Caliban and the Rhetoric of Sincerity: Postcolonialism, Performance, and the Self

Building on scholarship regarding sincerity and regarding Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest, I explore how rhetoric inflects the potential sincerity of the character's final statement—"I'll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace"—which has generated widespread scholarly disagreement. Although Caliban may appear more sincere (his act 2 soliloquy) or insincere (his volte-face responses to Prospero in act 1) in some portions of the play than in others, his development highlights not a reified sincerity or insincerity but the mercurial potential of the self—through varied inner forces such as reason and the passions—to use the notion of sincerity as a cover for selfish ends.