I’m loving working with a group of secondary English education students this semester and tomorrow’s workshop will be explorations of The Tempest. We’ll be doing some close readings of selections of text, some dramatic work, and a range of experiences to encourage visual, aural and kinesthetic interpretations of text. One of the tasks will be to create images of Caliban and make notes on the kinds of decisions that might be made with Caliban’s costume and make-up for a production of the play. Students have to consider Trincolo’s speech as he mocks Caliban:
TRINCULO
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 lazy out ten to see a dead
Indian. Legged like a man and his fins like
arms! Warm o’ my troth! I do now let loose
my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish,
but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a
thunderbolt.
To this end, I have gathered a few of my favourite images of the character:
