Comic and Tragic Heroines, and Fools in
Shakespeare and Film Adaptations
Shaddine Ayoubi 10565604
Supervisor: Dr. Kristine Johanson
Master Thesis in Literature and Culture: Specialization English University of Amsterdam
Table of Contents
Abstract………3 Acknowledgements………..4 Introduction……….5 Chapter 1: The Songs of Comic Heroines in Shakespeare and How They Are Silenced or Sexualized in Film Adaptations………..11 Chapter 2: The Songs of Tragic Heroines in Shakespeare and How They Are Voiced in Film Adaptations………..23 Chapter 3: The Songs of Marginalized Characters in Shakespeare and How They Are Indeed Marginalized in Film Adaptations……….40 Conclusion……….55 Works Cited………..58
Abstract
This Master thesis aims to illustrate that the way directors portray tragic heroines singing is dramatized and that they are voiced for the adaptation while comic heroines singing are silenced and relegated. It will also show that marginalized characters in tragedies and comedies are portrayed quite similar to each other, i.e. they are marginalized in their film adaptations. The six plays by Shakespeare that are discussed are: The Merchant of Venice, Love’s Labour’s Lost,
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Twelfth Night. This study was chosen because songs in film
adaptations have not been discussed often or recently, especially the way women are portrayed when singing, if they sing at all. The results were achieved by first examining the songs in the source texts and critics’ discussions on this. Then the film adaptations were analyzed to see what directors have chosen to do with these songs. From the study we can take that comic heroines are either silenced when their song plays or they are oversexualized while this is not the case in the source text. Tragic heroines on the other hand, are mostly voiced in a way that is fitting to the texts. From the last chapter we can conclude that marginalized characters are voiced but still sidelined, which is also appropriate to the texts. The results and implications are further discussed.
I would like to thank the main person that helped me with this Master Thesis and that is my supervisor and the UvA’s expert on Shakespeare, dr. Kristine Johanson. I am extremely grateful for her time, feedback and help.
And of course there are those in my personal life who have helped me get through this final process of my student career by giving me mental and loving support; a big thanks to: Kristel, Kayssar, Sanaa, Marc, and my brother Weel.
And lastly, but most importantly, I am thankful to my mom and dad for believing in me, loving me, supporting me, admiring me, having fun with me, and being the wind in my back for my whole life and in all aspects of my life.
I, Shaddine Ayoubi, hereby acknowledge that I have read the UvA guidelines on Plagiarism, making this thesis my own work.
The way William Shakespeare wrote his plays with poetic precision, wide-ranging imagination, character development, and various themes all play significant roles in his historic and modern popularity. In this thesis, I explore how Shakespeare is also a particularly musical poet, intensely moving his audience with the language he uses in his songs. Songs appear in various forms; sometimes a character spontaneously sings just two lines and other times a character is asked to perform a song that is more conventional to present audiences’ idea of a song, which contains verses and a chorus. I focus particularly on women and marginalized characters that do the singing in tragedy and comedy because it is interesting to examine how those who are not supposed to sing are portrayed in comparison to those who are. To connect this case to modern times, I compare the songs that are performed by these characters in the plays to their portrayal in modern cinema. The requirement the plays and their film adaptations need to meet for this study are: in two comedies and tragedies, a female character must sing at least one song, or, in the film adaptation, an actress must at least sing one song, the marginalized
characters in comedy and tragedy must at least sing one song in both the play and its adaptation. The songs that are examined come from the following plays:
• The Merchant of Venice (comedy: Portia sings)
• Love’s Labour’s Lost (comedy: actresses sing in its musical adaptation)
• Hamlet (tragedy: Ophelia sings)
• Othello (tragedy: Desdemona sings)
• King Lear (tragedy: for Lear’s fool)
• Twelfth Night (comedy: for Feste, the fool)
With their respective film adaptations and release dates:
• Jack Gold’s The Merchant of Venice (1980) and Michael Radford’s The Merchant of
• Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)
• Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990) and Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) • Orson Welles’ Othello (1951) and Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995) • Michael Elliott’s King Lear (1982) and Nunn’s King Lear (2008)
• Paul Kafno’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will (1988) and Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night or
What You Will (1996)
In this thesis, I argue that the way directors portray tragic heroines singing is dramatized and that they are voiced for the adaptation while comic heroines singing are more silenced and relegated. Marginalized characters in tragedies and comedies, however, are portrayed quite similar to each other. With ‘dramatized’ I mean that the scene containing the female character singing could also make use of non-diegetic sound like mood music. It could also contain specific lightning techniques, like backlights where the main source of light would come from behind that female character. The director could furthermore use specific elements of framing a shot that portrays the actress, as being the one the audience should be looking at. Examples of shots that are used for this purpose are (extreme) close-ups, and medium close-ups; in addition, the shot would be a one-shot, i.e. a shot framing only one person. Another element that is used to help the audience focus their attention to the woman that is singing is the use of eyeline matching (“Basic Glossary of Film Terms”), where other characters in the scene look at that specific female
character.
Analyzing how female characters are portrayed when singing is important for the adaptation because the audience might not read the play and still want the Shakespearean experience. Moreover, it is astonishing that Shakespeare has female characters singing in the Elizabethan era because women were not allowed to sing in public (Lathrop 4); directors should not deprive the viewer from this, especially since in modern times, women are free to sing. It is
musicians though, that would sing their masters songs if they were requested; they were also paid for this service. Fools, on the other hand, have different functions for both their masters and the audience. Their masters paid them for entertainment purposes, like storytelling but also for their songs, just like the court’s jester of that time. The audience however would look and listen to them trusting them to speak the truth (Evans 406-7) or laugh at their jokes. The audience thus considers the Shakespearean fool as a wise man who sometimes acts foolishly on purpose.
As stated before, it was frowned upon for women to sing in the Elizabethan era; fools or clowns were expected to sing. So it would be interesting to see what the similarities and
differences are between characters that were not supposed to sing and those that were, on the contrary, expected to sing and relate this to the adaptations to analyze how they are depicted. The similarity of the portrayal of marginalized characters could be seen as them having the same functions in comedy and tragedy. These characters could be portrayed as a fool’s role mentioned before, and they could be depicted as similar because in many productions they stand out from other characters, because of their clothes or because we hear and see them either breaking the fourth wall or talking to their self. An example is Lear’s fool in Elliott’s King Lear who wears a big floppy hat with white makeup on his face, and breaks the fourth wall whenever he is alone.
It is actually quite a pity that the musical The Tempest does not have a film adaptation where a woman plays Ariel; all of them are played by men. The solution for this lack of female voice is Love’s Labour’s Lost, which only has one film adaptation, and not a critically acclaimed one. In the original text there is not a woman who sings but there are in the film adaptation, so the film will be my focus for this comedy. The difference with the other comparisons is that I will be comparing this play to only one film. Other comedy plays either have no film adaptation, or they lack a woman who sings, or both these explanations. The reason Hamlet and Othello were chosen
for the tragedies is for the tragic heroines, Ophelia and Desdemona, who are both known for their songs. Ophelia goes mad and starts singing and Desdemona sings the Willow Song. Twelfth
Night and King Lear were also chosen because they are known for the songs performed by the
fools.
