Shakespeare’s Villains is a series of blogs by Finding Shakespeare and our education team. Some of Shakespeare’s most exciting characters are villains and we have chosen ten of the best to look at over the coming weeks.
This week our focus is on Caliban – the slave of Prospero in The Tempest. Despite his potentially monstrous form, and his attempted rape of Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, Caliban is not always interpreted as a straightforward villain. Maddie, Victoria and John from the Collections team have been exploring our archives for reviews of productions of The Tempest at the RSC over the years. They throw a little light on the variety of ways this character has been played.
Click here to take a look at our Flickr album on Caliban for some fantastic images of this character from different productions, and don’t forget to check out yesterday’s blog at Blogging Shakespeare for a closer look at Caliban.