The Tempest
how do you account for sudden change of caliban in the fifth act of the tempest?
the tempest text
the tempest text
In Act V, we do not see the wrongs done to Caliban redressed, and the poetic, noble sentiments that he shows within the play, especially in his beautiful speech about the island, do not reappear. "How fine my master is," Caliban exclaims; he fully proves himself a born servant, by apologizing to Prospero for taking the foolish, drunken Stephano for his master, and submitting himself to Prospero more willfully than ever (261). Trinculo and Stephano's ill-conceived murder plot is simply laughed off by the party, and Prospero shows no signs of treating Caliban with anything other than veiled contempt. Although Prospero does finally accept Caliban, he also still regards Caliban as being "as disproportioned in his manners as in his shape"; Prospero upholds his civilized superiority over this native, though to acknowledge Caliban and to also dislike his ways of being are completely contradictory views.