The types of films that are investigated – both A pictures and B pictures (Benshoff 269-70) – could have an impact on song. Branagh’s Hamlet is an example of an A picture because of its relatively large budget, big stars, well-known director, and aspiration towards quality and artistry. Here, Branagh is a hyphenate auteur (Benshoff 282) because he not only directs the film, but also stars in it as the Danish prince, and he adapted the screenplay – though it stayed very true to its source. His Hamlet, therefore, is not the only screen adaptation where he was a hyphenate auteur. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, he is the director, script adapter, actor, and producer. Nunn’s
King Lear is an example of a B picture: a relatively cheap film, although Ian McKellen stars as
the old king. This difference matters because a director of an A picture could decide to focus on filmmaking and scenery because he has the budget to use all kinds of special effects, which could work against the actual text due to cutting (parts of) songs for example. Or it could be that B pictures have such a small budget that they cannot fit the entire play in a film and thus have to cut text as well. The (parts of) songs that are cut and what these cuts do to the film are interesting here then.
The idea that these A and B film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays are the same yet different, could be a cause for the postmodern ideology of cultural exhaustion (Benshoff 274). These films are the same because they are adaptations of the same source text and sometimes films take in the entire literal text to stay as faithful to it as possible, which makes these
adaptations even more similar. They are paradoxically also different because they always show something new, be it a new interpretation of some lines or scenes, or a new interpretation of a
character. So whenever there is a plausible new interpretation of a play it should not be surprising to reboot the play in order to show this interpretation to the world. One of the reasons a producer would want to reboot or film a sequel is that they are assured they will attract audiences and consequently earn money. So such films are easy money; they do not require much originality or time. For Shakespeare’s plays though, I think we can see them as open texts with many
interpretations where the film adaptations are something new and refreshing if the director’s interpretation is radical or original enough, for example Joss Whedon’s Much Ado about Nothing from 2012; it is in black-and-white, the songs are sung by a woman instead of a man, and
Conrade is played by a woman instead of a man.
Before analyzing the film adaptations, I will first determine the significance of the songs in the source text for each play examined below. The songs’ importance will be realized by examining how songs are used. I will examine the songs by giving a close-reading of them. Then I will study how the film adaptations translate the songs to determine how the directors
interpreted them and if it is along the same line as that of critics. Questions that will be answered are: What does the song say? To whom is the song referring? Where in the play is it sung? Who sings it? How is it relevant? How is it supposed to make the characters/audience feel? What is its message?
The thesis will consist of three main chapters. In the first chapter, I argue that the comic heroines from The Merchant of Venice and Love’s Labour’s Lost are silenced in their film
adaptations even though they have an important voice in their source texts. The second chapter is where I discuss the tragic heroines in Othello and Hamlet. I claim that when they are singing they are generally portrayed as quite important and vital to the film versions, just like in Shakespeare’s texts. The third chapter is where I examine the marginalized characters in King Lear and Twelfth
final part will be the final Conclusion to the whole thesis. For each of the chapters I will first analyze the songs and give a close-reading. Then I will move on to analyze the songs in relation to their film adaptations. The next chapter is thus on the comic heroines in The Merchant of
Venice and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Chapter 1: The Songs of Comic Heroines in Shakespeare and How They Are Silenced or Sexualized in Film Adaptations
In this chapter I argue that Portia in film adaptations is silenced because she does not sing while in the source text the song helps her be voiced, also when there is use of
non-Shakespearean songs and female characters do sing, they are depicted sexually and are thus marginalized. With ‘sexually’ I mean that the women are sexualized according to the male gaze, be it because of their clothes or the way they were directed to act. Laura Mulvey claims that the male gaze “projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (4). In other words, directors would portray female characters in such a matter that would be attractive to a heterosexual male/lesbian audience and would thus marginalize the woman.
Portia’s Song in The Merchant of Venice and its Portrayal in Film Adaptations In this part, I argue that Portia’s song helps diffuse a serious moment in the play and helps Bassanio choose the right casket. But in film adaptations, Portia does not sing and directors do not put an emphasis on the comic heroine but rather portray the scene as various shots showing different characters, not really focusing on anyone. This depiction helps silencing Portia. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Portia’s late father designed a test, which contains of a gold casket, a silver casket, and a lead casket. Each suitor has to choose one and the one who picks the correct one, can marry Portia. When Bassanio is about to make his choice a song is played which is different to how other suitors experienced their choices since they made it
without any commentary. Many critics have hence argued that the song actually gives Bassanio a hint to choose the lead casket, which is the correct one because Portia truly likes him.
There are two possibilities on who actually sings the song on Fancy. Portia’s song can be found after she explains the rules of her father’s test to Bassanio. The following are parts of the lyrics to the song:
[Here music] A song the whilst Bassanio comments on the caskets to himself
Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply.
It is engend’red in the eye, With gazing fed, and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies. (III. 2. 63-91)
The song first wonders where desire comes from, how it is created and sustained, and then it answers these questions by claiming it comes from the eyes and is sustained by gazing. The first possibility is that someone from her household sings the song. This option is what both Jack Gold and Michael Radford – the directors to two film adaptations – have interpreted. It is weakened though by an earlier utterance from Portia in the same speech: “Let music sound while he doth make his choice; / Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end, / Fading in music” (III. 2. 43-45). Portia asks specifically for music to be played and not for a song to be sung. Other characters in Shakespeare’s plays ask literally for a song if they want to hear a song, like Orsino in Twelfth
Night who orders for “the song we had last night” (II. 4. 402, italics added). So there are two entities here, music that is played by her musicians, and the song that Portia herself sings, which
1 The 2003 Cambridge edition of The Merchant of Venice edited by M. M. Mahood was used throughout this thesis.
2 The 2004 Cambridge edition of Twelfth Night edited by Elizabeth Story Donno was used throughout this thesis.
is the second and more plausible possibility. The song is furthermore written in Portia’s dialogue and in the first-person, which is about infatuation and thus refers to her current situation. Another reason why it is more plausible that Portia sings is that, since Bassanio and Portia desire each other and they would wed they could be seen as two people becoming one. Then it would make sense that Bassanio would make a “swan-like end” if he choses wrongly where Portia would be the mute swan who sings before her death and therefore also before Bassanio’s.
