A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The tempest. 1892

It is interesting to note the uniformity of the estimate of Caliban's character by the critics. While all acknowledge his power and his attractiveness, scornings, loathings, and revilings are nevertheless heaped on him; indeed, I can recall but one solitary voice really raised in his favour: 'in some respects, ' says coleridge, 'caliban 'is a noble being.' It has become one of the commonplaces in crit icisms on the Play to say that Caliban is the contrast to Ariel (some times varied by substituting Miranda for Ariel), and that as the tricksy sprite is the type of the air and of unfettered fancy, so is the abhorred slave typical of the earth and of all brutish appetites; the detested hag - seed is then dismissed blistered all o'er with expressions of abhorrence and with denunciations of his vileness, which any print of goodness will not take. Is there, then, nothing to be said in favour of Caliban? Is there really and truly no print of goodness in him? Kindly Nature never wholly deserts her offspring, nor does shake speare. We may be very sure that he, who knew so well that there is always some soul of goodness in things evil, would not have abandoned even Caliban without infusing into his nature some charm which might be observingly distilled out. Why is it that Caliban's speech is always rhythmical? There is no character in the play whose words fall at times into sweeter cadences if the Eolian melodies of the air are sweet, the deep bass of the earth is no less rhythmically resonant. We who see Caliban only in his prime and, a victim of heredity, full grown, are apt to forget the years of his childhood and of his innocency, when Prospero fondled him, stroked him, and made much of him, and Miranda taught him to speak, and with the sympathetic instinct of young girlhood interpreted his thoughts and endowed his purposes with words. When Caliban says that it was his mistress who showed him the man in the moon with his dog and his bush, what a picture is unfolded to us of summer nights on the Enchanted Island, where, how ever quiet lies the landscape in the broad moonlight, every hill and brook and standing lake and grove is peopled with elves, and on the shore, overlooking the yellow sands where fairies foot it featly, sits the young instructress deciphering for the misshapen slave at her feet the features of the full-orbed moon. With such a teacher, in such hours, would it be possible for Caliban, even were he twice the monster that he is, to resist, at the most impressible age, the subtle influence of the atmosphere of poetry which breathed in every nook and corner of the Enchanted Island? The wonder is not that he ever after speaks in rhythm; the wonder would be if he did not.

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