| Abstract: | 加拿大女劇作家安瑪麗․麥唐娜在她1988 年的劇作《晚安戴絲德蒙娜（早 安茱麗葉）》混合莎士比亞原作材料和她自己女性主義原創成分，寫出了一齣 關於戴絲德蒙娜、茱麗葉與康斯坦․雷碧莉的戲。這齣戲娛樂性極高又充滿機 智，是饒富啟發的混雜戲。在這齣拿到加拿大最高榮譽戲劇獎的劇作中，我們 可以找到發現女性潛能及增加女性力量的創新方法。 康絲坦是京斯頓女王大學的助理教授。因為迷戀克勞德․耐德教授，所以 已經心甘情願地幫他捉刀代寫學術論文十年。然而戲一開始時，她就碰到人生 最低點，因為耐德教授告訴她，從今後她不用再幫他寫論文了，因為就在那天 他正式升等為教授，而且已拿到牛津大學講師的工作。他打算跟另外一名女學 生雷蒙娜一齊去牛津大學。就在被這樣的打擊擊潰時，康絲坦歷經扭曲果效被 帶往塞浦路斯去拜訪《奧賽羅》中的戴絲德蒙娜，然後再去維若那拜訪《羅密 歐與茱麗葉》中的茱麗葉。原來康絲坦就是在做《奧賽羅》與《羅密歐與茱麗 葉》的研究，她相信這兩齣戲原本是要寫成喜劇的。結果在這場時空旅行中， 她攪和了兩位女主角的生活，不但救了她們，自己也瞭解自己是誰，並頓悟到 生命對她又代表甚麼意義。 戲一開始時，康絲坦就展現了她研究潛能的創意，可是她此時完全臣服於 耐德教授，因為她一心希望能得到他的愛。她也大概知道她對《奧賽羅》和 《羅密歐與茱麗葉》頗有獨到的見解。跟耐德相比，她其實是更有批判力、原 創力及活力。可是她卻不積極、沒自信、沒聲音。再者，她也渴望從耐得教授 那兒得到關懷、施恩，來滿足她的女性需求。 然而就因她平日研究戴絲德蒙娜，又在這次奇幻旅程中碰到她，康斯坦從 她身上學到了勇敢與自主。因為戴絲德蒙娜讓康絲坦認識了自己的價值及自主 力。戴絲德蒙娜可被視為是康絲坦漸漸發萌的獨立自主的潛意識。這也因此讓 她對自我能力的焦慮及疑惑趨緩。同時，康絲坦也在此時意識到自己也有可能 變成成就傑出的人。 從戴絲德蒙娜那兒學到自信後，康絲坦接著又從茱麗葉那兒學到如何面對 自己的感情問題，並且還把自己從對耐得教授的迷戀中釋放出來。而且她瞭解 到自己對他的迷戀也很不成熟，於是她便脫離了對他的盲目迷戀。再加上羅密 歐及茱麗葉都不約而同的愛上她，她突然瞭解自己是一個有魅力的女人，而且 也是一個值得男（女）人愛的女人。 茱麗葉雖然衝動又不成熟，但她卻勇於表達自己的情慾。所以她的大膽情 慾表白開啟了康絲坦對同性情慾的尋求旅程。她不管康絲坦年紀較大，不但敬 重她並大膽求愛，瓦解康絲坦原有異性戀戀愛觀的被動老觀念。換言之，因為 茱麗葉，許多生命的可能性，尤其是性與愛，都展現於康絲坦面前。 有了戴絲德蒙娜的勇氣與自主，茱麗葉的坦然接受各種可能，康絲坦還缺 一樣東西來完成她自我發現的旅程，即聰明傻瓜的精神。劇尾她發現，她自己 就是她一路在尋找的傻瓜（弄臣）。而且她也學到，雖然她的行為是傻，但她 的傻行為卻擁有改變的力量。若想要成為生活中的智慧導師，她就是去做就對 了。即使她的行為在別人眼中是傻得可以。再者，遇到生活中的挫折及逆境， 她一定要用「笑」來清除看來無藥可救的問題。至此，康絲坦終於學會將人生 三寶混合運用──自主力、開放、笑。 麥唐娜的戲中英國文藝復興時空和現代加拿大時空交錯，呈現了新與舊、 過去與現代的對話，十分具有啓發性。這齣劇主框架是康絲坦愛情事業不順 遂，穿插於奧賽羅的塞浦路斯及羅密歐與茱麗葉的維若那的戲，用現代術語來 說，這齣戲其實是一齣「穿越劇」。麥唐娜大膽地加添了一個「傻子」的角色 來把悲劇還原成喜劇，如此穿越軌道的交錯，是在批判父權制度及意識形態， 也啓發女性在面對人生諸多議題時可有的各式各樣可能性。 麥唐娜援用穿越劇的新式鍊金術及莎翁悲劇變喜劇的方法，將逆來順受的 康絲坦變成一個具有韌性、柔軟性的勇敢女性。此劇同時也教導我們生活中喜 劇力量的重要性，以及做為一個大智若愚聰明傻子的重要性。雖然有些學者已 從性別、諧仿及喜劇角度來看此劇，這些研究中仍少了一個深度解析整合此劇 的焦慮、性別、女性自主、及外表令人捧腹不已的劇情實際顛覆父權主義的主 題。因此，本計畫即是要剖析《晚安戴絲德蒙娜（早安茱麗葉）》中現代女性 學者的焦慮，探究女性主義的閱讀及莎劇改編如何顛覆及解放父權限制，以及 這種伊莉莎白父權悲劇和現代女性主義重新閱讀和對話如何為今日女性加添力 量。
In Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1988), female Canadian playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald mixes up Shakespearean source elements and her own feminist and original ingredients and presents a highly entertaining, witty, and enlightening hodgepodge of Desdemona’s, Juliet’s, and Constance Ledbelley’s stories. In this winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Drama, one finds invigorating ways to the exploration of women’s potential and to women’s empowerment. Because of a crush on him, Constance, an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University, Kingston, has been ghostwriting papers for Professor Claude Night for ten years. However, she reaches the nadir of her life at the onset of the play when he tells her that she does not need to write for him anymore because he has made Professor that day and will take up a lecturing post at Oxford University. He plans to go there with another girl student Ramona. Vanquished by the blows, Constance experiences through warp effects transportations first to Cyprus to visit the Desdemona in Othello and then to Verona to visit the Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. It is Constance’s belief in her research that Othello and Romeo and Juliet might have been meant to be comedies. In her meddling with the two heroines’ lives, Constance manages to save their lives and also to understand who she is and what life truly signifies to her. At the beginning of the play, Constance manifests originality in her research potential but meanwhile she succumbs herself to Professor Claude Night because she dreams to secure his love for her. She might have a hunch that she is insightful about the comedy theory of the making of Othello and Romeo and Juliet. In comparison with Professor Claude Night, she proves to be more critical, original, and dynamic, but she is not assertive, confident, or outspoken. She needs the mainly male-dominated academic to approve of her stance. Moreover, she