The Island's Voice
📖 The Island's Voice
Stephano and Trinculo have found Caliban and given him wine. Drunk on freedom, Caliban sings. Then, hearing invisible music, he stops and speaks the most beautiful poetry in the play: "The isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not."
This is the colonised speaking the coloniser's language to describe what was taken from him. Shakespeare places this lyrical voice in the mouth of the character Prospero calls "a thing of darkness". The rest of the play must now reckon with it.
English Literature glossary
- What does 'dispossession' mean in the context of The Tempest?
- Being deprived of land, property, or rights. Caliban's opening speech — 'this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak'st from me' — is a precise articulation of dispossession. The present tense 'tak'st' emphasises that the act is ongoing, not historical. Caliban is not remembering a past wrong; he is naming a continuing injustice.
Shakespeare establishes the colonial problem before a single word of dialogue. Prospero and Miranda arrived on the island after Sycorax — who arrived from Africa and enslaved Ariel — who served a pre-existing island that Caliban calls his own. Three waves of arrival; the question of ownership is already complicated whe
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🧠 Colonialism's Trajectory in Three Words
Three stages. One mnemonic. Remember this for any question on colonialism, freedom, or power:
ENCOUNTER → LANGUAGE → AFTERMATH
ENCOUNTER — whose island? Caliban's claim vs Prospero's arrival. The question opened. LANGUAGE — "you taught me language, and my profit on't is I know how to curse" — language as the coloniser's tool, turned as resistance; Caliban's lyrical voice as the complication. AFTERMATH — Ariel freed, Caliban's future left open, Epilogue hands the question to the audience. Three stages; the moral question never closed.
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Quiz · Question 1 of 10
What does Prospero promise Ariel in return for loyal service?
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