Dramatic device of fateful tragedy in Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) but in a comic end. And comparison of mistake to Othello.
There are a series of parallels between Ann-Marie MacDonald's play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and William Shakespeare's plays Othello and Romeo and Juliet. MacDonald largely focused on taking a series of elements from Shakespeare's plays and using them in a way that contradicts their original purpose. The central character of MacDonald's play, Constance Ledbelly, attempts to demonstrate how Shakespere's plays were initially comedies that the playwright altered with the purpose of having them better fit a dramatic line of thoughts (Flaherty 55).
MacDonald's play goes further than to simply address the nature of Shakespeare's plays, as the writer uses the central character in an attempt to bring comedy to the English playwright's works. "By turning tragedy into comedy, MacDonald's text allows the doomed heroines Desdemona and Juliet to escape the prisons of their storylines and take an active role in their own fates." (Flaherty 19) The play practically shows a Romeo and Juliet that are far more adolescent-like in comparison to the original characters and a Desdemona that is much more...
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
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