What would then be the song’s function? Critics have previously indicated that “through this song Portia meant to convey a hint to Bassanio” (Gray 458). The hint is that the words bred, head, engend’red, and fed all rhyme with lead, which would be the right casket to pick. Bassanio would thus pick up on this hint, not by the song’s words or ideas, but simply by its sound. The reason why Portia gives him a hint is because she desires Bassanio, which was not the case with the other suitors, she took charge and made sure that it would not be for want of trying if he chooses wrongly. Eric Rasmussen has noted that it is also clear from Bassanio’s ponderings on the caskets after the song that he has noted Portia’s hint: “Consciously or unconsciously,
Bassanio has absorbed two of the key rhyme words from the song and incorporated them into his own musings on the caskets. The echoes of these rhyme words clearly indicate that Bassanio has, indeed, heard Portia’s song and the important clues which it provides” (12). The rhyme words are: “To be the dowry of a second head, / The skull that bred them in the sepulchre” (III. 2. 95-6, italics added). Bassanio here talks about the gold casket, which he discharges because he refuses to be deceived by decoration. It is plausible that Bassanio hears the song even though he is standing in front of the caskets pondering which one to chose. Because Portia uses words that rhyme with lead throughout the entire song, Bassanio could only hear one of them and thus understand what she is trying to convey. The song’s rhymes thus indicate that Portia is a confident and voiced woman in the play.
Conversely, there are also critics who argue that Bassanio has other reasons then Portia’s clues to choose the lead casket. Mahood claims that: “it [the melancholy song about Fancy] does not impugn Bassanio’s constancy. Rather it is just because his love is not a passing fancy that he is able to generalise from his feelings as a lover in reflections upon the specious and the real; reflections which bring him inevitably to the right choice of casket” (34). In other words,
Bassanio chooses the right casket simply because he sees past the materialistic aspects which he believes are not mandatory for true love and hence eliminates those obvious choices for the unpretentious one. In this case, Bassanio would not need Portia’s hints for his decision.
All together, I think it is acceptable to say that the song could be seen as a combination of Portia slightly giving clues to Bassanio because she thinks he is the one: “I could teach you / How to choose right” (III. 2. 10-1), and as a faint distraction from such a grave moment in the play. But, regarding Portia’s clues, Erin Minear claims in her book Reverberating Song in
Shakespeare and Milton that “such “cheating” fits neither Portia’s character nor the solemnity of
the moment and – more crucially – that an audience would be unlikely to notice anything so subtle” (43). I agree that Portia “cheating” would not fit her character since she also states that she will co-operate with being “obtained by the manner of [her] father’s will” (I. 2. 88) and that if she helps Bassanio she will be “forsworn. / So will [she] never be” (III. 2. 11-2). But love has made her consider her own feelings first and is not like she explicitly tells him to choose the lead casket. And the seriousness of the moment where Bassanio is about to choose is not that grim because the song takes away some of that gravity and gives the scene a more pleasant and affable atmosphere. Also, Minear heavily underestimates the audience’s ability to notice the rhymes, especially when the audience watches the play being performed, be it in film or on stage. Shakespeare uses lots of puns, wordplay, rhyme, and other stylistic features in his plays. The audience would therefore pay attention and look out for such auditory aspects.
The Song in Gold’s Adaptation. Jack Gold’s film version of The Merchant of Venice, which was
released in 1980, silences Portia (played by Gemma Jones) by not letting her sing the song on Fancy. Shakespeare is the only one who is given credit for writing, which means that the film is faithful to its source text since it was not adapted. In Act III scene 2 the characters are in Portia’s house, in the room where the caskets are. From the looks of the set and properties, it is obvious that this adaptation is a B picture, but Gold did not cut any part of the text but still chose to let a musician sing the song instead. When Portia starts talking about music the camera zooms in on Jones’ face, though some members of her household are still visible in the background. The camera zooms in until it has Jones’ face in a close-up. Gold is building up the tension for the scene and emphasizing Portia’s emotions towards Bassanio because the audience can see how she babbles with perceptible emotion to win more time before he choses the casket.
Though Portia does not sing the song but an unknown musician does, Bassanio is still tipped off. In the casket scene, the camera cuts to Bassanio who is standing in front of the three caskets thinking about them. There is also a man sitting on a bench with a guitar in the
background who has not been on screen before. This part of the room, which looks like an indoor garden, was also not shown before. The first notes are heard and the audience is surprised
because the man starts playing the guitar and singing out of the blue. Gold thus interpreted this song as a musician singing it instead of Portia. The problem with such an interpretation is that, as was mentioned before, Portia is giving out hints in the song; how would the musician know that she fancies Bassanio? She does mention it explicitly in her speech, but the musician is nowhere near her to hear this particular speech, so there is no way he would know of her intentions. It becomes more confusing when Bassanio turns his head towards the musician and thus shows that he is listening to the song and its clues. The camera then zooms in on the musician where, after a
while members of Portia’s household – three women and two men – surround him in half a circle where the camera once again zooms out on the ensemble whilst they sing “Ding, dong, bell” (1:22:05-1:22:26) together. When Bassanio and Portia in the background are shown again, Bassanio is shown still looking and thus listening to the musician. Portia however is shown gazing at Bassanio, possibly to see if he got the song’s message. Bassanio’s “So” in his speech “So may the outward shows be least themselves” (III. 2. 73) could therefore be interpreted as him drawing the conclusion from the song that the lead casket is the correct one. Gold’s adaptation thus silences Portia by not letting her sing the song on Fancy and lets her watch passively at Bassanio; Gold thereby takes away an important part of Portia’s agency.
The Song in Radford’s Adaptation. This film, which was released in 2004, 24 years after Gold’s
version, also silences Portia (played by Lynn Collins) by not letting her sing the song. This adaptation omits much of its source text; Michael Radford both directed and adapted the script for the screen. This adaptation is much different than Gold’s version. It focuses more on religious difference: in the beginning, the film explains how Jews were treated in 16th century Venice. It also feels more like a film than a play because of its use of music, space, and retaining of the fourth wall. Radford omitted much of Shakespeare’s text though he did leave important aspects of Portia’s character in his screenplay. In this manner, Portia does say that she “could teach you [Bassanio] / How to choose right, but then I’d break my oath. / That will I never do” (1:00:31-1:00:39). Radford portrays this fragment by picturing a close-up of Collins where she also stands by herself on a balcony with non-diegetic music in the background. Then Bassanio and Portia talk to each other where after, together with members of both households, they walk to another part of Portia’s house where the caskets are. During this walk, music starts to play and the song on Fancy begins. When the group is in the room with the caskets it is neither Portia who sings nor
any of the other people in this group. The audience only hears a high-pitched voice singing these words but sees no one moving their lips, which shows that whoever is singing, is being
marginalized. After a while the camera cuts to a musician and to someone wearing masculine clothes and thus the audience realizes that the person singing is not actually a woman but a boy. The credits after the film show that it is indeed Ben Crawley of around 15 years old who sings the song. Unlike the characters in Gold’s version, the characters in this adaptation do not
acknowledge the singer or the musician. The camera shows Portia anxiously breathing and not wanting to look which casket Bassanio chooses. Bassanio on the other hand is shown pondering on his choice. All the while, the boy keeps singing, but not the entire song. Radford edited it in such a way that it becomes even clearer that the song is giving Bassanio clues because he only sings the first four lines. Similar to Gold, Radford made the song come out of nowhere, without an introduction. In the 2004 version it is more random because Radford cut Portia’s lines about music and because the song starts as non-diegetic which then turns into diegetic. All in all, Gold silences Portia in his adaptation by not letting her sing, which thus makes her seem more passive than she actually is in Shakespeare’s text.
