Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Who first was mine own king; and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o’ th’ island.
And again, he promises Trinculo his services thus, if he will free him from his drudgery.
I’ll show thee
the best springs; I’ll pluck thee berries,
I’ll fish for
thee, and get thee wood enough.
I pr’ythee let
me bring thee where crabs grow,
And I with my long nails
will dig thee pig-nuts:
Show thee a jay’s
nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble
marmozet: I’ll bring thee
To clust’ring
filberds; and sometimes I’ll get thee
Young scamels from the
rock.
In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Prospero’s cell, Caliban shows the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge and greater folly; and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with his music, Caliban to encourage them accounts for it in the eloquent poetry of the senses:
Be not afraid, the isle
is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs,
that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand
twanging instruments
Will hum about mine
ears, and sometimes voices,
That if I then had waked
after long sleep,
Would make me sleep
again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought
would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me:
when I wak’d
I cried to dream again.
This is not more beautiful than it is true. The poet here shows us the savage with the simplicity of a child, and makes the strange monster amiable. Shakespeare had to paint the human animal rude and without choice in its pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure or some germ of the affections. Master Barnardine in Measure for Measure, the savage of civilized life, is an admirable philosophical counterpart to Caliban.
Shakespeare has, as it were by design, drawn off from Caliban the elements of whatever is ethereal and refined, to compound them in the unearthly mould of Ariel. Nothing was ever more finely conceived than this contrast between the material and the spiritual, the gross and delicate. Ariel is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought personified. When told to make good speed by Prospero, he says, ’I drink the air before me.’ This is something like Puck’s boast on a similar occasion, ’I’ll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.’ But Ariel differs from Puck in having a fellow-feeling in the interests of those he is employed about. How exquisite is the following dialogue between him and Prospero!
Ariel. Your charm so strongly
works ’em,
That if you now beheld
them, your affections
Would become tender.
Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit?