally manipulates characters through mere threats. Prospero speaks thirty percent of the lines in The Tempest (Vaughan and Vaughan 24), illustrating his large influence on the play’s discourse.
Firstly, Prospero acquired his powers by studying his books. He tells Miranda that his brother was able to usurp the Milanese dukedom because Prospero estranged himself from his political responsibilities through being ‘rapt in secret studies’ (1.2.77). He shows his appreciation for his books:
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity – who being then appointed Master of this design – did give us; with Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries
Which since have steaded much. So, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. (1.2.161-69)
Prospero prizes his books over his prior political power, illustrating his past
priorities. Caliban also ascribes his master’s power to these books when he tells Trinculo and Stefano to “Remember / First to possess his books, for without them / He’s but a sot as I am” (3.2.86-88). Without his books Prospero would not be ‘but a sot’ as Caliban is at that time, however, since he will regain his dukedom upon arrival in Italy. Prospero does have magic robes (“pluck my magic garment from me” (1.2.24)), a staff (“I’ll break my staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth” (5.1.54-55)), and a group of spirits at his disposal, yet he mostly performs his magic through commands in The Tempest.
Secondly, Prospero’s magic is mostly performed by proxy - through Ariel, whom he has given authority over the other spirits (“Go bring the rabble, / O’er whom I give thee power” (4.1.37-38)). Prospero directs Ariel’s magic through commands, e.g. when he orders
Ariel to bring the ‘trumpery’ to distract Trinculo and Stefano from their murder plot: “Thy shape invisible retain thou still. / The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither / For stale to catch these thieves” (4.1.185-87), or when he instructs Ariel to first release Alonso,
Sebastian, and Antonio: “Go release them, Ariel. / My charms I’ll break, their sense I’ll restore, / And they shall be themselves” (5.1.30-32), and later to release Caliban, Trinculo, and Stefano: “Come hither, spirit. / Set Caliban and his companions free. / Untie the spell” (5.1.254-256). His ability to perform magic through commands illustrates Prospero’s power through language.
Lastly, Prospero uses threats to control other characters in the play. At these
moments, Prospero does not need magic, because his servants are familiar with his power and they are afraid of him. When Ariel asks Prospero for his liberty, his master becomes agitated and threatens Ariel that if he continues “I will rend an oak, / And peg thee in his knotty entrails till / Thou hast howled away twelve winters” (1.2.296-98). Prospero’s threat echoes Ariel’s prior confinement in a pine tree and Ariel instantly apologizes and promises to ‘do [his] spriting gently’ (1.2.300). Caliban is more vocal than Ariel; Prospero needs to threaten him twice before Caliban listens and remembers that Prospero’s “art is of such power / It would control my dam’s god Setebos, / And make a vassal of him” (1.2.375-77). Prospero’s power through books, commands, and threats are all based in language and through this power, he transcends the human category of the Chain and places himself above all of the other characters in the play.
By attributing godlike powers to Prospero, Shakespeare renders a human godlike. Harold Bloom states that “the human, like the supernatural and the preternatural, is subject to Prospero’s Art” (675) and refers to ‘Prospero’s mortal godhood’ (682). However - as quoted earlier - Caliban believes that Prospero can control his god Setebos (1.2.376), illustrating his power over even the highest category of being. Shakespeare contributes to the extent of
Prospero’s strength by contrasting Prospero’s present godlike powers on the island to his future frailty in Italy.
As the play advances, Prospero increasingly alludes to his fragility through his identification with Gonzalo and his references to his own old age. Whereas Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian are Prospero’s former enemies, Gonzalo is his friend. When Ariel wakes Gonzalo to prevent Sebastian and Antonio’s murder plot, the spirit acknowledges his
master’s proximity to Gonzalo: “My master through his art foresees the danger / That you his friend are in – and sends me forth, / For else his project dies, to keep them living” (2.1.293-95). In addition, Prospero himself identifies with Gonzalo through his compassionate tears: “Holy Gonzalo, honourable man, / Mine eyes, ev’n sociable to the show of thine, / Fall fellowly drops” (5.1.62-64).
