Constance’s Dream in Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet): Comedic Rewriting of Shakespeare As an Alternative of Tragedy

Abstract

In the rewriting of Shakespeare’s Desdemona and Juliet, Ann-Marie MacDonald attempts to make the genre transformation in her Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). In the tragedy it is typical to categorize female characters into a wicked woman or a submissive victim. In either case, they are doomed to be eventually put into the trap of tragic ending: the death. On the other hand, female characters in Shakespeare’s comedy are usually empowered with wits and wisdom like a Wise Fool. They are different from those in the tragedy who are deprived of their own voice and place by the given fate. MacDonald raises a question of why Desdemona and Juliet are suddenly changed in their characterization regardless of their intrinsic nature. They appear to be driven into the death by the supposedly fate-ordained designation even though such an ending never seems inevitable. That is why MacDonald concentrates on the intriguing vibrations between genre and gender issues in rewriting Shakespeare. In the comedic transformation Desdemona and Juliet escape from the genric restriction in their dramatic action to show their original vitality, though it is sometimes against our general expectations. In this transformative comedy, we should examine what problems are to be corrected and why such an attempt is necessary. Constance Ledbelly, the new heroine of this play, explores the significance of facing our contemporary problems by reviewing the classics from other perspectives. These three plots of Desdemona, Juliet, and Constance merge into one place where the alchemistic happy marriage of past and present, or of their problems and ours, happens in the Shakespearean setting of comedy. The so-called interpretative community is formed to approach such feminist issues not individually but socially through mutual interactions. Constance’s reworking with Shakespeare’s transformed heroines lets us know that the same tragedy as Shakespeare’s is still going on in our reality. Although Constance’s search for the original Author is a way of avoiding her tragic reality at first, it is ultimately a search for the Self through others’ similar examples. Therefore, rewriting suggests an alternative way of interpreting the original with a mirror which reflects our own life as well. That is what MacDonald intends to tell us in her rewriting of Shakespeare.