The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

Caliban upon Setebos Shakespeare's Tempest provided Browning with the idea for his speaker (Caliban is Prospero's brutish slave, half-man, half-beast) and the subject of his musings (Setebos is briefly referred to in the play as the god of Caliban's mother, the witch Sycorax). From these beginnings Browning writes a poem that reflects on two closely related controversies of the Victorian period. The first concerned the nature of God and God's responsibility for the existence of pain in the world. The second debate, stimulated by the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), focused on humanity's origins and our relation to other beings.

As the poem's epigraph reveals, Browning is interested in the idea that the human conception of the divine is conditioned by our own limitations, or by our understanding of ourselves. Caliban, a lower being, draws his notion of the god who he believes dictates his fortunes from three main sources: his observations of life on the island, his own character, and his experiences with Prospero, his master. The first of these, his knowledge of the behavior and sufferings of animal life, gives rise to his "natural theology": that is, his tendency to understand the character of his god from evidences provided by nature rather than from the evidence of supernatural revelation. From his perceptions of his own motivations and the conduct of his earthly ruler comes Caliban's conception of Setebos's willful power. Caliban admires power and thinks of his god as a being who selects at random some creatures who are to be saved and others who are condemned to suffer. His musings thus connect in complex ways with key and pressing issues for the religious and scientific communities of the Victorian era: through the lens of this most unlikely philosopher, Browning raises the topics both of eternal salvation and of natural selection. Significantly, Caliban feels the need to posit a higher divine being, or presence, that exists "over Setebos": puzzling about this other deity, "the Quiet," Browning's speaker delves into fundamental questions of origin and the construction of myth.

An obstacle for the reader is Caliban's use of the third-person pronoun to refer to himself. Thus " 'Will sprawl" means "Caliban will sprawl" (an apostrophe before the verb usually indicates that Caliban is the implied subject). Setebos is also referred to in the third person but with an initial capital letter ("He").

Caliban upon Setebos

Or Natural Theology in the Island

"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."1

["Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,

Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,

With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.

1. Psalm 50.21. The speaker is God.

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CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS / 129 7

And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 5 And feels about his spine small eft-things� course, water lizards Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: And while above his head a pompion0 plant, pumpkin Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, 10 And now a flower drops with a bee inside, And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch� He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider web (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times) is And talks to his own self, howe'er he please, Touching that other, whom his dam� called God. mother Because to talk about Him, vexes�ha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, When talk is safer than in wintertime. 20 Moreover Prosper and Miranda2 sleep In confidence he drudges at their task, And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,� insult them Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.] Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! 25 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that: Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, 30 And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, 35 And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;' Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, 40 (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her despair, Hating and loving warmth alike: so He. 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, 45 Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk,� one fire-eye in a ball of foam, seabird That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye