Caliban
Gregory Leadbetter
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From the publisher
Caliban is an intriguing new work from Gregory Leadbetter
Long after the tumultuous events of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Caliban returns to the island, having been given his freedom by Prospero and entrusted with a secret task. Experimenting with the resonance of texture and sound that he discovers in the lyrical interplay between Elizabethan and contemporary English, Gregory Leadbetter gives an authentic new voice, and an intriguing new life, to this most enigmatic of Shakespeare’s creations.
‘Magical, complex and deeply rewarding, Greg Leadbetter’s Caliban is the most elegant of dances. Shakespeare’s lost and freckled “moon calf” is washed up on The Tempest beach to give double voice – the Tudor and the current – both to himself and to these two poets who’ve created him. Though they might speak in different tongues, they are united by the endlessness of tides and time. What splendid alchemy is this?’ - Jim Crace
Based on poetry written when he was Poet in Residence at Anne Hathaway's Cottage in 2016, Gregory Leadbetter's Caliban is a dramatic and intriguing new story based on an imagined life of Shakespeare's enigmatic 'thing of darkness' after the events of The Tempest. What makes the poems particularly interesting is that Greg wrote the poems first in the dialect of Shakespearean times ('Original Pronunciation') and then 'translates' them into modern English.