Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hag-Seed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Theater and The Tempest
Vengeance
Imprisonment and Marginalization
Transformation and Change
Grief
Summary
Analysis
Felix stands in in front of his new class. He’s never exactly sure who will be there, since dropouts and replacements happen at the last minute, but he sees a good mix of veterans from previous productions and nervous newcomers. The actors’ ethnicities are as assorted as the crimes for which they’ve been incarcerated; their one common trait is their desire to participate in the play.
While Felix is used to working with professional actors, his current cast is actually a better reflection of the productions Shakespeare himself staged, using actors with little training or formal education, who were often considered criminal for their disreputable profession.
Themes
Although he never mentions it, Felix knows what crimes each actor has committed—usually gang involvement, drug dealing, and theft. There’s even a hacker and a con-man. No one is supposed to take the course more than once, but Felix creates subsidiary classes like “Technology for the Theater” in order to get around this. Repeat participation means that he now has accomplished actors and men skilled in costume design, video editing, lighting, and makeup. He sometimes wonders if they will one day put these skills to work in robberies or kidnapping, but he tries not to think about it.
Felix is skilled at balancing his conceptions of the prisoners. Even though he knows exactly what crimes they’ve committed, he’s able to see them in terms of their skills and personalities. With this attitude he extends an opportunity for personal transformation which the men are rarely afforded, in the prison or in the wider society.
Themes
Felix can already see the perfect actors for some roles: WonderBoy, a former con artist, would be a perfect Ferdinand, while the hacker, 8Handz, will make a great Ariel. Bent Pencil, an embezzling accountant, can be Gonzalo, while SnakeEye, a Ponzi schemer, can be Antonio. Many men could take Caliban’s part, but he’ll have to think about that later.
Just as many of the people in Felix’s past mirror characters from The Tempest, the prisoners’ temperaments and past lives make them seem uniquely suited to certain parts.
Themes
Smiling as if he “knows what he’s doing,” Felix commences the speech he gives each year, welcoming everyone to the Fletcher Correctional Players and reminding them that who they are and what they’ve done on the outside is irrelevant to their participation in this course. He says they’ll be learning Shakespeare because Shakespeare wrote for everyone, “from high to low and back again.” While he, Mr. Duke, is the director, the players will work as a team and everyone is responsible for helping the others. By now, the troupe has a reputation to uphold, and Felix wants this year’s players to prove as good as the previous ones.
Implying that he doesn’t actually know what he’s doing, Felix once again suggests that as a teacher he’s playing a part, rather than truly expressing himself. However, it’s also clear that he does in fact know what he’s doing—he runs his class smoothly and confidently, and has already proven himself a success. He’s not just impersonating a teacher but has become one; Felix’s character is much less static and fixed than he thinks it is.
Themes
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Felix explains that the actors will be organized into teams for each of the principal characters. He proceeds to explain that the students will collaborate to rewrite parts of the play, as well as to videotape the production. Now, each of the actors has to think about what stage name they will adopt; Felix points out that movie stars and even rappers like Snoop Dog use stage names. The prisoners enjoy this task; they “welcome the return of this other self of theirs, standing there like a costume.”
Felix doesn’t recognize or appreciate transformations when they’re happening in his own life—he doesn’t see how he’s changing, and he’s suspicious when people like Tony or Miranda seem to evolve. However, he’s astutely aware that the prisoners crave the possibility of transformation, even expressed through something as small as a stage name.
Themes
Now, knowing he has to be persuasive, Felix introduces The Tempest as this year’s play. They’ve all had time to read the play in advance, but since most of them read at a third-grade level, there’s still a lot of work to do. Felix writes the “keynotes” on the board, listing “MUSICAL,” “MAGIC,” “PRISONS,” “MONSTERS,” and “REVENGE.” All the students are frowning back at him; this play is much different from Julius Caesar or Macbeth, which they all immediately related to.
Often, Shakespearean theater is regarded as approachable only after years of education and preparation. Felix upends this stereotype, treating it as a means through which one can approach education itself. While he’s often snobby, Felix is radical in insisting that theater is not the property of the educated classes, but rather can be enjoyable and beneficial to everyone.
Themes
When Felix opens the floor for questions, Leggs—arrested for breaking and entering, now a veteran actor who has played Mark Antony—immediately points out that there’s no fighting in the play, and that someone will have to play a fairy. PPod, who has played Lady Macbeth, asserts that he’s not going to play a fairy, and many others voice their unwillingness to play Miranda.
The whimsy and idiosyncrasies of The Tempest clash with the ideals of masculinity that the prisoners cling to. However, as the novel progresses, those ideals will prove much more malleable than either they or Felix first believe.
Themes
Felix is prepared for this hostility. In previous plays, the only female characters were supernatural or villainous, and thus acceptable to the men. However, no one wants to make himself vulnerable by playing a girl like Miranda. Felix informs the class that he’s hiring a female actor to play Miranda. This information impresses the men, who can’t believe that an actual woman will be willing to come to the prison and be in their play. Seizing his advantage, he says that if anyone acts out, especially towards the actress, the play will be canceled.
In bringing in an outside actress, Felix is furthering his own goal of staging the play in a spectacular fashion. However, he’s also doing another kindness to the prisoners by showing them that not everyone is afraid or disdainful of interacting with them and becoming part of their lives.
Themes
Now, instead of complaining, the prisoners are making raunchy jokes and speculating about who gets to play Ferdinand. It’s only Bent Pencil, always a stickler for tedious details, who reminds the class that someone still has to play Ariel. Felix promises to discuss this later; for now, he wants the prisoners to make a list of curse words, and reminds the class that anyone swearing with words outside the list will lose points and therefore valuable cigarettes. The actors set about the task with gusto, while Felix reflects that it’s profanity that is the “hag-born progenitor of literacy.”
Felix’s emphasis on the curse words is a reminder that Shakespeare’s plays are a bewildering mix of high and low art—mixing beautiful prose and complex moral questions with dirty jokes and slapstick humor. By recognizing and valuing this juxtaposition of styles Felix is attacking the elitism that often attends the study and performance of Shakespeare, displaying a mentality diametrically opposed to that of the politicians, who will assert that the prisoners don’t “deserve” to perform Shakespeare.
Themes
