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Prologue
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hag-Seed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Theater and The Tempest
Vengeance
Imprisonment and Marginalization
Transformation and Change
Grief
Summary
Analysis
Felix carefully inserts his false teeth into his mouth, but as usual they don’t fit very well. When he smiles, it feels like an “illusion.” Once, he would have been able to call upon a fancy dentist who would fix all these problems, but his insurance plan doesn’t allow that now. He worries that he will suddenly start lisping during the upcoming performance, rendering himself laughable and disrupting the perfect spell of the theater.
In his first appearance, Felix is worried about the different personas he needs to project: he needs to seem like a powerful man without the weakness of bad teeth, and he needs to be able to act well. At this point, Felix’s most prominent character trait is his skill at and preoccupation with creating illusions.
Themes
Felix practices his voice exercises in the mirror, feeling how “deflated” and “reduced” his existence now is. He compares himself to Tony, who is flitting from gala to gala, enjoying public approval and praise from people who once gave these things to Felix.
In describing the transformations in his own life, Felix uses very negative rhetoric, initially casting the idea of change as inherently bad.
Themes
Standing up straight, Felix examines the paunch that he’s just starting to develop. He sternly orders himself to put aside self pity. There’s a lot to do, “plots to be plotted” and “villains to be misled.” Finishing his exercises, he reassures himself that he still has his voice and the power to accomplish what he wants. He can still “make magic.”
Saying that he’s going to make magic, Felix aligns himself with Prospero, the wizard protagonist of The Tempest. He also suggests that his work in the theater is largely illusion and fantasy, which clashes with his later assertions that it’s deeply tied to real life.
Themes