Shakespeare constantly signifies Gonzalo’s old age, through both direct references and through metaphors. Even before the play-script begins, Shakespeare denotes Gonzalo’s old age. Gonzalo is characterized as “an honest old counselor of Naples” (The Persons of the Play). Antonio exaggerates Gonzalo’s age when he refers to him as “this ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence” (2.1.282), and Alonso calls Gonzalo ‘old lord’ (3.3.4). Yet Gonzalo also alludes to his own age by calling attention to his physical deterioration. He tells Alonso that:
I can go no further, sir.
My old bones ache. Here’s a maze trod indeed Through forthrights and meanders. By your patience, I needs must rest me. (3.3.1-4)
Gonzalo’s old age slows king Alonso’s entourage down, and he contrasts his bones with Adrian and Francisco’s youthful body. When Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso are desperate and mad through guilt, Gonzalo depends on his clear-headed companions:
I do beseech you
That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly, And hinder them from what this ecstasy May now provoke them to. (3.3.106-109)
His inability to move quickly and his dependence on Adrian and Francisco illustrate Gonzalo’s fragility. Ariel uses a metaphor to indicate Gonzalo’s age:
But chiefly
Him that you termed, sir, the good old lord Gonzalo: His tears run down his beard like winter’s drops From eaves of reeds. (5.1.14-17)
By using the simile of Gonzalo’s tears to winter’s drops, Shakespeare associates the counselor of Naples with the last season of the year, paralleling Gonzalo’s last season of life. Shakespeare stresses Prospero’s old age and consequent fragility through the portrayal of Gonzalo’s declining strength and Prospero’s identification with his friend. However, Prospero also refers to his own diminishing power. After he abruptly halts the pageant because he remembers Caliban’s conspiracy, Prospero tells Ferdinand that:
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vexed/
Bear with my weakness. My old brain is troubled. Be not disturbed with my infirmity. (4.1.156-160)
Prospero asks Ferdinand to excuse him for his old age and worried mind. He stresses the approaching end of his ‘little life’ (4.1.157) when he explains his life upon his return to Italy:
And so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial Of these our dear-belovèd solemnized; And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave. (5.1.311-315)
Shakespeare opposes the beginning of Miranda’s married life to the ending of Prospero’s life, stressing her youth and her father’s decline. Prospero’s fragility increases nine lines later when he is utterly dependent of the audience:
Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint. Now ‘tis true I must be here confined by you Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardoned the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands. Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so, that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free. (Epilogue 1-20)
Alone on stage, Prospero’s powers ‘are all o’erthrown’ (Epilogue 1). He lacks his ‘spirits to enforce’ (Epilogue 14), lost his books, magic robes, and staff, and he reassumes the human position in the Great Chain of Being. Whereas Prospero opens the play by raising a tempest, he needs the ‘gentle breath’ (Epilogue 11) of the audience to fill his sails and close the play. Just as “our little life / Is rounded with a sleep” (4.1.157-58), the wind on the sea is repeated in the epilogue of The Tempest, and the play is rounded with wind. Prospero’s increasing fragility towards his return to Italy mirrors and intensifies his godlike powers in the play. Whereas Prospero transcends the human category of being in the prehistory of the play, he reassumes his human form in the epilogue of The Tempest.
In this chapter I have examined linguistic aspects that question the categories of being of Caliban, Alonso, and Prospero respectively. I argued that Shakespeare renders Caliban more human through his language capacity and individuality, but the names that characters give Caliban make his state of being ambiguous. By comparing Alonso to coral, Ariel’s song
“full fathom five thy father lies” dehumanizes him but also contributes to the king’s immortality. Furthermore, through equating kings with extremely low beings in both The Tempest and Hamlet, Shakespeare attacks the hierarchical order of the Great Chain of Being by leveling the categories. Through the godlike power that Prospero acquired from his books, he transcends the human category of being, yet as the play progresses, the magus slowly reassumes his human form. The next chapter will focus on sex acts and reveal the underlying dangers of bestiality and incest in Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda, as well as Caliban and Ariel’s isolation from the other characters through sex acts.
