Supplemental Reading: Browning, Caliban Upon Setebos

Caliban and Prospero, from The Tempest 

NOTE: You don't have to read this poem, since I ended up cutting it from the schedule to start The Invisible Man next week. It's a very tough poem, but it has some great ideas that support the 'supervillain' theme we discussed on Friday. Here are some notes about the poem if you want to read it and possibly use it in your paper--or if you're just interested in reading more Browning.

Caliban Upon Setebos

Caliban: in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban is a native of the island that Prospero, a wizard, conquers to plot his revenge against his brother, the Duke of Naples. Caliban is a half-man, half-beast, and Prospero initially takes him in, treats him nicely, and teaches him to speak. But he later confines him in a cell when Caliban tries to take advantage of his daughter, Miranda. But all of this happens before the play starts, and it's hinted at that Prospero (who loves stagecraft and often acts like a stage manager) actually set his 'crime' up in order to punish him and hold it over his head. Caliban vows revenge and tries to kill Prospero later in the play along with some foolish Italians who wash up on the shore (an enterprise that is doomed to fail). 

Setebos: Caliban's god, whose existence was taught to him by his late mother, the witch Sycorax. She died before the play starts, and possibly before Prospero found him. Throughout the poem, he's trying to learn the nature of Setebos and whether or not his God is good and just. 

The poem opens with parenthesis, even though Caliban is the only one talking. This might be read as an aside, before he officially 'speaks' his monologue. When he says: 'Will sprawl, or 'Thinketh, the apostrophe before the word implies "he," so this should be read, "He sprawls" or "He thinketh." "He" meaning Caliban, who speaks of himself in the third-person. He ends each stanza "So He," meaning "so Caliban." 

Basically, Caliban sees Setebos as a prisoner like himself, someone with great but limited power, who suffers from having a greater 'god' above him, which he calls the Quiet. This mirrors Caliban's own position with Prospero on the island. Setebos cannot create a new island or even create new life, though he can alter or aid it. However, his aid is rarely good or even well-intentioned, and ends up causing suffering--as in the fish he tries to help escape to warmer water, but the fish ends up sickened by it, yet when it returns to its colder clime, can only bitterly miss the warm water. This is like Caliban who hates Prospero's customs and language, but now that he's been cast out of Prospero's sight, he longs to return and is speaking the language he's been taught to keep it in use, and to make things with it (like a God making new life). 

But he also imagines that Setebos, though he can't create life, can create things--just like Caliban creates things. Yet his things torment him, because they're more beautiful and perfect than he is. He uses the example of a bird caller which can make sounds and attract birds which his "great round mouth" cannot. In spite he destroys the bird caller, as he destroys all his creations. He later builds things just for the sake of building them, but ends up destroying them, too, since they only mock him with the beauty he lacks (like the Creature looking at himself in the water in Frankenstein). 

He ultimately feels that Setebos is cruel and unknowable, since you can't appease him or do anything right--his will is changeable, and he likes to watch you guess wrong and suffer. Here he's talking more about Prospero than his god, as Prospero is becoming his father/god, again, like the Creature/Victor. Setebos/Prospero will never outright kill him, but remove obstacles and give him a reward to keep him hopeful and happy...only so he can be tormented later on. 

At the end of the poem, another aside tells us that Prospero is working magic and poor Caliban is terrified, going into hiding and cursing his silly little poem. He will merely lie flat and worship Setebos and hope that better days follow. The entire poem is a terrifying portrait of someone who is abused and deprived by the only father figure he has, and is suggests that monster are made by the cruelty of their fathers--just like in Frankenstein.