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Goodnight Desdemona
In this exuberant comedy, MacDonald asks, What if Desdemona and Juliet were allowed to live? Constance Ledbelly, a tweedy academic, has ghostwritten the papers of her mentor for years, when suddenly he announces he's marrying a rival. Escaping into her research, Constance decodes the Gustav Manuscript, and discovers a pair of comedies that she believes are the source for Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet. Transported into the world of her theory, she comes face-to-face with Desdemona and Juliet and discovers that, far from shrinking violets, they are hellions full of surprises. What follows is a riotous retelling of theatrical legend that brings Constance out of her gloom and straight into a new and confident self.
88 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1997
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1248 people want to read
About the author
Ann-Marie MacDonald
22 books1,365 followersAnn-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian playwright, author, actress, and broadcast host who lives in Toronto, Ontario.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 148 reviews
May 20, 2016
I attended a performance of this play last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a joint presentation of Handsome Alice (a feminist theatre troop) and The Shakespeare Company here in Calgary. There was a large contingent of high school students in the audience, and judging from their response, it was entertaining for them too.
I’m not a laugh-out-loud-in-the-theatre type of person, but these performers gave me no choice. Laughing had to happen. And yet there was a serious side to the play as well, as we watch a young doctoral student realize that she has been used by a professor and that her lack of self-confidence is holding her back. How many young women (and maybe some not so young women) are there out there who believe that they are not quite enough? Feeling that they have to justify their existence by “helping” other people, to their own detriment? Being used by the people out there who can recognize their neediness? You know, those people who actually have to be reminded on airplanes to put on their own oxygen mask first, before helping others.
In this version of events, Constance (our student) watches her professor take credit for her work, get engaged to one of his other students, and take up a university position that she had hoped to claim for herself. In despair, she is transported into Othello, where she changes the balance of things to prevent Desdemona’s death and learns that Desdemona isn’t nearly as passive as the Bard’s play portrays her! Subsequent adventures among the Montagues and Capulets in Verona reveal a teenage Juliet who is obsessed more by death than by love. Between Desdemona and Juliet, Constance learns to take her life in her own hands and quit relying on the men (or other women) in her life to give her meaning.
Getting all these modern messages presented in blank verse is no mean feat. I admired how well the author had to know the plays, academia, and female psychology. This is a play worth watching, especially if you have a teenage girl in your life who is likely to enter the university world.
I’m not a laugh-out-loud-in-the-theatre type of person, but these performers gave me no choice. Laughing had to happen. And yet there was a serious side to the play as well, as we watch a young doctoral student realize that she has been used by a professor and that her lack of self-confidence is holding her back. How many young women (and maybe some not so young women) are there out there who believe that they are not quite enough? Feeling that they have to justify their existence by “helping” other people, to their own detriment? Being used by the people out there who can recognize their neediness? You know, those people who actually have to be reminded on airplanes to put on their own oxygen mask first, before helping others.
In this version of events, Constance (our student) watches her professor take credit for her work, get engaged to one of his other students, and take up a university position that she had hoped to claim for herself. In despair, she is transported into Othello, where she changes the balance of things to prevent Desdemona’s death and learns that Desdemona isn’t nearly as passive as the Bard’s play portrays her! Subsequent adventures among the Montagues and Capulets in Verona reveal a teenage Juliet who is obsessed more by death than by love. Between Desdemona and Juliet, Constance learns to take her life in her own hands and quit relying on the men (or other women) in her life to give her meaning.
Getting all these modern messages presented in blank verse is no mean feat. I admired how well the author had to know the plays, academia, and female psychology. This is a play worth watching, especially if you have a teenage girl in your life who is likely to enter the university world.
April 4, 2007
Yes, yes, yes. We ALL KNOW I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this play. Well guess what?! READ IT. Even though (spoiler alert!) I proved in my thesis (nerd!) that the basic argument of MacDonald's protagonist - that "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet" would have been comedies if Shakespeare had included a Wise Fool character to foil the trajectories of the title characters - is never effectively proved by the play, it's a freaking good time to read any way, and is structured PERFECTLY as a Shakespearean comedy. Which, for having been written in 1990 ain't too shabby.
