Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Mr Avuncular Lunatic

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood is a modern day adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.  Felix Phillips is the artistic director of a Canadian arts festival, who is sacked in favour of his lieutenant.  Twelve years later, he stages his Tempest, and his revenge, with the help of the convict students of a literacy course he teaches at the local correctional facility.

Story ☆☆☆★★

This is my second Shakespeare adaptation of the year, having already struggled through Nutshell by Ian McEwan.  It suffers from the same issues that any adaptation is going to encounter: the reader (probably) knows the story.  Hag-Seed sticks pretty close to the original, though Atwood's choice of transposition seems an unlikely one.  Felix works through the same feelings of dispossession and vengeance, though all is seen through the lens of his grief for his dead daughter, Miranda.

The setting, and particularly the way Atwood writes it, stretches credulity somewhat.  Felix is engaged, under a pseudonym, as a teacher of a literacy course at Fletcher Correctional Facility.  When he states he wants to teach Shakespeare, the minister engaging him is sceptical -- so is the reader.  Things become more unlikely as students are forbidden using conventional swear words, instead rewarded for using curses from the text itself.  Initial readings of the text are completed by inmates on their own before the course, a very unlikely success story for anyone who's tried to teach Shakespeare to anyone with a low literacy level.

There is a glorious moment, during the peak of Felix's vengeance, the play within the adaptation of a play, when the Miranda avatar warns the Ferdinand avatar that Felix/Prospero is barking mad and just to go along with whatever he says for his own safety.  I got very excited at this point, hoping that the 'players' would rebel, that the gunshots described in the prologue would turn out to be genuine and the play would be thrown out.  Alas, this does not happen.  Instead, the 'play' comes off as you would expect, and the only new material is provided in short epilogues where the class surmise what would happen to each character after the end of the play.

Style  ☆☆★★★

As always, Atwood's writing is engaging.  The novel is narrated by Felix, a dinosaur of a lovey, peppering the narrative with various casually sexist and racist remarks which encourages a questionable connection with the story (this might be why I hoped his plan would go tits-up!)  

Other characters seem to be archetypes included in the novel to fulfil a purpose.  The convict students are heavily defined by their crimes, Felix's enemies are cartoon villains.  The reader is left with the impression that this is how Felix sees the world: it's all just one big play, and the people around him are parts that service a purpose.

This makes the sections where Felix fantasises his dead daughter into existence all the more heart-braking.  To this sad old failure, the phantom daughter that only he can see is the only thing that is real.

Substance  ☆☆★★★

As an adaptation, I'm not sure what original insights it really brings to the original.  It perhaps brings home just how petty people can be, how out of proportion Felix/Prospero's revenge plan really is.  But then, in this adaptation, Felix hasn't been stranded on a desert island, and hasn't been removed from human contact for twelve years.  His hermitage is self-enforced, and he still teaches courses during it.  It's his grief, I think, that keeps the reader from giving up on him entirely.

The novel itself explores ideas of adaptation and modernisation.  Felix's con students are encouraged to update the text and turn its many musical sections into rap and dance numbers.  

What most clearly presented itself reading Hag-Seed was that Shakespeare is still relevant because it can be so easily manipulated -- and in this book, Felix is a master manipulator.  He knows that his students will not react well to The Tempest, and so bends the text to suit his purpose, and to manipulate his students into agreement.  Ariel is not a fairy or spirit, but an alien with super powers.  Prospero is not a controlling lunatic who abuses his powers, but a desperate man with no other option.  As an English post-grad, it's very interesting to see a work of fiction and adaptation be so blatant about reading perfect opposites into the same text.  Try hard enough, and Elizabethan theatre can mean basically whatever you need it to mean!

Verdict  ☆☆★★★

As recent Shakespeare modernisations go, this is a better one.  And for anyone unfamiliar with The Tempest, this will probably be a very enjoyable read.  Those familiar with Shakespeare, however, might be disappointed that Atwood didn't go further or bolder.