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)
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)
