Margaret Atwood has not only reimagined The Tempest in a contemporary setting, she has created a frame with a Tempest-like plot in which staging a production of the play itself occurs. This intricate arrangement brings to mind another work by William Shakespeare, the Players's performance within Hamlet.
The frame both matches and departs from Shakespeare's play. The father is named Felix, but the daughter is still Miranda. Rather than a duke, he is a theater director. Rather than blown away onto an island, they are exiled in a remote rural area.
The play production aspect adds several new wrinkles. Felix, years past his professional prime, is hired to work with prison inmates, and they put on a modernized hip-hop/rap version that seriously refigures the text's language as well as its setting. His discussions with the inmates offer a vehicle for many of the critical questions that have been raised about the racial and colonialist issues in the original, especially Prospero's enslavement of Caliban.
The book is one of a series of modern retellings commissioned by Hogarth Festival. Critical reception overall was good, although some found the raps unconvincing. The plot has been criticized as contrived due to the way in which Felix's rival from the theater world is brought in.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/239449/hag-seed-by-margaret-atwood/9780804141314/readers-guide/
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood is a contemporary novel based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Do you have anything on it, please?
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