For my thesis, I intend to examine and analyse the representation of female servants in Shakespearean films since the 1990’s, paying close attention to the correlation between class, sexuality and identity. Currently, my working title reads “Woman or Wench? Shakespeare’s Servants Re-imagined On Screen”. I shall endeavour to explore whether cinematic adaptations elevate the performance of a relatively marginalised group of individuals. To achieve this, I shall be concise in my selection of characters and their onscreen counterparts. I have chosen Margaret from Much Ado About Nothing, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice and Emilia in Othello. I have chosen these characters as they are each active and essential to the overall narrative. My objective for the thesis is to interrogate recent films and the portrayal of these characters. As such I shall be primarily focusing on film adaptions since 1990 up until 2013.
For my focus on Margaret, I have selected Joss Whedon’s 2012 production of Much Ado About Nothing and Kenneth Brannagh’s iconic 1993 film where Margaret is played by Ashley Johnson and Imelda Staunton respectively. Both films feature Margaret yet her performance differs in each. I intend to interrogate these differences and ponder the implications for her overall performance. When examining the Nurse I shall use Baz Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Rome+Juliet (1996). In Luhrman’s film, the Nurse, played by Miriam Margoyles, is Latina and I will examine the implications of this characterisation. For Emilia, I have chosen Oliver Parker’s 1995 film, with Anna Patrick playing the role. Finally, I shall use the 2004 adaptation of The Merchant of Venice to examine Nerissa, played by Heather Goldenhersch.
Firstly, I plan to carefully study the texts Much Ado, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello to ensure I can offer an informed analysis of their cinematic counterparts. I will use The Norton Shakespeare Second Edition edited by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). Greenblatt’s edition provides the audience with critical essays, textual information and a bibliography for further reading. The footnotes are well-presented and provide insight into the plays and their context.
Shakespeare’s female servants on screen is an overlooked topic; there is little critical theory solely dedicated to the characters I have discussed. I will examine essays or texts devoted to Shakespearean films and overall theories on cinema. Crucial to my research is Maurice Hindle’s Studying Shakespeare on Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Hindle presents an in-depth analysis on the film modes, styles, the history of Shakespeare on film and critical essays on Brannagh’s Much Ado About Nothing and Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet.
To gain a firm understanding of the technicalities of Shakespearean films, I will use Samuel Crowl’s Shakespeare and Film, A Norton Guide (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). His chapter “Soliloquies and Scenes: Adapting Stage Conventions to the screen” will be of particular use. As I shall be examining the characters’ performance, identity and sexuality, I will make use of Laura Mulvey’s Visual and Other Pleasures (Antony Rowe Ltd, 1993). Her chapter “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, which details the theory of “the Male Gaze”, is particularly relevant to my research.
Additionally, my research requires the examination of the characters in their textual setting. To gain a full, complete understanding of their context, I shall use R.C. Richardson’s text Household Servants in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Out of my chosen films, Romeo+Juliet and Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing are the only two not set in the Renaissance period. Additionally, Frances E. Dolan’s chapter “Household Chastisements: Gender, Authority and ‘Domestic Violence’” from the collection Renaissance Culture and the Everyday (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) provides extensive knowledge on the subject of servants in the Renaissance and Early Modern era.
As previously stated, there is little critical theory devoted to Margaret, the Nurse, Nerissa or Emilia on film. I shall have to rely on the work carried out on the textual characters and argue whether it is applicable to the cinematic representation. There are certain difficulties and concerns with this approach and I will need to remain objective and focused on my title. I have found a selection of essays and articles that have provided some compelling arguments. Barbara Hodgson’s chapter “William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet: Everything’s Nice in America?” from Shakespeare An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004) looks at the effect ethnicity has in Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet. Given Margoyles’ almost caricature, Latina performance of the Nurse, this chapter is relevant to my analysis of the character. Regarding the role of Margaret in Much Ado, Mario DiGangi “The Social Relations of Shakespeare’s Comic Households” (A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works: The Comedies. Blackwell Publishing, 2003) looks at her place as a domestic servant. I intend to examine the connection between Margaret’s status as a servant and her sexuality. Mihoko Suzuki’s “Gender, Class, and the Ideology of Comic Form: Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night” (A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. Blackwell, 2000) examines her sexual transgressions and culpability in Hero’s downfall.
