EMPOWERING HEROINES IN GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA (GOOD
MORNING JULIET) AND HARLEM DUET
By
TATIANA IZERGUINA
Integrated Studies Project
submitted to Dr. Julie Sutherland
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts – Integrated Studies
Athabasca, Alberta
February, 2016
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Table of Contents
Abstract
Essay
Works Cited
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Abstract
Shakespeare has inspired and amazed people all over the world for centuries.
However, the patriarchal notions illustrated in his texts and his tendency to
render women in his tragedies as helpless, weak, innocent victims attract the
attention of certain present-day authors wishing to change his narratives by
incorporating in them modern views. Two such authors are Canadian feminist
playwrights Ann-Marie MacDonald and Djanet Sears. Through their respective
adaptations of Shakespeare, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and
Harlem Duet, these women substantially rework their Shakespearean source
material in order to raise contemporary female issues. Their stories delineate
the difficulties and achievements of two heroines, Constance Ledbelly and
Billie, and present accounts of their empowerment after serious personal crises.
In demonstrating their protagonists’ transformations into powerful human
beings, the plays communicate the need for women to acquire psychological
strength and highlight the importance of help in the processes of emotional
recovery and personal development.
Shakespeare’s literary legacy keeps captivating the imagination of people generation after
generation, leaving the impressive testimony that individuals in various time periods and
different regions of the world find his dramas relevant, interesting and valuable. For example,
such interest and esteem are expressed by two contemporary Canadian playwrights, Ann-Marie
MacDonald and Djanet Sears. Rather than strictly adopting his cultural worldview, however,
they have responded to the Bard’s influence on them by writing adaptations of his works:
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MacDonald composed the comedy Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1988), while
Sears wrote the play Harlem Duet (1997). Both of these Shakespeare-inspired pieces were
enormous successes, garnering several awards including the Governor General’s Award for
Drama (Fischlin 321; Fischlin and Nasby 61; Knowles 371).
Considering their approaches to Shakespeare and his classics, the two modern authors
acknowledge their gratitude to and respect for the Bard. In fact, despite being farce and criticism,
MacDonald’s comedy Goodnight Desdemona is a sort of tribute to the master (Yachnin 41).
Speaking of Shakespeare, MacDonald declares her admiration for his talent. She states, “I would
never lampoon something that I hated. It can only be something which fascinates me for some
reason and if I’m fascinated by it then it means there is a deep attraction to it” (Much 136). In a
similar vein, Sears says in her interview that “Shakespeare’s a god in Western literature” and
admits when talking about her rhapsodic blues tragedy Harlem Duet, “So while I can challenge
Shakespeare, in truth, he’s really a part of me. … It’s part of the foundation of my own
mythology, so me challenging Shakespeare is me challenging God, in terms of literature, because
it’s something that exists inside of me” (“An Interview”). Thus, revisiting and undermining some
of his notions, they revere him recognizing the worth of his work for literature across the globe.
Revising his dramas, both modern authors, nevertheless, do not use Shakespeare as the
only starting point for their adaptations (McKinnon 221). As the title suggests, Goodnight
Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is mainly founded on Othello and Romeo and Juliet
(McKinnon 233); however, in addition to them, MacDonald quotes from Hamlet, Macbeth and
Sonnet 116 (Porter 371, 372). More significantly for the point here, she extensively deploys Carl
Gustav Jung’s psychological analysis (McKinnon 233). Sears similarly turns to multiple texts
when writing Harlem Duet: its “most prominent Shakespearean source is Othello, but as Kidnie
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points out it also alludes to Pericles, and Dickenson [sic] shows that it also engages in an
intertextual dialogue with antecedents as diverse as Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Franz
Fanon” (McKinnon 233).
Being feminists (Much 129, 134; Wasserman vol. 1, 389, vol. 2, 193), these two authors
tend to criticize patriarchal views expressed by Shakespeare. Talking back to him by creating
modern adaptations, both seem to respond to the victimization of women in his tragedies, which
includes unjust accusations, the neglect of their wishes and the ostensible right of the husband to
kill his wife for her assumed infidelity. Consequently, as opposed to his tendency to destroy his
tragic heroines, these playwrights illustrate the journeys of their main characters to recovery,
development and wholeness after deep personal crises. As a result, Ann-Marie MacDonald and
Djanet Sears employ Shakespeare’s dramatic works to depict different processes of
empowerment, which lead to the positive transformations of their protagonists.
Though Shakespeare was patriarchal as his plays often reinforced his culture’s patriarchal
worldview, he has composed complex pieces, which permit to formulate diverse interpretations.
For example, Linda Burnett declares, “As for women, Shakespeare may well do only a sketchy
job when it comes to the ‘ways of looking’ of Gertrude and Ophelia. However, when these
women ‘do appear on stage, they’re fascinating women,’ who are so ‘truly’ written” (7).