Chapter 3: ‘Thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child’: Bestial and Incestuous Threats in Caliban’s Attempted Rape of Miranda
PROSPERO. I have used thee,
Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child.
CALIBAN. O ho, O ho! Would’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else This isle with Calibans. (1.2.348-54)
Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda is a key moment in the play because the prevented rape causes Prospero to exclude Caliban from humanity. This chapter argues that Shakespeare criticizes the hierarchical Chain by questioning the borders of the human through sex acts. I identify two underlying dangers in the attempted rape of Miranda: bestiality and incest. The first part of this chapter examines the potential bestiality in the attempted rape of Miranda, and argues that Caliban poses a threat to the human category of being through both his origin and his potential actions. The second part of this chapter examines Caliban’s artificial family and argues that Shakespeare renders Caliban more human through his former position within Prospero and Miranda’s family and that – if Caliban is human – the attempted rape could be read as incestuous.
Rachel Bryant states that “according to Prospero, the relationship between Caliban and the Europeans only broke down after Caliban attempted to rape Miranda” (100). As Caliban tells Prospero that “when thou cam’st first, / Thou strok’st me and made much of me” (1.2.335-6), Prospero used to include Caliban into his and Miranda’s activities. However, after Caliban’s attempted rape, Prospero treats him much differently. Caliban blames him: “here you sty me / In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me / The rest o’th’island” (1.2.345-7). After initially taking Caliban in, Prospero has now captured Caliban in his cell and into slavery. In her essay “The Human Face of Early Modern England”, Erica
Fudge argues that “to be alone – to live outside of society – is to be not human” (98). Caliban’s exile from Prospero’s society dehumanizes him. The attempted rape is thus a defining moment for Caliban’s exclusion from the human world.
Aside from the obvious dangers of violence and damage to Prospero’s legacy, the attempted rape of Miranda also threatens the human category of being through the possibility of bestiality. Both Karen Raber and Erica Fudge argue that early moderns’ fear for bestiality grew because of the increasing fragility of the category of the human. Fudge claims that “a bestial relationship had the potential to upset the very fragile order of nature which placed humans at the top of the chain (“Monstrous Acts” 25), and Raber states that “early modern cultural fears about bestiality and incest . . . demonstrate the violability of the supposedly inviolable categorical difference between human and animal” (Raber 292). Fudge also argues that the superior position of humans grew weaker in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because of several changes:
Colonists were bringing back stories of monstrous races which appeared to confirm medieval ideas, and which upset many of the established perceptions about the final work of Creation. Reformation had caused a new interrogation of the self, and a new emphasis on what it was that made the human human, while the New Science saw bodies investigated in a way that compromised the distinction between human and animal. In the light of changes such as these to the category of the human, animals were moving ever closer. (“Monstrous Acts” 22).
In light of these changes, Caliban’s existence alone is a sign of bestiality and a source of fear for the other characters. According to Prospero, Caliban is a product of bestiality. Prospero states that Caliban was “got by the devil himself” (1.2.323), and later calls him a ‘demi-devil’ (5.1.275). Sycorax is human and her sex act with the devil resulted in Caliban’s birth. Yet Caliban’s threat to the world of the play is even greater through his potential and bestial sex act.
