Sycorax - Sycorax in Later Literature

Sycorax in Later Literature

In Ernest Renan's play Caliban the anti-hero states that Sycorax went to "all the devils" but left him as rightful ruler of the island. Marina Warner reimagined the witch in her 1992 book Indigo, in which Sycorax is a healer and dyer of indigo who uses her magic to help slaves. Her attempts to give up sorcery fail, because "she cannot abjure, give up, control the force by which she is possessed".

J.B. Aspinall's novel Sycorax (2006) places the origin of the story with a 14th century peasant woman from Yorkshire. The Indian poet Suniti Namjoshi in Sycorax: New Fables and Poems imagines Sycorax returning to the island after Prospero and the others have left (including Caliban). Namjoshi has stated, "The Sycorax in my poem is still alive . . . She is still defiant, still fierce, but she is old and knows that death is no longer so far away that it need not be thought of... I wanted to follow Sycorax, keep her company, as it were, up to the final moment".

Sycorax is also revived in the "Baroque pastiche" opera The Enchanted Island, devised by Jeremy Sams, in the first production of which she was played by Joyce DiDonato.