Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

Leggs makes his way up to the front of the room, red in the face and more freckled than ever. He’s giving it his best shot, taking a dominant stance, one leg forward, foot angled out, then a tilt of the pelvis and the other leg swinging as if welded at the knee. He surveys the assembled cast and crew, scowling his Caliban scowl. Then he slowly rolls up his sleeves.

Good theatre, thinks Felix. He’s making them wait.

“Team Hag-Seed reporting here, sir,” he says to Felix. The mode is quasi-military but at the same time subtly mocking.

“Here’s the real clear truth,” he begins. “Hag-Seed, I mean Caliban — nobody’s on his team. Even his so-called friends and allies, those two drunk assholes — they’re not loyal to him, they make fun of him and call him names, they’re out to make a buck off him. So inside the play, he don’t have a team. His only team he ever had is dead, which was his mother, who other people called a witch. But she must’ve loved him enough to at least not drown him like a kitten. She did the bare essentials, she kept him alive. You gotta hand it to her, considering. She was all alone on the island, birthing the baby and so forth. She maybe had her failings, but she did what she could for him. She was tough.”

Nods from the audience: tough though fallible mothers are being remembered.

“Then she died and Caliban grew up on his own. He was welcoming to Prospero at first, but now Prospero’s on his back 24/7, and Ariel’s not gonna help him out either, though they’re both slaves in a manner of speaking. They’re both kept in line by threats of torture; only difference is, Ariel sucks up and Caliban holds out, so it’s only Caliban who gets the pinches and cramps.

“But I’m glad to say I have a team helping me with this report, and that is the Hag-Seed backup group and costume designers for the numbers we did, namely PPod, TimEEz, VaMoose, and Red Coyote. You guys were great, I couldn’t of done it without you, we really scored, and this will always be a great memory in my life.” He pauses. Is it a studied pause or is he choking up? I’ve taught him too well, thinks Felix, if even I can’t tell the difference.

“So this is our report,” says Leggs. “Report of Team Hag-Seed. What happens to Caliban after it’s over? At the end of the play he’s left dangling, so we don’t really know. He’s going to be a good servant to Prospero, or what?

“Okay, we thought of various ways it could of gone. First, Caliban’s left on the island and the rest of them sail away. He gets the island and he’s the king of it, like he wanted, but there’s nobody else on it any more, so what’s the point? You can’t be a king unless you’re the king of somebody else, right?”

Nods from the cast. They’re listening intently: they really care what happens to Caliban.

“Okay, so we tossed out that one. Next — that’s number two — he sails on the ship for Naples with the rest of them. Prospero gets killed and Miranda gets raped, like in what Team Antonio said — sorry, Anne-Marie, but in real life there wouldn’t be any goddesses, so that’s what would happen — only she’s not raped by Hag-Seed. It’s only by Antonio, because he’s so evil, like he said. After that he kills her because he wants to be the Duke and he can’t have any rivals, so she has to go, it makes sense. Caliban’s pissed off by that, but he can’t do nothing because by this time Stephano and Trinculo have him chained him up in the bottom of the ship.

“When they get to Naples, they put him on show for money, just like they said they would. They tell folks he’s a savage from the jungle, a part-fish monster, and also he eats people. Everyone throws things at him like a gorilla in a cage, and they call him shit names, like Prospero and Miranda and Stephano and Trinculo did, and they poke him with sticks to make him snarl and curse, and they laugh at him. Plus they feed him crap food. So after a while of this he gets a bunch of diseases — he’s never been vaccinated, right? — and one day he comes out in spots and a fever, and then he flops over and dies.”

Silence in the room. It’s all too plausible.

“But that was too dark for us,” says Leggs. “Why should the other ones in this play get a second chance at life, but not him? Why’s he have to suffer so much for being what he is? It’s like he’s, you know, black or Native or something. Five strikes against him from Day One. He never asked to get born.”

More nods. Leggs has the audience. Where’s he taking them? Felix wonders. Somewhere strange, you can see it in his eyes. He’s about to spring a surprise. “So here’s what we’re thinking,” says Leggs. “We’re thinking about that line, said by Prospero: ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.’ What’s he mean by it? Just that Caliban works for him or is, like, his slave? It’s gotta be more than that.” He leans forward, making eye contact, then more eye contact. “This is what we think. It’s gotta be true. Here it is: Prospero is Caliban’s dad .”

Murmurings, small head-shakings. They aren’t convinced. “Stick with me,” says Leggs. “Let’s walk it through. His mom is a sorceress, right? Sycorax. She’s wicked! Prospero is a sorcerer. They do a lot of the exact same kind of things — charms, spells, changing the weather — including putting the twist on Ariel, except that Prospero does those things better, and we’re supposed to think it’s okay for him but evil for her. Suppose they met earlier at, like, a sorcerer type of convention, and they had a thing together. One-night stand. He knocks her up, skedaddles back to Milan; she’s up the spout, she gets caught, they dump her on the island.

“Prospero washes up onshore. Sycorax is dead by then, but he takes one look at Caliban and he knows right away whose kid this has to be. He slangs the dead mother, that’s natural; he doesn’t own up to the kid, but thinks he might make something of him anyway — the kid must have some good qualities, right, because it’s half his. Proud of him at first, because Caliban’s self-reliant, knows his way around the island, comes up with food, pig-nuts and fish, whatever — eager to please. So Prospero humors the kid, teaches him stuff. Language, and that.

“But then the kid takes a crack at Miranda. That’s natural too, maybe not nice, was there consent, who knows, he said she said, but whose fault was it anyway, letting Miranda prance around in full view? Prospero should’a seen it coming. Should’a locked her up, if it was that important. Prospero ought to eat some of the blame for that number.

“But that’s not what he does. Instead he gets in a twist, piles on the insults, starts with the tortures, overlooks the good points Caliban’s got, such as musical talent. But by the end, Prospero’s learning that maybe not everything is somebody else’s fault. Plus, he sees that the bad in Caliban is pretty much the same as the bad in him, Prospero. They’re both angry, both name-callers, both full of revenge: they’re joined at the hip. Caliban is like his bad other self. Like father, like son. So he owns up: ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.’ That’s what he says, and that’s what he means.

“So after the play, Prospero tries to make up for what he did wrong. He takes Caliban onto the ship, runs him under the shower, scrubs off that fishy smell, orders him some fancy new clothes, makes him, like, a pageboy or something, so he can learn to eat from a plate. Says he’s sorry and they need to start fresh. Appeals to the artistic side of Caliban, what with the beautiful dreams and all. Once Caliban is cleaned up and well dressed and has manners, people don’t think he’s ugly any more. They think he’s, like, rugged.