Women Singing in Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost
In this section, I argue that Branagh portrays the lead ladies as oversexualized and attractive to the male gaze, as mentioned before, when they are singing. In Love’s Labour’s Lost there is not a lot of singing present except for the ending where there are two songs about Spring and Winter, which are indisputably not sung by women. Because this play is not particularly a musical play, it is very interesting to examine Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation, which was inspired by the musicals from the 1930s. Branagh directed, produced, adapted the text, and plays the role of Berowne in the 2000 adaptation. Branagh uses the original text but omits much of it; he added popular songs
and dance as compensation. In an interview with Ramona Wray and Mark Thornton Burnett in 1999, Branagh said: “the selection of the songs, … are all very particular and specific to moments in the play” (175). He also explained why he chose to incorporate musical aspects in a
Shakespearean play, which might be considered odd since in this case there is interaction between Elizabethan English and modern English. He states: “In [the] case [of Love’s Labour’s
Lost], [I was] trying to find a world … where I could believe the themes in this play and the plot
of this play could sit in a way that was pleasing for the audience (173)”. Branagh indeed provides the same themes in his film but it seems that he puts some special emphasis on some. He puts emphasis on the themes of sex and femininity, which will be discussed further.
He then explains why he decided to choose these classic songs: “there’s an endless number of times, actually, where the actual lyrics of the songs refer directly to and use words that are used [in the play]…. So the songs were pre-chosen” (175). Some critics are of the opinion that this interlinking of Shakespeare’s poetry with dance and popular songs is what makes Branagh’s experiment so strong. It is possible that the original ideas he had on these subjects can even be seen as avant-garde but there is one specific area where Branagh catches the audience off their guards: his depiction of the female characters, especially when they sing and dance. He pictures them as oversexualized, flirting constantly with the men in the film.
This oversexualization is most clear in the masked scene of Act V scene 2 when the ladies want to playfully fool their men. With ‘oversexualization’ I mean that the women are sexually objectified, i.e. made into an object for the men’s sexual use. The actual fooling is when the Princess (Alicia Silverstone) starts singing “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” by Irving Berlin, which is about enjoying the present moment, and the others join her. While Boyet is about to finish his speech about the ladies’ intentions, the music changes from high to low keys. The pianist smirks at the camera to show that he too is in on their plans. The lights also change; they
go from everyday use to sultry red. The women also have different dresses on; short satin dresses with plunging necklines, black pairs of pantyhose, heels, red lips, and of course their masks. This manner of dress would appeal to the male gaze. The lords however could also appeal to the female gaze but it is not so strongly shown as the women. The men namely wear tight white undershirts, long black pants, and also masks. This manner of dress would appeal to the female gaze mostly because of their upper bodies. When the song starts the women stand behind a chair while the men walk to them and grab them by their waists. The camera pans to the actors’ waists where the men’s upper legs are between the women’s legs. They move slowly and smooth, sexualizing the scene. They also switch partners making it look like an orgy, there is touching everywhere. Most of the time, the camera stays focused on the actors’ bodies, making it difficult for the audience to see who is touching whom. Soon, the women are sensually sitting on the floor while the men are crawling to them. Then the ladies sit on their chairs with its back between their legs and the men join them by sitting right behind them on the same chairs. A very explicit moment in this scene is when the camera pans from Silverstone’s head while it obviously shows her neckline, following the king’s (Alessandro Nivola) movement from her head to her legs. This moment happens to the other three couples as well. The camera furthermore shows a montage of more touching, kissing, and licking of body parts focusing on the female body. Another moment that shows the audience that this scene was one big orgy is when after the song is finished the four women are seen smoking with big smiles on their faces. This activity is the classic
Hollywood depiction of what happens after sex. This scene thus shows that Branagh interpreted Shakespeare’s scene as a scene about sex; while in the source text each woman tells the others that her respective man has vowed his love to her, though they also disguise themselves, but not to sexually trick them, more to taunt the men to expose their deception. After the ladies’
2. 2933) which shows how much she enjoyed their victory on wit over the men instead of victory on sex.
Another scene that seems to attract the male gaze and therefore marginalizes the ladies is when they wake up and go for a swim in the swimming pool, where only girls are allowed at this time. Silverstone is first seen in a medium shot in bed with a big teddy bear. She – and her teddy bear – then wake up cheerfully and she starts singing “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free)” by Irving Berlin. The other ladies also wake up and join her in her merriment, dancing, and jumping on their beds. In a next shot the ladies have changed in a gold swimsuit and gold cap. There are other women in this moment who are filling the space with their synchronized swimming. While all the ladies are in the water, the camera focuses on the female bodies and not their faces, just like the scene where they are singing “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”. This scene ends with all the ladies squealing and jumping out of happiness. I think this song really captures the ladies’ role in this entire film and thus also Branagh’s interpretation of the play because they are mostly shown as objects to be gazed upon or to seduce the lords. This female-male binary is also what Friedman has claimed, stating that “As with Branagh’s shot selection and choreography, there is hardly a moment in the arrangement of the film’s music that does not in some sense contribute to the viewer’s awareness of the gender dichotomy and the ultimate pairing of male and female” (32).
Altman has come up with certain propositions for American musicals, which could help explain why Branagh chose to sexualize the female characters. According to him, “the male-female duality established by these scenic parallels extends to every component of the American film musical’s composition, which tends to reinforce the genre’s impulse to unite a man and a woman in loving matrimony” (32). It would be fair to say that this unison is not only adhered in
3 The 2009 Cambridge edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost edited by William C. Carroll was used throughout this thesis.
the American musical but also to Shakespeare’s comedies: they always end with
heteronormativity. In Branagh’s case, he shows heteronormativity constantly with the songs he chose instead of the dialogues the characters would be having in the source text. There are, however, also scenes that show homoerotic tensions between the four lords and four ladies. An example of this is when the men find out that they have fallen in love with their respective ladies and start singing “I’m in Heaven” while they are literally being pulled into the sky. It is a happy song that is happily performed which makes the audience wonder about the social affairs that have happened between the men. The homoerotic scene that applies to the ladies is the previously discussed moment with “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free)”. Both Shakespeare’s comedies and the American film musical seem to imply that the only state that a human being would be happy in is when someone of the opposite sex loves them.
Another one of Altman’s propositions is that he suggests that “shot selection, dance choreography, and musical arrangements recapitulate the basic male-female duality and thereby keep it constantly in the forefront of the spectator’s mind” (35). All three techniques Altman discusses can be observed in Branagh’s adaptation. He furthermore even emphasizes them by omitting most of secondary characters’ dialogue. The audience rarely gets a glimpse of Boyet or Moth but when they do their dialogue must have some relation to the pairing of the main
characters. It has already been discussed how shot selection and dance choreography and therefore also musical arrangements reiterate this pairing, most prominently in “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”.
Conclusion
In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice Portia sings the song about Fancy to give Bassanio hints to choose the correct casket and to ease off the tense moment in the play. In the two film
adaptations, Portia is not the one who sings this song. Gold chose to let a musician sing the song and Radford decided to let a boy sing it with a high-pitched voice.
