Oh these shameless moderns!

1/ Over the past few months, I have been bombarded with Facebook ads for The Duchess (of Malfi), featuring Jodie Whittaker. 

What is it? you ask—why is “of Malfi” in brackets? It’s because this is a contemporary adaptation of Webster’s play. “A bloody revenge tragedy made marvellously modern”, says The Telegraph. The Duchess of Malfi stripped of its poetry, stripped of its language. Reduced to its plot. Reduced to something about “the patriarchy” and “female resistance.” 

One ad has the writer-director, Zinnie Harris, discussing “why she thinks John Webster’s classic text is still studied in school and remains relevant today.” 

I’d say The Duchess of Malfi endures because of its poetry, not because of its plot. Zinnie Harris herself mentions language and imagery—then why did she remove all of it? 

I’ll give you two quotes from Webster’s play:  

“BOSOLA Do you not weep?

Other sins only speak; murther shrieks out: 

The element of water moistens the earth, 

But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens. 

FERDINAND Cover her face. My eyes dazzle: she di’d young.”

(Act 5 scene 5) 

“ANTONIO […] In all our quest of greatness, 

Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, 

We follow after bubbles, blown in th’air. 

Pleasure of life, what is’t? only the good hours

Of an ague: merely a preparative to rest, 

To endure vexation…” 

(Act 5 scene 4)

2/ In 2022, Netflix released an adaptation of Persuasion. A “subversive new take on Jane Austen”, according to British Vogue. Persuasion Fleabag-ified. Anne Elliot regularly breaks the fourth wall and at some point says “Now we’re worse than exes, we’re friends.” Her sister Mary calls herself “an empath.” Someone says “It’s often said that if you’re a 5 in London, you’re a 10 in Bath.” Isn’t that relatable? British Vogue says “The introduction of direct-to-camera moments and doses of contemporary humour make Anne’s inner journey immediately relatable, in a way that might have been impossible under the standard conventions of the buttoned-up Regency drama.”

“Impossible”, they say—why do they think so many people love the book? 

But that’s not all. Carrie Cracknell, the director said “I’ve always loved casting in a color-conscious way. A conversation that I’ve had with lots of the actors that I’ve worked with over the years is how powerful it can be for a diverse audience to see themselves represented in historic cultural texts and stories, because in some way it sort of broadens the scope of the audience who can feel part of this story or can feel ownership over this story.” 

How marvellous! Where would we be without Carrie Cracknell and people like her? Since its publication in 1817, we pitiful people of colour have never felt that Persuasion was ours till Netflix condescended to help us feel included. 

3/ Today, at The Open Book in Richmond, I came across a book called She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said by Harriet Walter. 

“An incisive, funny, mischievously subversive homage to Shakespeare’s heroines, written by one of mine”, Meera Syal blurbs. 

Tamsin Greig says “With characteristic wit, compassion and fierce intelligence, she gives tantalising voice to the Bard’s female greats.” 

These are the opening lines of the introduction on the dust jacket:

“Dame Harriet Walter, renowned for her wonderful portrayals in Succession and Killing Eve, among others, is one of Britain’s most acclaimed Shakespearean actors. Now, having played most of the Bard’s female characters, audaciously she lets them speak their minds.” 

I’m sorry—do they not speak in the plays? 

One of the reasons Shakespeare is called the greatest writer of all time is that his range of characters is unequalled—he creates characters of different backgrounds, races, nationalities, classes, sexes, sexualities, religions, political views, points of view… and also different types of characters—he contains everything. Look at the female characters he created—look at Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth and Gertrude and Volumnia and Rosalind and Beatrice and Isabella and Viola and Portia and Imogen and Desdemona and Emilia and Hermione and Juliet’s nurse and so on and so forth—and Harriet Walter or the intro writer thinks she “lets them speak their minds”? That she imagines what “these women were really thinking”? And Walter thinks “the mirror that [Shakespeare] held up to nature reflected a predominantly male image of the world” and he needs her to “let a little sunlight in on some of his women’s stories”? 

The arrogance is incredible.