A Mere Piece of Furniture  Dinah Birch    • Albertine by
Jacqueline Rose     Chatto, 205 pp, £14.99, October 2001,
ISBN 0 7011 6976 1  There are good reasons, and a few bad ones,
for lifting minor characters out of famous texts and putting
them centre-stage. One bad reason might be that refiguring a
large reputation quietly amplifies your own. Shakespeare’s
cultural authority has made him a tempting source, but writers
who provide Shakespeare’s marginal presences with another chance
to speak also aim to make amends, to offer restitution to those
who didn’t get a fair deal on their first appearance. Browning’s
monologue ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ is a pioneering work here.
Written long before Caliban came to be seen as the play’s most
worthy character, this extraordinary poem endows Prospero’s
beastly slave with a measure of aspiration and much charm.
Browning uses his Caliban to address the questions that were
bothering his contemporaries – uncertain boundaries between
animal and human, theories of religious beli