One of the reasons why Caliban and Miranda could never engage in a sexual act (even if it were with consent) is that – in Prospero’s eyes – this sex act would be bestial. As I have
already argued in chapter two, Caliban’s various names obfuscate his humanity. Prospero describes Caliban as ‘a freckled whelp’ (1.2.285) and his cruel treatment of his slave adds to Caliban’s animal status. Stefano and Trinculo also regard Caliban as an animal, referring to him with names such as ‘cat’ (2.2.79) and ‘fish’ (3.2.24) respectively. If Prospero actually believes that Caliban is not human, this assertion means that Caliban could never have sex with a human being because any sex act that he would engage in would be bestial. In addition, Prospero suggests that Caliban is the sole occupant of a species called ‘Caliban’, preventing any accepted sex act between Caliban and other beings. When Prospero warns Miranda about Ferdinand, he tells her that:
Thou think’st there is no more such shapes as he, Having seen but him and Caliban. Foolish wench! To th’most of men this is a Caliban,
And they to him are angels. (1.2.482-85)
By referring to Caliban with the article ‘a’, Prospero creates an entirely new species. As the only member of the species of ‘Caliban’, Caliban cannot have sex with any other animal or human. Caliban’s sexual intercourse with a human would be bestiality, and sexual intercourse with any other animal species than his own would be interbreeding. In her essay “Monstrous Acts: Bestiality in Early Modern England”, Erica Fudge concludes with the following question: “if it is so easy to pollute the species with cross-breeds, where does the stability of the species lie?” (“Monstrous Acts” 25). Both bestiality and interbreeding thus threaten the human category of being. By threatening the stability of Prospero’s species, Caliban’s existence and potential and bestial act consequently destabilizes Prospero’s superiority over him. Caliban himself also acknowledges this danger and might have regarded this threat as his strongest weapon: “O ho, O ho! Would’t had been done! / Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else / This isle with Calibans” (1.2.352-54). By procreating Caliban will have his own children and assume the authoritative position of father. In
addition, if Caliban procreates intensively, he could potentially be at the head of a new civilization on the island, assuming a godlike position as Creator, or a sovereign position as political leader. By posing the threat of bestiality in Caliban’s sex act, Shakespeare hauntingly shows his audience that Caliban – as non-human being in this reading – is a danger to the stability of the human category of being.
In his work The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, Lawrence Stone states that “there is reason to think that sodomy and bestiality were more repugnant to popular standards of morality than breaking the laws of incest” (Stone 491). Incest would be less of a threat to the category of the human than bestiality. Richard A. McCabe reads Prospero’s disgust towards Caliban’s ‘animal lust’ as a tempering of his own passions. He states that “in so far as Caliban represents a central facet of human nature, his restraint denotes a victory over Prospero’s personal appetites”, referring to Prospero’s line: “This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine” (5.1.278-9) (McCabe 188, 189). McCabe thus suggests Prospero’s incestuous desire for his daughter. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T Vaughan also acknowledge that “an underlying motive for his urgency for the match with Ferdinand may be incestuous feelings for his own daughter” (25). Whereas I agree with Vaughan and Vaughan, I want to highlight the possibility of Caliban’s desire for Miranda being incestuous. As stated before, incest was less of a taboo than bestiality, and the threat of incest in Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda is smaller than the dangers of bestiality. However, the suggested incestuous act would still be a reason to prevent any sexual union between Caliban and Miranda. Caliban and Miranda are not biological siblings yet both have been tutored and raised by Prospero. Caliban acknowledges this:
When thou cam’st first,
Thou strok’st me and made 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 showed thee all the qualities o’th’ isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile – Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you; For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king, and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’th’ island. (1.2.335-47)
Prospero used to nurture Caliban with love, flavored water, and education, indicating his fatherly care. Miranda was educated exquisitely according to Prospero:
Here in this island we arrived, and here
Have I thy schoolmaster made thee more profit Than other princes can, that have more time
For vainer hours and tutors not so careful. (1.2.172-75)
Prospero’s education and nurturing of both Caliban and Miranda unifies his students and illustrates their sibling relationship. Harold Bloom even recognizes Prospero as Caliban’s foster father (671) and speaks of a ‘paradisal adoption’ (665). Since both Miranda and
Caliban were under Prospero’s care until the attempted rape, this play hints towards their sibling relationship.
This sibling relationship is further clarified through the parallel between Caliban and Claribel, and Miranda and Ferdinand. Apart from the similarity in Caliban and Claribel’s names, Caliban’s mother is an African woman, “the foul witch Sycorax” (1.2.259), born in Algeria ((1.2.263), “This damned witch Sycorax, / For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible / To enter human hearing, from Algiers / Thou know’st was banished” (1.2.265-68)). Claribel is married off to the King of Tunis. Caliban’s origin and Claribel’s fate are thus set in two neighboring African countries.