Emilia is both a servant to Desdemona and wife to Iago. The duality between these two social roles results in two different yet compelling portrayals in Parker’s adaptation. To aid my interrogation of the character, I will use Carol Chillington Rutter’s text Enter the Body: Women and Representation of Shakespeare’s Stage (Routledge, 2001), notably the chapter “Remembering Emilia”. Although Chillington Rutter primarily focuses on stage performance, I believe the chapter offers a detailed critique of the relationship between Emilia and Desdemona. I would like to repeat my earlier conviction that there is merit in the critical opinions and theories based on Shakespeare’s texts and their applicability to film.
This is certainly true of Kay Stanton’s “Made to Write ‘whore’ upon: Male and Female Use of the Word ‘Whore’ in Shakespeare’s Canon” from A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare (Blackwell, 2000). The word “whore” is used by and to describe Emilia. I shall examine how these descriptions translate to Othello. Radford’s The Merchant of Venice demonstrates highly homoerotic overtones between Antonio and Bassanio. However, I believe Nerissa and Portia’s relationship in this film has similar overtones. To address this, I will use Theodora A. Jankowski’s chapter from A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, “…in the Lesbian Void: Woman-Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare’s Plays.”.
However, I will not solely rely on work based around the texts. I believe Carol Chillington Rutter’s essay “Looking at Shakespeare’s Women in Film” from The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film is one of the best pieces of work written about Shakespearean women on film. In this essay, Rutter specifically examines female performance from a range of films. Rutter argues that Shakespeare’s films offer women more to perform than his texts. This is one of the few essays solely dedicated to Shakespearean women on screen and it discusses the characters and films I am examining in my thesis.
In addition to these texts, I shall also rely on IT to aid my research and thesis composition. I endeavour to use the databases made available to me through the Boole Library website including JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, LION and ProQuest. Online journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies and Shakespeare Survey will be of great assistance to my research. I will also make full use of the multimedia facilities supplied by the Boole Library.
Works Cited
Callaghan, Dympna. A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. Print.
Chillington Rutter, Carol. “Looking at Shakespeare’s Women on Film”. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Ed. Russell Jackson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
–Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare’s Stage. New York: Routledge, 2001. Print.
Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare and Film: A Norton Guide. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.
Dutton, Richard, and Jean E. Howard. A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003. Print.
Hindle, Maurice. Studying Shakespeare on Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Hodgson, Barbara. “William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet: Everything’s Nice in America?” Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1945-2000. Ed. Russ McDonald. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.
Much Ado about Nothing. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, and Denzel Washington. Samuel Goldwyn Co., 1993. DVD.
Much Ado About Nothing. Dir. Joss Whedon. Perf. Amy Acker, Alexis Denishof. Lionsgate, 2012. DVD.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire, 1993. Print
Othello. Dir. Oliver Parker. Perf. Laurence Fishburne, Kenneth Brannagh. Columbia Pictures, 1995. DVD.
The Merchant of Venice. Dir. Michael Radford. Sony Pictures, 2005. DVD.
Shakespeare, William. “Much Ado About Nothing”. The Norton Shakespeare Second Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.
-“Romeo and Juliet”. The Norton Shakespeare Second Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.
-“Othello”. The Norton Shakespeare Second Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.
-“The Merchant of Venice”. The Norton Shakespeare Second Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhrman. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes. 20th Century Fox, 1996. DVD.
Illustrations
Studying Shakespeare on Film. Digital image. Amazon. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2016. <http://www.amazon.com/Studying-Shakespeare-Film-Maurice-Hindle/dp/1403906726>.
Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. Digital image. Blackwell Reference Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2016. <http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/book?id=g9780631208075_9780631208075>.
Nerissa. Digital image. Weary Sloth. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2016. <http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsG/35991-27174.gif>.
Ashley Johnson Gallery. Digital image. Very Sharing IMG. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2016. <http://veryshareimg.com/ashley-johnson-much-ado-about-nothing.html>.
Anna Patrick as Emilia. Digital image. Crimson Chevalier. WordPress, n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2016. <https://crimsonchevalier.wordpress.com/emilia/>.
Romeo and Juliet Nurse. Digital image. Quotes Gram. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2016. <http://quotesgram.com/romeo-and-juliet-nurse-quotes/>.
Michelle E. Murphy 
