Is the currently derisory attitude towards stage adaptations in academia changing?

The phenomenally successful Warhorse, which has been adapted from the novel to stage and screen to rave reviews

In an article in the The Guardian in September 2013, journalist Lyn Gardner wrote a short piece entitled ‘Are stage adaptations always inferior?’ where she queried twenty-first century attitudes towards stage adaptations. She draws particular reference to William Shakespeare’s writings when examining this negative attitude towards stage adaptations:

If William Shakespeare were writing plays today, what would his inspirations and sources be? As we all know, Shakespeare was a great playwright but not a great originator of plots, and quite happily plundered the work of writers and historians. He took familiar stories and made them his own... Shakespeare's sources tended to be published texts, but if he were writing today he would almost certainly turn his attention to movies, online stories, TV formats and maybe even video games: good playwrights are magpies whose beady eyes alight on the bright and shiny.

She states that the snobbish attitude towards adaptations is unjustified because even William Shakespeare wrote adaptations and that one of his most famous plays Romeo and Juliet is a little known adaptation of Arthur Brooke's narrative poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562). She goes on to say that she believes that the current snobbishness towards adaptations must be coming to an end due to the success of adaptations such as Michael Morpurgo’s Warhorse and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. And maybe the disdain with which adaptations are treated in academic and media circles is now ending, but it’s taken over a century and a half!

One of the reasons for the derision of adaptations, could be the belief “that a story acted on stage by living, breathing people affected the senses ‘much more strongly’ than did the same story nestling between the covers of a book or in a magazine” (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p59).This was William Bodham Donne’s, who was the Deputy Examiner of Plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and was responsible for censoring plays, opinion of novel-to-stage-adaptations expressed in 1866. It came about as a consequence of an existing ban on London stage productions of Jack Shepperd and Oliver Twist. The ban was established because ‘the Lord Chamberlain [had been receiving a] great many letters from parents and masters requesting that such pieces should not be exhibited, because they had an ill effect on their sons and apprentices” (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p59).

Plays being performed in a theatre exist in a “different cultural space” from their original source (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p58-59) and being able to see the action described in the novel taking place directly in front of you was considered to be more affecting merely reading about the events. In the case of several Victorian novels, it is possible to see why the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, and other public figures, were against the staging of plays like Oliver Twist for fear of the action influencing audience members to act out elements of the play in their own lives. Theatre houses did not help matters by turning to the most sensational novels to fill their repertoires. In 1865, the Daily Telegraph reported that ‘latterly the custom [of adaptation] has been carried out to a fuller extent than usual, for the sensational element in the productions of the lady-novelists who are now in the ascendant has possessed great attractions for both actor and audience’ (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p58-59). As sensation novels were so often turned to for adaptation to the stage, and they were already receiving criticism because they “appeal[ed] directly to the nerves ... with its surprises, plot twists, and startling revelations” (Gilbert 2011: online source), it is no wonder that the adaptations also received negative attention if they were said to affect the senses “much more strongly” (Andrew Maunder ‘Sensation Fiction on Stage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction “(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p59).

Patsy Stoneman examines the dismissal of stage adaptations because they are inconsequential ephemera in Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848-1898 (2007) and attention on this area is now rapidly increasing as a result of the work of people like her and Harold Bloom. Stoneman’s work on the stage adaptations of Jane Eyre picks up from her earlier work on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as cultural phenomena. The enormous popularity of the novels when they were first published led to their rapid transfer to the stage. A stage adaptation of Jane Eyre appeared within three months of the novel’s publication and Brontë’s response to it was “[s]uch then is a sample of what amuses the Metropolitan populace!” (Brontë in Stoneman 2007: 1). As we’ve already seen there was a certain cultural snobbishness attached to adaptations in the Victorian era, possibly because at this point in the history of British theatre, melodrama was the king of the Victorian stage and melodrama focuses on sensational plots and farce at the expense of character development. However, this meant that sensational novels were ceased because of their already dramatic plots, vulnerable heroines and wicked villains, books like Jane Eyre, where these same elements appear, were quickly jumped on by theatre houses so that they too could cash in on the success of the original source.

The rushed adaptations are frequently very unrefined in terms of their style, spelling, plot and grammar, and this may be another reason why stage adaptations are seldom examined by academics; however the speed at which they were produced is also one of the reasons why the texts should be examined today. As the stage adaptations had to be written quickly in order to respond to the audience’s demand, they contain many elements of interest to historians as well as to English literature and theatre scholars. Not only do the stage adaptations relay the plot of the original source, the authors also changed it to appeal more to the audience whether by refocusing the attention on another character or even inventing characters who vie against Jane for the audience’s attention. By examining these stage adaptations and the decisions the author made it is possible to identify things like places being significantly affected by the late introduction of the Enclosure Act, as in the case of the 1874 stage adaptation of East Lynne in Nottingham.

       In the Victorian era nothing was safe from the minor theatre houses. Every story, poem, novel or event was looked at as a means of getting ‘bums on seats’ for the theatre houses which contributed to the negative attitude which was held, and is sometimes still held today in many academic spheres. The reason that adaptations have a bad ‘rep’ is because minor theatres used to have them as a regular part of their repertoire as they were cheap and easy to produce. Whereas original plays were considered more ‘sophisticated’, such as the works of Henrik Ibsen or George Bernard Shaw, but particularly canonical works, such as those by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and operas and ballets. Due to the consequences of the Licensing Act of 1737, spoken drama was only permitted to be performed at the patented theatres of The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, both of which are in London. This meant that the ‘minor theatres’ were only limited to producing musical dramas, burletta and melodrama (Flanders 2006: 292). One of the ways that the ‘minor theatres’ managed to fill their repertoires, despite the limitations of the Theatre Regulating Act of 1843, was to turn to the current bestseller and transform it for the stage. The theory was that a bestseller would ensure that they got bums on seats because the story was already attracting public and media attention. In academic circles, it was sometimes considered that there was less effort involved in producing adaptations as they were not original ideas, which also contributed to the low reputation of adaptations.