December 31, 2010
Goodnight Desdemona, o'er all others
Did not fail this reader to impress.
Even Shakespeare's characters could not
Leap off the page the way MacDonald's do,
Though hers are take-offs on th' originals.
Even Shakespeare's verse has not endured
So well that I did not find hers more fresh.
The meeting of her world and the Bard's!
The call to revere him, though she dares adapt,
Truly I believe is answered well.
Playfully done, and with true art accomplished.
(I would go on, but pure awe shuts me up.)
Hear me, though: you shall enjoy this play!
Vibrant life's in this slim tome of drama,
And I'll re-read it many a future day
At home upon my couch, or – heck – in class;
In Constance's dream I'll gladly lose myself
– one day, if lucky, glimpse it on a stage?
O, eyes wouldn't dare to hear, nor ears to speak.
Hey, Anne-Marie! Do you think you could
Try something with A Midsummer Night's Dream next?
Did not fail this reader to impress.
Even Shakespeare's characters could not
Leap off the page the way MacDonald's do,
Though hers are take-offs on th' originals.
Even Shakespeare's verse has not endured
So well that I did not find hers more fresh.
The meeting of her world and the Bard's!
The call to revere him, though she dares adapt,
Truly I believe is answered well.
Playfully done, and with true art accomplished.
(I would go on, but pure awe shuts me up.)
Hear me, though: you shall enjoy this play!
Vibrant life's in this slim tome of drama,
And I'll re-read it many a future day
At home upon my couch, or – heck – in class;
In Constance's dream I'll gladly lose myself
– one day, if lucky, glimpse it on a stage?
O, eyes wouldn't dare to hear, nor ears to speak.
Hey, Anne-Marie! Do you think you could
Try something with A Midsummer Night's Dream next?
August 22, 2015
Wait is this a joke? Is liking this play a big in-joke with people who pat themselves on the back at their narrow interpretations and pedantic self-fellation? Oh no -- that's just literary academia in a nutshell.
To like this play, I feel you would have to have very little actual respect for Desdemona, Juliet, and the plays in question. You would also have to think the rest of the world outside the artistic/academic realm ~~~~doesn't get it~~ and that you are a prince/ss of literature tee hee hee. You would also have to have a phenomenally awkward sense of humor, and be a diehard theatre kid. The kind everyone avoids in the halls at school because they're singing musical numbers and using jazz hands.
To be fair: there are some interesting moments of analysis, particularly in the R&J section, but it quickly devolves into pointless bullshit. I get the attempt at making it a Shakespearean comedy, but thinking you can pull that off is yet more narcissistic aggrandizement.
Overall, the play is pretentious, cursory, and teeth-gratingly irritating. How anyone has taken it seriously is beyond me.
To like this play, I feel you would have to have very little actual respect for Desdemona, Juliet, and the plays in question. You would also have to think the rest of the world outside the artistic/academic realm ~~~~doesn't get it~~ and that you are a prince/ss of literature tee hee hee. You would also have to have a phenomenally awkward sense of humor, and be a diehard theatre kid. The kind everyone avoids in the halls at school because they're singing musical numbers and using jazz hands.
To be fair: there are some interesting moments of analysis, particularly in the R&J section, but it quickly devolves into pointless bullshit. I get the attempt at making it a Shakespearean comedy, but thinking you can pull that off is yet more narcissistic aggrandizement.
Overall, the play is pretentious, cursory, and teeth-gratingly irritating. How anyone has taken it seriously is beyond me.
November 16, 2016
4,5 Sterne.
Selten so ein Lustiges Stück gelesen. Hatte hiervon eigentlich nicht viel erwartet, gerade weil ich nicht der größte Shakespeare-Liebhaber bin. Aber ich habe mich wirklich weggeschmissen vor Lachen. Vor allem die Parodie von Romeo and Juliet war einfach göttlich. Wie die Quest am Ende aufgelöst wird, hatte ich zwar schon lange vorhergesehen, daher einen halben Stern Abzug, aber ansonsten habe ich mich köstlich amüsiert und würde viel darum geben, das Stück einmal aufgeführt zu sehen. Obwohl ich es mir ach so gut vorstellen konnte. Herrlich. Und dass, obwohl ich nicht mal ein großer Fan von Komödien oder auch nur Dramen im Allgemeinen bin.
