Characters in Search of an Ending in Laura Wade’s Stage Adaptation of Jane Austen’s The Watsons

Abstract

This article proposes to consider the notion of transmission in relation to the process of adaptation since adaptations, whatever form they take, bring a text—transmit a text—to a new audience while submitting the text to a process of transformation and appropriation. Jane Austen’s relatively small body of work has given rise to countless television or film adaptations, stage adaptations but also narrative expansions and continuations that all revisit Austen’s characters and plots. The intermedial adaptation under consideration here is that of a fragment written by Austen in 1805, The Watsons, by English playwright and screenwriter Laura Wade in 2018. The aim of this article is to examine how Wade’s play establishes and reflects on its own status as an adaptation in the twenty-first century while tackling the issue of authenticity inevitably raised by adaptation and continuation. Following a few remarks on the adaptation of unfinished texts, I will examine the metafiction and metatheatricality at work before focusing on the issue of the ending.