In the musical adaptation of the non-musical Love’s Labour’s Lost, Branagh emphasizes the way that the women are distractions to the studying men. Furthermore when the women are singing, Branagh directed them to act perceptibly feminine and sexually. Because there are not any songs the ladies and lords sing in the source text Branagh took a big risk trying to depict that in the 21st century it is completely normal for non-marginalized characters, especially women, to burst out in singing instead of having their dialogue.
All in all, comic heroines in film adaptations of Shakespeare’s comedies are either not directed to sing or are directed to act in an oversexualized manner. All three directors thus discard that Portia desires Bassanio and is not afraid to show it, and discard the ladies’ wit in Love’s
Labour’s Lost to oversexualize them, which make these comic heroines seem inferior to how they
are portrayed in Shakespeare.
The next chapter will examine how, on the other hand, tragic heroines are depicted in Shakespeare’s tragedies and their respective film adaptations. It will take into account Desdemona in Othello and Ophelia in Hamlet.
Chapter 2: The Songs of Tragic Heroines in Shakespeare and How They Are Voiced in Film Adaptations
In this chapter I argue that tragic heroines singing in film adaptations are depicted as voiced and significant characters, which is not always the case with comic heroines. This depiction is important for the adaptation because it acknowledges the fact that Shakespeare voiced his female characters by letting them sing and the director does not silence them. Film adaptations make use of a range of techniques to dramatize the scene with Ophelia’s songs. These
techniques include the use of non-diegetic sound like mood music or even no music at all. In particular, if a song is performed a cappella, the scene becomes more intense since the audience only hears the actress’s voice and is thus directed to listen to what she is saying. Film adaptations also use specific lightning techniques, like backlights where the main source of light would come from behind that female character. The director could also use specific elements of framing a shot that portrays the actress, as being the one the audience should be looking at. Examples of shots that are used for this purpose are (extreme) close-ups, and medium close-ups; in addition, the shot would be a one-shot, i.e. a shot framing only one person. Another element that is used to help the audience focus their attention to the woman that is singing is called eyeline matching, where other characters in the scene look at that specific female character. This chapter will first focus on Ophelia in Hamlet and then on Desdemona in Othello.
Ophelia’s Songs in Hamlet and their Portrayal in Film Adaptations
In the tragedy of Hamlet, Ophelia starts singing songs when she finds out that Hamlet has killed her father, which drives her mad. Gertrude, Horatio, and a gentleman are in the castle when Ophelia walks in distracted. When Claudius also enters, Ophelia starts to sing. For an Elizabethan audience, the sight of a noble woman singing parts of then-popular songs would have been exceptionally surprising. These songs are, in several ways, also an indication of Ophelia’s
madness. The most obvious indication of her madness is social conventions; women of Ophelia’s rank would not sing but more likely “command their servants to do so” (64), observes Frederick W. Sternfeld, which is what occurs elsewhere in Shakespeare, like Orsino commanding Feste to sing in Twelfth Night. Public singing by the nobility would have been viewed as unwelcome and inappropriate as it would upset the social hierarchy. Sternfeld also notes that these songs “a nurse may have taught her; [they are] not the aristocratic ayre, [because they are] crude songs of the
common folk” (65). By reproducing them, Ophelia surrenders her power and rank, and is
therefore somehow freed from the rules they bring with them. Because mad Ophelia freely sings and acts, she has a very distinctive voice in this scene, a voice of madness and of loss. Another way her singing indicates her derangement is visible in how she handles interruptions; she addresses them and then continues. When Gertrude interrupts her in the first song, she addresses her, but then her dead father replaces the ballad’s absent lover present in the fist stanza. The way she handles them, in a way also shows that she feels free enough to stop her song and start again after commenting on her audience. Lastly, the songs are ethically improper according to social norms concerning a young aristocratic woman because some of them mention extramarital affairs.
In the first song, Ophelia’s madness shows because in the middle of the song the song’s addressee changes from her absent lover, i.e. Hamlet, to her late father. A fragment of the lyrics is:
How should I your true love know From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon. …
He is dead and gone lady, He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone. (IV. 5. 23-324)
4 The 2003 Cambridge edition of Hamlet edited by Philip Edwards was used throughout this thesis. This edition is based on the second quarto and the first Folio. The songs in Zeffirelli and Branagh do not differ from the Cambridge edition.
In the first stanza Ophelia is trying to find out how she could make a distinction between real love and other kinds of love. Fiona Benson argues that “Shakespeare makes Ophelia a
practitioner of the ballads as well as a ballad character, and in doing so demonstrates a process of feminization, by which the ballad material available is modified to fit a female situation” (83). In other words, she uses and adapts the song to her own liking in which she refers to herself in the first-person. She would want to make the distinction probably because she was in love with Hamlet but he tells her that he does not love her back. The song escalates quickly in the second and following stanzas where Ophelia sings about death, which is an obvious reference to her dead father. So here onwards the “he” refers to Polonius who takes the place of the absent lover. She starts with “your true love” which refers to Hamlet, then Gertrude interrupts her, who probably confuses her and thus continues to sing about her father since Hamlet and Polonius were the two closest men she knew and lost. Ophelia directs this ballad to Gertrude since she starts singing it after she finds the queen; she asks first: “Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?” and Gertrude answers with: “How now Ophelia?” (IV. 5. 21-2) which is her queue apparently to start singing. It could be that she is trying to ask for her help since Gertrude might know if Ophelia is her son’s true love or because she is looking for some female companion. Because Hamlet is absent, her father is dead, and her mind is playing tricks on her, she links the two men together and comes up with this song. This ballad is all in all a moment of grief for Ophelia.
The second ballad expresses how emotional she is about her father’s death but it also shows some of mad Ophelia’s freedom. A fragment of the second song Ophelia sings goes as follows:
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door;
Let in the maid that out a maid Never departed more. (IV. 5. 48-55)
It seems like this song is directed to everyone in the scene while no one actually listens to its lyrics. Claudius interrupts her, but she is determined to finish her song: “Without an oath I'll make an end on’t” (IV. 5. 57). After the song is over, Claudius responds by wondering: “How long hath she been thus?” (IV. 5. 67), without anyone acknowledging the lyrics of the song. This song suggests that Ophelia and Hamlet had had sexual relations because a maid went in a
bedroom but did not get out as one. But I think it should not be interpreted as if it confirms this kind of relationship between the two because she could be using the words “door” and “more” simply for their rhyme. Additionally, because the song consists of three voices: a narrator, a woman, and a man, what should be taken out of this song is that Ophelia’s words are intensely emotional because they show what an impact the news of her father’s death has had on her.
Just like the first ballad, the final song clearly shows Ophelia’s grief for her father; she repeatedly sings that “He is gone,” and “will not a come again” (IV. 5. 192, 185). These are also Ophelia’s final words before she drowns herself. Her father’s death and Hamlet’s melancholy have affected her in such a manner that she cannot think straight and ultimately kills herself. And again, it makes the audience and the other characters feel sorry for her.
