Sycorax

Sycorax never appears onstage in Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611), but her presence haunts the play. She is a cruel and formidable witch, the mother of Caliban, one of the island’s few original inhabitants. Prospero, the play’s protagonist, is stranded on that same island. Sycorax died years before the main events unfold, yet memories of her shape key relationships.

Caliban claims ownership of the island based on his blood tie to her. Prospero constantly reminds the spirit Ariel of the harsh treatment Sycorax inflicted, using that memory to keep Ariel obedient. Scholars generally see Sycorax as a foil to Prospero, closely linked to Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Postcolonial critics and writers view her as a figure who gives voice to peoples—especially women—recovering from colonialism.

Later adaptations of The Tempest, starting with William Davenant’s seventeenth-century version, gave Sycorax spoken lines but kept her as a malevolent antagonist to Prospero. In The Tempest, Prospero describes Sycorax as an ancient, foul witch from Algiers. She was banished to the island for practicing sorcery “so strong / That [she] could control the Moon.” Sailors brought her there, and she later arrived on the island 'with child'—meaning Caliban was born on the island, not that she was pregnant during the voyage.

Because of her pregnancy, she was spared execution and left behind. On the island, she enslaved the local spirits, especially Ariel, whom she trapped in a pine tree for disobedience. She gave birth to Caliban and taught him to worship the demonic god Setebos. She died long before Prospero and his daughter Miranda arrived.

Caliban resents Prospero’s presence and power, insisting the island belongs to him because it was his mother’s before Prospero came. Scholars have found few concrete facts about Shakespeare’s sources for Sycorax.

Beyond her connection to the magical sorceresses Medea and Circe from Greek mythology, nothing definitive has been established. Several linguistic theories compete. Some argue her name combines the Greek sys (“sow”) and corax (“crow” or “raven”).