Therefore, in their attempts to challenge the Bard, MacDonald and Sears try to detach their
dramas from Shakespeare to pursue their own goals and, at the same time, give credit to him
while using his writings and personae to express their ideas. As Daniel Fischlin notes, both
Goodnight Desdemona and Harlem Duet are “radical adaptations of Shakespearean source
materials” (321). James McKinnon also points to significant differences between the Bard’s
theatrical compositions and those by the Canadian dramatists: “These plays use original plots,
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contemporary settings, and/or new protagonists to distance themselves from Shakespeare” (220).
That said, they evidently explore subjects and situations Shakespeare’s scripts depict or allow
imagining. Stressing the indebtedness of the modern authors to the Renaissance creator who
produced multi-level, intricate dramas, Linda Burnett contends that MacDonald and Sears
“introduce ‘different ways of looking’ at Shakespeare” (7). In her opinion, “Their quarrel, their
plays suggest, is less with Shakespeare, whom they enlist in the service of their counterbalancing
project, than with traditional interpretation, which has limited what Shakespeare can mean by
granting only the patriarchal point of view” (7). Linda Burnett, Mark Fortier and Marta Dvorak
draw our attention to the fact that in her comedy, MacDonald emphasizes the qualities of
Desdemona and Juliet that are mentioned in the Bard’s tragedies (namely Desdemona’s interest
in terrifying stories and Juliet’s tendency to feel excessive love), but have been repeatedly
ignored by critics (Burnett 8; Fortier, “Undead and Unsafe” 349). So, Goodnight Desdemona
apparently re-establishes the sense of complexity that originally existed in his manuscripts
(Scott). On the other hand, Djanet Sears’ approach to Shakespeare does not involve a discovery
and display of historically overlooked nuances of Othello; instead, she adds an absolutely new
perspective to this piece―the outlook of a black woman (Sears, “An Interview”). Her adaptation
represents an imaginary prequel to Othello, which is, however, impossible to attach to the source
tragedy due to significant differences in the circumstances of events, characters’ traits, issues and
expectations.
Still, although Shakespeare’s scripts contain numerous details and communicate diverse
attitudes, they are noticeably patriarchal, and this apparently provokes both feminist playwrights
to address the topic of the empowerment of women in their revisions of the old tales. The
patriarchal content of the Bard’s dramatic stories can be explained and, as a consequence,
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somewhat justified by the fact that his works were, to a certain degree, reflections of the local
Renaissance patriarchal society (Porter 362). However, because of the patriarchal conditions in
which he lived and created, Shakespeare was not kind to women while fashioning his tragedies
(Porter 362; Stone-Blackburn 44). Discussing this matter, Laurin R. Porter agrees with Judith
Barber who comments, “Often the women in the comedies are more brilliant than the men, more
aware of themselves and their world, saner, livelier, more gay” (qtd. in Porter 362). Further,
Porter asserts that “[j]udging from her first solo drama, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning
Juliet), Canadian playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald is acutely aware of the contrast between
Shakespeare’s tragic and comic heroines” (362). MacDonald surely seems to recognize this
difference in Shakespeare’s renderings of women. In her play, its protagonist, Constance
Ledbelly, is writing a dissertation and, feeling unhappy about Desdemona and Juliet’s
preventable deaths, tries to prove in it that Othello and Romeo and Juliet were, at first, comedies,
which the Bard unfortunately transformed into romantic tragedies (8, 15). Thus, as Porter points
out, it is logical to infer that MacDonald reacts to the ill-treatment of female characters in
Shakespeare’s tragic works since her text alters Desdemona and Juliet’s fates and turns the
heroines into comic characters (363). Similarly, Mark Fortier proclaims that “Shakespearean
tragedy is the scene of the victimization of weak and helpless women” (“Shakespeare with a
Difference” 47, 48). He thinks that “[w]hat MacDonald found missing in Shakespearean tragedy
were truly tragic women, women of strength and will” (“Shakespeare with a Difference” 47) and
believes that she addresses this issue by producing a story of empowerment (“Undead and
Unsafe” 349).
In comparison with Goodnight Desdemona, Harlem Duet does not appear, on the face of
it, to be an account of empowerment. But actually it is so in the way Djanet Sears presents the
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play’s main character and her need and wish to be strong in order to successfully deal with
personal difficulties and concerns. In contrast to MacDonald’s comedy, which demonstrates the
empowerment of a relatively weak female, in Harlem Duet, the audience witnesses a
deterioration of the psychological state of its protagonist, a black woman named Billie, until she
finally slips into a state close to madness, “Lear-like” (Nurse C5). Sears herself is quite
conscious of the gloomy tone and depressing events of her work; for this reason, she calls it “a
rhapsodic blues tragedy,” a generic hybrid which is both musical and tragic. Nevertheless,
depicting a hard time of the heroine (in the Shakespearean tragic tradition), Sears presents her as
a powerful character. As a consequence, Billie looks amazingly like a conventional tragic hero
who undergoes a downfall, despite being “strong [and] intelligent” (Armstrong), but who begins
to recover at the end of the narrative.
