| Summary: | This paper examines a number of contemporary adaptations of The
Tempest – Fred McLeod Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956), Peter Greenaway’s
Prospero’s Books (1991) and Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed (2016) – which indicate
new avenues for exploring the phenomenon of past-and-present re-bonding
through re-telling. If adaptation theory suggests, at its best, that an adaptation
may encourage the public to read the adapted text, if unfamiliar, as Linda
Hutcheon argues, these particular adaptations of Shakespeare’s play, I contend,
take a step forward. Not only do they spur their readers/spectators on to (re)-
read The Tempest, but they elicit (re)considering the relationships amongst
(certain of) Shakespeare’s plays. It is what happened to this author too whilst
reading Hag-Seed, even before reaching the page where Atwood’s protagonist –
Felix qua Prospero actor and figure – contemplates the opportunity offered by
mounting The Tempest to unmask his usurpers. “The play’s the thing”, Felix
thinks in Hamletian terms, allowing the readers familiar with Hamlet to complete
mentally “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. More than being
Shakespeare’s swan song, as typically regarded, The Tempest thus becomes the
metatheatrical light on Hamlet’s own metatheatricality – also courtesy of the
former’s adaptations.
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