also longs to get care, boon, and love from Professor Claude Night to fulfill her female/sexual desire. However, by studying Desdemona and meeting her in this alchemy journey Constance learns from Desdemona courage and agency. Invoking Constance’s recognition of her worth and her power of agency, Desdemona can be regarded as the awakening unconsciousness of independence and self-recognition within Constance, which gradually ameliorates Constance’s anxiety and uncertainty over the nature of her power. It is at this moment that Constance begins to acknowledge that she is capable of greatness, too. After gaining self-assertion from Desdemona, Constance learns from encountering with Juliet how to confront her emotional problem and to liberate herself 2 from her juvenile crush on Professor Claude Night and to explore her erotic potential. Seeing the teenage lovers acting in an immature way, she understands her own infatuation with Professor Night is equally immature, so she begins to unfetter herself from her blind obsession. In addition, because both Romeo and Juliet fall for her, she suddenly realizes that she is a woman of charm and power, and she deserves a better man, or, maybe a woman. Though impetuous and immature, Juliet is daring in expressing her desire. She embarks Constance on a journey of homoerotic quest. Offering respect and even love to her despite her seniority, Juliet disarms Constance of her old and passive concept of what a woman should be like in heterosexual love. In other words, thanks to Juliet, many possibilities of life have been opened to Constance. With Desdemona’s courage and agency, Juliet’s willingness to accept possibilities, Constance only needs one more virtue to finish her journey of self-discovery, viz, the spirit of the wise fool. She finally discovers she is the Fool she has been looking for and her foolish act in life, though foolish, has the power to change. To become the wise Bard of her life, she has to do it, though her deed might appear to be foolish to others. Further, in face of setbacks in life she has to resort to laughter to diffuse fatalistic and pessimistic problems. Constance now is able to mingle and unmingled three ingredients of life—agency, openness, and laughter. Ann-Marie MacDonald’s play juxtaposing between the Renaissance chronotope and modern chronotope is an illuminating dialogue between old and new, past and present. To use a modern jargon, this play set in Othello’s Cyprus and Romeo and Juliet’s Verona with the frame story of Constance Ledbelly’s love and career failures, is a “traversing,” or “cross chronotope,” drama. MacDonald boldly inserts a Fool there to “reverse” the tragedies back to the comedies and this traversing trajectory serves as a censure on patriarchal institution and ideology and as an illumination on the woman’s versatile possibilities in dealing with issues in life. Ann-Marie MacDonald, employing the new alchemy of traversing drama and transforming submissive Constance to be a pliable and brave heroine, does succeed in instructing us on the importance of the power of comedy in our life and the significance of being a wise Fool. Although several critics have worked on this play from the perspectives of gender, parody, and comedy, there is still a lack of in-depth analysis of anxiety, gender, woman’s autonomy, and the comic subversion lurking beneath the hilarious plot arrangement in this play. This project intends to examine how the anxiety of a modern female academic can be anatomized in Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), how a feminist reading can help subvert and liberate patriarchal confinement, and how such juxtaposition and dialogue between the Elizabethan patriarchal tragedies and modern feminist rereading can bring forth 3 empowerment for women today. |
