SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE: APPROPRIATION OF SHAKESPEARE IN POPULAR ROMANCE ...

236 Pages·2013·1.45 MB·English

by  John Chambers

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE: APPROPRIATION
OF SHAKESPEARE IN POPULAR
ROMANCE NOVELS

by
TAMARA LYNN WHYTE
SHARON O’DAIR, COMMITTEE CHAIR
DAVID AINSWORTH
JENNIFER DROUIN
TRICIA MCELROY
CATHERINE ROACH

A DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of English
in the Graduate School of
The University of Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA

2013
Copyright Tamara Lynn Whyte 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ABSTRACT

Popular romance authors frequently allude to William Shakespeare’s works within their
novels. In my dissertation, I survey and analyze the various ways current authors of historical
romance novels appropriate Shakespeare and how those appropriations reinterpret his works. I
argue in part that the inclusion of Shakespearean allusions has become part of the codes of
romance novels, with various types of allusions serving different purposes.
Performances of Shakespeare’s plays tend to serve as a backdrop for courtship or as a foil
to the plot of the novel. When romance authors rewrite Shakespeare’s plays to suit the romance
novel audience, they often refocus on the heroine and give her more agency. Romance authors
also rewrite Shakespeare’s tragedies as romance in ways that draw on reader familiarity with the
plays. These revisions tend to reduce the plays to key moments or themes and focus on female
characters in Shakespeare’s works. When romance novel heroes or heroines quote Shakespeare,
his words serve as a signal to the reader of elements of their character, such as their intelligence
or emotional availability. When authors allude to Shakespeare’s works in titles, names, or
opening quotations, they openly signal their appropriation of the Bard in ways that distinguish
their novels from others. In these more minor appropriations, Shakespearean allusions can
function as marketing tools.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am pleased to have this opportunity to thank the many colleagues, friends, and faculty
members who have helped me with this project. I would like to thank Sharon O’Dair for her
continued assistance and patience throughout the process. Without her and the other members of
my committee, this work would not be possible.
I could not have completed this project without the continued support of my parents and
my wonderful husband. I am forever grateful for their love and encouragement. Thank you to
Mara Bandy and Krista Garcia for providing feedback and support throughout each iteration of
my work. Thank you also to my other colleagues who helped along the way, particularly Molly
Wright-Starkweather and Cori Perdue.
I would also like to thank my fellow romance scholars that I have met and worked with
over the past few years who have aided me in finding these sources and believing in my project.
I am proud to be part of the community of romance scholars.

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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................ ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................... iii
LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................v
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................1
CHAPTER ONE “THE PLAY’S THE THING”:
ATTENDING THEATRICAL PRODUCTIONS .....................................17
CHAPTER TWO “THE STORY SHALL BE CHANGED”:
REWRITING SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS ...............................................43
CHAPTER THREE “ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL”:
TURNING SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY INTO ROMANCE ...........84
CHAPTER FOUR “WHERE DID YOU STUDY ALL THIS GOODLY
SPEECH?”: QUOTATIONS AS CHARACTERIZATION ....................117

CHAPTER FIVE “WHAT’S IN A NAME?”:
TITLES, NAMES, AND OPENING QUOTATIONS ............................150
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................189
REFERENCES ........................................................................................197
APPENDIX ..............................................................................................209

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LIST OF TABLES

1 Shakespearean Allusions by Year .............................................................2
2 Percentage of Shakespearean Allusions ....................................................3
3 Plays Attended in Romance Novels ........................................................18
4 Most Shakespearean Allusions by Play ..................................................85
5 Shakespearean Allusions by Type, Part 1 .............................................119
6 Shakespearean Allusions by Type, Part 2 .............................................151

