Caliban upon Setebos is a poem written by the British poet Robert Browning and published in his 1864 Dramatis Personae collection.
[1] It deals with Caliban, a character from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and his reflections on Setebos, the brutal god believed in by himself and his late mother Sycorax.
[2] An offshoot of this interpretation is the argument that Browning is applying evolutionary theory to religious development.
[3] Others feel that he was satirizing theologians of his time, who attempted to understand God as a reflection of themselves; this theory is supported by the epigraph, Psalm 50:21, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."
[a] The poem begins (text in [brackets]) with a brief narration, but quickly moves to Caliban's monologue, in which he contemplates his god: ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.