In both scripts, empowerment is triggered by a grave personal crisis. The dramas do not,
nevertheless, start with the depictions of the protagonists’ traumas; their distinctive feature is that
they speak of magic before they picture the crises. In this manner, they foreground the heroines’
need for empowerment, drawing audiences’ attention to the old, unofficial way of obtaining
certain knowledge and particular new aptitudes.
Of course, the theme of magic and its influence on the lives of people is inspired by
Shakespeare and, as such, is not an unexpected element in the adaptations. The dramas Othello
and Romeo and Juliet both reveal the wonderful and harmful effects of drugs and substances. For
example, the offended father of Desdemona, Brabantio, complains to Duke of Venice accusing
Othello of witchcraft: “She is abused, stol’n from me, and corrupted/ By spells and medicines
brought of mountebanks” (Othello I. 3. 60-61). Apparently, as this statement suggests, during the
Renaissance in England, the difference between alchemy and medicine was relatively vague.
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Although Othello denies any magical influence on Desdemona at the beginning of the tragedy,
he claims later that he presented his wife with an item possessing remarkable supernatural
power―a handkerchief. Raging against Desdemona, he informs her that an Egyptian, who was a
sibyl (prophetess), charmer and mind reader (III. 4. 56-58, 70) gave it to his mother. The Moor
angrily declares, “She told her [his mother], while she kept it,/ ’Twould make her amiable and
subdue my father/ Entirely to her love” (III. 4. 58-60). So, according to the narrative, the
handkerchief can have a positive or harmful impact on the destiny of a woman. It was sewn with
good intentions and ostensibly protected the happiness of Othello’s mother. However, its loss
entails Desdemona’s demise. Akin to the handkerchief, in Romeo and Juliet, the potion Friar
Laurence offers Juliet is supposed to help the newlyweds, but sadly his trick brings about their
deaths (V. 3).
Creating her work in response to the Bard, Ann-Marie MacDonald utilizes the themes he
raises in his two romantic tragedies to tell her narrative of female empowerment. And like him,
she pays attention to magic using this topic to conjure up the Jungian mystical transformation of
Constance Ledbelly. The comedy begins with a dumbshow, which simultaneously features three
vignettes. The first displays Othello killing Desdemona; the second shows Juliet stabbing herself,
and the third demonstrates Constance Ledbelly, an assistant professor at Queen’s University,
Kingston, in her office, picking up an ancient manuscript from her desk and throwing it into the
wastebasket (5). By presenting all these scenes at the same time, the play draws a parallel
between them conveying women’s sufferings and their inability to turn their lives around
(Wilson 3). In this way, MacDonald displays the fates these three female characters avoid in her
narrative due to magical intervention. Then, in the prologue, the Chorus explains what alchemy
is in an amazingly confusing way:
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What’s alchemy? The hoax of charlatans?
Or mystic quest for stuff of life itself:
eternal search for the Philosopher’s Stone,
where mingling and unmingling opposites,
transforms base metal into precious gold.
Hence, scientific metaphor of self:
divide the mind’s opposing archetypes
– if you possess the courage for the task –
invite them from the shadows to the light;
unite these lurking shards of broken glass
into a mirror that reflects one soul. (5, 6)
The Chorus finishes his obscure speech by saying that the old manuscript “is the key to her
[Constance’s] Philosopher’s Stone” (6). The protagonist intends to use this old, currently
undecipherable document, called “the Gustav Manuscript,” to prove that the stories of Othello
and Romeo and Juliet were originally comedies written by an unknown playwright, which
Shakespeare transformed into tragedies by eliminating a Fool (MacDonald 14, 15; Dvorak;
Stone-Blackburn 43). However, she believes that Shakespeare gave his source material “to his
elderly friend, Gustav the alchemist, to shroud in an arcane code” (MacDonald 17). The name of
the document alludes to Carl Gustav Jung (Yachnin and Whitted 269; Fortier, “Undead and
Unsafe” 349; Snyder 44). And the narrative “delineates Constance in the process of individuation
― in the process of bringing the archetype of the self into consciousness ― which, according to
Jungian analysis, is the purpose of life” (Snyder 43). This transformation is supposed to lead to
the “harmony of the conscious and unconscious self” (Snyder 43) in a complete, developed
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human being, and it requires Constance to “recognize and unify her oppositional shadow selves”
(Snyder 43). In view of this Jungian theory of individuation, Goodnight Desdemona features two
types of Constance’s shadow selves: her personal concealed dormant identities in the forms of
Desdemona and Juliet and her animus―“her unconscious masculine side” (qtd. in Snyder
48)―which is represented by the Chorus, Iago and the Ghost (Snyder 43, 44). Only after
unifying her oppositional shadow selves, the heroine can “claim her own agency, or, in play’s
terms, recognize that she is the author of her self, a self that is neither and both male and female,
masculine and feminine” (Snyder 44). So, in her work of fiction, MacDonald describes the
magical, psychological transformation of Constance Ledbelly into a strong individual. That said,
this metamorphosis is depicted in a manner that does not show the signs or phases of
Constance’s psychological alteration, which are hidden for a viewer or reader who is not
acquainted with Jungian theory. As a result of relying on Jungian analysis, MacDonald’s
interpretation of alchemy is based on modern thoughts regarding the concealed workings of the
psyche and, therefore, differs significantly from the Renaissance perceptions of magic illustrated
by Shakespeare.
In comparison with MacDonald’s approach to empowerment through alchemy, in Harlem
Duet, Sears presents both traditional mystical and modern psychological modes of generating
magic. Her dramatic composition similarly depicts the contemporary world and begins with a
conversation about alchemy (Act I, scene 1). According to Billie’s landlady, Magi, Billie “got a
real talent for herbs” (26). In addition to this traditional type of magic, “she’s on some
archeological dig of the unconscious mind” (30). Billie’s serious commitment to her new hobby
implies that she unconsciously looks for a way to empower herself. At this initial stage in the
drama, she expects that her former husband Othello will provide her with money to continue her
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studies at university and she will be able to advance her career through education. As a result,
magic is less important for her then than official learning; nevertheless, in the first scene of Act I,
it is introduced as an alternative method of gaining power and knowledge.
Although both adaptations start with discussions of alchemy, the real cause of their
protagonists’ transformations is not magic, but a profound personal crisis. In contrast with the
Shakespearean works in which the married couples die at the end of the stories, the adaptations
do not feature the demise of their main characters. Instead, the plays relate the heroines’ misery
provoked by the failures of their relationships with men. MacDonald depicts the nadir of
Constance Ledbelly’s existence relatively early in her script―Act I, scene i. In this pivotal
episode, the person she has loved for ten years, Professor Claude Night, reveals his double
betrayal to Constance (MacDonald 19, 20, 36; Snyder 44). At that moment, she confronts “with
his treachery ― in the form of his [another] girlfriend, graduate student Ramona, and Claude’s
acceptance of” (Snyder 44) the position at Oxford, which she has hoped would be offered to her.
On top of these two reasons for deep disappointment, the protagonist realizes that she has been
used by this man (Stone-Blackburn 43, 44). The entire time they have been dating, Constance
has been busy ghost-writing articles and speeches for Professor Night in hope to attract his
attention (MacDonald 18, 20). Professor Night has taken advantage of this situation, and as a
result of her efforts, he has been “widely published” (Wilson 3) and obtained his tenure, whereas
she has not had time to finish her dissertation (MacDonald 16, 19; Snyder 44; Wilson 3).
Overwhelmed by disillusionment and sadness, the heroine decides to call the Dean and resign.
Djanet Sears portrays a similar trauma in Harlem Duet, with one important difference:
unlike MacDonald who devotes to this subject only a part of the first scene, upsetting but quite
short, Sears’ entire story focuses on Billie’s sufferings, outlining the causes of the breakdown of
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her relationship with Othello and providing numerous arguments and accusations which the
former lovers tell each other. In fact, the narrative consists of three plot strands set in 1860-62,
1928 and the present, and every one of them illustrates how a black man (Othello) abandons his
black girlfriend/wife Billie for a white woman (Miss Dessy/Mona). His action unfortunately
causes Billie to experience considerable problems and profound anguish. As Louise Harrington
observes regarding the present-day strand of the plot, “She [Mona] indirectly deprives Billie of
economic security and the chance of educational advancement, as in order to buy an apartment
with Mona, Othello can no longer pay for Billie’s university fees, after Billie had previously
given up her share of her mother’s life insurance in order to pay for Othello’s education” (137).
Besides giving him her inheritance, Billie worked to enable Othello to complete his Ph.D. in
anthropology (Dickinson 189; De Wagter 41). As a consequence of her support, Othello
manages to become an instructor at Columbia University in the plot strand depicting events in
contemporary Harlem. So, in this story as well, we can see that a female character has made
many sacrifices for the man she loves, and eventually, after he gets a post at a university, he
leaves her for another woman. Because Mona is also an instructor at Columbia University, her
privileged economic status makes Billie feel betrayed. Her bitterness is further amplified by her
awareness that her own academic progress and, correspondently, her career advancement are
postponed (Gruber 357). Both Eda Dedebas and Elizabeth Brown-Guillory infer that the lowest
point for Billie in the rhapsodic blues tragedy is her soliloquy at the very end of Act I that
follows Othello’s announcement of his inability to support her studies for some time (BrownGuillory 163). At that point, she says,
Yet I’ll be discarded as some kind of unconscionable bitter shadow, or something. Ain’t I
a woman? This is my face you take for night―the biggest shadow in the world. I… I
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have nothing more to lose. Nothing. Othello? I am preparing something special for you…
Othe… Othello. A gift for you, and your new bride. Once you gave me a handkerchief.
An heirloom. […] It is fixed in the emotions of all your ancestors. […] What I add to this
already fully endowed cloth, will cause you such…… such… Wretchedness. (Harlem
Duet 75, 76)
These words demonstrate Billie’s inability to deal with Othello’s abandonment in an appropriate,
rational and moral, way. They, therefore, display that she needs strength to cope with her pain
and willpower to stop herself from committing a murder through poisoning the handkerchief.
But Ann-Marie MacDonald and Djanet Sears do not intend their feminist compositions to
conclude at their protagonists’ moments of despair; rather, they aim to convey how such
moments lead to the positive transformations of personalities. Thus, the main characters of the
plays are destined to undergo a journey towards recovery and wholeness. MacDonald’s script
depicts the unexpected, magical transformation of Constance Ledbelly’s underdeveloped self in
the process of individuation―a process that Jung praises highly since he assumed that it enables
to create a whole, strong, harmonious self. Just at the time that the heroine is waiting for the
office of the Dean to answer her call, she decides to throw the Gustav Manuscript into the
wastebasket. However, she interrupts her action seeing that a section of the text becomes legible
and reads (Snyder 44):
“You who possess the eyes to see
this strange and wondrous alchemy,
where words transform to vision’ry,
where one plus two makes one, not three;
open this book if you agree
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to be illusion’s refugee,
and of return no guarantee –
unless you find your true identity.
And discover who the Author be.” (MacDonald 21, 22)
Accepting this challenge, Constance opens the manuscript and, according to the Chorus’s
explanation, falls through the wastebasket into the world “of the unconscious mind” (22). In light
of the reactions of critics to this scene, the nature of this imaginary realm is a moot question:
Mark Fortier believes that it is a “larger female psyche” (“Undead and Unsafe” 349); Laurin R.
Porter and Shelley Scott suppose that the described dreamlike domain is Constance’s own
unconscious mind (Porter 363). In any case, in this zone of the unconscious, Constance emerges
into the playworld of Shakespeare’s Othello, where she drastically changes the plot of the
tragedy by revealing Iago’s deceit to the Moor. Here, in addition, she meets a violent and
adventurous Desdemona―a personage that strikingly differs from Shakespeare’s gentle female
figure, which represents “the passive embodiment of goodness” (Wilson 6), but, as MacDonald
points out, strangely loves to hear “horror stories” (9). Marta Dvorak wittily defines
MacDonald’s Desdemona as “an Othello in skirts.” Even though she lacks mildness, we observe
her eagerness to obey her husband. After Othello introduces Constance to Desdemona as a new
friend, Desdemona, readily accepting his judgement, shows her affability to Constance by
squeezing her “in a soldierly embrace” (MacDonald 29; italics in the original). Obviously, in the
context of the Renaissance patriarchal traditions, her behaviour would be considered of a wrong
kind―suitable for a mighty male, like Othello or Tybalt, rather than a female. Then, another
page of the manuscript sends Constance to the world of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet where
she prevents Mercutio’s death. Altering this classic too, the modern heroine meets Romeo and
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Juliet who behave as “spoiled, petulant teenagers” (Kerslake 138). Furthermore, what might be
especially disturbing for the reader enjoying Shakespeare’s work is “an extremely erotic
depiction of Juliet, completely at odds with the innocence traditionally associated with her”
(Porter 370). For instance, knowing Constance as a boy called Constantine, she seduces the
protagonist:
O let Juliet initiate
thy budding taste of woman’s dewy rose.
Learn how the rose becomes a sea of love:
come part the waves and plumb Atlantic depths.
I’ll guide thee to the oyster’s precious pearl …
we’ll seek out wat’ry caves for glist’ning treasure,
spelunk all night until we die of pleasure. (MacDonald 68)
MacDonald’s irreverent and irritating representation of the heroine that underscores her tendency
to experience excessive love (Romeo and Juliet II. 2. 98-104, II. 6. 33) nevertheless makes sense
in view of Jungian theory. According to it, she functions as an element of Constance’s psyche,
which should be embraced by Constance in order to become a well-rounded person.
While MacDonald’s protagonist self-determinedly launches her incredible journey, the
same cannot be said about Sears’ main character. Billie has no wish to undergo her psychological
transformation, which is accompanied by sorrows, menacing intentions and a painful revision of
her perspective. In this narrative, the playwright dwells on the protagonist’s trauma; in fact, most
of its scenes are devoted to the explanation of the reasons for the relationship’s breakdown, the
depictions of the crisis in three time frames and the representations of Billie’s acts or plans of
revenge (she murders Othello in the strands describing events in 1860-62 and 1928 and intends
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to kill him in the present-day strand by poisoning the handkerchief). Because of these upsetting
details, critics have diverse understandings of the process of Billie’s psychological journey. On
the one hand, for some, it hardly looks like a form of progressive process but appears to be rather
an ongoing struggle with severe depression. As D. J. R. Bruckner asserts when comparing the
adaptation with the Shakespearean piece, “In this case, it is the woman, Billie, not Othello, who
is being destroyed by bitterness and jealousy” (E4). Likewise, Craig Stewart Walker comments
that the heroine’s nickname Billie evokes “Billie Holiday―the breathtakingly gifted but
tragically self-destructive jazz singer” and, therefore, “we are invited to question whether she
does not exhibit a propensity for turning personal misfortunes into full-scale tragedies” (661).
Peter Dickinson argues that because the story of the breaking up couple has three variations that
illustrate similar situations, the text creates an impression that the main character is “caught in a
feedback loop, where her life with Othello repeats itself constantly inside her head” (191).
Agreeing with him, Joanne Tompkins asserts that Billie is “stuck in the refrain” (273) dealing
with Othello’s betrayal time after time (272). On the other hand, we can find more optimistic
perceptions of the aftermath of the heroine’s crisis. In fairly sharp contrast to the aforementioned
visions, Elizabeth Brown-Guillory notes, “Billie still loves Othello, but she recognizes that she is
responsible for changing the circumstances of her life. Her lapse in judgement becomes the
catalyst for her journey to wholeness” (160). To an extent, I accept all these interpretations. To
me, the contemporary strand of the narrative represents the account of how a person descends
into a nervous breakdown wishing to avenge her pain and trying to improve her mental state.
That said, because the end of the play does not only suggest Billie’s recovery but also pictures
her in the company of relatives, it also appears to be a journey to her happiness whose course is
concluded quite early in the story―at the very beginning of her recovery. In other words, it
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finishes at the beginning of her transformation into a wiser, more self-controlled woman.
Consequently, in this script, as well as in Goodnight Desdemona, empowerment is not only
about gaining strength but also about utilizing it to find psychological balance and stability in
one’s own character.
As the modern dramas unfold, they disclose different methods of empowerment. One is
alchemy, which somewhat surprisingly brings about opposite results in Goodnight Desdemona
and Harlem Duet. MacDonald presents magic as a tool that enables Constance’s growth.
However, what the author depicts in her narrative is not exactly the traditional kind of alchemy;
instead, she employs the concept of alchemy in light of Jungian analysis. Jung has used it “as a
metaphor for the transformation of personality” (Snyder 44). In accordance with this
representation, the arcane Gustav Manuscript functions as a unique means that allows Constance
to discover her true self by merging “mingling and unmingling opposites” (MacDonald 6)
existing in her psyche into a harmonious, stable unity.
In contrast with these beneficial effects of magic, alchemy plays a negative role in
Harlem Duet. One of the central themes of the drama is Billie’s dire plan to poison Othello’s
handkerchief in order to revenge him and his bride, Mona. As Ric Knowles observes, “Harlem
Duet makes the most extensive use of the handkerchief motif from Shakespeare, which the main
line of Shakespeare criticism, like Goodnight Desdemona, has until recently taken as a (too)
simple plot device” (388). The playwright’s interest in this object can be explained by its
Egyptian origins. Both Ric Knowles and Albert-Reiner Glaap find that, in her drama, Sears links
the handkerchief with African spirituality and mysticism (Knowles 388; Glaap 84). In Act II, we
also learn from the protagonist’s father, Canada, that Billie’s full name is Sybil, which “means
prophetess. Sorceress. Seer of the future” (Sears 81). At this point, it becomes clear that Billie is
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the “sibyl that … in her prophetic fury sewed” (Othello III. 4. 70, 72) the handkerchief in Othello
and who connects the adaptation to its source material (Glaap 84; Dickinson 190; De Wagter 41;
Moser). “Ironically,” Caroline De Wagter remarks, despite her magical powers, “Billie/Sybil, the
prophetess, cannot alleviate her own predicament and ends up in a psychiatric ward” (41). In
addition to being an unsuccessful method to cope with a nervous breakdown, alchemy might
have a harmful impact on Othello and Mona’s health since Othello takes the poisoned
handkerchief from Billie’s apartment in Harlem as well as on Billie’s health because the heroine
“accidentally touches her face with her gloved hand that has the poison residue” (Moser).
Nevertheless, what works for both women protagonists as a means of empowerment is
the encouragement and help of other female characters. In MacDonald’s comedy, Desdemona
and Juliet are archetypes of Constance’s unconscious, or in other words, constitutive elements of
her personality that have been dormant (Djordjevic 103; Rubess xii; Porter 363). As a
consequence, in order to become a more complete being, she has to integrate their qualities into
her character. Desdemona assists her in discovering courage and strength, while Juliet helps her
acknowledge her passion (Stone-Blackburn 44; Wasserman vol. 1, 391, 392). Together with
Constance, they form the Jungian Trinity― a tripartite, well-rounded woman (Djordjevic 99,
100), who, in this instance, represents a combination of “the woman of action,” “the sensual
woman” and “the intellectual woman” (Djordjevic 112). To emphasize the unity of this creation,
the Chorus describes the mystical merging of Constance’s selves as “one plus two makes one,
not three” (MacDonald 21). As “the intellectual aspect to the tripartite vision of ideal femininity”
(Djordjevic 100), Constance in turn prompts Desdemona and Juliet to change their personalities
and conduct. By the end of the story, she finds out that Desdemona is “just like Othello –
gullible and violent,” whereas Juliet is “in love with death” (86). Trying to help these heroines,
Izerguina 20
she manages to persuade them that their excessive attributes and irrational or dangerous actions
might entail tragic outcomes (MacDonald 86, 87)
Moreover, Jungian theory provides a more sophisticated explanation of how these three
women complement each other. Jung assumed that women are governed by the principle of Eros,
whereas men are primarily ruled by Logos (Snyder 45). He has claimed that “Eros is the
principle of reciprocity, of relatedness” (47) that motivates women to define themselves in
relations with others, rather than as active, independent agents (48). Both Desdemona and Juliet
in Shakespeare’s tragedies are dominated by Eros (47), being gentle females who completely
obey their husbands. The same can be said about Constance at the beginning of the modern
adaptation when “she aligns herself with the image of the submissive ‘good girl’” (47, 48), who
does not oppose Professor Night’s fairly unpleasant observation concerning her, “Your
fascination with mystery borders on the vulgar” (MacDonald 17). On the other hand, Logos is
the principle of the “apprehension of the self as difference [sic], distinct, an independent entity
ruled not by love or empathy, but by logic and mind” (Snyder 48). In MacDonald’s play, in
contrast to its source materials, Desdemona and Juliet represent archetypes (aspects) of Logos
that contribute to the development of qualities traditionally regarded as masculine in Constance’s
psyche (49). Desdemona teaches Constance to “acquire a taste for blood” (MacDonald 32), while
Juliet is obsessed with sensual love and poetic tragic death; their characteristics have been
sometimes allowed to men, but not to women. The process of incorporation of their manly
qualities into her character enables the heroine to achieve integrity as her opposing traits are now
in balance.
Female solidarity functions as an effective means of empowerment in Harlem Duet, too.
Since the beginning of the rhapsodic blues tragedy, we become aware of Billie’s friendship with
Izerguina 21
Magi, her landlady, and her strong attachment to Amah, her sister-in-law. In her conversation
with Amah in Act I, scene 1, Magi says, “Thanks for doing this Amah. For coming. It’ll make
her [Billie] feel like a million dollars again” (26). In fact, in the present-day strand, despite her
sadness, the protagonist tends to feel better when she talks to these two women. Thus, it is not
surprising that going through severe depression, she turns to them for solace and advice (BrownGuillory 164). Sears mentions another source of Billie’s strength― the campaigner for women’s
rights and the abolishing of slavery, Sojourner Truth: “In Act 1, Scene X, when Billie is at her
lowest, she reaches back to her [cultural diasporic] ancestor and says, ‘Ain’t I a woman’”
(Brown-Guillory 163). In this episode illustrating her crisis, the protagonist thinks that she has
nothing to lose (Harlem Duet 75) and looks to this active, courageous woman, Sojourner Truth,
for inspiration and to help her acquire emotional strength to survive the breakup. Billie’s
behaviour and interactions, therefore, suggest that black women have a history of supporting
each other and can often find in their female friends understanding, strength and consolation.
But female characters are not the only personae that help the protagonists of the two
contemporary adaptations to recover and develop; men also facilitate and contribute to these
processes. Indeed, the transformation of Constance would not be complete without the male
Ghost. It appears before Constance twice (Act III, scene vi, and Act III, scene ix) in her red toque
(MacDonald 73; Wilson 9) telling her riddles that finally allow the heroine to determine her true
identity. In Mark Fortier’s view, this figure combines in itself several characters: “It seems to be
in part an echo of two of the dead in Hamlet: Yorick and Hamlet’s father. But it seems to be
many others as well, including Shakespeare and Jung” (“Undead and Unsafe” 349). Further,
because “[t]he closest it comes to identifying itself is to say ‘You’re it,’” Fortier argues, “the
spectre is Constance” (349). Laura Snyder comes to a similar conclusion; to her, the Ghost is a
Izerguina 22
concealed masculine element of the protagonist’s psyche, which she has to face and accept in
order to “recognize her own ‘authority’” (52). For this reason, at the moment when she solves its
riddles, she discovers that she is both the Wise Fool and the Author, thus a person with some
abilities and power (MacDonald 87; Snyder 53).
Likewise, in Harlem Duet, Billie’s father, Canada, provides his daughter with muchneeded psychological support. He abandoned Billie as a child after his wife died and descended
into alcoholism (45). For Gruber, Kidnie and Brown-Guillory, his coming to see Billie in Harlem
in the present-day strand marks an important point in the narrative, initiating a return to the
normal. Elizabeth Gruber, for example, comments, “Canada’s presence signals the possibility of
transformation, hinting that the murderous outcomes depicted in the two earlier sequences can be
avoided” (359). Margaret Jane Kidnie contends that the reconciliation between the daughter and
father distances the drama from tragedy and makes it resemble Shakespeare’s late play Pericles,
which describes the adventures of “broken families” (“There’s Magic” 39, Shakespeare 88) and
the renewal of family ties. Due to this, Kidnie asserts, it promises hope and new beginnings
(“There’s Magic” 39, 41, Shakespeare 88). Also, Brown-Guillory notes, “His [Canada’s] need to
find Billie facilitates his own healing as well as hers. When he reconciles with Billie, we see the
beginnings of transformation in both characters” (165). Their reunion lets them refocus their
attention from the past to the possible future opportunity to live nearby and support each other,
empowering the father and daughter and contributing to their psychological recovery.
Therefore, MacDonald and Sears both dramatize transformations, though different ones.
In regard to Goodnight Desdemona, Ann Wilson declares that it is a “drama of empowerment”
(11). Truly, its ending can be categorized as very happy. In her interview with Rita Much, AnnMarie MacDonald acknowledges that she considers her play “a Jungian fairy tale” (Much 141).
Izerguina 23
The comedy’s conclusion shows Constance in her office at the university in the powerful
position of the author of her own self and the new play in which she has participated as a
character, self-assured and more womanly, with her pen turned into pure gold (Stone-Blackburn
44; Weales 20; Johnston and Stratton; Bemrose 66; MacDonald 88). Although, as John Bemrose
and Shannon Hengen state, Constance’s deep emotional change and gradual psychological
growth are not really displayed (Bemrose 66; Hengen 106), the Chorus assures the audience in
the epilogue that her metamorphosis has passed successfully by telling that “mingling and
unmingling opposites/ performs a wondrous feat of alchemy,/ and spins grey matter, into
precious gold” (MacDonald 89).
As well, Harlem Duet’s ending shows a positive transformation which happens because
Billie begins to gain strength and seemingly revises her views on racial issues, which have
provoked her disagreement with Othello and, as a consequence, have been a cause of her
hardships. Since the last scene of the work disclosing the protagonist’s empowerment and
recovery is relatively short, Sears presents her tale as an open-ended story and slightly confuses
her audience about its result (Glaap 84; Gruber 360). Jill L. Levenson, for instance, remarks
about it, “In each narrative [strand] the conclusion is tragic, madness or death.” However, the
reactions of other critics are more optimistic. In Marlene Moser’s standpoint, “Although the
outcome is ambivalent, the swelling of support for Billie is significant” permitting us to believe
that “there is ‘hope.’” Tompkins notes that the play demonstrates that the protagonist is going to
recover (273). And Kidnie and Brown-Guillory suggest that she is on a path towards happy life
and psychological wholeness (Kidnie, “There’s Magic” 41, Shakespeare 88; Brown-Guillory
160).
Izerguina 24
As my comparison of Goodnight Desdemona and Harlem Duet shows, both Canadian
adaptations are contemporary accounts of the empowerment of women through reviewing
Shakespeare’s tragedies. What significantly differentiates them from each other is the moment at
which they conclude in presenting the process of gaining strength and confidence. Ann-Marie
MacDonald’s story finishes with the depiction of empowered Constance who has already
completely recovered from Claude Night’s treachery and transformed into a developed,
independent human being. In comparison with this, Sears’ composition strictly describes the
beginning of Billie’s emotional recovery and personal growth, with the help of her family and
Magi. They try to assist the heroine in becoming stronger and, according to the last scene, have
already succeeded in doing that to an extent. In both narratives, the help of relatives, friends
and/or magic is required. Neither Constance calling the Dean nor Billie believing that she has
“nothing more to lose” (Harlem Duet 75) has psychological power not to despair and to
adequately deal with their personal traumas. In my opinion, their revisions of their own lives
result in positive transformations, and that is largely because of the aid they receive from friends,
family, the hidden constituents of the self and an alchemical manuscript.
Izerguina 25
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