Wirklich sehr empfehlenswert! Vor allem für diejenigen, die schon viel über Othello und Romeo and Juliet gelesen haben.
Selten so ein Lustiges Stück gelesen. Hatte hiervon eigentlich nicht viel erwartet, gerade weil ich nicht der größte Shakespeare-Liebhaber bin. Aber ich habe mich wirklich weggeschmissen vor Lachen. Vor allem die Parodie von Romeo and Juliet war einfach göttlich. Wie die Quest am Ende aufgelöst wird, hatte ich zwar schon lange vorhergesehen, daher einen halben Stern Abzug, aber ansonsten habe ich mich köstlich amüsiert und würde viel darum geben, das Stück einmal aufgeführt zu sehen. Obwohl ich es mir ach so gut vorstellen konnte. Herrlich. Und dass, obwohl ich nicht mal ein großer Fan von Komödien oder auch nur Dramen im Allgemeinen bin.
Wirklich sehr empfehlenswert! Vor allem für diejenigen, die schon viel über Othello und Romeo and Juliet gelesen haben.
June 21, 2022
In some ways, this read like fan fiction, and, in a way, I guess it was indeed fan fiction. As a book it was mediocre, perhaps it is better as a theatre production. Rather than falling in love with this story, I was left wanting to read Othello and Romeo and Juliet.
February 2, 2025
fun and snappy! Wouldn’t call myself a huge Shakespeare stan but still very much enjoyed
April 3, 2025
Romeo enamorándose de todo lo que pasaba por delante y Julieta queer, un 10 de mi parte
April 10, 2025
3.5 - was not expecting one of my annotations to be “Draco Malfoy, is that you?”
June 13, 2015
Quest'opera è geniale!
"Cosa accadrebbe se Shakespeare avesse concepito Otello e Romeo e Giulietta come commedie?"
Ce lo spiega la MacDonald in questo libro, catapultando all'interno dei drammi Costanza, ricercatrice universitaria che cerca in tutti i modi di dimostrare che l'Othello e Romeo e Giulietta si siano trasformati in tragede a causa di un Fool perduto.
All'interno dei drammi, una serie di equivoci, di battute argute e di battute originali porteranno i personaggi delle vicende a mescolarsi e.. Scopritelo!
Io l'ho trovata un'opera immensamente piacevole, carismatica e audace.. Ma d'altronde dalla MacDonald, autrice de Chiedi perdono (LEGGETELO!) non mi aspettavo nulla di meno!!!
PROFESSORE: [...] Cosa ti fa pensare di avere qualcosa di tanto speciale?
COSTANZA: Oh no, non lo penso affatto, no, non ho proprio niente di speciale io, sono... sono proprio come chiunque altro, un frammento isolato e imperfetto di un'infinita mente perfetta, io... io penso di esistere nella misura in cui io e lei siamo qui a chiaccherare con la prova tangibili l'uno dell'altra, esistiamo in quanto non siamo là a non chiaccherare, no, io non sono speciale... unica forse, come... proprio com'è unico un fiocco di neve, che però non vale niente di più di qualsiasi altro fiocco di neve...
"Cosa accadrebbe se Shakespeare avesse concepito Otello e Romeo e Giulietta come commedie?"
Ce lo spiega la MacDonald in questo libro, catapultando all'interno dei drammi Costanza, ricercatrice universitaria che cerca in tutti i modi di dimostrare che l'Othello e Romeo e Giulietta si siano trasformati in tragede a causa di un Fool perduto.
All'interno dei drammi, una serie di equivoci, di battute argute e di battute originali porteranno i personaggi delle vicende a mescolarsi e.. Scopritelo!
Io l'ho trovata un'opera immensamente piacevole, carismatica e audace.. Ma d'altronde dalla MacDonald, autrice de Chiedi perdono (LEGGETELO!) non mi aspettavo nulla di meno!!!
PROFESSORE: [...] Cosa ti fa pensare di avere qualcosa di tanto speciale?
