TRINCULO Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i’th’ wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. [Sees Caliban.] What have we here, a man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish, a very ancient and fish-like smell, a kind of – not of the newest – poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. (2.2.18-32)
Trinculo, not named yet, but identified in the ‘persons of the play’ as a jester. He might be recognisably dressed as a fool; his name suggests a drinker (trincare: drink heavily; trincato: drunk; trincone: a drunk, all in Italian, as well as the German trinken) but also, perhaps, a cook or one who serves food: trinciare, to carve, apportion. (Stephano, about to appear, is identified as a butler.) Trinculo is most worried about the coming storm – hence the thunder in the opening direction at the top of the scene, and it apparently continues to rumble under the dialogue. With all the goings-on with Sebastian and Antonio, Gonzalo and Alonso, and not least Gonzalo’s reimagining of the island, it’s easy to forget its strangeness, and apparent hostility as an environment. But here Trinculo reiterates that, at least in the part in which he currently finds himself, it’s bare (like the stage), with neither bush nor shrub. (Deforested, some have suggested; Caliban’s logs have come from somewhere; Prospero has invoked the pine in which Ariel was imprisoned, and threatened them with being re-imprisoned in an oak.) There are louring black clouds, and rain is imminent: the biggest of the clouds, yond huge one (a gesture, presumably) looks like a foul bombard, an enormous leather bottle or bucket that’s about to burst and shed its liquor, by pailfuls. (Liquor and bottles are going to come to dominate this scene, and this character’s interactions.)
Why he thinks that Caliban – concealed somehow, lying flat on the ground – is either a man or a fish isn’t clear. Why man/fish? But that’s the conceit, and he will try to work it out. Is it dead or alive? (Caliban is keeping very still). And then – moving into broad comedy – it smells like a fish. Old fish – not of the newest – a delicate circumlocution (perhaps this is a catering professional). Poor-John is dried and salted fish, cheap and long-lasting, the sort of food that you’d get sick of on long sea voyages. And then a dig at the audience, who have, after all, paid money to see this show, these actors, and hence this strange fishtoo: in England (I’ve been to England, says Trinculo) even a picture of this fish, like a shop sign, would draw people in (especially a holiday fool, a person at a fair, on holiday, spending money freely on trifles and diversions) and encourage them to pay to see the real thing (whatever it is). This monster (whatever it is) could make a man’s fortune in England, because there they like strange beasts, of whatever kind. They won’t give a doit, half a farthing (so, an eighth of a penny, apparently of Dutch origin; there was no such coin, it means a tiny, trifling sum) to a lame beggar, but they’ll pay a decent amount – a couple of pennies at least – to see a dead Indian. (The audience standing in the yard at the Globe would have paid a penny to see the show; at the Blackfriars, the cheapest seats – no standing – were sixpence.) The dead Indian jars for a modern audience much more than it would have for an early seventeenth-century one. Yes, people from the Americas were sometimes – occasionally – brought back by expeditions and displayed, exhibited, for money in England. (This was not the case for all of the around 25 people of First Nations origin who are known to have been in England in the early seventeenth century.) Such people were made monsters by being put on show, exhibited (monstrare: show).
