Hag-Seed

by Margaret Atwood

  He runs down his tentative list:

  The Persons of the Play

  PROSPERO, THE DEPOSED DUKE OF MILAN: Mr. Duke, Director and Producer.

  MIRANDA, HIS DAUGHTER: Anne-Marie Greenland, Actress, Dancer, Choreographer.

  ARIEL: 8Handz. Slight build. East Indian family background. About twenty-three. Very bright. Agile with a keyboard. Highly knowledgeable in tech matters. Conviction: Hacker, identity theft, impersonation. Forgery. Feels justified in his activities, as he believes he was playing a benevolent Robin Hood versus the evil King John capitalists of this world. Betrayed by an older colleague when he wouldn't hack refugee charities. Played Rivers in Richard III.

  CALIBAN: Leggs. About thirty. Mixed background, Irish and black. Red hair, freckles, heavy build, works out a lot. A vet, was in Afghanistan. Veterans Affairs failed to pay for PTSD treatment. Conviction: Break-and-enter, assault. Drugs-and booze-related. Was in addiction treatment but the program's been canceled. Played Brutus, Second Witch, Clarence. Excellent actor but touchy.

  FERDINAND, SON TO ALONSO: WonderBoy. Looks twenty-five, probably older. Scandinavian name. Appealing, clean-cut, handsome, plausible; can seem very sincere. Conviction: Fraud; sold fake life insurance to gullible seniors. Was especially effective with immigrants. Played Macduff, and Hastings in Richard III.

  ALONSO, KING OF NAPLES: Krampus. Maybe forty-five. Mennonite background. Long horse-face. Member of a Mennonite ring ferrying drugs from Mexico through the US in farm machinery, under a cloak of piety. Depressive. Played Banquo in Macbeth, Brutus in JC.

  SEBASTIAN, BROTHER TO ALONSO: Phil the Pill. Vietnamese refugee background; extended family sacrificed to get him through medical school. About forty. Feels he was wrongfully charged. Conviction: Manslaughter in connection with the deaths by overdose of three young college students for whom he repeatedly prescribed addictive painkillers. Says they begged him to help them. Easily manipulated. Played Buckingham in Richard III.

  ADRIAN AND FRANCISCO, THE TWO COURTIERS. Note: Many productions cut these parts and assign some of their speeches to Gonzalo or Sebastian. A good plan and I've followed it.

  GONZALO, ELDERLY COUNCILLOR TO ALONSO: Bent Pencil. Overweight, balding. In his fifties. WASP background. Accountant. Conviction: Embezzlement. Intelligent, with a philosophical turn. Feels his sentence was undeserved. Respected by the others, who think he can help them work the system once outside. Played Cassius in Julius Caesar, Duncan in Macbeth.

  ANTONIO, USURPING BROTHER TO PROSPERO: SnakeEye. Italian background. Slim, works out. Has a squint. About thirty-five. Law degree, which when traced proved a forgery. Conviction: Real-estate scammer; falsified deeds, then sold properties he didn't own. Also ran a minor Ponzi scheme. Persuasive, but only for those who want to be persuaded. Sense of entitlement. Thinks others are credulous and therefore deserve to be fleeced; feels he was only caught on a legal technicality. Played Macbeth. Played Richard III. Good villain.

  STEPHANO, A DRUNKEN BUTLER: Red Coyote. In his twenties. Native-Canadian background. Conviction: Bootlegging, drug-pushing. Doesn't think he was doing wrong because the legal system is illegitimate anyway. Played Mark Antony in JC. Played First Witch in Macbeth.

  TRINCULO, A JESTER: TimEEz. Chinese family background on one side. Round-faced, pale. Took his stage name from the Timmy's doughnut chain because he claims to have nothing in the middle of his head. Acts stupider than he is. Advanced pickpocket skills. Conviction: Running a retail shoplifting ring. Claims he was pressured into it. Soothsayer in Julius Caesar, doorkeeper in Macbeth. Natural clown.

  ANNOUNCER: We have always used an announcer, who provides capsule versions of each scene so the audience can follow the plot. Considering Shiv the Mex for this part. New Mexican family background. Conviction: Assault. Was acting as enforcer for a local gang. Outgoing personality, good voice. Played Lord Grey in Richard III.

  BOATSWAIN: PPod. African Canadian. Musical talent, and yes, I know about the cliches. A dancer, not as good as he thinks, but good. Conviction: Drugs, extortion, assault, gang-related. Would have been a fine Caliban but is needed in other capacities.