COSTANZA: Oh no, non lo penso affatto, no, non ho proprio niente di speciale io, sono... sono proprio come chiunque altro, un frammento isolato e imperfetto di un'infinita mente perfetta, io... io penso di esistere nella misura in cui io e lei siamo qui a chiaccherare con la prova tangibili l'uno dell'altra, esistiamo in quanto non siamo là a non chiaccherare, no, io non sono speciale... unica forse, come... proprio com'è unico un fiocco di neve, che però non vale niente di più di qualsiasi altro fiocco di neve...
October 25, 2015
Brilliant.
August 9, 2020
Eh. Pretty mixed bag here.
The good:
-the Shakespeare-flavored language was excellent: MacDonald did a great job of blending quotes from the plays (set off in bolded italics) with her own writing
-Desdemona being a freaking badass!
-the Othello section in general was my favorite in the play
-exploration of gender and sexuality! plus, Shakespeare would have been proud of the use of cross-dressing subplots
The bad (in my opinion):
-WHAT was that Romeo and Juliet section?? I guess there are some readers who would love to see the two leads miserable together and fall in love with everyone else instead, but not me. R&J isn't my favorite by any means, but sheesh. Making them such ludicrous caricatures (mostly Romeo I guess - Juliet got a little more depth?) when we know their tragic ends in canon felt really sad and cruel somehow rather than clever. Seeing them snipe at each other (like, their pet turtle gets ripped in half during their fight?!) was just not fun.
-the frame for the story. I was excited at the prospect of Constance's thesis (R&J and Othello were actually meant to be comedies but the Fool character got written out, with tragic results), but the actual "real world" story elements were things I just didn't care about...including Constance, honestly.
-shallow commentary, for lack of a better term. This is from a couple decades ago so maybe some of that is to be expected, but for example: There was a moment near the end where this behavior was explicitly called out by Constance which was great! but then it's just brushed aside when the characters promise to do better, and then we move on.
The "your mileage may vary" parts:
-Some of this depends on your feelings and appreciation for Shakespeare. Ex: something about this 'Shakespeare stole the plays from another writer but he cut out a character!' storyline didn't sit well with me in light of the persistent (and ridiculous) "authorship question" some people insist on pursuing despite a total lack of evidence. Like, why are we giving credibility to this idea even in a comical and tangential way?
-The ending. Some last-minute character development that didn't feel earned, a somewhat predictable reveal that kind of didn't make sense, and an epilogue that I think was attempting to explain The Point of the play but that I don't think did a great job. It wasn't as disappointing as it could have been since we're kind of warned at the beginning it will be one of *those* modern plays, but it still contributed to my "meh" feelings about this play.
So, would I recommend this? Again: eh. It's not BAD, but it's not that good either, in my opinion. I DO think this could be a ton of fun to act in, but reading it as a story it left something to be desired for me. Maybe check it out if you're really interested in a retelling that plays with and changes Shakespeare A LOT, and if you don't mind some of those specific choices the playwright makes like I described above.
CW: Animal death, homophobia
The good:
-the Shakespeare-flavored language was excellent: MacDonald did a great job of blending quotes from the plays (set off in bolded italics) with her own writing
-Desdemona being a freaking badass!
-the Othello section in general was my favorite in the play
-exploration of gender and sexuality! plus, Shakespeare would have been proud of the use of cross-dressing subplots
The bad (in my opinion):
-WHAT was that Romeo and Juliet section?? I guess there are some readers who would love to see the two leads miserable together and fall in love with everyone else instead, but not me. R&J isn't my favorite by any means, but sheesh. Making them such ludicrous caricatures (mostly Romeo I guess - Juliet got a little more depth?) when we know their tragic ends in canon felt really sad and cruel somehow rather than clever. Seeing them snipe at each other (like, their pet turtle gets ripped in half during their fight?!) was just not fun.
-the frame for the story. I was excited at the prospect of Constance's thesis (R&J and Othello were actually meant to be comedies but the Fool character got written out, with tragic results), but the actual "real world" story elements were things I just didn't care about...including Constance, honestly.
