Setebos (also Settaboth) was a deity of the Tehuelche people of eastern Patagonia. The name was recorded by Europeans traveling with Ferdinand Magellan during the first circumnavigation of the world (1519–1522), and again some 58 years later by Sir Francis Drake during his (1577–1579) circumnavigation voyage. The Tehuelche language is recently extinct; since the name Setebos is not attested in more recent ethnographic studies of eastern Patagonian indigenous peoples, the reports made during the 16th century appear to be the only documented evidence of a god having this name.
However, the name Setebos occurs twice in Shakespeare's 1611 play The Tempest, and scholars generally agree that Shakespeare adopted the name after having read a sixteenth-century English account of Magellan's voyage. In the play, Setebos, an unseen character, is described as the god worshiped by the sea-witch Sycorax, the mother of the subhuman Caliban. Many Shakespearean scholars have explicitly connected the character of Setebos in The Tempest with the characteristics attributed by the Tehuelche people to their god Setebos.
Largely because of Shakespeare's use of the name, "Setebos" has maintained currency in published works, including poems, novels and plays. In some of these (e.g. Robert Browning's Caliban upon Setebos) Setebos is understood to be the mythical character mentioned in The Tempest, while in others (e.g. Mónica Maffía's Cimbelino en la Patagonia) Setebos is presented both as a Shakespearean character and as the Tehuelche god.
Setebos's physical appearance is described only briefly in the 16th century accounts, and not at all in The Tempest, and in subsequent works, Setebos has been imagined in a variety of different ways, ranging from nearly human, to a tiger-toad chimera, to a bizarre extraterrestrial creature.
Setebos in the New World
In 1519 the Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan crossed the Atlantic on the first leg of his circumnavigation of the world. Near the southern tip of South America he encountered native people who were described by the Italian who accompanied the expedition, Antonio Pigafetta (1480–1534), as “Patagoni”. Pigafetta's manuscript account of the voyage is believed lost, but four other manuscripts from the same time period, one in Italian (known as the "Ambrosian" or "Milan" manuscript) and three in French translation, are extant. The most accurate and complete English translation of Pigafetta's report was published by James Alexander Robertson in 1906 based on the Ambrosian manuscript.
The first encounter between the Europeans and the Patagonians took place in May 1520, when the fleet had been anchored for two months at Puerto San Julian. According to Pigafetta,All quotations from Pigafetta are taken from the Robertson translation. "One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head."Robertson, p. 49. The natives were given gifts and some were invited on board the ships. Two weeks later, four natives appeared and Magellan's crew captured two of them by a ruse: loading their arms with presents and then shackling their legs. "When our men were driving home the cross bolt, the two giants began to suspect something, but the captain assuring them, however, they stood still. When they saw later that they were tricked, they raged like bulls, calling loudly for Setebos to aid them".Robertson, p. 55.
Pigafetta also reported on the burial customs of the natives: When one of those people die, ten or twelve demons all painted appear to them and dance very joyfully about the corpse. They notice that one of those demons is much taller than the others, and he cries out and rejoices more. They paint themselves exactly in the same manner as the demon appears to them painted. They call the larger demon Setebos, and the others Cheleulle. That giant [native] also told us by signs that he had seen the demons with two horns on their heads, and long hair which hung to the feet belching forth fire from mouth and buttocks.Robertson, p. 61. Pigafetta relates that another native, who was brought on board one of the ships, was shown a cross and was terrified. "Once I made the sign of the cross, and, showing it to him, kissed it. He immediately cried out “Setebos,” and made me a sign that if I made the sign of the cross again, Setebos would enter into my body and cause it to burst. When that giant was sick, he asked for the cross, and embracing it and kissing it many times, desired to become a Christian before his death".Roberston, p. 79.
The Patagonian's god is also mentioned (this time spelled "Settaboth" and also "Settaboh") in a separate account of Sir Francis Drake's voyage of circumnavigation (1577–1580), a half-century after Magellan's. Drake followed a similar route to Magellan's along South America's eastern coast, and laid anchor at Puerto Deseado (121 nautical miles north of Puerto San Julián) for two weeks in May–June 1578. Here the sailors made their first acquaintance with the Patagonians.S. E. Morison, p. 642. An encounter is described in a journal kept by Francis Fletcher (c. 1555 – c. 1619), a priest of the Church of England who accompanied Drake on his voyage. According to Fletcher, the English attempted to trade some trinkets, but the natives were cautious and retreated. "They would have non of our company" wrote Fletcher, "till such tyme they were warranted by oracle from their god Settaboth, that is, the Divell, whom they name their great god". The natives then sent one of their own, a "priest or prophet", to confer with Settaboth: [the prophet] departed for the tyme from them into som secret place under the side of the hill, where Settaboh appeared unto him to give him his oracle to bring unto them, that they might know what they should doe, that is, whether they should be acquainted with us or noe. Now when the prophet came to them againe he seemed to be changed in shape, for even as Settaboh appeared vnto him, he in shew and outward apearance came to them, haveing on his head before, standing upright, little hornes, and two long and broad black feathers ... but in a long tyme they would not receave annything out of our hands, except we cast it downe upon the ground.Fletcher, p. 48.
