Caught between presence and absence: Shakespeare's tragic women on film Item Type Thesis or dissertation Authors Scott, Lindsey A. Publisher University of Liverpool (University of Chester) Rights screenshots reproduced under s.30 (1) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. Further re-use (except as permitted by law) is not allowed. Download date 04/10/2021 11:49:26 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10034/100153 This work has been submitted to ChesterRep – the University of Chester’s online research repository http://chesterrep.openrepository.com Author(s): Lindsey A Scott Title: Caught between presence and absence: Shakespeare's tragic women on film Date: October 2008 Originally published as: University of Liverpool PhD thesis Example citation: Scott, Lindsey A. (2008). Caught between presence and absence: Shakespeare's tragic women on film. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. Version of item: Submitted version Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10034/100153 Caught Between Presence and Absence: Shakespeare’s Tragic Women on Film Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy By Lindsey A. Scott October 2008 Declaration I declare that the material presented in this thesis is all my own work and has not been submitted for another award of the University of Liverpool or any other Higher Education Institution. Signed Lindsey A Scott Dated 27/08/09 Usually a physical presence – moving in space or making its own distinctive sounds – the body may also manifest itself only in verbal traces, or in echoes which signify its absence. Patrick Campbell, ‘Introduction’, The Body in Performance: Contemporary Theatre Review ed. by Patrick Campbell (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1-3 (p. 1). Caught Between Presence and Absence: Shakespeare’s Tragic Women on Film Table of Contents Title Page Acknowledgements i Abstract ii List of Illustrations iii-iv Introduction ‘A Better Head Her Glorious Body Fits’: Space and the Body, Shakespeare and Adaptation 1 Chapter One ‘Such Black and Grainèd Spots’: Gertrude on Film 28 Chapter Two ‘A Closet Lock and Key of Villainous Secrets’: Filming Othello’s Private Parts 69 Chapter Three ‘In This Borrowed Likeness of Shrunk Death’: Juliet’s Liminal Body on Film 115 Chapter Four ‘Naked Frailties’: Nakedness and Violence in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth 158 Chapter Five ‘Groaning Shadows that are Gone’: the Ghosts of Julie Taymor’s Titus 196 Conclusion ‘Confusion Fall – ’: Moving Beyond a Fixed Point 238 Primary Bibliography 244 Secondary Bibliography 245 Selective Filmography 265 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Emma Rees, for her support and for her belief in my abilities throughout this project. Thanks also to Chester University for awarding me a 3-year full bursary in order to complete my research. Sincere thanks to everyone within the English Department at Chester for offering advice, encouragement, listening to papers, and for assisting me with assembling and printing the thesis in those final difficult moments. Special thanks are due to Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan who have supported me, advised me, guided me and inspired me for many years. I would also like to thank Ian Hunter for giving me my enthusiasm for film and for assisting me in my search for funding. Thanks to Yvonne Griggs for her generous friendship, and to Mitchell Dunkley for coming to my rescue on several occasions. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the library staff at Chester, De Montfort University, Leicester University, and Birmingham University for all their assistance. The anonymous readers at the BSA journal Shakespeare; Shakespeare Quarterly; and Literature/Film Quarterly have also provided me with invaluable comments that have allowed my research to develop in fruitful ways. Special thanks are also due to Anthony Davies, José Ramόn Díaz-Fernández, Peter Holland, Gail Kern Paster and Elsie Walker for their advice and for the opportunities with which they have provided me. On a more personal note, I wish to thank my wonderful sister, Joanna, for always being there for me; my dear friend, Emily Knight, for listening to me and for supporting me from the beginning until the very end; Richard Davis for his patience, generosity and enthusiasm; and Emma Scott for much love and kindness: I know you will all be proud. To my girls, Alexandra Cruikshank, Holly Notcutt, Anneliese Merrikin, Kate Blythe, and Louise Ryan, I am forever grateful: without you, I could never be myself. Finally, to my loving parents, Jim and Jean, who have given me so much and have provided me with the strength, determination, and humour to see this project through: my love and gratitude is immeasurable. As the smallest token of my appreciation for all the wonderful things that you have done for me, this thesis is dedicated to you both. i Abstract In offering readings of Shakespeare’s