Ambroise Paré’s Des Monstres as a Possible Source for Caliban
Kahan, Jeffrey
Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (May 1997)
Abstract
According to Vaughan and Vaughan, it has long been thought that Conrad Gesner’s Animalium may have served as a source for Caliban. The book contains a picture and history of a strange seacreature known as the seabishop. However, the picture appears in an encyclopedia of fish, a work that may have held limited fascination to Shakespeare. If the seabishop picture did spark Shakespeare’s imagination when creating the monsterous character Caliban, it is far more likely that he consulted Ambroise Paré’s Des Monstres (1573). This later work contains the seabishop picture as well as other studies of monsters, birth defects and commentary on the possibility of human and demonic offspring as well as a series of pictures, some of which bear remarkable affinities to passages in The Tempest. While each individual link may be regarded as tenuous, together they present a strong argument in favour of this reattribution of source material.
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