Shakespeare
made the monster for decorative purposes, to satisfy his love of the
grotesque, as an architect placed gargoyles on a cathedral: the
grotesque is an organic part of romantic art. Browning is interested
not in Caliban's appearance, but in his processes of thought.
Suppose a monster, half fish, half beast, living with supreme
comfort in the slime, could think: what kind of God would he imagine
had created this world?
Caliban speaks in the third person (does Browning make a slip when
he changes occasionally to the first?) in order to have indicated
the low order of his intelligence; just as a little child says,
"Don't hurt her: she hasn't done anything wrong." He is lying in
liquid refuse, with little lizards deliciously tickling his spine
(such things are entirely a matter of taste, what would be odious to
us would be heaven to a sow) and having nothing to do for the moment,
like a man in absolute leisure, turns his thoughts to God. He
believes that God is neither good nor bad, but simply capricious.
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