tragic women on film, this thesis explores bodies that are caught between signifiers of absence and presence: the woman’s body that is present with absent body parts; the woman’s body that is spoken about or alluded to when absent from view; the woman’s living body that appears as a corpse; the woman’s body that must be exposed and concealed from sight. These are bodies that appear on the borderline of meaning, that open up a marginal or liminal space of investigation. In concentrating on a state of ‘betweenness’, I am seeking to offer new interpretive possibilities for bodies that have become the site of much critical anxiety, and bodies that, due to their own peculiar liminality, have so far been critically ignored. In reading Shakespeare’s tragic women on film, I am interested specifically in screen representations of Gertrude’s sexualised body that is both absent and present in Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Desdemona’s (un)chaste body that is both exposed and concealed in film adaptations of Othello; Juliet’s ‘living corpse’ that represents life and death in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; the woman’s naked body in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) that is absent from Shakespeare’s play-text; and Lavinia’s violated, dismembered body in Julie Taymor’s (Titus, 1999) and Titus Andronicus, which, in signifying both life and death, wholeness and fragmentation, absence and presence, something and nothing, embodies many of the paradoxes explored within this thesis. Through readings that demonstrate a combined interest in Shakespeare’s plays, Shakespeare films, and Shakespeare criticism, this thesis brings these liminal bodies into focus, revealing how an understanding of their ‘absent presence’ can affect our responses as spectators of Shakespeare’s tragedies on film. ii List of Illustrations 1.1. Spectres for spectators: the ghosts of Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999) 2.1. Feminising the ‘nasty sty’: the royal bed in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) 2.2. ‘Ay, madam, it is common’: Laurence Olivier and Eileen Herlie in Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) 2.3. ‘Why, how now, Hamlet?’: Eileen Herlie’s Gertrude in Olivier’s closet scene (1948) 2.4. Seeing her ‘inmost part’: Elza Radzin’s Gertrude in Kozintsev’s Hamlet (1964) 2.5. Thorns that ‘prick and sting’: Glenn Close’s Gertrude in Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990) 2.6. ‘Ay me, what act?’: Kenneth Branagh and Julie Christie in Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) 2.7. ‘Dost thou not laugh?’: Christie’s ambiguous smile in Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) 2.8. Placing the blame: searching the ‘enseamèd bed’ of Kate Winslet’s Ophelia in Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) 2.9. ‘To be, or not to be’: keeping the camera rolling in Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000) 3.1. Hidden spaces: Suzanne Cloutier’s Desdemona in Welles’s Othello (1952) 3.2. Plaguing women’s interiors ‘with flies’: Cloutier’s Desdemona in Welles’s Othello (1952) 3.3. ‘Well, happiness to their sheets’: the ‘inviting eye’ in Welles’s Othello (1952) 3.4. ‘O, these men, these men’: Dividing Cloutier’s Desdemona and Fay Compton’s Emilia in Welles’s ‘willow’ scene (1952) 3.5. Exposing and concealing private parts: Desdemona’s murder in Welles’s Othello (1952) 3.6. ‘Othello’s visage’ in her mind: Skobesteva’s Desdemona in Yutkevich’s Othello (1956) 3.7. Desdemona’s globe: Irina Skobesteva in Yutkevich’s Othello (1956) 3.8. Confronting monstrosity within: Andrei Popov’s Iago in Yutkevich’s Othello (1956) 3.9. ‘This accident is not unlike my dream’: dangerous visions in Parker’s Othello (1995) 3.10. ‘Ocular proof’: contaminating the bed with Irène Jacob’s Desdemona and Nathaniel Parker’s Cassio in Parker’s Othello (1995) 3.11. ‘Sing willow, willow’: Laurence Fishburne in Parker’s Othello (1995) 3.12. ‘My husband?’: Anna Patrick’s Emilia in Parker’s Othello (1995) 3.13. ‘What you know, you know’: treacherous private bonds between men in Parker’s Othello (1995) 4.1. Enclosing the virginal body: Susan Shentall in Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet (1954) 4.2. ‘This object kills me’: Laurence Harvey’s Romeo cowers from Juliet’s ‘corpse’ in Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet (1954) 4.3. ‘What hands do’: Symbolising Juliet’s ‘rebirth’ in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) 4.4. A ‘living corpse’: Hussey’s Juliet on the bier in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) iii 4.5. ‘Did my heart love till now?’: focusing on Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) 4.6. ‘Alas, she has no speech’: Danes’s Juliet in Luhrmann’s tomb scene (1996) 4.7. ‘The rest is silence’: Danes’s Juliet in Luhrmann’s tomb scene (1996) 5.1. ‘Through the fog and filthy air’: the Witches in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) 5.2.