Reading a fair amount of commentary on The Tempest lately for my project led me to Montaigne, probably my favorite writer of all time. The conversation between Miranda and Caliban where Miranda said she pitied Caliban the savage and taught him their language, and now he swears and deserves to be in prison or worse. And in today’s language Caliban responds, “Tough shit bitch, I didn’t ask for your pity or to learn your language. But now that I do, go fuck yourself!” Or something thereabouts. Montaigne’s essay The Cannibals of Brazil is in the Norton Critical Edition. I found this interesting because there is a lot of commentary whether Shakespeare was making references to slavery, colonialism, and the native people of these lands. I have no idea and no way of knowing, but in The Swerve apparently Shakespeare was a big fan of Montaigne and that is why Shakespeare started reading Lucretius. Montaigne in his essay talks about who is really the savage? The people in the Amazon who live into their 80s, know no diseases and plagues, don’t have a word for property, and by all intents of purposes live happy lives.
The word “savage” is used a lot in The Tempest and as we’ve talked a lot about, Shakespeare was very deliberate in his choice of words. So perhaps Shakespeare was making a pun or illustrating to the audience who was really the savage; the great Europeans with the greatest religion of this world to spread their message of the good news and their diseases as well, or not.
The more Shakespeare, the cloudier it all gets, at least for me.
To be, or not to be: 