  IRIS, CERES, JUNO: A problem, Felix has written. None of the men will agree to impersonate these goddessess. But Prospero calls them puppets, so why not use puppets? Or dolls, with digital voices. Give them an edge of strangeness. On video it could work.

  There are a number of other roles and duties that Felix needs to assign: tech special effects, prompters, understudies. Costumes and props. He'll need a photographer for the publicity stills; there won't be any real publicity, of course, but the guys get a kick out of pictures of themselves in costume. The class has already decided they'll be altering some of the musical numbers and adding others, so singers and dancers will be required. Rap singers, break dancers, is Felix's guess. Anne-Marie can help them with the choreography.

  He's roughed out the crew, but things can be switched around as he discovers the capacities and limits of each.

  Provisional Lineup

  SPECIAL EFFECTS: 8Handz, lead tech; WonderBoy, Shiv, PPod, HotWire.

  PROPS AND COSTUMES: Assign as project to each principal, with suggestions by their team.

  PUBLICITY STILLS: WonderBoy. He has a sense of what looks glamorous.

  MUSIC DJS: Leggs, Red Coyote, Paleface Lee, Riceball. 8Handz will do the sound editing.

  INSTRUMENTALS: Leggs, Shiv the Mex, PPod, Red Coyote, Col.Deth.

  CHORUS AND DANCERS: PPod, Leggs, TimEEz, VaMoose, Riceball, and Members of the Company, as required.

  CHOREOGRAPHY: Anne-Marie Greenland, Leggs, PPod.

  CHIEF GOBLINS: Riceball, Col.Deth, VaMoose. Convictions: Arson for insurance; armed robbery; drug charges. All first-time actors who can learn much from the others. Two of them have been bouncers.

  BACKUP GOBLINS: Members of the Company, as required.

  --

  The Goblins, thinks Felix. The ultimate weapon. For the kernel of his secret project, his nugget of revenge, everything hinges on the Goblins. What should they wear? Black ski masks, or is that too close to bank robbers and terrorists? If so, he thinks, all the better: fear can be very motivating. Sea-changing, you might say.

  Felix meets Anne-Marie for lunch at the Imp and Pig-Nut in Makeshiweg. She's a little less scrawny, but she's tense. Wired. Percolating with energy. At the same time her eyes look bigger, her expression more open: she looks ten years younger. She's wearing a simple long-sleeved shirt, white. In the play, Miranda traditionally wears white. Beige, at the very least.

  Excellent, thinks Felix. She's melding into the role. Next thing you know she'll be going barefoot even though it's winter. "Beer?" he says. "Burger and fries?"

  "I think I'll just have the walnut and cranberry salad and a cup of green tea," she says. "I've sort of gone off meat." Young girls are doing that now, thinks Felix: his own Miranda is the same. They eat quinoa, flax seeds, almond-milk shakes. Nuts. Berries. Zucchini pasta.

  "Don't go overboard," he says.

  "Overboard?"

  "On the innocence and purity," he says. "You know. The salads." She laughs.

  "Okay, I'll have a beer," she says. "And fries with the salad."

  Felix orders a burger for himself. It's been a while since he's had one. What did they do for protein on that island? he wonders. Oh yes. Fish. That's why Caliban smells like a fish! He's not only the digger in the earth for pig-nuts with his long nails, he's also the fish-catcher. No more dams I'll build for fish. Why has Felix never put that together before?

  "How're you getting on with it?" he asks. "Your part?"

  "It's all there," she says. "From before. In my head. It was just waiting--stored in, you know, the dark backward and abysm of time. One of my roomie's hearing my lines for me. I'm almost word-perfect."

  "I look forward to doing that scene with you," says Felix. "The dark backward scene. The whole play, actually. You're going to ace it!"

  She gives a rueful smile. "Yeah, I know, right? It'll make my career, doing
Miranda with a bunch of crims. You're talking as if it's real. A real production."

  "It is real," he says. "More than real. Hyper-real. You'll see."

  The food arrives, miraculously not late, and there's an interlude of chewing. When he judges the time is right, Felix says, "I've cast the show. Provisionally. There could still be changes. I've brought the list so you'll know who you're playing with, before you meet them. I've made some notes on them for you."

  He hands the paper-clipped pages across the table; she studies them. "So you put their crimes in," she says reproachfully. "Thoughtful of you, but is that fair? You wouldn't do that for normal actors. You used to say we should come to it naked. No preconceptions about each other."

  "Normal actors are on Wikipedia," he says. "Their crimes are their bad reviews. Public knowledge. Anyway, these aren't crimes as such, they're convictions. Different thing. We don't know if they actually did whatever."

  "Okay, wink, nudge, fair enough," she says. She runs her finger down the list. "Assault, embezzlement, fraud. Nice. At least there's no serial killers or baby-fuckers."

  "Those are in the maximum wing," says Felix. "Under special surveillance. For their own protection. My guys don't approve of that kind of thing."

  "Good," says Anne-Marie. "So Caliban won't really try to rape me?"

  "Not a hope," says Felix. "The other guys would stop him. One of them's an accountant." He indicates Gonzalo. "And here's your Ferdinand."

  "Cute," says Miranda. "WonderBoy. He pick that stage name himself?"

  "Not sure," says Felix. "He's got the right face for it though. The fifties after-shave look. Earnest." He's dated himself with fifties after-shave, but she doesn't tease him.

  "So, a fraudster. Ripping off oldies," she says. "That's not pleasant."

  "He didn't injure anyone," says Felix defensively. "Not physically. He was selling fake life insurance to seniors, doing very well at it. They never found out until after they were dead."

  "Say that again?" says Anne-Marie, smirking.

  "All right, it's the beneficiaries who'd find out, but since none of his targets had died yet, that hadn't happened. It was a dumped girlfriend who spilled the beans on him, as I understand."

  "And how many of those were there? Dumped girlfriends?" Already she's sounding possessive: of an unreal actor playing Ferdinand, the facsimile of a non-existent swain.

  " 'Full many a lady,' " says Felix, quoting, "but not a patch on you. You're perfect and peerless, remember?"

  "I know, right?" She laughs again. He'll ask her during rehearsals to reprise that laugh, turn it from a laugh of self-mockery to a laugh of delight.

  "He's obviously a sweet-talker," says Felix. "Some of the seniors came to his trial. They wanted him to get a reduced sentence, be given another chance. They loved him; they thought of him as a son. If anyone can make those flowery love speeches convincing, it'll be WonderBoy."

  "You're telling me something?" says Anne-Marie.

  "Forewarned is forearmed," says Felix. "This kid could talk the pants off a statue of Queen Victoria. He'll want you to be his girlfriend on the outside, smuggle stuff in for him, who knows? Just don't get involved. He's probably already married. To more than one woman," he adds for greater effect.

  "You think I'll fall in love with him, right?" says Anne-Marie. "You think I'm that easy?" She clenches her jaw.

  "No, no," says Felix. "Heaven forefend. But you'll need your wits about you once you're in character. Even a hard-shelled little nut like you."

  "You're in character already," says Anne-Marie, grinning. "Playing my overprotective dad. But you know teenage girls, they desert their adored daddies the minute some young ripped stud heaves into view. Don't blame me, blame my fucking hormones."

  "Okay, truce," says Felix. "You're doing well, only quench the swearing. It's off-limits, remember; especially for Miranda."

  "Agreed," says Anne-Marie. "I'll try." She continues down the list. "I see you're having the song-and-dance."

  "Well, The Tempest spent the whole eighteenth century as an opera," says Felix. "So I pitched it to the guys as a musical. Puts it in more of a context for them. They were having trouble with the fairies and the bee-sucking song and so forth."

  "Yeah, I get that," says Anne-Marie, grinning.

  "I was wondering if you could help out with the choreography. Give them some pointers."

  "Could do," she says. "I take it no ballet. We'll have to see what their bodies can handle." Felix smiles: he likes the word we. "What'll you do about that bee-sucking? It could be a deal-breaker."

  "Remains to be seen," says Felix. "They could redo the wording. In the other plays we've put on, they've written some new material for sequences they felt needed some updating. Using the, ah, the contemporary vernacular."

  "The contemporary vernacular," says Anne-Marie. "You mean trash talk. How now, grave sir?"

  "It's the literacy part of the course," he says a little apologetically. "Writing things. Anyway, judging from the texts we have, Shakespeare's troupes must have done some improvising."

  "You always pushed the boundaries," says Anne-Marie. "What about Iris, Ceres, and Juno? The engagement-party masque. That's a weird scene. It's got a lot of words, it could get boring. I see here you're thinking of dolls?"

  "I can't ask the men to dress up like goddesses. We can montage..."

  "What kind of dolls?"

  "I was hoping you'd help me out," Felix says. "I'm not proficient in that area. Grown-up dolls."

  "You mean, with tits."

  "Well, not babies, or, you know, animals. What would you suggest?" His Miranda hadn't made it past the teddy-bear stage: dolls are a pain point for him.

  "Disney Princesses," says Anne-Marie decisively. "They'd be perfect."

  "Disney Princesses? Such as..."

  "Oh, you know. Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty as in Sleeping, Jasmine from Aladdin in those campy pants, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas in the leather fringes...I had the whole set, once. Not Merida from Brave, though--that was since my time."

  This is a foreign language to Felix. What is Merida from Brave? "It can't be Ariel," he says. "We already have an Ariel."

  "Okay, I'll noodle on it. Could work really well! Who wouldn't want three Disney Princesses to turn up at their engagement party and shower them with blessings? And maybe some glitter confetti," she adds slyly, Felix being notorious for the glitter.

  "I'll be counseled by you," says Felix at his most courtly. "Miss Nonpareil."

  "Save it for the fans," she says, laughing. But he has what he wants: now they're allies.

  Or are they? Maybe her eyes aren't wide because of innocence. Maybe it's fear. He has a split instant of seeing Prospero through the gaze of Miranda--a petrified Miranda who's suddenly realized that her adored father is a full-blown maniac, and paranoid into the bargain. He thinks she's asleep when he's talking out loud to someone who isn't there, but she's heard him doing it, and it scares her. He says he can command spirits, raise storms, uproot trees, open tombs, and cause the dead to walk, but what's that in real life? It's sheer craziness. The poor girl is trapped in the middle of the ocean with a testosterone-sodden thug who wants to rape her and an ancient dad who's totally off his gourd. No wonder she throws herself into the arms of the first sane-looking youth who bumbles her way. Get me out of here! is what she's really saying to Ferdinand. Isn't it?

  No, Felix, it isn't, he tells himself firmly. Prospero is not crazy. Ariel exists. People other than Prospero see him and hear him. The enchantments are real. Hold on to that. Trust the play.

  But is the play trustworthy?

  At the Print Pro shop in Wilmot, Felix makes copies of his revised cast list--just the character names and the actors, no descriptions--to hand out to the actors. Then he drives into Makeshiweg and picks Anne-Marie up outside the house she shares with her three roommates. He gives her the Fletcher Correctional pass Estelle has arranged for behind the scenes, and she follows him in her own car--a
dented silver-gray Ford--up the hill and through the outer gate to the parking lot.

  She clambers out of her car, sets a tentative boot upon the ice. Should he extend a helping hand? No, he should not, he'd be slapped down with a quip. She surveys the chain-link fence, the barbed-wire topping, the searchlights. "This is grim," she says.

  "Yes, it's a prison," he says. "Though 'Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.' But they do contribute to a cage-like ambience."

  "What play is that in?" says Anne-Marie.

  "Not a play," he says. "A poem. The man who wrote it actually was in prison--he chose the wrong political side. It does say in The Tempest, 'Thought is free,' but unfortunately that's in a song sung by three idiots."

  "What a downer," says Anne-Marie. "Dwelling on the dark side these days? Winter getting to you? Cold enough for you?"

  "It's over this way," says Felix. "The entrance. Watch out. Icy."

  --

  "This is Anne-Marie Greenland," he says to Madison and Dylan at Security. "She's a very well-known actress," he lies, "who has kindly agreed to join our acting company. She'll be helping us out with the play. She's got a pass."

  "Nice to meet you," says Dylan to Anne-Marie. "Anything, any trouble, you can call on us."

  "Thanks," says Anne-Marie curtly in her I-can-take-care-of-myself voice.

  "This is like a pager," says Madison to her. "You push this button. Can I clip it onto your--"

  "Got it," says Anne-Marie. "I'll clip it on myself."

  "Then you put your bag through here, and you walk through here. What's that in the bag? The sharp things?"

  "Knitting needles," says Anne-Marie. "For my knitting."

  Felix is taken aback--knitting and Anne-Marie don't seem a fit--but Dylan and Madison smile indulgently: it's a womanly occupation. "Ma'am, sorry, but those have to stay with us," says Dylan.

  "Oh for God's sakes," says Anne-Marie. "I'm going to knit someone to death?"

  "Those needles could be used against you," Madison says in a patient voice. "Anything sharp can. You'd be surprised, ma'am. There are dangerous men in there. You can pick up the bag on the way out."

  "Right," says Anne-Marie. "Just don't mess with my wool while I'm gone." They grin at that, or maybe just at her, because evidently she delights them. Why not? thinks Felix. Despite her razor edge she's a bright light in a dim space. She breaks up the monotones.