SOURCE: Latham, Jacqueline E. M. “The Tempest and King James's Daemonologie.” Shakespeare Survey 28 (1975): 117-23.

In the following essay, Latham identifies James's Daemonologie as a possible source for the character of Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The Tempest offers a twentieth-century audience more problems for a full understanding than most of Shakespeare's plays, and these problems are the more insidious because action, language and characters seem transparently clear. Yet the play is highly intellectual and despite the work of scholars who have explored many of the ideas raised by the varied but scant sources there remain elements that still seem to fit uneasily, and one character, Caliban, who eludes even the simplest definition. This essay seeks to develop two aspects of contemporary thought by means of which Caliban can be seen not more clearly but in even greater complexity, and it proposes King James's Daemonologie as a possible source...