gy, taken from the record of the chronicler of Magellan's
voyages, who pictures the Patagonians, when taken captive, as roaring,
and "calling on their chief devil, Setebos." So far the historical
setting of Caliban and Sycorax and Setebos. In character, Caliban and
Jack Falstaff are related by ties closer than those of blood. Both are
bestial, operating in different departments of society; but in the
knight, as in the slave, only animal instincts dominate. Lust is
tyrant. Animality destroys all manhood, and lowers to the slush and
ooze of degradation every one given over to its control. A man
degraded to the gross level of a beast because he prefers the animal to
the spiritual--this is Caliban. His mind is atrophied, in part,
because lust sins against reason. Caliban is Prospero's slave, but he
is lust's slave more--a slavery grinding and ignominious as servitude
to Prospero can be. Prospero must always, in the widest sense, lord it
over Caliban, with his diminished understanding and aggravated
appetites, who vegetates rather than lives. His days are narrow as the
days of browsing sheep and cattle; but his soul knows the lecherous
intent, the petty hate, the cankerous envy, the evil discontents,
indigenous only to the soul of man. Plainly, Caliban is man, not
beast; for his proclivities, while bestial, are still human. In a
beast is a certain dignity, in that action is instinctive, irrevocable,
and so far necessary. Caliban is not so. He might be other than he
is. He is depraved, but yet a man, as Satan was an angel, though
fallen. The most profligate man has earmarks of manhood on him that no
beast can duplicate. And Caliban (on whom Prospero exhausts his
vocabulary of epithets) attempting rape on Miranda; scowling in
ill-concealing hate in service; playing truant in his task when from
under his master's eyes; traitor to Prospero, and, as a co-conspirator
with villains like himself, planning his hurt; a compound of spleen,
malignancy, and murderous intent; irritated under conditions; failing
to seize moral and manly positions with such ascendency as grows out of
them, yet full of bitter hate toward him who wears the supremacy won by
moral worth and mastery,--really, Caliban seems not so foreign to our
knowledge after all. Such is Shakespeare's Caliban.

Him Browning lets us hear in a monologue. Whoever sets man or woman
talking for us does us a service. To be a good listener is to be
astute. When a