Would You Forgive Caliban?

Bardfilm and I are currently having a heated debate about sympathy for Caliban.  He basically commits one sin (attempts to, at least), and for that he is cast out from his adopted family and turned into their slave, treated like something less than human.

His sin, for those unfamiliar with the story, is that Prospero walked on him trying to “violate the honor” of his daughter Miranda.  Rape her, to put it bluntly.

Wait wait wait, don’t get out your pitchforks yet, it’s more complicated than that.

Caliban was born on the island, far away from any civilization, with only his mother Sycorax as his guardian. It is unclear how old he was when she died, but from that point on he lived alone on the island for something like the next twelve years (we know that Ariel was trapped in the tree that long).  So he’s likely a young teenager when Prospero arrives with three year old Miranda in tow.

While recounting the story, Caliban tells us that he wanted to “people the isle with Calibans.” So presumably he understood what he was trying to do, and that Miranda had to be old enough to do it with. That suggests that maybe ten years or so have gone by, making Miranda maybe twelve or thirteen, but making Caliban closer to twenty.

We can also assume that this was a single incident. Miranda clearly wasn’t a willing participant, so it’s not like she had any urges of her own that she was exploring behind her father’s back.

So then we arrive at the critical moment. What do you think of Caliban’s state of mind at that point? What was his capacity for understanding right from wrong? He certainly understood the general idea behind sex and the purpose of it, probably from having seen animals on the island. Do you think that Prospero ever sat down to tell him about the birds and the bees?  I don’t. I expect that the thought never occurred to Prospero until he literally walked in on them. Why would he? He taught Caliban language so that Caliban could tell him about the island, not to better Caliban’s existence.

The other important part of the story, not to be too graphic about it, is that we don’t really know what he walked in on. Was Caliban chasing her around the cave with a lusty look? Or did he have her on the ground and half out of her clothes? Prospero is the very definition of an overprotective father, so it’s easy to imagine Caliban doing little more than giving her the eye and Prospero seeing that as over the line.

Whatever happened, it was enough to cast him out as a slave. I suppose it could be worse, I suppose Prospero could have just killed him outright. But then who would bring them their firewood?

The play is about forgiveness. Prospero brings his enemies to his island to forgive them. Do you think he forgives Caliban?  Would you?

How Much Does Miranda Know?

My Tempest series continues…

I had read The Tempest many times before someone drew my attention to the fact that Miranda does not know Ariel exists! Prospero puts her to sleep every time Ariel appears.

But we know that Miranda is aware of her father’s magical powers, since the first time we see her she asks him whether he caused the storm, and to please make it stop.

Ok, so fine, the only magic she knows is what her father does, right?

When Ferdinand arrives, her first guess is, “Oh, he’s a sprite.  A very handsome sprite, but definitely a sprite.”  So….what, she’s cool with random sprites roaming around?

How about the music? Caliban has that great speech where he tells Stephano and Trinculo, “Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises…”  Does Miranda hear those noises as well?

Miranda has grown up on the island, the island is all she knows, I get that. I’m just trying to see the world through her eyes. She’s amazed at the brave new world of people, but she’s used to seeing sprites just randomly floating through the forest?

No More! The Texts Are Foolish!

Perhaps you’ve heard the story by now about the guy that is getting revenge on a scammer by texting him the complete works of Shakespeare? Seems he sent a bank transfer to this guy to buy a PS3, and never got his PS3 and can’t get his money back. So he decides to start cutting and pasting, sending monstrous texts to the guy. Whether it’s just to annoy him or because the dude still lives in a time when you have to pay to receive a text I don’t know, but the sender has unlimited sending data so he figures he’s cool.

Whole lot of problems with this plan. Most notably, the scammer has probably already blocked his number by now so continuing to text him will do no good.

Worse, if the scammer realizes that he actually has rights (whether he’s a jerk in other matters does not change legal issues), he might decide to sue the guy for harassing him.  In our modern world of cyberbullying, sending unwanted texts to a person for the malicious purposes such as these is a big deal. Whether it’s a criminal offense yet I cannot tell (and would depend on where they are) but at the very least the scammer could make his case to the phone company and cost our Shakespearean friend
his service plan.

Don’t punish people with Shakespeare.

Parsing Shakespeare

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare make an outstanding dataset for projects like this, which looked at how often various “couples” in Shakespeare spend talking to each other.

There’s a number of reasons, of course, why the actual “results” are only somewhat interesting. The amount of lines exchanged between two characters is not really an indicator of their compatibility or the strength of their relationship, as is demonstrated by the finding that Romeo and Juliet don’t spend all that much time together. You could alter your hypothesis, for example, and maybe look at the average number of lines per scene? Obviously characters that only have 3 scenes together are going to have less lines than those that have 5 or more.
I’m also disappointed that they didn’t do every play. Why, in such a finite dataset as this, don’t you do a complete analysis? Where is Much Ado About Nothing?  I’d like to see them release the source code. It could be fun to play with.
The project also reminds me of the Bechdel Movie Test, which measures how frequently women communicate with each other about a subject other than men. How cool would it be for scriptwriters to upload their draft into a test like this to see how they do?

New Game! The Play’s A Thing!

As I read The Tempest and how it starts with a tempest and how Miranda runs to her father and says, “Did you cause that tempest?” I had an idea for a game.

Start with one of Shakespeare’s plays that is a noun or noun phrase, but not a proper noun / name.  All plays named after people are too obvious. The Tempest counts, as do Merry Wives of Windsor, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and so forth.  Get the idea? The name of the play references a thing of some sort.

Now, find me a passage in the play that refers to that thing. For instance can you find the spot where the wives of Windsor are referred to as merry? Or that a certain shrew ends up tamed?  How about a tale of winter?

For extra credit, is there actually a specific line in Two Gents that refers to them as two gents? Or noble kinsmen in Noble Kinsmen?