The Sublime Savage: Caliban to Setebus"Caliban my slave, who never / gives us a kind answer." (The Tempest, I.ii.310-1) "Caliban on Setebos" was one of Robert Browning's most popular poems among the Victorians, for its supposed satire of orthodox Calvinism, Puritanism, and equally dark Christian sects. And Browning, Shakespeare's savage, actually seems to throw some digs in that direction, but the poet's exercise seems to fall just as much into alternative theology. Caliban's mired conjectures, in their significant departures from standard religious doctrine, serve both as an interesting repudiation of Archdeacon Paley's attempts to rationalize God, and as an entertaining "science fiction," if you will, account of religious thought under alternative circumstances. Caliban is, of course, the "deformed savior slave" of Shakespeare's dramatis personae in The Tempest, son of the late witch Sycorax, servant of the magician Prospero, consort and bootlicker of Stephano and Trinculo, failed conspirators and drunken jesters. "As disproportionate in his ways / As in his form" (Vi290-1), he tried to rape Prospero's daughter Miranda before being exiled to his cave, and in the course of the play he attempts to overthrow Prospero himself and install Stephano. on the throne of the island. In the end, however, Duke Prospero comes to forgive Caliban too: "This thing of darkness I / acknowledge as mine" (Vi275-6), and his servant promises to "be wise in the afterlife, / and seek grace" ( Vi294-5 ) or the favor of his master. Browning certainly did his research in crafting the poem: towards the end of the work, Caliban cowers beneath Setebus's "crow that told"... in the center of the card... in a way, / he revels in fictions" (ll. 168-9). Caliban's easy acceptance of a capricious, often cruel deity, and his willingness to humble himself in penance for the irrational divine anger, serves as a satirical reproach to both Paley and the Calvinists, and gives eloquent support for Browning's more palatable God of Love Shakespeare's Prospero claims that, without his aid and education, Caliban "knew not, O savage, / thy meaning, but stammered as / A very brutal thing" (I.ii.357-9). Some of Browning's detractors considered "Caliban on Setebos" still brutal, for its harsh language and unpleasant philosophy. Yet the poem succeeds in its purpose: it is an effective purgative for complacent religious theory and an entertaining look at a supposed religion based on principles quite different from Victorian Christianity..