The journals of Pigafetta (Magellan) and Fletcher (Drake) were not published immediately after voyage's end. Pigafetta returned to Europe in 1522, where he presented a number of kings and queens with extracts from his narrative of Magellan's voyage,Magellan himself had died the previous year, in the Battle of Mactan. and from the Seignory of Venice he obtained permission to publish it, but he never did.S. E. Morison, p. 467. The first published version of Pigafetta's journal was an Italian translation of a French translation of the lost Italian original. That Italian translation was itself translated into English in abbreviated form by Richard Eden in his The Decades of the New Worlde, published in London in 1555, and then posthumously reprinted in an augmented version in 1577. It is the 1577 Eden version where Shakespeare is most likely to have come across the name Setebos.
Francis Fletcher's account of Drake's voyage of circumnavigation, which also discussed an encounter with the native Patagonians, was not published until 1628, after Shakespeare's death. However textual evidence suggests that Shakespeare may have been familiar with Fletcher's (yet unpublished) account, as discussed in the next section.
Shakespeare and Setebos
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was first performed on 1 November 1611, the character Caliban twice mentions a god Setebos. The first instance occurs near the play's beginning. Caliban is responding to a threat from Prospero, who asks Caliban if he is refusing a command to fetch wood. In an aside to the audience, Caliban says (Act I, Scene II, Line 374): No, 'pray thee. I must obey. His Art is of such pow'r, It would controll my Dams god Setebos, And make a vassailevassaile vassal. of him.Quotations from Shakespeare's The Tempest are taken from Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies [The First Folio]: A facsimile edition prepared by Helge Kokeritz. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. Caliban's "Dam" (mother) is the evil witch Sycorax. The second instance is near the play's end. Ariel has lured Caliban and two co-conspirators, Antonio and Sebastian, to Prospero's cell, where spirits in the shape of dogs have been set to snarling at them. Caliban addresses Setebos (Act V, Scene I, Line 261): O Setebos, these be bravebrave fine. spirits indeede! How fine my MasterMaster Prospero. is! I am afraid He will chastise me.
There is no documented proof that Shakespeare was familiar with the accounts by Pigafetta or Fletcher of the New World, or that he knew about the Tehuelche god Setebos. However it is widely accepted, by literary scholars and historians, that Shakespeare was familiar with those accounts, and that he chose the name Setebos for the god of Caliban and Sycorax based on them.
One argument is based on the notoriety, in the 16th century, of Magellan's and Drake's voyages: Whether or not Shakespeare read [Pigafetta's] or any other account of Magellan’s voyage, these were the sorts of terms, names, and incidents that were being bruited about. Magellan's voyage was discussed as polar or lunar expeditions have been in modern times. We need to read the voyage literature, therefore, not necessarily to find out what Shakespeare read, but to ascertain what Shakespeare and his audience together would have been likely to know—what they would have gathered from a variety of sources.
But probably more persuasive is the work by Shakespearean scholars Frank Kermode, Geoffrey Bullough, Hallett Smith and others who have traced textual connections between New World materials and The Tempest. For instance: In the French and Italian accounts of Magellan's voyage that preceded Eden's, two of the mutineers against Magellan were named Antonio and Sebastian, and Magellan was said to have put the mutiny down with the help of one Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa. In the play, for comparison, two characters also named Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill king Alonso, and an advisor named Gonzalo; Prospero and Ariel thwart the conspiracy.
In the case of Francis Fletcher's account of Drake's voyage, which was not published until after Shakespeare's death, some of the resemblances to happenings in The Tempest are striking, suggesting that Shakespeare was familiar with Fletcher's unpublished narrative. For exampleFrey, p. 35. the description in the play of Alonso and his party coming upon the banquet prepared by the "several strange Shapes" parallels the description in Fletcher of the first meeting between Drake's men and the Patagonians. In the words of Hallett Smith: "Shakespeare's imagination, at the time he wrote The Tempest, would appear to have been stimulated by the accounts of travel and exploration in the new world".Smith, p. 143.
Many Shakespeare scholars have explicitly connected Setebos of The Tempest with the Patagonian Setebos. For instance, John Lee writes: In his comprehensive generalisation Shakespeare ascribes to Caliban some vague affinities with the most barbarous of all the American races. ... [Sir Francis] Drake echoes reports by earlier Spanish travellers of the savage worship, which the Patagonians offered their 'great devil Setebos.' Of this Patagonian deity Caliban twice makes mention, calling him 'my dam's god, Setebos' (I. ii. 373; V. i. 261). Despite his dissimilarity from the Patagonians in all other respects, he avows himself a votary of their 'great devil'.
And John Gillies writes "Caliban's description of Setebos as 'my dam's god' (1.2.376) is fully consistent with Pigafetta's account of Setebos as a devil, in view of Prospero's repeated references to Caliban as a devil":