Travellers' tales

An "Anthropophagus. From Conrad Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, Basel, 1557" By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The voyagers sometimes found--or said they found--strange and wonderful monsters, often beings half one animal, half another: dog-faced men, satyrs, men with one large foot they used to shade themselves. Compared to these, Caliban, half man half fish, is tame. Othello tells of his "travel's history":

Wherein of antres [caves] vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak. Such was my process.
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi [cannibals] and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
(1.3.139-44)

Caliban: new peoples

Europeans were fascinated by reports of the new people, their reported savagery, and their seemingly idyllic nakedness. It was common practice for the voyagers to capture members of the native population, and bring them home to show--as Stephano plans to do with Caliban*.

Colonization and its attendant exploitation followed rapidly, though no English colonies* were successful in Shakespeare's lifetime.