Caliban in William Shakespeare's The Tempest
William Shakespeare, often nicknamed ‘The Bard”, is beyond any comparison, the most towering name in English Literature. The Tempest, a masterpiece of Shakespeare, explores the consequences of European settlement in the new world. It is generally considered Shakespeare's final play as well as the last of his romance plays. William Shakespeare (Picture Credit- time.com) Most of the readers of The Tempest look upon Caliban, that "freckled hag-born whelp," as a monster creature, half-man and half-devil, a repulsive creature of brute understanding, stunted faculties, and gross, malignant, moral nature. But there is much to be said in favour of this spawn of Sycorax and the devil. What faults the moon-calf has lie in his physical grossness and in his attempt on the virtue of Miranda; yet the first of these is characteristic of Falstaff, the second is a situation familiar in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, and neither is uncommon enough to elicit especial censure. Caliban is a...