Rather than centralizing on postcolonial critiques of Caliban as the colonized ‘Other’ in The Tempest, Atwood reimagines a humanist critique of the Fletcher Correctional Players in Hag-Seed. Inspired by Canada’s reformative prison literature of the Shakespeare Behind Bar program, Atwood adapts the universality of Shakespeare’s language to allow the inmates to transgress their mundane existence through the rehabilitative power of theatre.
In The Tempest, Shakespeare explores the relationship between European civilization and the primitive New World ‘savage’, utilizing the European master-slave trope to envisage Caliban’s subjugation through Prospero’s colonizing tongue. This oppressive power dynamic is seen in Prospero’s threat to Caliban, “If thou neglect or dost unwillingly. What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps/Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar” where the juxtaposition of the first and second person pronouns coupled with the authoritative, high modality rhetoric, highlight the oppressive power dynamic between Prospero and the ‘other’, Caliban. Furthermore, the animalistic imagery connoted by ‘roar’ dehumanizes Caliban, thus reflecting the contextual colonial paradigm in which the ‘other’ were seen as sub-human in such a way that provided moral justification for invasion and missionisation.
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Despite Caliban rebelling against Prospero’s oppression through his cursing, “You taught me language, and my profit won’t/ is, I know how to curse,” his articulation of subjectivity remains mediated within the limits of the colonizer’s tongue. However, Caliban’s inferiority is shaped with ‘new meaning’ through Atwood’s innovative polyphonic humor embedded in her title; in which the subaltern voice of “Hag-Seed” become ‘reimagined’ into giving expression for the multicultural collective voices of the Fletcher inmates. In ‘Evil Bro Antonio,’ Atwood’s playful employment of slam-style poetry and rap subverts the traditional limitations of Shakespeare’s poetic verse, in which SnakeEyez's satirical critique of Prospero’s monologue, “Plus, it’s boring. Even Miranda finds it boring. She almost goes to sleep” leads to his own authentic self-expression, “We tossed him into a leaky boat…Told the folks he went away, took a break, took a vay-cay-shun.”
Here, Atwood emphasizes that despite SnakeEye’z parallel criminality and ‘Othered’ status to Caliban, his capacity to freely mold and appropriate Shakespearean language allows for him to transcend the physical and cultural limitations of his imprisonment. As such, while Shakespeare’s Caliban sees the ‘New World’ language as a reminder of his captivity and submissiveness to colonial authority, Felix’s teaching of The Tempest’s language allows the Fletcher Inmates to move beyond their confinement.
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