-shallow commentary, for lack of a better term. This is from a couple decades ago so maybe some of that is to be expected, but for example: There was a moment near the end where this behavior was explicitly called out by Constance which was great! but then it's just brushed aside when the characters promise to do better, and then we move on.
The "your mileage may vary" parts:
-Some of this depends on your feelings and appreciation for Shakespeare. Ex: something about this 'Shakespeare stole the plays from another writer but he cut out a character!' storyline didn't sit well with me in light of the persistent (and ridiculous) "authorship question" some people insist on pursuing despite a total lack of evidence. Like, why are we giving credibility to this idea even in a comical and tangential way?
-The ending. Some last-minute character development that didn't feel earned, a somewhat predictable reveal that kind of didn't make sense, and an epilogue that I think was attempting to explain The Point of the play but that I don't think did a great job. It wasn't as disappointing as it could have been since we're kind of warned at the beginning it will be one of *those* modern plays, but it still contributed to my "meh" feelings about this play.
So, would I recommend this? Again: eh. It's not BAD, but it's not that good either, in my opinion. I DO think this could be a ton of fun to act in, but reading it as a story it left something to be desired for me. Maybe check it out if you're really interested in a retelling that plays with and changes Shakespeare A LOT, and if you don't mind some of those specific choices the playwright makes like I described above.
CW: Animal death, homophobia
June 13, 2024
Governor General Award-winning play for drama wickedly crafted by a Governor General Award-winning author. Nothing short of brilliant is Anne-Marie MacDonald’s hilarious farce. Constance Ledbelly is a shy, awkward and insecure PhD student of literature. She is working on a thesis that proposes two of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, Othello and Romeo and Juliet, could have easily been comedies with the introduction of a wise fool character that could have steered the tragic outcomes of both Desdemona and Juliet in an entirely different direction. She sees in both these tragic women potential for strength, bravery and boldness. Things in Constance’s own life are not going well. Her professor, whom she secretly has a crush on, has been using her for some time to anonymously write large portions of his papers. He has shown no interest for Constance in all the time they’ve worked together and is plainly using her. Constance’s professor pops into her office one day and lets her know he’s been offered a position with tenure at Oxford and is moving on with another student. After he exits, Constance’s anger gets the best of her and she has a mini breakdown. Suddenly by some magic or alchemy, she’s transported into Shakespeare’s fictional world with her first stop being in Othello. After this brief but hilarious lead-in, what follows is brilliant. Adeptly mixing Shakespeare’s words with her own, authentic sounding and in iambic parameter, MacDonald treats us to a sidesplitting retelling of both tragedies with a hapless Constance inserted as a character in both plays. If you’re a fan of Shakespeare, farce and a laugh-out-loud reading, and, if like me, you’ve not had opportunity to see it live, read this play and enjoy.
January 16, 2019
I'm always a sucker for works that play with Shakespeare, be they theatre, film, or prose, so I was predisposed to enjoy reading Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). I was even more likely to enjoy it since I saw the play a couple of decades ago and remember loving the performance. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself underwhelmed by the play this time around.
I don't really need to go into too much detail. The problem was disappointment in the changes made to Desdemona and Juliet. When I saw the play, I loved those changes. But reading them now, I can't help feeling that Ann-Marie MacDonald's changes ignored the strengths that were already there within Desdemona and Juliet. By ignoring them, MacDonald failed to build on what was there, to expand from Shakespeare's position; instead, she replaced their personalities with some of the worst parts of what we're now calling "toxic masculinity," and while this makes for some fine laughs -- even on the page -- it shines no real light on Shakespeare's women.
It's still a good play, and I would run out and see a new staging of it without hesitation. It's just that what I once felt was brilliant I now feel is just okay.
I don't really need to go into too much detail. The problem was disappointment in the changes made to Desdemona and Juliet. When I saw the play, I loved those changes. But reading them now, I can't help feeling that Ann-Marie MacDonald's changes ignored the strengths that were already there within Desdemona and Juliet. By ignoring them, MacDonald failed to build on what was there, to expand from Shakespeare's position; instead, she replaced their personalities with some of the worst parts of what we're now calling "toxic masculinity," and while this makes for some fine laughs -- even on the page -- it shines no real light on Shakespeare's women.