The function of all three songs is quite similar. As previously mentioned they are all evidence of Ophelia’s madness but the songs also show that in the last moments before her death, she has gained some freedom that she did not have at all before she went mad. The way they appear ghostlike, like no one expecting them and out of nowhere, during this scene also
strengthens this argument of her madness since there is a consensus that Hamlet is mad because he sees the ghost of his dead father. Bruce Johnson gives another reason why Shakespeare would want to add these songs in the play: “Shakespeare is using popular music in ways that have become increasingly common in recent film: to evoke shared memories, but in ways that suggest the disruption of the order they represented. … [T]hey would thus carry associations for the audience that would be essential in their contribution to meaning and affect, including
proclaiming the full extent of Ophelia’s derangement” (262). The songs evoke shared memories because the Elizabethan audience would know them and they suggest the disruption of order because Ophelia sings songs that are supposedly popular with the lower class, which shows that in her freedom she simply does not care that these songs are from the lower class. The shared memoires are important because everyone would be free in this way to think about what the songs remind them of and would thus result in many stories. These songs are thus supposed to alarm the audience and the other characters in the play that Ophelia has changed significantly since last time she was present, which was during Hamlet’s play. The next part of this chapter will in detail examine Ophelia singing in two film adaptations: Hamlet directed by Zeffirelli and by Branagh. I argue that they both show Ophelia as a voiced character when she sings.
Ophelia’s Songs in Zeffirelli’s Version. Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of Hamlet, which was
released in 1990, portrays Ophelia as having more freedom and a stronger voice in the scene where she sings. Shakespeare, Zeffirelli, and Christopher De Vore are given credit for writing the screenplay, which means that there should be some differences with the source text; the order of the songs is changed and “For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy” is left out, and it is directly evidenced the first time Ophelia sings. After the scene where Hamlet’s companions swear on his sword, Zeffirelli cuts to Ophelia (played by Helena Bonham Carter) walking into a room while
she is embroidering and singing the first part of “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day”. In this scene, Polonius is still alive and Ophelia therefore still sane. She is wearing an off-white dress with a pink undershirt and her hair is tied up; she looks like a healthy young woman. She enters the room embroidering like she does not have a care in the world. Her tone while singing is also carefree. When she sings “And I a maid at your window / To be your Valentine” (00:36:15-00:36:25), she is trying to get a thread through a needle, which could be interpreted as Ophelia not being a ‘maid’ anymore5. After this moment, she looks up like she senses she is not the only one in the room. She acts surprised because indeed there is someone with her; the camera cuts to a melancholic Hamlet. The reason why this scene is important and dramatic is firstly because there is no use of music; only the words to the song are audible, which directs the audience’s attention to the lyrics. Secondly, there is sufficient light to clearly show any kind of emotion Ophelia is having, which also directs the audience’s attention to Ophelia’s emotions. Thus Zeffirelli prioritizes Ophelia here instead of Hamlet.
Another scene that portrays Ophelia as a significant character in the film is when she sings “How should I your true love know”. Zeffirelli clearly makes it visible to the audience the
moment Ophelia has gone mad mostly because her physical appearance changes significantly. She walks barefoot and wears ragged clothes that are wet at the bottom, which could be Zeffirelli foreshadowing her drowning. Her hair is loose and wild, she has dark circles under her eyes, white lips, she barely blinks, and lastly her gait communicates instability, as if she is not sure of where she is. She sings this song to a random guard who is of no importance in the film. This scene is sexualized which also strengthens the fact that Ophelia has gone mad. Namely, she touches the guard’s face while singing and then grabs a strap from his uniform at his waist and
5 Zeffirelli has an interest in a Freudian reading of Hamlet, which is also noticeable in the bedroom scene with Hamlet and his mother.
moves it suggestively. Gertrude watches from a window, and another guard has to interfere to take her away. This scene is also important and dramatic because there is no background noise, so it focuses on the words and the camera concentrates on Ophelia, which places her in the center of the screen. Gulsen Sayin Teker argues that “This prolonged scene of seduction pictures
Ophelia as liberated from her conventional female roles, namely that of an innocent and obedient daughter, a faithful lover, and a good sister. At that point in the film Zeffirelli seems to be saying that sexual frustrations and oppressions were among the reasons for her madness” (“Empowered by Madness”). Another way Zeffirelli shows her madness is that Ophelia sings part of “How should I your true love know” and the rest of “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day” in one scene. The combination of these two songs shows her confusion and therefore also her madness.
The final song Ophelia sings is the second stanza of “How should I your true love know” where she seems determined and confident, something the audience has not seen from her before. Because these are new features for Ophelia, the scene becomes more dramatic since the audience is not used to seeing her behave in this way. In this cut she is inside the castle looking for
Gertrude since she asks twice: “Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?” (1:33:29-1:33:40). When she finds her she continues with the first ballad. Here she is much stronger because she looks determinedly at Gertrude, as if Ophelia is blaming her for her father’s death. She walks with long strong strides towards her while Gertrude is shown being shocked and possibly even afraid of Ophelia, as if she secretly agrees with her tantrum. And here again there is no
background music, which prioritizes her because the audience can fully focus on Ophelia’s words and her behavior.
From this adaptation can be concluded that even though Zeffirelli has changed the order of the songs and left out “For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy”, it is still clear that his tragic heroine has a dramatic and important role in this film especially when she sings, Ophelia may
even appear madder because of how she interlinks the songs, as was discussed when she combines “How should I your true love know” with “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day”. Zeffirelli wants to show his audience how her father’s death affects Ophelia, i.e. her madness.
Ophelia’s Songs in Branagh’s Version. This four-hour long film was released in 1996, six years
after Zeffirelli’s adaptation, and shows that Branagh had enough time to dramatize Ophelia to make her an important tragic heroine. Kenneth Branagh is here a hyphenate auteur since he produced, directed, adapted, and stars as Hamlet in it. This adaptation is faithful to the source text, which means that Ophelia (played by Kate Winslet) sings the songs at exactly the same moment as the second quarto and first Folio. Branagh’s version is set in the nineteenth century, which provides him with a stereotype of the mad woman into which his Ophelia fits; hence his use of padded cells, straightjackets, and cold showers on the mad Ophelia. When she is looking for Gertrude, two people carry her – in a straitjacket – into the room. This firstly makes it clear to the audience that she is mad, and secondly that only her words can be used for communication. She lies on the ground, not able to move, while uttering the first words of “How should I your true love know”. The camera focuses on her but Gertrude’s back is also visible since she is trying to loosen the jacket; Gertrude is a distraction for the audience then to not focus on Ophelia. As in Zeffirelli’s version, no background music is used so the audience can focus on the ballad. When Claudius enters the room, everyone else in the room is also shown to show that they quickly glance to see who has entered the room. This shot could have been chosen in order for the audience to see that Ophelia is the only one who does not glance, since she probably does not care.
