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• #Caliban the tempest full

If he somehow takes it to England and gets it painted, he may earn a lot of money. Trinculo thinks that it is a very rare and strange fish. Caliban may be a fish for he smells like a fish. Seeing Caliban, Trinculo is confused if he is a man or a fish and that too dead or alive. He takes Stephano to show the treasures of the island. He welcomes Stephano as his new master and asks him to kill Prospero and marry Miranda. He hates Prospero and wishes to take revenge by seeing Miranda’s chastity violated. It is Caliban’s innocence that he sees his liberty merely in change of master. The island belongs to him for his mother Sycorax ruled there before Prospero’s arrival. “He is an original inhabitant of the island. For mean service, Prospero employs Caliban. Prospero lives here with his daughter Miranda. He is a great magician and nis potent spirits are Ariel and Caliban. And so his heart-felt upset in the second half of the line (post-caesura) is earned Caliban has earned this anger, just as Prospero has earned his anger…and his desire for revenge which drives our titular Tempest.Prospero, the right Duke of Milan rules the island. And that is what had happened to Prospero back in Milan, and this is what has happened to Caliban on this island. The meter that’s there is messed up…because the whole idea of usurpation is messed up. Or maybe it’s just a hiccup in the meter with no meaning. So is Shakespeare using the bizarre rhythm here to equate Caliban with something supernatural (or subhuman)? Maybe. Almost otherworldly… you know like the witches in Macbeth. We could call it catalectic trochaic trimeter (three trochee feet, with the last foot losing its unstressed second syllable) or we could call it acephalous iambic trimeter (three iambic feet, but the first foot has lost its head–its initial unstressed syllable). Five syllables, alternating stressed and non-stressed. But it’s what comes before that period that interests me. The second sentence kicks off with the palpitating trochee/spondee combo.

Nine syllables, so we can expect a caesura…and it comes where we would expect it, at the punctuation between sentences. This is the line where the actual accusation of usurpation takes place. So I’m back to more of a comparison rather than contrast.Īnother bit of scansion-y interest is that of the fifteen lines, only three are perfectly iambic pentameter, and two of them are separated by a single line: Like I said, I would say that it’s to show their differences, but I really can’t: Prospero’s partial line, too, ends with the feminine unstressed syllable.

#Caliban the tempest full

Feminine endings can spotlight a mind too full of ideas (Hamlet), or mind/emotion/soul diseased (as it can throw off the rhythm of the next line). What to make of this perfect antilabe? Is there an equation being drawn here? I might say that it is to show their differences: Caliban’s line ends with the feminine added syllable (the trailing – ner in dinner). The first partial line completes, without a rhythmical break, Prospero’s line. Yeah, so the words are great, but what’s interesting to me–you knew this was coming–is in the scansion. Caliban reciprocated, showing the magician “all the qualities o’ th’ isle.” And he curses himself for doing so, and then curses Prospero as well, reminding him that Caliban is his only subject, whom Prospero has confined in a cave.

Prospero stole the island, however, even after treating Caliban nicely at first, petting him, giving him water flavored by fruits, and teaching him about the stars. He recounts how the island is his, passed on to him by his mother, Sycorax. Now the words of the speech are pretty straightforward. In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me Which first was mine own king and here you sty me Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you, The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile. And then I loved thee,Īnd showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle, To name the bigger light and how the less, Water with berries in ’t, and teach me how Thou strok’st me and made much of me, wouldst give me This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother,