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Summary
This poem picks up on Shakespeare’s
The poem ends with Setebos “reawakening” and Caliban once again cowering in fear of the god’s arbitrariness. “Caliban Upon Setebos” appeared in the
Form
“Caliban Upon Setebos” is written in unrhymed pentameter lines. It contains many metrical irregularities, which suggest the speech of one who is uneducated and coarse in nature. Caliban speaks of himself in the third person, and often uses no pronoun at all (“’Conceiveth,” “’Believeth,” etc.): in part this results from Caliban’s own intentions; he speaks this way to escape the attention of Setebos. Bit it also reflects the poet’s intentions; Browning uses the technique to give Caliban’s speech a Biblical, objectified quality that reflects the monster’s theological speculations and his comparisons of himself with a god. Because no audience seems present, the poem technically classifies as a soliloquy rather than a dramatic monologue.
Analysis
This poem reflects many of its era’s struggles with religion and with man’s place in the natural order. Caliban lies at the mercy of a figure who is mysterious and capricious, yet at times Caliban himself is able to act is a similar manner towards lesser creatures, like the crabs whom he either feeds or kills, at will. Caliban’s soliloquy abounds with concrete examples from the natural world, one of the most dramatic of which is the anecdote of the freshwater fish who tries to survive in the ocean (lines
This problem emerges particularly clearly in Caliban’s consideration of evolution. Caliban does not believe what his mother has told him, that nature has been created arbitrarily by the “Quiet” and that God, or Setebos, just does what He can with what is already there. Caliban believes instead that Setebos made creatures, including Caliban, expressly so that their weaknesses can be used against them. He explains a fossilized newt he once found as a creature that Setebos envied and so turned to stone. Caliban’s mother (“Sycorax” in Shakespeare’s play) asserts that there exist forces separate from and more powerful than any God, which operate neutrally and disinterestedly. The theory of evolution would fit within this system of thought. In its way, then, this is the same as the crisis of faith facing the Victorians: does a God exist, whose qualities are up for debate? Or is science right, and is our society the product of an infinite number of arbitrary, impartial natural processes? Caliban finds neither prospect a sufficient justification of his misery, just as the Victorians found neither option a sufficient explanation for the suffering and corruption of modern society.