During the scene where Ophelia sings “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day”, Branagh tries to illustrate how she breaks down and reacts to her imprisonment and oppression. The
camera takes a medium shot where only she is on screen. She dances and sings out of tune while the camera follows her movements for the first part of the song, showing that even though she is imprisoned, the song gives her some freedom, she does not adhere to the social conventions for a noble lady anymore. For the second part of the song she stands extremely close to Claudius, not caring about her behavior, while the camera shows, again, everyone in the room. During these lines:
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed.’
He answers
-So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
And thou hadst not come to my bed. (00:00:39-00:00:51)
she grabs Claudius then lies on the floor and starts thrusting the air. A flashback of Hamlet and Ophelia having sexual intercourse is also shown. This scene shows a big difference with
Zeffirelli’s Ophelia; his is younger and modest while Branagh’s is more mature and ostentatious. Teker argues that “In terms of cinematographic representation, Branagh’s mad Ophelia, in Kate Winslet’s performance, takes on a feminist slant; her acting style is divorced from lyricism and to-be-lookedatness” (“Empowered by Madness”). This statement is accurate because she is not trying to sing beautifully, but like a mad person would, and she is not the epitome of beauty because she is supposed to look like a mad woman. And by singing imperfectly she is being more dramatic and important to get her point – her reaction to her imprisonment and oppression – across.
In the last song, Branagh really tries to make the audience feel sorry for Ophelia. She is sitting across Laertes with a mirror next to them. First the camera does not really pay attention to
her when she sings “For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy”. But when she continues with the second line the camera starts zooming in on her. This zooming in and Ophelia’s singing as the only audible aspect of the shot truly makes it dramatic and makes the audience feel pity for the tragic heroine.
Branagh’s adaptation, like Zeffirelli’s, the tragic heroine is much more voiced than was discussed with the comic heroines. However, this voicing is even more evident than in Zeffirelli because Branagh does not cut any of her text and Winslet’s Ophelia is more mature than Bonham Carter’s because Hamlet and Ophelia are shown having sex. Because Branagh’s version is faithful to its source text, he had enough time to dramatize Ophelia to make her an important tragic heroine.
Desdemona’s Song in Othello and its Portrayal in Film Adaptations
The Willow Song in the tragedy of Othello is a song for Desdemona to show her hopelessness. Desdemona starts singing the song before Othello accuses her of sleeping with another man. This song is directed to Emilia while she helps Desdemona get ready for her deathbed. A part of the text to the song goes as follows:
The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow;
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow;
The fresh streams ran by her and murmured her moans; Sing willow, willow, willow.
-…
I called my love false love, but what said he then? Sing willow, willow, willow;
If I court moe women, you’ll couch with moe men – (IV. 3. 38-546)
The text seems appropriate for the situation Desdemona has found herself in because it is a melancholic song about a sad woman who is not with her true love. According to M.P. Tilley, the willow is “a proverbial emblem for the forsaken lover” (403), which would be Desdemona in this case because Othello loses his trust for her. The last stanza does not really refer to the play itself because it says if instead of when so it is a possibility that the female character in the song would sleep with more men if her love would court other women. Othello does not seduce other women in the play, so he should not think Desdemona would sleep with others if this song would follow the plot. Desdemona knows this song because she learned it from her mother who in her turn learned it from her maid. So like the songs Ophelia sings, this song also originates from a lower class. We can determine then that, in their most desperate and fragile moments, both tragic heroines fall back to songs from the lower classes. This song is according to Ernest Brennecke, a way for Desdemona to “[reveal] more of her subconscious awareness than any spoken words could indicate,” because “[she] invents and sings it as if in a dream or a deep reverie” (37). This is not entirely true because first of all, she does not invent the song, and second of all, there is not reason to believe she sings it as if in a dream because she told its backstory, which makes her aware of what she is singing. Shakespeare uses this song then to tell his audience about Desdemona’s melancholy.
Shakespeare also uses this song to convey Desdemona’s hopelessness. Minear argues, however, that the function of the song is that “Both Desdemona and Emilia treat the song as an 6 The 2003 Cambridge edition of Othello edited by Norman Sanders was used throughout this thesis.
epitaph, as a final pronouncement that will proclaim and determine, at the moment of their deaths, the essence and meaning of their lives” (74). I disagree with her statement because Desdemona does not treat the song to show the audience the meaning of her life but rather to show the audience the melancholy and hopelessness she feels in this drama with Othello. Also, Minear does not take into account that Desdemona truly loves her husband as she said: “That I did love the Moor to live with him, / My downright violence and storm of fortunes / May trumpet to the world” (I. 3. 244-6) before. Her love for him would make helping Othello with whatever he does, have a far more important meaning to her life, as one would think.
The song also suggests the audience to feel sorry for Desdemona. As Eamon Grennan argues “The song itself, as well as the silence that surrounds it as we listen to her voice, transport us to a zone of feeling where analysis becomes futile. The point is that we do feel; that for the unreflecting moments while the song endures we are bound with Emilia to Desdemona in sympathy. To prevent (I suspect) such sympathy becoming ethereal or sentimental or abstract, Shakespeare has her interrupt the song at a number of points, either to pass a remark about her garments or to urge Emilia to haste, thus keeping in touch with the deictic ground of the scene and its many meanings” (279, italics in original). So it is mostly a song to make the audience feel pity for both women but just enough to keep in mind what has happened to them and what will happen next to actually feel this way. After everything that happens in the play, the audience can conclude that after Iago’s idea that Desdemona slept with Cassio has been incepted into Othello’s mind, Othello does not think rationally anymore and murders Desdemona to literally silence her. By silencing her, he cannot listen to her side of the story and thus lets jealousy and pettiness win over honesty and trust. The next part of this chapter will in detail examine Desdemona singing in two film adaptations to determine how the directors interpret the Willow Song.
Desdemona’s Song in Welles’ Version. In Orson Welles’ 1951 film version of Othello, only
Shakespeare is credited as a writer. However, the film’s runtime of one and a half hours suggests that significant cuts were made. By Act IV Scene 3 of the film, it is already clear that Welles did not choose to pay a lot of attention to the role of the tragic heroine but rather to concentrate on the relationship between Iago and Othello. This focus is achieved by cutting many of
Desdemona’s speeches, which means that she therefore also lacks significant screen time. One of the most significant speeches that is omitted is where Desdemona claims to love Othello: “That I did love the Moor to live with him” (I. 3. 244). The audience thus does not learn that she is devoted to him.
