Sycorax Writes to Caliban
How tired I am in this, my final hour
At least you’ll thrive because you’ll drink the dew
I found for you to give you staying power.
How came I here, to conquer this odd isle?
From “witch” to queen, I finally can be free,
A daughter of a blue-eyed pirate while
A daughter of a slave too black to plea:
“Unhand me, cur, I will not lie with you!”
The pirate took his time and felt the need
To seize and take my mother’s beauty true
And start my life when he did plant his seed.
A child, my life was shunned by white and black,
Light-skinned, blue-eyed, my freckles made them vexed,
They called me “WITCH” and threw stones at my back,
So poor, surviving only through my sex.
A sailor erred when he did lust one night
My sex bewitched him ‘tween my tongue and lip --
He fell in love and felt my pow’r too tight
And so he brought me tied aboard his ship.
I plied and played him off against his mates,
Seducing all, commanding all, to seize
The ship, and sail to freedom through my straits
Until I found this isle, this home, that frees.
My Caliban, I bore you here, the child
Of men your mother ‘witched to find a land
Her son could rule with fruits and grains all wild,
With gold and silver ores at your command.
No human walked this isle before and yet
A sprite I found became my help and friend
My Ariel served me while I paid my debt
And birthed a son I always would defend.
Then Ariel cried and lost his love for me
He envied you and struck poor Caliban
Which made me act and jail her in a tree
Beware he lives and may avenge -- he can!
But now I die and scratch this note to you,
The price I paid for breaking free from men.
Rule over this domain in waters blue,
Resist invaders, keep this isle your den.
- Arthur D.
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Analysis of “Last Will and Testament: Sycorax Writes to Caliban”
Although the character of Sycorax never appears alive in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, her power remains palpable through the struggles of her son, Caliban. The absence of a character who exerts extraordinary posthumous influence greatly enhances dramatic irony, as the “ghost” of the absent character floats amidst the “present” characters, their actions, and choices (cf. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca). In this poem, I tried to imagine how Shakespeare might have included Sycorax in his story, writing in iambic pentameter and in an A-B-A-B rhyme scheme. Most of the information I gained for this poem can be found in Prospero’s ranting to Ariel in Act I, Scene ii, lines 250-285. Shakespeare hints that Sycorax was resourceful in a way he leaves unspoken (263-267):
This damn’d witch Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,
Thou know’st, was banish’d: for one thing she did
They would not take her life.
He further says that “This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child, And here was left by the sailors,” (269-270) which suggests that Sycorax was born of mixed, European and African (Algerian) parentage. I surmised that Sycorax had survived in prostitution and had been taken from Algeria by a European sailor, perhaps the one who made her pregnant with Caliban. In order that Sycorax would be able to escape her captivity on board the ship, I believe she seduced the sailors in order to gain control and be able to escape the ship when an (uninhabited) island came into view. While Prospero claims that Sycorax was envious of Ariel, I decided that Ariel became envious of Caliban, which led to bitterness and Sycorax’s decision to imprison Ariel in the “cloven pine.” Shakespeare hints at the mixed parentage of Caliban when he has Prospero decries the child as near-monstrous -- as many Europeans believed the products of miscegenation to be:
Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp hag-born—not honour’d with
A human shape (282-284)
It’s high time that Sycorax receives a voice to speak for herself!