It's still a good play, and I would run out and see a new staging of it without hesitation. It's just that what I once felt was brilliant I now feel is just okay.
April 17, 2023
3,5 stars.
It was good. It was very weird though. But in a good way? The author had a great way with words and played really well with the different characters to make them fit into this new narrative.
There's still a lot of aspects of this book that are unclear to me, and I'm looking forward to analyzing it in class next week. This book is definitely made to be deeply analyzed and it was objectively a good piece of literature. The writing was exquisite and great reflexions were brought up by this book.
I don't know if any of this makes sense, but these are my thoughts right after finishing it.
It was good. It was very weird though. But in a good way? The author had a great way with words and played really well with the different characters to make them fit into this new narrative.
There's still a lot of aspects of this book that are unclear to me, and I'm looking forward to analyzing it in class next week. This book is definitely made to be deeply analyzed and it was objectively a good piece of literature. The writing was exquisite and great reflexions were brought up by this book.
I don't know if any of this makes sense, but these are my thoughts right after finishing it.
December 22, 2023
Not totally sure how I feel about this one. It was just kind of... weird? The Romeo & Juliet portion just felt entirely out of control and the play as a whole felt more like self-insert fanfic than a play. It certainly falls into the realm of comedy and the premise of perhaps tragedies were/are also comedies in some ways was really intriguing to me. So maybe if I was able to see a performance of this I would feel differently about it but it definitely doesn't quite do what I wished it did with "rewriting" and adapting Shakespeare.
February 6, 2022
I know this is like satire or a parody of Shakespeare plays and I read it for uni but this is the first time I was actually interested in physically reading a play. It did not feel like a chore and i was pleasantly surprised!!
August 27, 2021
Read for thesis. Interesting, but I thought the parts where she tried writing Shakespearean verse were cheesy. But hey, she did acknowledge that her character knew how she was speaking.
April 22, 2024
Tis be goofy
May 12, 2025
3.5
It got me both laughing and facepalming lol
It got me both laughing and facepalming lol
June 5, 2025
shakespeare meets fanfiction. was really entertaining and easy to read, i really enjoyed the idea of it
June 19, 2022
This is a really interesting adaptation of both Othello and Romeo and Juliet, along with a satire of academia, and a healthy dose of feminism into the mix. MacDonald's play tells the story of a struggling academic--archytypically both the absent minded professor and the junior female colleague exploited by a dashing older male colleague--who has tried to build a career on deciphering an obscure manuscript in alchemical symbols, which she believes is a source text for both Othello and Romeo and Juliet, which Shakespeare (for reasons unknown) suppressed by having it translated into code. As she is about to abandon the quest to decipher the code, Constance is sucked into a time warp which lands her in Renaissance Cyprus, where she meets Othello and Desdemona, and foils Iago's initial plan, though he soon insights the same kind of jealousy in Desdemona that Othello feels in the Shakespeare. After that, Constance is transported to Verona, where she (in the guise of the Greek boy Constantine) meets Romeo and Juliet, stops Tybalt from killing Mercutio and Romeo from killing Tybalt, thus averting the suicide plot. However, both Romeo and Juliet fall in love with Constance and Juliet spends most of the rest of the play in a bipolar dash between loving Constance and threatening suicide. It is only when Constance is able to bring herself, Desdemona, and Juliet together that she learns the secret of the manuscript (which I won't spoil).
https://youtu.be/tA6Tt5N9Xnk
https://youtu.be/tA6Tt5N9Xnk
February 28, 2019
This play is an absolute riot. I loved the chaos of it.
As one of the plays I will most likely be reading for my Canadian Drama course this upcoming September, I am so glad that I opted to read it in advance. Had I read it while I was swamped with work for other courses, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to enjoy it as full-heartedly as I did.