The scene with the Willow Song is a good summary of how Welles has silenced Desdemona (played by Suzanne Cloutier). In this scene, Emilia (played by Fay Compton) is clearly seen because she is closer to the camera while Desdemona is in the back, agitated because she does not know what will happen to her next. The wind, which is a bad omen, is evidently audible when Desdemona asks “Hark, who is it that knocks?” whereupon Emilia answers with “It is the wind” (1:12:32-1:12:38). In the source text this dialogue happens after the Willow Song but Welles changes the order because he also shows that Othello is eavesdropping so it could also be him that the ladies hear. After this interchange, Desdemona immediately starts to hum a tune, but it is very difficult to hear distinctly what it is she is singing because of the wind but probably also because of the quality of the film itself. It is nevertheless certain that Desdemona does not sing the whole song, and thus the audience does not learn how hopeless she is. With some effort it can be argued that she sings one sentence from the final stanza of the song and that is “I called my love false love, but what said he then?” (1:12:38-1:12:58) These are the only words to the song that she sings, which makes them feel out of context for the audience because they are not introduced in any way. She starts humming while she is with Emilia in a big hall of the citadel
but then, with Emilia following, Desdemona walks into an unknown room, which the audience does not see. The audience only sees the exterior of the room; that is the open door and the window with bars that have spikes on them. Desdemona then stands behind the window holding on to the bars, as if she were a prisoner, which is reasonable since she does not have a solution. The idea of imprisonment implied by the song, i.e. a loveless marriage, is through these visuals evident. I would say that Welles does portray this scene as dramatic because the context is dramatic but not necessarily as important because there is no focus whatsoever on either of the women in this shot.
Some reasons why Welles could have chosen not to have Cloutier sing the whole song are: lack of time and space, lack of skills (be it Cloutier singing or Welles directing), and/or lack of interest. It is certain though that by not letting her sing all of the Willow Song, Welles silenced this version of Desdemona in a severe way since he also cut big parts of her texts. By silencing her to such a degree, she is very much marginalized, which is not what happens in Shakespeare’s text.
Desdemona’s Song in Parker’s Version. Oliver Parker’s film version of Othello was released in
1995, 44 years after Welles’ version. Both Shakespeare and Parker are given writing credits, so there has been some adaptation to the source text; the Willow Song is shortened for example.
Parker makes good use of the song to both introduce it to the audience and to make Desdemona (played by Irene Jacob) have an important voice in the film. This importance impacts how the audience views her because it shows Desdemona in a fragile and desperate state. Before she starts singing, she goes obediently to her room after Othello bids her to get ready for bed. When she is there with Emilia (played by Anna Patrick) bathing her, she sings the first line of the song and stops and tells Emilia where she knows it from and that “That song tonight / Will not go
from my mind” (00:32:27-00:32:32). Parker thus introduces the song very smoothly to the audience; it does not feel like it comes out of the blue, and makes it hence more genuine. When Desdemona starts singing the song again, Emilia is still washing her and it seems like she is passively listening to the song. The medium shot is taken where Emilia is blurred in the background whereas Desdemona is focused in the foreground. Parker in this way does make it clear to the audience that he puts his focus on Desdemona. There is use of background music – violin and harp – used so the words to the song are not the only auditory aspect in the scene. The music is soft and ballad-like, fitting for making the scene more dramatic. Jacob singing a
sequence of the Willow Song gives her a more important voice than Cloutier has in the film because Parker does not ignore the fact that it is present in Shakespeare’s source text.
As mentioned before, Jacob does not sing the entire song but Parker made sure that she does not become a silenced character, the way Welles’ Desdemona did. For the final two lines she sings, the shot shifts from the ladies to the silhouette of Othello standing alone outside near a lake, which could be interpreted as Othello contemplating if it is truly necessary to murder his wife since Parker includes Desdemona’s speeches of loving her husband. By not cutting all of Desdemona’s speeches and have her sing a big part of the Willow Song, Parker stays true to the image Shakespeare creates of Desdemona in his text, which is that of an honorable and devoted woman. Jacob also portrays a stronger but at the same time also more melancholic Desdemona than Welles does with Cloutier because Parker made a longer film and he obviously found it important to have Desdemona be portrayed as a complete tragic heroine, as was envisioned by Shakespeare.
To conclude this chapter, Ophelia’s character sings song about her dead father, Hamlet, or a combination of these two men after she has gone mad. The songs show other characters and the audience that, indeed, she is not sane anymore, and they try to elicit pity from the audience. Ophelia is voiced more evidently in Branagh than in Zeffirelli because Branagh does not cut any of her text and Winslet’s Ophelia is more mature than Bonham Carter’s, who is more modest.
Desdemona’s character in the source text is that of a voiced and crucial character in the play, which film adaptations do not always represent. As was discussed, Orson Welles’
adaptation of Desdemona is a silenced version of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine though this is probably mostly due to the time Welles had and the message he wanted to convey to his audience in that time. Oliver Parker’s adaptation on the other hand, does show Desdemona as a tragic heroine Shakespeare envisioned since she has an important role with a strong voice.
The next and final chapter of this thesis will clarify, how in comparison to female characters singing, marginalized characters singing in a tragedy and comedy are portrayed in film; they are indeed marginalized, which is similar to the portrayal of comic heroines. The focus is on the fool in King Lear and Feste in Twelfth Night.
Chapter 3: The Songs of Marginalized Characters in Shakespeare and How They Are Indeed Marginalized in Film Adaptations
While the Elizabethan audience would not expect female characters to sing they would certainly expect fools to do just that (Lathrop 4). It would be interesting then to examine how differently and/or similarly these marginalized characters are portrayed in film adaptations in comparison to the way female characters are portrayed as discussed in the previous chapters. This chapter will consider the fool in the tragedy of King Lear and Feste in the comedy of Twelfth
Night.
The audience did not only expect a fool to sing songs; he can have two other functions in a play, be it a tragedy or a comedy, in which his songs could also be categorized. They could: fearlessly speak the truth to the audience and other characters in the play, and be used for comic relief to ease a dramatic moment (Weimann 242 and Levin 142). In this chapter I focus on the songs these fools sing since they could be categorized in either one or both of these functions. I will first determine what functions the songs have in Shakespeare’s text and then examine what
the film adaptations exactly do with the songs and if the directors stay faithful to these functions. The chapter will conclude with a connection to the female heroines to see what the differences and similarities are between them and the fools. The next section will examine the fool in King
Lear and in two film adaptations.
The Fool’s Songs in King Lear and Their Portrayal in Film Adaptations
The songs Lear’s fool sings help back up his overall role in the play, which is that, unlike Lear, he is aware of what Lear’s two eldest daughters have in mind and still remains at his side like a loyal servant to tell Lear about them. H. B. Lathrop says the following about fools’ songs: “Fools … betray their lightheadedness by irrelevant scraps of melody. Under this disguise the hysterical tenderness of the Fool in Lear is hidden; his shafts of keen but loving satiric wit are couched in the form of improvisations and parodies of popular songs, sung to familiar tunes” (2). First of all, because each song has a specific function, which will be discussed further on, they should be considered significant and not as “irrelevant scraps of melody”. Second of all, there are songs that do hint at the fool’s sympathy towards Lear, especially if they are performed dramatically so the second part of Lathrop’s statement is correct. But to say that the fool betrays his
“lightheadedness” by songs goes too far in King Lear because Lear and his fool can be seen as friends and thus would not mind showing their emotions to each other. Lear says to his fool namely: “Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart / That’s sorry yet for thee” (III. 2. 70-1). The nameless fool in this play is also an entertainer where his spontaneity could make him seem irresponsible because he is fearless in what he says. Lear actually appreciates and values this honesty: “And you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped” (I. 4. 1427). Lear says this to his fool right after he finishes singing two songs.
