Caliban is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, a deformed monster who is the slave of Prospero. He is referred to as a mooncalf, a freckled whelp, he is the only human inhabitant of an island that is otherwise "not honored with a human form." In some traditions he is depicted as a wild man, or a beast man, or sometimes a mix of fish and man, stemming from the confusion of two of the characters about what he is, found lying on a beach.