• European encounters with the New World produced contentious debates over the nature of native peoples and how to treat them. In contrast to prevailing views of the time, French jurist Michel de Montaigne rejected the notion that there is one universally correct way of life. In his essay “On Cannibals,” he argued that indigenous cultures seemed barbaric only because they were unfamiliar and that their natural simplicity was superior to the artifice of European civilization. In his play The Tempest, William Shakespeare refuted Montaigne's trust in nature with his harsh portrait of Caliban (a play on the word cannibal). Caliban is the primitive and violent inhabitant of a Caribbean island, who has been enslaved by the sorcerer Prospero for the attempted rape of Prospero's daughter Miranda.

Montaigne on Natural Virtue

“I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation [Brazil], by anything that I can gather, excepting, that everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country: as indeed we have no other level of truth and reason, than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live; there is always the perfect religion, there the perfect government, and the most exact and accomplished usage of all things. They are savages at the same rate that we say fruits are wild, which nature produces of herself and by her own ordinary progress; whereas in truth, we ought rather to call those wild whose natures we have changed by our artifice and diverted from the common order. In those, the genuine, most useful, and natural virtues and properties are vigorous and sprightly, which we have helped to degenerate in these, by accommodating them to the pleasure of our own corrupted palate. . . .

These nations then seem to me to be . . . not much remote from their original simplicity. The laws of nature . . . govern them still. . . . It is a nation wherein there is no manner of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name of magistrate nor political superiority; no use of service, riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no dividends, no properties, no employments, but those of leisure, no respect of kindred, but common, no clothing, no agriculture, no metal, no use of corn or wine; and where so much as the very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction and pardon were never heard of.”

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

CALIBAN: This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,

Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in't, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o' the island.

PROSPERO: Thou most lying slave,

Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,

Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate

The honour of my child.

CALIBAN: O ho, O ho! would't had been done!

Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else

This isle with Calibans.

PROSPERO: Abhorred slave,

Which any print of goodness wilt not take,

Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes

With words that made them known. But thy vile race,

Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures

Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou

Deservedly confined into this rock,

Who hadst deserved more than a prison.

CALIBAN: You taught me language; and my profit on't

Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

For learning me your language!

Sources: The Essays of Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, trans. C. Cotton (London: Alex Murray & Son, 1870), pp. 133–134; William Shakespeare, The Tempest (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915), pp. 25–27.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS