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Modes of Adaptation and Appropriation in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series

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Modes of Adaptation and Appropriation in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series Trabajo de Fin de Máster en Estudios Literarios y Culturales Ingleses y su Proyección Social Modes of Adaptation and Appropriation in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series Autor: Mario Giménez Yuste Tutora: Dra. Marta Cerezo Moreno Facultad de Filología UNED Convocatoria general: junio 2019 Curso: 2018-19 Modes of Adaptation and Appropriation in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series Contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 2 2. Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................. 4 2.1. Adaptation and Appropriation ................................................................................... 4 3. The Hogarth Series .................................................................................................... 14 3.1. Critical Reception ..................................................................................................... 14 3.2. A Brief Consideration of the Seven Novels ............................................................... 16 3.3. Selection Criteria ...................................................................................................... 20 4. The Chosen Novels ........................................................................................................ 21 4.1. Dunbar ...................................................................................................................... 21 4.1.1. Critical Reception .............................................................................................. 21 4.1.2. The Tragedy of a Media Mogul ......................................................................... 25 4.1.3. Modes of Adaptation in Dunbar ....................................................................... 37 4.2. Vinegar Girl .............................................................................................................. 40 4.2.1. Critical Reception .............................................................................................. 40 4.2.2. A Marriage Plot ................................................................................................. 45 4.2.3. Modes of Adaptation in Vinegar Girl ............................................................... 50 4.3. Shylock Is My Name ................................................................................................. 53 4.3.1. Critical Reception .............................................................................................. 53 4.3.2. The Novel and the Play ..................................................................................... 56 4.3.3. Modes of Adaptation in Shylock Is My Name ................................................... 64 5. Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 67 6. Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 70 1. Introduction This Master’s dissertation aims to analyse processes of adaptation and appropriation in three of the novels that constitute the series Hogarth Shakespeare: Dunbar, Vinegar Girl and Shylock Is My Name. Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced in 2013 a project consisting in asking different best-selling authors to rewrite a Shakespeare’s play of their choosing into a novel, a project that would contribute to the commemoration of the Quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death celebrated in 2016. The first book of the series was Jeanette Winterson’s “cover version” of The Winter’s Tale, The Gap of Time, published in 2015. It was followed in 2016 by Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name, and Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl, which retold The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew, respectively. Tracy Chevalier’s New Boy and Edward St Aubyn’s Dunbar, recreations of Othello and King Lear, appeared in 2017, and Jo Nesbo’s Macbeth in 2018. The last volume of the series, Gillian Flynn’s Hamlet, is due for release in 2021. It is not easy to decide whether the project commemorates Shakespeare the man or the author. From a commercial perspective, one tends to perceive that the publishing house uses the myth as an advertising strategy to sell books. From the perspective of the authors that take part in the project, without underestimating the effect that associating their names to Shakespeare can have on their market value, the act of retelling Shakespeare in a present- day setting may mean a homage to the creativity of an author whose subjects are “for all time.” Thus, Adam Gopnik writes: Saluting Shakespeare with new versions of his stories is a bit like saluting Mozart by commissioning Philip Glass to write a new opera to the plot of ‘Così Fan Tutte,’ with its disguised Albanians and absurd coincidences . Most of the authors in the Hogarth series, to their credit, aren’t so much “reimagining” the stories as reacting to the plays. They’ve taken on not the tale itself but the twists in the tale that produced the Shakespearean themes we still debate: anti-Semitism in “Merchant of Venice,” the subjugation of women in “The Taming of the Shrew,” art and isolation in “The Tempest.” Each of the novels gives us a revisionist account of the central Shakespearean subject and asks us to think anew about that subject more than about the story that superintends it. (par. 2-3 original quotation marks) Following Gopnik, I should add some other Shakespearean themes that are concerns of present times: lust for power in King Lear, which in Dunbar are transposed to the greediness of financial sharks and big corporations; racism in Othello; political corruption in Macbeth, which Nesbo links to drug trafficking, urban decay and extinction of traditional industry. Jeanette Winterson explains in the very text of her version how important for her The Winter’s Tale is: “I wrote this cover version because the play has been a private text for me for more than thirty years” (284). Jacobson’s novel is not only a retelling of the play, but 2 also it is a continuous examination of the play and its characters’ actions, especially ¨Shylock’s. Jacobson’s inquiry, Winterson’s confession and all the series in general can be an incentive for the reader to go to the original play and to read it for the first time or to reread it. I dare say then that the global balance of the series is a real homage to the author more than to the man. A recently published text by Douglas Lanier, “The Hogarth Shakespeare Series: Redeeming Shakespeare Literariness,” analyses four volumes of the series: The Gap of Time, Hag-Seed, Shylock Is My Name, and Vinegar Girl. Lanier approaches the dilemma of adapting language or plot when dealing with Shakespeare, and he puts especial emphasis on the message of redemption that the adapted plays convey. Apart from that dilemma, the essay echoes several questions that are developed in the theoretical section, such as the consideration of adaptation as a secondary mode (Linda Hutcheon XIII) , or the process of reception as a definitory element of adaptations. As far as I can tell, the only academic work that I have found dealing with the Hogarth project comprehensively is Colleen Etman’s 2018 Master’s thesis “Feminist Shakespeares: Adapting Shakespeare for a Modern Audience in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project.” Its theoretical section relies mainly on Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation, and the novels subjected to analysis are The Gap of Time, Hag-Seed, and Vinegar Girl. Within the theoretical framework established by Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer, Douglas Lanier, Linda Hutcheon, and Julie Sanders, this work takes a different approach from Etman’s and searches for modes of adaptation and appropriation in the works under exam, and the way the novels dialogue with the source plays. I try to prove that there are three patterns in the way the different authors have approached the Hogarth project. These patterns are exemplified in the three novels that are the focus of the analysis, namely St Aubyn’s Dunbar, Tyler’s Vinegar Girl, and Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name. In the first pattern, followed by St Aubyn in Dunbar, the author “translates” plot, characters and situations of the play to present-day circumstances with few alterations or suppressions. In the second pattern, the author also translates the play, but although characters and situations may be more or less similar to the original, the most important variations are changes of points of view and of the characters’ motivations. This is what Tyler has done, as I expect to show, in her version of The Taming of the Shrew. In the third pattern, apart from building a story that mirrors the play, the characters of the story establish an explicit dialogue with the source play, as they do in Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name. The exploration of theories of adaptation and appropriation will allow to ascertain whether the above patterns match any of the modes of 3 appropriation and adaptation described in the theoretical works consulted, bearing in mind a certain scepticism about the validity of definite borders between modes. As for the structure of the present study, the next section includes a brief survey of the works on adaptation and appropriation that constitute the theoretical framework for this research. Section 3 contains an overview of the seven novels published, and an explanation
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