Sycorax symbolized ignorance, and thought had been long imprisoned in the holds of nature by this creature of darkness, but ever painfully struggling to reach the light. Ignorance imprisoned thought, but could not free it. Prospero, as wisdom, gave it freedom and directed its action until he could send it forth in still more glorious freedom. Freedom of thought is a dominant strain in the drama, and is even sung by the “reeling ripe” Stephano. Caliban represents the child of ignorance, closely allied to nature and partaking of its poetry and grandeur. He is man in his first estate, just emerging from the animal. Yet, in this crude, forbidding aspect how superior in dignity compared with Stephano and Trinculo in their vile abasement through the vices of civilization.
Shakspere’s knowledge of the power of thought over the body is shown in his saying that Sycorax, “through age and envy, had grown into a hoop;” and of Caliban that, “As with age his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers.” It is not strange that Shakspere perceived the new psychology, for Milton sang—
Oft Converse with heavenly habitants
Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul’s essence,
Till all be made immortal.
The poet Spenser most beautifully expresses this truth in saying:
So every spirit, as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,