Drama Comedy Question in Both

Drama

Comedy Question

In both Othello and in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses the device of fateful mistakes to develop the tragic action. Can similar kinds of mistakes be said to happen in "Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)," but to comic ends instead? Compare MacDonald's use of this device with one of the "mistakes" in Othello.

Comedic plots often depend on a series of 'unfortunate' or mistaken events. For example, in a classic comedic set piece, someone slips on a banana peel that a friend tossed aside. The individual subsequently crashes into the peaceful friend happily eating a banana, and chaos and audience laughter ensues. However, such a chain of causal, mistaken events can also create the plot of a tragedy. In William Shakespeare's play "Othello" the newly married heroine Desdemona's carelessly discarded handkerchief creates a terrible series of events. Her use of a handkerchief to wipe Othello's brow results in her death, after her handmaiden Emilia gives it to Iago, Othello's sworn enemy.

In comedy, mistakes are a source of delight for the audience, even if they are upsetting to the characters. In tragedy, events occur that the characters are often unaware of, or unaware of the event's implications, such as Juliet's simulation of her own death -- until it is 'too late,' and the event has had terrible and unintended results for the innocent participants. In Ann-Marie MacDonald's comedic play "Good Morning Juliet, Goodnight Desdemona," the scholar Constance Ledbelly believes she can prove that Shakespeare had different endings for two of his most famous tragedies, although her local college colleagues laugh at her theories. She wishes to 'undo' the series of tragic misunderstandings. Then, through a series of comedic happenstances, Ledbelly disappears into her wastebasket, and resurfaces in the worlds of "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet," only to find that undoing the chain of mistakes does not undo the inevitability of tragedy occurring in these misogynistic worlds.

The comedy of Ann-Marie MacDonald's play could be classified farce because the characters are often sad at the series of mistaken events, but the audience does not always sympathize with them and put themselves into their personas -- they do not think, if only Constance had not lost her notes about alchemy! Oh no! But the audience mourns -- if only Emilia had not given Desdemona's strawberry-spotted handkerchief to her husband, not realizing Iago's nefarious purposes! Then Desdemona would be alive! Yet there are aspects of "Good Morning Juliet, Goodnight Desdemona," that could have tragic implications. For instance, Constance's supervisor, Professor Claude Knight, frequently plagiarizes her carefully researched and written work. Later, after stealing from her, Knight runs off with a more attractive graduate student, very unlike the Shakespearean heroes Constance is so enamored of, such as Romeo. But because of the heightened absurdity of the pun-ridden scholarship of Constance, and the ugly nature of Knight, the audience does not necessarily see these events as tragic, like Romeo and Juliet's separation.

Also, when Ledbelly enters the world of Shakespeare's dramas and makes them 'right,' such as when she exposes Iago's treachery, although she interrupts delicate causal chain of events that make up the plot of the play, she does not create a perfect world. In "Othello," rather than a tragedy of two good spouses subject to misunderstandings, the two characters must now understand one another on a deeper level, after the first flush of first love. Desdemona is angry, and wishes to revenge herself upon Iago, upsetting the audience and Othello's conception of his innocent wife as a pure victim, almost as much as the accusation of Desdemona's adultery. Later, Ledbelly discloses to Tybalt that he and Romeo are now joined as cousins, because of Romeo's marriage to Juliet -- but clearing up consequences only results in further levels of conflict.