Caliban meets Stephano and Trinculo

Another part of the island. Caliban enters carrying a load of wood and cursing Prospero. He hears someone coming — assumes it is one of Prospero's spirits sent to torment him — and throws himself flat under his cloak. Enter Trinculo, the king's jester, who has been wandering alone since the wreck. A storm is gathering. He sees the cloaked, motionless shape on the ground, decides it is "either some islander or some strange fish," and crawls under the cloak for shelter. The audience now sees one cloak with two pairs of legs underneath.

Enter Stephano, Alonso's drunken butler, who has survived the wreck by floating ashore on a barrel of wine and has been working steadily on it ever since. He sees the four-legged, two-headed shape on the ground and assumes it is a local monster. Caliban groans; Stephano, drunk, decides the monster has a fever and pours wine into Caliban's mouth as medicine. Trinculo, hearing his old friend's voice, calls out from his end of the cloak. Stephano, terrified, thinks the monster is speaking with Trinculo's voice. The cloak is pulled off. Trinculo and Stephano embrace. Caliban, who has now tasted wine for the first time in his life, has fallen to his knees.

The conversion is immediate and total. Caliban decides Stephano is a god — "hast thou not dropped from heaven?" — and offers himself as his servant. He swears to show him every fertile inch of the island, every spring, every nut-tree, every rock where shellfish cluster. The new master is a drunken servant from a wrecked ship; the old master was a powerful magician; Caliban does not seem able to imagine an existence not under a master, and Shakespeare lets the comedy hold that observation without softening it. Caliban ends the scene singing his own drunken song: "Ca-Caliban has a new master — get a new man! Freedom, high-day, freedom!" The freedom is to a different bondage. The audience can hear the irony; Caliban cannot.