Book Review: "Hag-Seed" by Margaret Atwood

Many authors have re-envisioned Shakespeare's plays using contemporary settings and contemporary language, with  varying degrees of success.  What makes Margaret Atwood's "Hag-Seed", a re-envisioning of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", so interesting is that it includes a re-envisioned performance of the play within a reimagined and modernized version of the plot.  It is, essentially, Shakespeare within Shakespeare.

The inner version of the play is a performance put on by prison inmates.  They paraphrase and modernize the language, creatively interpret the costuming, and stage the performance by way of video editing rather than a strictly traditional live performance.  The outer version of the play is the story within which the actual play is produced, a story which parallels the plot of "The Tempest."

Director and actor Felix has had a highly successful run of organizing (and directing, and starring in) an annual Shakespeare festival, staging new versions of many of Shakespeare's plays. That is, until his assistant Tony stages a coup, takes over his position, and gets Felix blacklisted.  Felix, devastated, withdraws from society and the theatre scene.  We learn that Felix had lost his wife in childbirth and then his beloved daughter to an illness only a few years later.  He imagines that his daughter, Miranda, is still with him, growing up and becoming a young woman.  He knows it is only a fantasy, but it keeps him sane to imagine being with her in his self-induced exile.  After a few years he is ready to reenter the theatre world, but only under a pseudonym, and only with actors who have no chance of recognizing him from his former life.  He gets a job teaching English literature to medium security prison inmates (under the pseudonym Mr. Duke), and he uses Shakespearean drama as his main teaching tool.  After several successful years, he discovers that his old nemesis, Tony, along with several other important politicians, plans to visit the prison, with the intention of canceling the funding of the English program.  Felix plots his revenge using a production of The Tempest and the assistance of several technologically savvy inmates. (Atwood cleverly weaves in some themes from Hamlet, a bit of "the play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.")

Admittedly, there are several aspects of the plot which are dubious, at best.  It takes some willing suspension of disbelief to accept that a prison would hire a teacher without a full background check, that important politicians would enter a prison unescorted by armed guards of any kind, or that they would willingly eat food at the prison after being attacked and restrained by the inmates.  However, the characters and the plot are intriguing enough for the reader to skip over minor plot holes such as this.

As a fan of Shakespeare in general, and of "The Tempest" in particular, I really enjoyed the parallels between the outer story and the original material.  I suspect there are some parallels and details that would be missed by a reader with less familiarity with the original play, but the story is interesting enough and well-told enough that it is worth reading even for a reader who has never read "The Tempest."  The plot of the play within the story is explained enough to make many of the parallels clear without any previous familiarity with Shakespeare's work. In addition, the inmates' final analysis of their characters is a fascinating study that is likely to encourage the reader to go back and read (or re-read) Shakespeare's play. 

I enjoyed this novel very much, and would recommend it to Shakespeare fans and non-fans, alike. 


I received this book for review from Blogging for Books. For more information about Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, please see the Penguin Random House website.

April Is National Poetry Month

The word “poetry” immediately brings to mind Miss Kelly’s 7^th grade class, and memorizing dozens of poems, most notably John Masefield’s poignant “Sea Fever,” most of which I can recite to this day. Thanks to her and many other teachers like her, I have learned to enjoy many types of poetry through the years.

The poet with the earliest influence on me was, of course, Dr. Seuss. From fox in socks and hop on Pop to green eggs and ham with Sam I am, his simple, memorable rhymes taught me poetry when I could barely read. Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein were close behind, with poems like “A Wonderful Bird Is the Pelican” (one of my father’s favorites) and “How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes.”

As I grew a bit older, I discovered that poems don’t always have to rhyme. My favorite example of a non-rhyming poem was haiku. I loved the predictable rhythm, the brevity, the tiny taste of description before the poem vanished. I could even write them myself! And I learned the beauty of other non-rhyming poems, with their glorious imagery. Some of my favorite lines of poetry are Carl Sandberg’s, “…the fog comes in on little cat feet” and ee cummings’ “…the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.” (Both, I may add, in my memory thanks to Miss Kelly.)

And then I discovered Shakespeare. Oh, Shakespeare! The vocabulary, the description, the pure loftiness of the words, the sly humor. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” “’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve.” “Full fathom five thy father lies: of his bones are coral made, those are pearls that were his eyes.” “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” “Hark! Hark! The lark at heaven’s gate sings!” And of course, my personal favorite, from “Much Ado About Nothing”: “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes; and moreover I will go with thee to thy uncle's.”

And so much glorious love poetry outside of Shakespeare! Robert Burns: “My luve’s like a red, red rose.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Lord Byron: “She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies.” Edna St. Vincent Millay: “I will permit my memory to recall the vision of you, by all my dreams attended.” Percy Bysshe Shelly: “Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, love itself shall slumber on.”

And our local poets. Robert Frost: “I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence.” Emily Dickinson: “I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too?” Ralph Waldo Emerson: “My angel – his name is Freedom. Choose him to be your king.” Anne Sexton: “And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats.” Robert Lowell: “Sleepless, you hold your pillow to your hollows like a child.” Anne Bradstreet: “The world no longer let me love, my hope and Treasure lies above.”

The world is a richer place because of poetry and the poets who write it. This month, let us all lift a glass to those who wield words through poetry to make us savor those words, to question them, to enjoy them, sometimes even to hate them. But above all, to think about them.

Salut!

I'm Comin' Up

At my daughter’s 6-month pediatrician appointment last week, while the doctor was examining her, she grabbed onto the doc’s arm and hauled herself up into a kneeling position. The doc was a bit surprised and asked how long she’d been doing that. I told her about a week and joked that we had to lower the crib mattress so she didn’t launch herself over the side some morning. The doc then told me that most kids don’t get to that stage till more like 9 months. I guess she’d really be amazed if she saw my daughter pulling herself up to a standing position and creeping a step or two around the coffee table today.

Right now, if I put her on the floor in the middle of the room but stand next to her, she immediately grabs my leg and does a “hand over hand” crawl up my leg until she’s up on her knees. (She hates Mondays when I take my son to gymnastics and wear my slippery Spandex yoga pants.) She’s discovering which objects in every room are useful to pull herself up on. If we bring her into the living room, she crawls right over to the coffee table, which is short enough that she can reach up and grab the edge to pull herself up. She’s frustrated in the kitchen because the chair rungs are too low and the cabinet knobs are too high for her to pull up on. Any body part of any human being in a room with her is considered fair game – if you’re sitting on the floor you may find a small warm body pulling herself up your back or grabbing your knees; if you’re walking past a pair of small hands may grab at your ankles; if you lie down you’ll be scaled like Mt. Everest.

When you think about it, the motivation for a baby to get as much height as possible has to be astounding. All the most interesting action is happening far above her head. Up to now, she’s been totally dependent on someone picking her up to be able to see any higher than about knee level. We have a booster chair with an attached tray on the floor where my son eats his lunch, and if my daughter is crawling around while he’s eating, she immediately comes over, grabs onto the tray with both hands, and hauls herself up to peep at him and check out what he’s doing. Being on the floor, she can’t see up over a lot of things, and the curiosity just kills her. Even in her crib, if she’s awake and aware that we’re in the room, she’ll stop playing with her toys and pull the bumper down so she can peer over and see us.

As sad as I am to see my baby girl leaving the tiny baby stage and becoming a crawler and a creeper, I also find it incredibly exciting to watch her learn and grow and explore the world around her. I hope she continues to reach higher and higher all her life. After all, in the words of Shakespeare, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”