When reading Northrop Fry’s The Argument of Comedy a particular passage stuck out to me. Fry states: “The association of this symbolism with the death and revival of human beings is more elusive, but still perceptible. The fact that the heroine often brings about the comic resolution by disguising herself as a boy is familiar enough. In the Hero of Much Ado About Nothing and the Helena of All’s Well That Ends Well, this theme of the withdrawal and return of the heroine comes as close to a death and revival as Elizabethan conventions will allow. The Thaisa of Pericles and the Fidele of Cymbeline are beginning to crack the conventions, and with the disappearance and revival of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, who actually returns once as a ghost in a dream, the original nature-myth of Demeter and Proserpine is openly established. The fact that the dying and reviving character is usually female strengthens the feeling that there is something maternal about the green world, in which the new order of the comic resolution is nourished and brought to birth.”
This brought me to thinking about the more modern adaptations of Shakespeare’s comedies within film and stage-plays, and more specifically, the way these gender differences included in the death and rebirths of characters (or in narrative plot points) are portrayed. There’s the obvious example in She’s The Man (based on Twelfth Night) in which Viola pretends to be her twin brother, Sebastian, in order to beat her ex-boyfriend in a soccer/football match while playing on the men’s team. A slightly less obvious example would be the portrayal of Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew). While Kat’s character does not at any point pretend to be a man, her character design in terms costume, and attitude is more traditionally maslucline, especially when compared to her sister, Bianca. However a key point to keep in mind regarding this specific example is that she stays feminine and feminist throughout the entire show, even when her character is portraying more male-associated characterstics (like aggression). Finally, in Josie Rourke’s version of Much Ado About Nothing, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Benedick and Beatrice both characters at different points in the show take on the costumes/traditional characteristics of the opposite gender, most notably in the scene I have included. All of these are played for comedy at some point within their respective works, and are additionally used to pull the narrative along or to “revive” the character. She’s The Man hinges on this, Kat gradually shows more traditionally feminine traits over the course of 10 Things in terms of costume and disposition (like emotional vulnurability
), and similarly Benedick and Beatrice’s costumes/character traits only properly fit back into the gender norms after the plot has been more or less resolved. The “crack in conventions” as Fry has described it, is what allows for comedy and pulls the plot and its characters towards its “revival” and subsequent resolution.
There are so many good Shakespeare adaptations! You raise interesting points, I think it is fascinating how Shakespeare’s plays do not need to be adjusted much to entertain a modern audience and reflect current gender ideologies, perhaps the main difference does not lie in the material but in the audience’s perception of it.