Shakespeare and Beowulf

As Professor Burton as urged us to look to sources outside of the text to further our learning about Shakespeare I was lucky enough to have so pretty cool stuff just fall in my lap. In The Tempest Caliban is described as a demi-devil, being the son of Sycorax and the devil and it is said that he was "littered", making his birth seem very animalistic. While simultaneously reading The Tempest and Beowulf I discovered a line that immediately made me think of Caliban. It is the part of the poem where Beowulf has just begun fighting the beat Grendel. The line describes Grendel and says "He was desperate to flee to his den and hide with the devil's litter..." It is estimated that Beowulf was written somewhere between 700 and 1000 AD, in England, and The Tempest was believed to have been written between 1610-1611, presumably in England. I don't know if this phrasing is coincidental, if it was common practice in England to say that someone was "littered" as an insult, but I found it interesting that Caliban is "littered" and a devilish figure and that Grendel is also referenced as part of the devil's litter. The roles that Caliban and Grendel play in their respective works are fairly similar, that of a dark, monstrous character that threaten moral standing and virtue. They represent a sort of devilish fear that needs to be overcome. In The Tempest it seems the moral counterpart to Caliban would be Miranda or Ariel and in Grendel it is clearly Beowulf. While The Tempest may not be considered a heroic epic I find the thought that it could be alluding to one interesting.  Shakespeare is seen as a creator in the literary world...the first to use this word or the first to successfully utilize that form but I had never thought that maybe he liked to read too. Maybe he had favorite authors, maybe he was inspired, maybe he knows who wrote Beowulf? Probably not. I know that the likelihood that Shakespeare read Beowulf isn't high, but it isn't impossible. Whether great minds think alike or the phrasing for the Tempest was implanted by Beowulf it's just kind of comforting to know that Shakespeare wasn't the first in everything, that the guy probably read a bit, and that the fact that he didn't get to everything first means there's more to say, more to write, more to discover.