Shakespeare's Caliban : A Cultural History

Rating:
Summary: An excellent historical survey from various disciplines.
Review: This book is an excellent, and largely unbiased, discussion of CALIBAN (the character from Shakespeare's The Tempest) and traces the evolution of his perception as reflected in literary criticism, culture/politics, theatrical performance (stage and film), poetry, and visual art. An actor myself, when doing research on Shakespeare roles, the most efficient technique I've found is investigation of stage history. Most of the relevant literary criticism has at one time or another been reflected in stage history. Also, stage history is something I find more easily applicable to performance than literary criticism--for obvious reasons. In light of this bias, the only disappointment I had in the book is that I would have liked a longer chapter on stage history. Nonetheless, as the book surveys CALIBAN's history from so many perspectives, one comes away with a strong appreciation of the wide range of exploration available in playing CALIBAN. The numerous black & white figures are an added plus. Finally, any actor playing CALIBAN and hard-pressed to find research time would do well to at least read the chapter on scriptural analysis relevant to CALIBAN and the final chapter, which summarizes the entire book. Directors and designers would benefit from perusal of this text; however, the book does stick fairly close to its subject of CALIBAN, specifically, rather than The Tempest, in general. To close, Shakespearean actors would certainly benefit from more character-specific surveys like this book.