Darwin, Natural Theology, and Slavery: A Justification of Browning’s Caliban

This essay argues that “Caliban Upon Setebos” is not about either the insufficiency of Caliban’s theology as compared to Browning’s, or the evolutionary primitiveness of that theology (the two reigning readings of the poem) but rather a satire of the argument from design coupled with a consideration of Caliban’s state of enslavement. These two themes connect in the problem of whether to read Setebos as an actual god Caliban posits or as a way of talking about Prosper. The contradiction between Caliban’s motive for the meditation—to vex Setebos—and its lesson—to keep a low profile—as well as the conflicting pictures of the range of Setebos’s power both indicate and derive from this problem. In depicting a god as a slave master, while wondering whether his actual slave master has a special connection to god, Caliban wonders about his choices as a slave. His predicament is the poem’s point.