PROSPERO What ho, slave! Caliban,
Thou earth, thou: speak!
CALIBAN [within] There’s wood enough within.
PROSPERO Come forth I say, there’s other business for thee.
Come, thou tortoise, when?
Enter ARIEL, like a water nymph.
Fine apparition, my quaint Ariel,
Hark in thine ear.
ARIEL My lord, it shall be done. Exit.
PROSPERO Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam; come forth! (1.2.314-319)
Excellent delaying strategy here: Caliban and what he will look like has been built up, albeit relatively rapidly, so this is putting off the big reveal just a moment longer. First, though, to link him explicitly to earth, and to address him as slave. And confirmation that gathering and carrying and chopping wood is Caliban’s main occupation, his default response to any call or summons being There’s wood enough within; you don’t need any more wood for the moment. Leave me alone. Where is within? Backstage – or potentially under the stage – although the direction here is editorial – all that can be inferred is that Caliban is not yet visible. Sometimes it’s suggested that Caliban is in Prospero’s cave or cell – which might be at the rear of the stage (and probably used the inner stage or discovery space in the earliest stagings). If he were to be under the stage, it might suggest that Caliban is not only earthy, but infernal, hellish – and Prospero certainly makes this suggestion at times, as here. Not just wood, he yells at Caliban, not this time, get a move on you tortoise. Hard not to laugh; tortoise suggests slowness, of course. It would also be exotic for an early modern audience: the shells of tortoises (and tortoises themselves) were the stuff of travellers’ tales, and were the sorts of things that might be displayed among collections of curiosities. And there might be a glance at Jonson’s Volpone 5.4, first performed by the King’s Men in 1606, in which the ridiculous English knight Sir Politic Would-be ‘camouflages’ himself as a tortoise. (So there was probably a tortoise shell available to the actors, perhaps still regularly seen on stage; audience expectations might be raised of a familiar comic accessory. The exact nature of the tortoise, or turtle, was the subject of debate: was it a fish or a beast? This question will be asked of Caliban too.)
But instead of Caliban: Ariel, like a water nymph. A couple of designs below, both by Inigo Jones. The woman is dressed as a sea nymph for Tethys Festival, the river pageant performed as part of the entertainments for the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales in 1610; they wore sky-blue satin and cloth of silver, trimmed with gold lace to look like sea-weed. The man is dressed as a more generic ‘star’, not for Tethys Festival, but perhaps giving some ideas as to what a nymph might wear. (Of course, Ariel could wear a woman’s costume; my quaint Ariel, as well as suggesting that Ariel is cunning, skilful, clever, could be a sly sexual pun, if Ariel has slipped for the meantime into women’s clothing.) And perhaps a laugh, that this isn’t Caliban after all, after the initial shock. What Ariel is to do remains, for the moment, a secret – Hark in thine ear. My lord, it shall be done. With Caliban about to appear, Prospero and Ariel are very much on the same team again. And a final abusive summoning of Caliban: get out here, you slave, you devil’s child, you son of a bitch.