With the cultural phenomena surrounding Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), it is no wonder that Jane Eyre is one of the most adapted stories in English Literature (Stoneman 1996: 1) and why at least eight stage adaptations (that we know of from the Lord Chamberlain’s Archive) took place between 1848 and 1898. The original source, Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), received very mixed reviews, but an enormous amount of attention as well, which is a consequence of its treatment of very controversial issues, such as, the difficulties of unsatisfactory married life and a poor, dependent orphan girl’s struggle for independence and a voice. Matthew Arnold, the renowned critic and author, heavily condemned the book saying that:

Miss Brontë has written a hideous, undelightful, convulsed, constricted novel . . . one of the most utterly disagreeable books I've ever read . . . [because] the writer's mind contains nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage and therefore that is all she can, in fact, put in her book (Arnold in Mayer).

And Victorian essayist and journal editor Anne Mozley felt that Jane Eyre was “a dangerous book” (Mozley qtd. in Allott 2003: 203) because of its “protest against the outrages on decorum, the moral perversity, the toleration of, nay, indifference to vice which deform her first powerful picture of a desolate women’s trials and sufferings” (Mozley qtd. in Allot 2003: 203). But not all of the critical reviews to Jane Eyre were negative, however, Margaret Oliphant, another nineteenth-century reviewer and herself a novelist, described Jane Eyre as “one of the most remarkable works of modern times” (Oliphant in Allott 2003: 313). Whilst the reviews range from fiercely critical to laudatory, none of them feel that the book is ‘cheap’ or of a ‘low standard’, which is sometimes held of adaptations. What is interesting in the context of this study is that in none of the contemporary reviews of the productions of Jane Eyre, by any of the eight adaptors, is adaptation as a genre denigrated.    

   Stage adaptations of Mary Elizabeth Braddon received similar treatment from the press. However, one dramatist sought to avoid any negative criticism regarding a lack of fidelity to the original source by working closely with Braddon herself.  George Roberts invited Braddon to attend the rehearsals of his play and encouraged her to provide her feedback as he wanted desperately to gain her approval. He did this at a time when the copyright laws of the age meant that you didn't need permission to adapt and stage a play from a recent novel so he didn't need to do this. Earlier in the year, Braddon had sued William E. Suter over his attempt to publish his adaptation of her novel because she had not authorised the adaptation of her novel in the first place. Suter’s adaptation has the most melodramatic elements, including several moments of slapstick between the invented servant characters, Bibbles and Bubbles. Suter’s key approach to staging Lady Audley is that she is a bad woman, whereas George Roberts’ was that Lady Audley was a woman pushed to the edge of insanity. Despite the fact that Suter approached Lady Audley in an entirely different manner to Roberts, who worked closely with Braddon, contemporary reviews did not denigrate the genre or accuse the production of cheapness.

Given that no contemporary reviews of adaptations of East Lynne, Lady Audley’s Secret or Jane Eyre I came across whilst researching my thesis felt that adaptation was an inferior genre, it is surprising to me that this attitude was held and is still held today. This also makes it all the more important to study stage adaptations and to try to overcome the attitude that they lack “dramatic authenticity” (Stoneman 2007: 1). That the contemporary reviewers of The Era, The Illustrated London News and even The Times, did not consider the stage adaptations to be beneath them, begs the question ‘why’ given that adaptations are supposed to be so ‘poor’. Why were these adaptations being reviewed? What about them drew press attention to them? And there is no absolute answer to answer this question. Each play has its own merits, whether it was a famous actor or actress starring in a lead role or a different take on the original novel’s contentious character, or even inventing characters that were relevant to the audience surrounding the theatre. From the perspective of sociology and politics, linguistic theory and cultural studies analysis of these plays helps us to understand a specific point and place in time.

In conclusion, whilst Lyn Gardner in her article in The Guardian entitled ‘Are stage adaptations always inferior?’ states that she thinks the snobbishness towards adaptations is coming to an end, but the fact that she was writing an article about it one hundred and fifty years after the Lord Chamberlain’s Office commented on the inferiority of adaptation, indicates that attitudes towards adaptations have not developed far beyond the mid-nineteenth-century. This is despite the work of people like Harold Bloom and Patsy Stoneman who promulgate that they are “unique markers of social and ideological change” (Stoneman 2007: 1), but maybe with continued research this attitude will change one day. Hopefully, one day soon in the case of my thesis!

Bibliography

Flanders, Judith, Consuming Passions (London: Harper Perennial, 2006)

Gilbert, Pamela, A Companion to Sensation Fiction (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

Mayer, Sonja, ‘Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Readers Alone! Why a Governess's Narrative in Jane Eyre Shocked Certain Victorians’ in Narrative Strategies in the Novel (English 507, Mercy College Online). Accessed on 01/05/2014 at: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/mayer1.html

Stoneman, Patsy, Brontë Transformations: The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996)

Stoneman, Patsy, Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848-1898: An Illustrated Edition of Eight Plays with Contextual Notes (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007)