Shakespeare's Heroines in American Musical Theater

Jelena Zlatarov-Marcetic Jelena Zlatarov-Marcetic Jelena Shakespeare's Heroines in American Musical Theater Migration and Happiness Master’s thesis in English Supervisor: Eli Løfaldli Master’s thesis Master’s May 2019 Shakespeare's Heroines in American Musical Theater Musical in American Heroines Shakespeare's NTNU Faculty of Humanities Faculty Department of Language and Literature Norwegian University of Science and Technology of Science University Norwegian Jelena Zlatarov-Marcetic Shakespeare's Heroines in American Musical Theater Migration and Happiness Master’s thesis in English Supervisor: Eli Løfaldli May 2019 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Humanities Department of Language and Literature Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank my family for their unwavering support and patience, and especially my husband for his invaluable inputs. Secondly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Eli Løfaldli, who has taught me a lot and has shown great patience and understanding during this whole year. Thirdly, I would like to thank Kirsten Slørstad for being the kindest librarian ever, without whose help I would have had great difficulty getting hold of the necessary literature. Finally, I big thank you goes to all my friends who have shown interest in my work, let me use their libraries, and proofread my writing. Also, to Rasmus, who always knew when I needed a break. Jelena Zlatarov-Marcetic, Tynset 15 May 2019 Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….…1 Adapting the Canon .………………………………………….………………..……...3 The Musical ……………………………………………………….…………………..5 Migration and Happiness ……………………………………………….…………….9 Thesis Outline ……………………………………………………………….……….14 Chapter 1 …………………………………………………………………………….……...16 The Taming of the Shrew ………………………………………………………....….16 Kiss me, Kate ………………………………………………………………….……..31 Chapter Conclusion ………………………………………………………….………48 Chapter 2 …………………………………………………………………………………....50 Romeo and Juliet ……………………………………………………………….……50 West Side Story ………………………………………………………………………64 Chapter Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….81 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………..83 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………….………..87 Primary Sources …………………………………………………………….……….87 Secondary Sources …………………………………………………………...………88 Abstract …………………………………………………………………………….……….97 Introduction “People are always rewriting other people’s stories—consciously or unconsciously—cutting and trimming, pasting, rearranging, and adjusting to new times and circumstances…” Norris Houghton (7) “…art is derived from other art; stories are born of other stories.” Linda Hutcheon (2) The telling and retelling of stories have always been part of human nature. Historical events, myths and legends have been conveyed from generation to generation, with constant revisions and embellishments. Oral literature has been dependent on this process. As written literature evolved from the oral, the process of retelling of the stories remained. Before the printing press, the concept and practice of authorship were not specifically defined, and the story was more important than the author. While the printing press emphasized the economic aspect of the endeavor and intellectual property became something that could turn a profit, writers continued to borrow from each other (Griggs 7). Ideas for literary texts came from the world around the authors but also from other literary texts. Shakespeare based his plays on other texts, plays, myths and legends, and in return has become the source of ideas for other authors. Thus, his texts may themselves be seen as adaptations and appropriations, but also as sources for other adaptations and appropriations, or as Gérard Genette refers to them, as simultaneously hypotexts and hypertexts (5). Literature reinvents itself. In these days of humanity on the move, it is tempting to look at literature and its adaptations in terms of migration. One might say that adaptations and appropriations of literary works undergo processes of migration of their narratives, characters and ideas. One of the borders they often cross on their journey to renewal and recreation is that between different media. Novels and plays become other novels and plays — or paintings, operas, musicals, films and even piano sonatas, to name but a few. Giuseppe Verdi composed operas Macbeth and Othello — based on Shakespeare’s plays — and Falstaff, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor; John Everett Millais painted an oil on canvas of Ophelia; Ludwig van Beethoven wrote the 1 Piano Sonata Op. 31 No. 2 in D minor, called The Tempest, for which, according to one of his private conversations, he got inspiration from Shakespeare’s play. However, not everybody sees this as a lateral development. The status of these