Key contexts and readings of Caliban

• Reports brought back by European travellers describe the inhabitants as strange, savage and sub-human, even as cannibals.

• Caliban's name is an anagram of cannibal.

• Some settlers claimed they were bringing civilisation to the 'savages'.

• William Strachey's account of the Sea Venture shipwreck includes an account of the native American Indians in Virginia.

• Here he is writing about the capture and sacrifice of one of the settlers: "And this did not a little trouble the lieutenant-governor, who since his first landing in the country, howsoever justly provoked, would not by any means be wrought to a violent proceeding against them for all the practices of villainy with which they daily endangered our men, thinking it possible by a more tractable course to win them to a better condition; but now, being startled by this, he well perceived how little a fair and noble entreaty works upon a barbarous disposition, and therefore in some measure purposed to be revenged."