Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is the kind of play Virginia Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare would have written – had she been allowed to. Woolf writes that if Shakespeare had had a sister that when she attempted to act, the men at the stage door would have laughed at her. “She could get no training in her craft”, Wolf writes, “Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight?” She says that women in Shakespeare’s time could not have been geniuses, because “almost before they were out of the nursery” their work had begun. They were forced by parents, laws and customs to act in accordance with their traditional roles. Women who did have gifted minds, says Woolf, “would have certainly gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village.”
The fact that women were not allowed to be geniuses at this time, though, says Woolf, robbed literature of much of its potential greatness. So, too, did the fact that men portrayed women only as love interests for men. “Cleopatra’s only feeling about Octavia is one of jealousy,” she writes. “Is she taller than I am? How does she do her hair? The play, perhaps, required no more, but how interesting it would have been if the relationship between these two women had been more complicated.” This kind of complicated relationship is the basis of Goodnight Desdemona. It celebrates complex relationships among women. Constance feels deep admiration for both Juliet and Desdemona. Desdemona feels loyalty, love and friendship for her. Juliet feels both romantic and erotic love for her. Both women, for different reasons and at different times want her to die. Being able to write and publish such a play would have delighted Judith Shakespeare.
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"Goodnight Virginia: Reading Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) through Virgina’s Woolf’s Perspective".
Woolf is critical of classic literature. “I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends,” she writes, but she comes up empty. Woolf and Judith Shakespeare would have been particularly pleased with the ending of Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) because women are represented as friends in its pages. Woolf asks what would happen to literature if men were portrayed in the same way men have portrayed women. If Judith Shakespeare had wanted to show them, she might have written something like Desdemona. In it, men like Othello and Romeo figure in as romantic interests for their women.
They are used almost as decorations. Women, not men, play the major roles. This role reversal extends past their identities and importance. Whereas in many of William Shakespeare’s plays, women play chaste victims and men scamper around making lewd remarks, women make their own sexual allusions in Desdemona. When Juliet believes Constance is a boy, she begs, “Learn how the rose becomes a sea of love: come part the waves and plumb Atlantic depths.” If this weren’t enough, she goes on. “I’ll guide you to the oyster’s precious pearl,” she says. “We’ll seek out wat’ry caves for glist’ning treasure.” This would have been accepted in Shakespeare’s time from a man, but not, in all likelihood, from a women. Desdemona shows what a Shakespearian play might have been like if men and women had been equals. Juliet’s words are striking, not only because of their brazenness, but also because they transform Juliet from an innocent victim into a coy, experienced woman, ready, not only to engage in sexual adventures, but to guide men through them.
Desdemona gains from the talents of a female writer in just the way Woolf suggests such a play might have benefitted in Shakespeare’s time. Women’s characters become deeper. While, at first, Juliet and Desdemona seem rather flat and one sided, they develop into women who can learn, change and be influenced by those around them. Juliet might, at first, look like a promiscuous airhead, but the audience ends up seeing that she has the capacity to act in the spirit of friendship, to risk her life for others and to think. Desdemona, at first, looks like a blood-loving war monger, but the audience sees that she is capable of love, loyalty and intelligent thought.
Woolf objects to the fact that men create female characters who are strange, because they are said to be of great importance, yet they really play insignificant roles. Desdemona turns this on its head. While, at first, it looks like Desdemona will be portrayed as one of these great, celebrated, empty women, she plays one of the most significant roles in the play.
Woolf writes that, had Shakespeare had a sister with the same genius as he had, she would have, after being subjected to pleas and beatings from her father for not marrying, have found that all doors were closed to her. Thwarted in her desire to act and write, she would have, says Woolf, “killed herself one winter’s night”. Being able to write a play like Desdemona might have saved the fictional life of Judith Shakespeare. Not only would it have allowed her to unleash her genius, it would have allowed her to expose the social inequalities of her day. She could have used it to condemn men’s’ use of assistants and secretaries. She could have used it to address social issues, such as taboos against lesbianism, transsexuality and homosexuality. Or perhaps she could have used it to address familial feuds in her own day. She might have used Desdemona to advocate for sword control or anger management.
Yet, although Desdemona is the kind of play that Judith Shakespeare would have wanted to write, it is precisely the kind of play that she would be forbidden to publish. Woolf writes that “Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman’s life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.” Writing a play like Desdemona might call into question the chasteness of its playwright, who seems well educated on sexual topics. In an age where even acting could be considered unchaste, an author like Ann-Marie MacDonald would be shunned.
