Caliban - Quotes
English Lit: AQA GCSE The Tempest, topic 11.1.3
Key Quotations - Caliban
Here are three key quotations that highlight aspects of Caliban's character:
'You taught me language,'
- 'You taught me language, and my profit on 't / Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your language!'
- Caliban resents the language Prospero taught him because it is part of how he has been oppressed and colonised by him.
'Beat him enough'
- 'Beat him enough. After a little time / I'll beat him too.'
- Caliban shows no mercy because he has been treated poorly and does not have the ability to forgive in the way that Prospero does.
'I say by sorcery he got this isle;'
- 'I say by sorcery he got this isle; / From me he got it. If thy greatness will, / Revenge it on him, for I know thou dar'st, / But this thing dare not.'
- Caliban thinks that Prospero got the island illegally and illegitimately, and he wants to get revenge.
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