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INTRODUCTION
Currently, at least three historical romance authors—Christy English, Eloisa James, and
Nichole Jordan—are actively writing series of novels that adapt William Shakespeare’s plays.
These works are a part of a larger trend within historical romance novels to appropriate
Shakespeare in a variety of ways to suit the romance novelists’ ends. These appropriations take a
variety of forms, from complete rewritings of the plays to brief allusions in titles or opening
quotations. My project examines how current romance authors appropriate Shakespeare.
Shakespearean allusions serve as everything from a marketing tool to source material for
historical romance authors. I argue that these various uses of the Bard have become part of the
codes of the historical romance novel.
The inclusion of Shakespearean allusions is not a minor trend within current historical
romance novels. Between 2000 and 2013, at least 213 romance authors have alluded to
Shakespeare in their novels. My sample consists of 539 historical romance novels by these
authors that directly allude to Shakespeare’s plays or poetry. Within my sample, I identified 27
novels with Shakespearean allusions published in 2000, 25 in 2001, 39 in 2002, 59 in 2003, 51 in
2004, 61 in 2005, 32 in 2006, 49 in 2007, 35 in 2008, 34 in 2009, 35 in 2010, 39 in 2011, 35 in
2012, and 18 so far in 2013 (see table 1). These figures demonstrate the persistence of
Shakespearean allusions within historical romance novels.
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Table 1 Shakespearean Allusions by Year
2013 18
2012 35
2011 39
2010 35
2009 34
2008 35
2007 49
2006 32
2005 61
2004 51
2003 59
2002 39
2001 25
2000 27
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Romances with Shakespearean allusions

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While publishers did not respond to my request for publication statistics, previous data
from Romance Writers of America1 demonstrates that these allusions appear in roughly 10
percent of historical romances in 2003 and 2004. They reported that around 2,000 romances were
published each year from 2000-2003, which means Shakespearean allusions appeared in at least
one percent of all romances in each year (see table 2). In 2005, publishers released 5,994
romance titles, making the percentage once again one percent overall. Over these five years the
percentage of historical romance novels within my sample that include Shakespearean allusions
rose from 4.6 percent in 2000 to 12.3 percent in 2003 and 10.7 percent in 2004. The decrease of
the total allusions in 2006 corresponds with publishers Zebra and Signet discontinuing their
regency lines. Nine of the romance novels within my sample which alluded to Shakespeare in
2005 were published by the Signet Regency Romance line; clearly the cessation of these lines
affected the overall number of allusions. Though there is a decrease in number of allusions, there
is an increase in percentage. As time goes on, the historical romance reader could come to expect
Shakespeare allusions in the more limited historical romances that are offered.

Table 2 Percentage of Shakespearean Allusions
Novels with Percentage of
Total Historical Shakespearean Percentage of Historical
Year Romances romances allusions all romances Romance Novels
2000 2289 586 27 1.20% 4.60%
2001 2143 566 25 1.20% 4.40%
2002 2169 580 39 1.80% 6.70%
2003 2093 479 59 2.80% 12.30%
2004 2285 477 51 2.20% 10.70%

1 Romance Writers of America is a professional organization of romance authors. Each year they
collect statistics on the current romance market and readership.
3
The variety of definitions of adaptation and appropriation complicates the choice of
terminology to discuss authors’ relationships with previous texts. In Adaptation and
Appropriation, Julie Sanders attempts to differentiate between adaptation and appropriation,
presenting three categories of adaptation: transportation, commentary, and analogue (20).
Transportations move a text from one medium to another, or relocate them “in cultural,
geographical, and temporal terms” (20). The film Romeo + Juliet falls into this first category.2
Works in the second category, commentary, are “adaptations that comment on the politics of the
source text, or those of the new mise-en-scéne, or both, usually by means of alteration or
addition” (21). Sanders argues that the audience must be familiar with the original work for this
type of adaptation to have its full impact (22). For example, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is
more powerful when viewed as a reworking of King Lear. The third type of adaptation,
analogue, does not require knowledge of the original to be understood, though that awareness
can deepen appreciation for the work, such as in the film 10 Things I Hate About You. Yet all
three of these categories could easily be argued to also be appropriations. Sanders’ own
argument that “an adaptation signals a relationship with an informative source text or original,”
while “appropriation frequently affects a more decisive journey away from the informing source
into a wholly new cultural product and domain” would suggest that the final category should be
called appropriation (26).
The most useful definitions for my project tend to be of appropriation. In The
Appropriation of Shakespeare, Jean Marsden connects appropriation with taking possession of a

2 Even this category could be considered appropriation. In Shakespeare and Modern Popular
Culture, Douglas Lanier settles on appropriation as the proper term. This term “focuses our
attention on the ways in which Shakespeare is moved from one cultural realm or interpretive
frame to another. It acknowledges that by simply changing the context in which Shakespeare’s
words appear—without changing the words themselves—we radically alter their meaning” (5).
So simply changing the setting, without changing anything else produces a new product.
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