A second similarity between Claribel and Caliban is the threat they have posed on their ‘siblings’. When Caliban attempted to rape Miranda (“thou didst seek to violate / The honour of my child” (1.2.350-1), he almost took all of her pride, by taking her virginity.
Ferdinand illustrates the importance of Miranda’s virginity when he exclaims: “O, if a virgin, / And your affection not gone forth, I’ll make you / the Queen of Naples” (1.2.452-4).
Miranda needs her virginity to be a suitable marriage candidate. Claribel also poses a threat to her sibling, because, as Alonso believes before he meets his son again, Ferdinand died on their way back from Claribel’s marriage. Kunat states that “Sebastian depicts his brother as a king who refuses to take counsel, preferring his own purposes to the advice of his leading men” (311) . Sebastian blames Alonso: “Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss, / That would not bless our Europe with your daughter, / But rather loose her to an African, / Where she, at least, is banished from your eye” (2.1.123-6), and later refers to the loss of Ferdinand and claims that “the fault’s your own” (2.1.133). Sebastian thus links Claribel’s marriage to the King of Tunis to Ferdinand’s death. In this sense – even though she was forced by her father – Claribel caused a threat to her sibling Ferdinand through her marriage with the King of Tunis in the prehistory of the play. Both Claribel and Caliban thus endangered their ‘sibling’, strengthening the parallel between these two characters. Miranda and Caliban’s sibling relationship thus implies that Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda would be incestuous.
Whereas I argued that Caliban’s relationship to Miranda is familial, he is united with Ariel through their respective isolation. Their respective relationships to sex acts unite Caliban and Ariel because this link sets them apart from the other characters. The play questions these characters’ humanity more obviously than the humanity of the remaining characters because Ariel is a spirit and Caliban is deformed and treated as a subhuman being. Prospero constantly threatens Caliban with physical punishments:
Shrug’st thou, malice?
If thou neglect’st or dost unwillingly
What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar, That beasts shall tremble at thy din. (1.2.370-4)
Prospero threatens with extremely cruel punishment, and he even tells Caliban that he will be punished if he is not happy to perform Prospero’s commands. Stefano and Trinculo eventually exploit Caliban to carry their stolen robes: “Help to bear this away / where my hogshead of wine is, or I’ll turn you out of my kingdom. / Go to, carry this” (4.1.247-49). Caliban and Ariel are different from the others through their respective relationship to sex acts. Ariel is not related to sex acts at all. There are characters such as Gonzalo and Trinculo that also seem to be unrelated to sex acts, yet because they were born from the legal sex act between their mother and father, they are still inherently tied to sex acts. However, the audience can only guess that Ariel is created by God. Furthermore, characters such as Prospero, Ferdinand, and Alonso have even closer ties to sex acts because they are fathers, sons, and brothers, illustrating their familial relationships. Because these three characters are all of noble blood (Prospero is duke, Ferdinand prince, and Alonso king), the audience is sure that the sex acts that they come from were legal. As opposed to Ferdinand’s parents,
Caliban’s parents committed a sex act that is not recognized. Even though we know that Caliban was born from a sex act between a mother and a father (Caliban is “the son that she [Sycorax] did litter here” (1.2.284)), the audience also knows that he is an illegitimate child, since Prospero refers to Caliban as ‘a bastard one’ (5.1.276). Caliban is also linked to an extreme and illicit sex act, the attempted rape of Miranda. Ariel is thus at one end of a spectrum of sex acts, which starts with complete isolation from sex acts, moves on to legitimate sex acts, and ends with illegitimate sex acts. Caliban is at the other end, and all of the other characters are set in the middle of the spectrum, which is most human. Stefano’s position would be slightly closer to Caliban’s because the play suggests his visits to prostitutes in his song:
The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I, The gunner and his mate,
