Island's Mine!" (Caliban, in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," 1.2)

Comparison between the slave rebellions of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Aphra Behn's "Oroonoko"

One of the most poignant statements in all of Shakespeare's "Tempest" is the assertion by the work's 'villain,' Caliban, that the island of the play's setting really and rightfully belongs in his ownership, not Prospero's. "This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou takest from me." (1.2) It is Prospero, Caliban alleges, who is the interloper, who took the island away from the control conferred to him by the witch who gave birth to him. Caliban, of course is right in the sense that other than possessing a greater power of sorcery, and by virtue of landing upon the island, Prospero as a human man has no right to control and dominate the island, any more than the protagonists of Aphra Behn's later work "Oroonoko" have to...
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