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Page 149

poem and play not only concerns the “evolutionary creature” Caliban, but also demonstrates the evolution of Robert Browning as a poet. As Harold Bloom argues, a poet “‘completes’ his precursor” by borrowing from the “parent-poem,” but then altering or extending the meaning “as though the precursor had failed to go far enough” (Bloom 1973:14). Hence, Browning ups the ante by “completing’’ Caliban, transforming the creature to reflect Browning’s own ideas.

Browning endows his Caliban with a sophistication lacking, as he saw it, in Shakespeare’s original conception. Browning examines Caliban as an evolving creature whose idea of God/Setebos, like the reader’s perhaps, is evolving as well. In Shakespeare’s play, Caliban learns language from Miranda, who “pitied” him, and took “pains to make [him] speak, taught [him] each hour/One thing or another” (1.2.356, 357–58). Shakespeare’s Caliban acknowledges her role in his acquisition of language, admitting that he was taught “how/To name the bigger light, and how the less,/That burn by day and night” (1.2.338–39), but concludes angrily that “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/Is I know how to curse” (1.2.363– 64). In Browning’s version, Caliban also learns speech from his masters, but employs it to contemplate the nature of Setebos, “whom his dam called god” (1997:1. 16). These thoughts bother Caliban, “[b]ecause to talk about Him, vexes” (l. 17).

Browning’s Caliban uses his language in a more philosophical, and by extension, more profitable manner than Shakespeare’s Caliban. His words reflect his sophisticated understanding of the isle, and the “sea which sunbeams cross/And recross till they weave a spider-web” (ll. 12–13). Although Shakespeare imparts some poetical language to his Caliban, Browning’s creature employs language to contemplate existence rather than to curse his captors. Caliban also recalls the creativity of Setebos, who, like Shakespeare, “[m]akes this a bauble-world to ape yon real” (l. 147). Perhaps Browning’s appropriation also cheats Shakespeare out of his mastery, just as Caliban discovers it “good to cheat” Miranda and Prospero (l. 22). Like Caliban, who “[p]lays thus at being Prosper in a way” (l. 168), Browning plays at being Shakespeare. Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos,” which concerns the evolution of man, also reveals the evolution of an appropriating poet, Robert Browning. Thus, Browning’s second method of mitigating influence is to write a prequel to Shakespeare’s play, and to replace Prospero with Caliban. This move allows the auditor to “see” through Caliban’s eyes, the goal of the “objective” poet, and to sympathize with a creature held captive

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