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
With costumes and sets making the play feel more real, everyone is more enthusiastic. The keyboard finally arrives, and Anne-Marie works on choreography and music in one of the classrooms. 8Handz is busy with the cables and cameras that Felix has procured for him. Felix sets up a folding screen in the main room, behind which is a computer showing video feeds from all the other rooms in Felix’s classroom block. Felix commends 8Handz on his ingenious work and promises that he’s cleared all this with the authorities, a statement he considers “half true.”
Even though the costumes seem silly and superficial, they help the prisoners to effect real transformations in their acting. 8Handz’s technical set-up allows Felix to see and control everything that happens in his classroom wing; however, it also shows the extent to which that power derives from illusions and outside help, rather than Felix’s own abilities.
Themes
WonderBoy and Anne-Marie have developed a better working relationship, although he continues to follow her around offstage. To counter this she’s adopted a maternal air, baking cookies for all the prisoners and the guards. Felix is astonished that someone so young can appear so commanding and “matronly.” She’s also taken charge of the goddess dolls, telling him that her knitting group will create outfits for them. Felix teases her for her grandmotherly hobby, but she says that it keeps her calm.
Anne-Marie is a mix of contradictions: she’s young and beautiful at the same time as cultivating matronly hobbies, and she’s tough but considerate at the same time. Perhaps Felix’s perplexity stems from the fact that his protégé is so much more nuanced than the imaginary daughter he’s created for his companion.
Themes
Felix is worried that knitted attire for the goddesses is “bad taste…[and] not the kind of bad taste he favored.” He reminds Anne-Marie that his most important speech, in which he describes the island fading away like the play itself, comes after the appearance of the goddesses. When he declaims part of the speech, Anne-Marie is very moved. His effortless talent, she says, is the reason she always wanted to work with him. She reassures him that the dolls will look fantastic once she’s done with them.
It’s interesting that the most important speech—for both Prospero and Felix—concerns the demise of the island and the play, the two things that give them power and security. While the play allows Felix to consolidate his advantages and achieve revenge, it also points to the inevitable decline of his power.
Themes
It’s Wednesday, and there are two weeks left of rehearsal. They’ve recorded some of the first scenes on video, and today are shooting Caliban’s scenes. In full costume, Leggs tells Felix that his team has written an extra number for Caliban, choreographed by Anne-Marie. Worried about wasting time, Felix grumpily agrees to see it.
As the prisoners revise many aspects of the play, it’s important that they are most interested in rewriting Caliban’s role. Identifying with the enslaved villain highlights their conception of themselves as marginalized, but changing his plotline shows their ability to empower themselves.
Themes
Get the entire Hag-Seed LitChart as a printable PDF.
Caliban’s team—TimEEz, PPod, VaMoose, and Red Coyote—clap a beat while Leggs begins to rap. Prospero, he says, “prison me up to make me behave,” but he can’t be contained because he’s “Hag-Seed.” He tells the story of his birth to Sycorax, a “real bad bitch” after she was dumped on the island. He says that he was kind to Prospero upon his first arrival, but after he tried to “jump” Miranda the wizard “pinch me black and pinch me blue,” making him do all the work on the island. The rap ends with Caliban’s avowal that if he ever gets the chance he’ll kill Prospero and rape Miranda, making her “my Hag-Seed queen.”
By rapping about Prospero’s imprisonment of Caliban, Leggs makes even more explicit the connection between the prisoners and the play’s villain; he also points out the differences between Prospero and Felix, who helps the prisoners empower themselves and fight the stigma of imprisonment. The one problematic aspect of the prisoners’ embrace of Caliban is the gleeful violence it entails, especially towards Miranda.
Themes
Anne-Marie claps enthusiastically at the end of the rap, and after a minute Felix does as well. He’s a little choked-up at Leggs’s performance; he knows that it’s only Anne-Marie, not him, who could coax out this excellence. Quoting the play, he says that it’s a “brave new world.” When Anne-Marie asks if they’re trifling with the play too much, he reassures her that the play belongs to all of them, not just him.
Felix has finally learned how to take pride in the plays he directs without feeling that all their merits are due to him. By working at the prison, he’s arrived at a much more inclusive and less self-centered conception of his own profession.
Themes