recreations is often lower than the status of the text of origin. The audience might compare a novel with its film adaptation, using fidelity to the “original” as the standard, but disregarding the conventions of a different medium. As Linda Hutcheon states in her Theory of Adaptation, “[i]f an adaptation is perceived as ‘lowering’ a story (according to some imagined hierarchy of medium or genre), response is likely to be negative” (3). In the introduction to The Bloomsbury Introduction to Adaptation Studies, Yvonne Griggs raises her voice for these adaptations. Quoting Adrienne Rich's “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” Griggs states that “[t]he act of ‘re-vision,’ of’'looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes’ enables the writer to ‘ent[er] an old text from a new critical direction’” (7-8). Griggs continues by introducing the term “refraction” which describes the reciprocal relationship between the older and the new texts have and the light they shed on each other. Hutcheon favors the term “repetition with variation” (4) or “repetition without replication” (7), while Julie Sanders, in Adaptation and Appropriation, leans towards musicological terminology, using “the potential of phrases themselves from the discipline of music — terms such as variation and sampling — to revivify our understanding of the kinetic processes of adaptation” (16). Regardless of the terminology used, when stories change medium, the hypotexts go through a process that often involves a simplification of literary text that is necessary for the transposition of a story from one medium to another. During this transposition, some elements of the adapted story are amplified, others are excluded, and choices are made that affect the hypertext. These choices lead to the “repetition without replication” that constitutes the new work of art. When a work of literature migrates to a new medium, it does not do so in its entirety. Different elements of the first make the journey to the latter (e.g. in Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film Hamlet most elements migrate, but not the setting; in Zaffirelli’s 1967 film The Taming of the Shrew, the Christopher Sly plot does not make the migration with the rest of the plot; etc.). The interest of this analysis is the adaptation of canonical literature to musicals, more precisely the adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays to Broadway musical theater. The thesis will focus on the female characters in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet and their parallels in the musicals Kiss me, Kate and West Side Story. The analysis will include Katharina Minola, Bianca 2 Minola, Juliet Capulet, and the Nurse, with a short reference to Lady Capulet, and their musical counterparts Lilli Vanessi/Kate Minola, Louis Lane/Bianca Minola, Maria and Anita. To analyze the migration of Katherina, Bianca, Juliet and the Nurse from one genre to another, it is necessary to first analyze these characters in Shakespeare’s plays and find out how, or whether they embark on a journey and what this journey may consist of. Some of the journeys or migrations discussed happen within the characters themselves and are of a mental or emotional nature rather than a physical one, making the journey itself metaphorical rather than literal. The female characters in the musicals will be considered to be migrants on many levels. Firstly, they are temporal migrants, bridging the temporal gap of three hundred and fifty years, from Elizabethan times to 1950s. Secondly, they are special migrants from Shakespeare’s Italian plays to the 1950s United States. Thirdly, they bridge the medial gap between theater and musical stages. Finally, they are all metaphorical migrants, dynamic characters that move towards their goal. However, it is important to mention that Maria and Anita, in West Side Story, are also physical migrants from Puerto Rico to New York, with ideas and issues that bring their migrant status into light in more than just the metaphorical way, so they will be treated as double migrants. Adapting the Canon Works by William Shakespeare are considered to belong to the English literary canon. The dictionary definition of canon, as a literary and literary critical term, is “the works ascribed to an author that are accepted as genuine; the complete works, as of an author; those works, authors, etc. accepted as major or essential” (Webster’s New World Dictionary). As opposed to the biblical canon, which is ratified by the church authorities and, as such, consists of a closed/limited list of texts, the literary canon is open to revisions (Abrams 29). According to Abrams, “[t]he term ‘canon’ was... used in a literary application to signify the list of secular works accepted by experts as genuinely written by a particular

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