Editing Setebos (section)

== Shakespeare and Setebos ==

In Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'', which was first performed on 1 November 1611,<ref>{{cite book |last=Chambers |first=E. K. |date=1930 |title=William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, vol. 2 |page=342 |publisher=Clarendon |location=Oxford}}</ref> the character [[Caliban]] twice mentions a god Setebos. The first instance occurs near the play's beginning. Caliban is responding to a threat from [[Prospero]], who asks Caliban if he is refusing a command to fetch wood. In an [[aside]] to the audience, Caliban says (Act I, Scene II, Line 374):
<blockquote>
No, 'pray thee.
I must obey. His Art is of such pow'r,<br />
It would controll my Dams god ''Setebos'',<br />
And make a vassaile<ref>''vassaile'' vassal.</ref> of him.<ref>Quotations from Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'' are taken from ''Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' [The ''First Folio'']: ''A facsimile edition prepared by Helge Kokeritz''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.</ref> 
</blockquote>
Caliban's "Dam" (mother) is the evil witch [[Sycorax]].
The second instance is near the play's end. [[Ariel (The Tempest)|Ariel]] has lured Caliban and two co-conspirators, Antonio and Sebastian, to Prospero's cell, where spirits in the shape of dogs have been set to snarling at them. Caliban addresses Setebos (Act V, Scene I, Line 261):
<blockquote>
O ''Setebos'', these be brave<ref>''brave'' fine.</ref> spirits indeede!<br />
How fine my Master<ref>''Master'' Prospero.</ref> is! I am afraid<br />
He will chastise me.
</blockquote>

There is no documented proof that Shakespeare was familiar with the accounts by Pigafetta or Fletcher of the [[New World]], or that he knew about the Tehuelche god Setebos. However it is widely accepted, by literary scholars and historians, that Shakespeare was familiar with those accounts, and that he chose the name Setebos for the god of Caliban and Sycorax based on them.<ref name=Robertson/><ref name="HulmeSherman"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stritmatter |first1=Roger |last2=Kositsky |first2=Lynne |date=2009 |title='O Brave New World': 'The Tempest' and Peter Martyr's 'De Orbe Novo.'|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/41556311 |journal=Critical Survey |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=7–42 |doi= 10.3167/cs.2009.210202|jstor=41556311 |access-date=1 February 2025|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
<ref name="Frey">{{cite journal |last=Frey |first=Charles|date=1979 |title=''The Tempest'' and the New World |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2869659 |journal=Shakespeare Quarterly |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=34 |doi=10.2307/2869659 |jstor=2869659 |access-date=1 February 2025|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
<ref name="Travels">{{cite book |last=Gillies |first=John |date=January 1, 2000 |editor-last=Hulme |editor-first=Peter |editor-last2=Sherman |editor-first2=William H.|title="The Tempest" and its Travels |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=180–201 |chapter=Chapter 13: The Figure of the New World in The Tempest |isbn=0-8122-3582-7}}</ref>

One argument is based on the notoriety, in the 16th century, of Magellan's and Drake's voyages:
<blockquote>
Whether or not Shakespeare read [Pigafetta's] or any other account of Magellan’s voyage, these were
the sorts of terms, names, and incidents that were being bruited about.
Magellan's voyage was discussed as polar or lunar expeditions have been in modern times. We need to read the voyage literature, therefore, not necessarily to find out what Shakespeare read, but to ascertain what Shakespeare and his audience together would have been likely to know—what they would have gathered from a variety of sources.<ref name=Frey/>
</blockquote>

But probably more persuasive is the work by Shakespearean scholars Frank Kermode,<ref>{{cite book |last=Kermode |first=Frank |date=1954 |title=''The Tempest'', the Arden Edition |location=London |publisher=Methuen}}</ref> Geoffrey Bullough,<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Bullough |editor-first=Geoffrey |date=1960 |title=Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 volumes |location=London |publisher=Routledge}}</ref> Hallett Smith<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Hallett |date=1972 |title=Shakespeare's Romances |location=San Marino, California |publisher=The Huntington Library}}</ref> and others who have traced textual connections between New World materials and ''The Tempest''. For instance: In the French and Italian accounts of Magellan's voyage that preceded Eden's, two of the mutineers against Magellan were named Antonio and Sebastian, and Magellan was said to have put the mutiny down with the help of one Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa.<ref name=Frey/> In the play, for comparison, two characters also named Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill king Alonso, and an advisor named Gonzalo; Prospero and [[Ariel (The Tempest)|Ariel]] thwart the conspiracy.

In the case of Francis Fletcher's account of Drake's voyage, which was not published until after Shakespeare's death,  some of the resemblances to happenings in ''The Tempest'' are striking, suggesting that Shakespeare was familiar with Fletcher's unpublished narrative. For example<ref>Frey, p. 35.</ref> the description in the play of Alonso and his party coming upon the banquet prepared by the "several strange Shapes" parallels the description in Fletcher of the first meeting between Drake's men and the Patagonians. In the words of Hallett Smith: "Shakespeare's imagination, at the time he wrote The Tempest, would appear to have been stimulated by the accounts of travel and exploration in the new world".<ref>Smith, p. 143.</ref>

Many Shakespeare scholars have explicitly connected Setebos of ''The Tempest'' with the Patagonian Setebos. For instance, John Lee writes:<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Sidney|date=1913 |title=Caliban's Visits fo England |journal=[[The Cornhill Magazine]] |volume=34 |issue=201 |publisher=[[John Murray (publishing house)|John Murray]] |location=London |pages=333–345 |access-date=}}
</ref>
<blockquote>
In his comprehensive generalisation Shakespeare ascribes to Caliban some vague affinities with the most barbarous of all the American races. ... [Sir Francis] Drake echoes reports by earlier Spanish travellers of the savage worship, which the Patagonians offered their 'great devil Setebos.' Of this Patagonian deity Caliban twice makes mention, calling him 'my dam's god, Setebos' (I. ii. 373; V. i. 261). Despite his dissimilarity from the Patagonians in all other respects, he avows himself a votary of their 'great devil'.
</blockquote>

And John Gillies writes "Caliban's description of Setebos as 'my dam's god' (1.2.376) is fully consistent with Pigafetta's account of Setebos as a devil, in view of Prospero's repeated references to Caliban as a devil":<ref name="Gillies">{{cite book |last=Gillies |first=John |date=1994 |title=Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference |url=https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/renaissance-and-early-modern-literature/shakespeare-and-geography-difference?format=PB&isbn=9780521458535 |location= |publisher=Cambridge University Press |series=Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture|page=222|isbn=9780521458535}}</ref>
<blockquote>
The name 'Setebos' is more than just a random echo of the voyage narratives. By worshipping the god which Antonio Pigafetta describes as being worshipped by the Patagonian Indians of the storm-beaten wilderness of Tierra del Fuego, Sycorax is identified with the most remote, God-forsaken and degenerate of sixteenth-century Amerindian types.
... If Prospero is to be believed, Sycorax has had intercourse with 'the devil himself', resulting in Caliban, 'the son that she did litter here'.<ref>Gillies (1994), pp. 142-43.</ref>
</blockquote>