Update:
Goodnight Desdemona (Good morning Juliet) is a play full of ambiguities and contradictions. Having written a critical research paper on it, I came to the conclusion that this isn’t a play about self-discovery. Though heavily praised as a feminist play, I believe that the contradictions are too many to make that claim. In simple terms – Constance does gain a backbone and voice by the end of the play, but it is at the expense of all the other characters. She condemns Desdemona and Juliet for qualities she herself admits to possessing, and ultimately uses and psychologically manipulates all of the other characters to achieve her goals – she may have been abused and neglected by her *love*, but that does not give her an excuse to be an abuser.
As one of the plays I will most likely be reading for my Canadian Drama course this upcoming September, I am so glad that I opted to read it in advance. Had I read it while I was swamped with work for other courses, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to enjoy it as full-heartedly as I did.
Update:
Goodnight Desdemona (Good morning Juliet) is a play full of ambiguities and contradictions. Having written a critical research paper on it, I came to the conclusion that this isn’t a play about self-discovery. Though heavily praised as a feminist play, I believe that the contradictions are too many to make that claim. In simple terms – Constance does gain a backbone and voice by the end of the play, but it is at the expense of all the other characters. She condemns Desdemona and Juliet for qualities she herself admits to possessing, and ultimately uses and psychologically manipulates all of the other characters to achieve her goals – she may have been abused and neglected by her *love*, but that does not give her an excuse to be an abuser.
October 8, 2025
iskreno - budalaština
December 18, 2023
As I am currently reading Othello for school, I found this book to be particularly comical, yet insightful.
I particularly liked the portrayal of Desdemona in this play. I, in the original, saw Desdemona as naive and childish, but here she is presented as a bold and fierce women with the power to make her own decisions…and I loved this juxtaposition to the stereotypical Shakespearean female.
What lost me in this book was the Juliet love story. I didn’t really get the whole turtle thing and I thought that part to be underdeveloped. In addition, the whole “fool/author” situation was subsequently confusing and not very well developed or explained…but maybe this is just my opinion.
I definitely do recommend this play to any Shakespeare lover!
________________________________________________
Update 11/2023: I was fortunate enough to meet the author of this play and they are unironically the coolest person I have ever met.
I particularly liked the portrayal of Desdemona in this play. I, in the original, saw Desdemona as naive and childish, but here she is presented as a bold and fierce women with the power to make her own decisions…and I loved this juxtaposition to the stereotypical Shakespearean female.
What lost me in this book was the Juliet love story. I didn’t really get the whole turtle thing and I thought that part to be underdeveloped. In addition, the whole “fool/author” situation was subsequently confusing and not very well developed or explained…but maybe this is just my opinion.
I definitely do recommend this play to any Shakespeare lover!
________________________________________________
Update 11/2023: I was fortunate enough to meet the author of this play and they are unironically the coolest person I have ever met.
November 3, 2020
ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. I love this so much!!!! What a brilliant way to modernize Shakespeare and reimagine some of Shakespeare's best work, not to mention bring so much more depth to the characters, even more than what was already there.
Do yourselves a favor and watch this ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFX_0... ) performance of the play simultaneously, the actors brought so much life and humor to the play.
Do yourselves a favor and watch this ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFX_0... ) performance of the play simultaneously, the actors brought so much life and humor to the play.
May 16, 2022
Introduction:
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian actress who starred in several movies and TV shows before switching to the stage. She wrote many novels and plays, of which the two most famous are Fall on Your Knees, and this one. This particular play caught my attention in 2014 because of its cover. I read it on three consecutive nights in early April, and it is one of the most fascinating plays I’ve read.
Banuta Rubess introduces the play with the work’s inception, as a joke. The title (which is very clever and appropriate) was the spark that initiated the play. The two used to work as director and writer, but in this work, MacDonald wrote the play and Rubess directed it. And it is always a curious thing when an actor on the stage writes the play, as was the case with Shakespeare since actors have an intimate knowledge of how plays function from the inside. This gives a special character to this play and makes it a very enjoyable and funny one. (It is really funny!)
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is a modern comedy that reflects the modern man’s anxieties, especially that special problem we all face: The sense, and belief, of being inefficient, wasteful, unhelpful, and always, an imposter. There are very few modern works that deliver these messages as great as how this book does, and in the plays of Shakespeare, we may see the contrast that helps us put ourselves in the big historical picture to see that we don’t really have to be who we think we have to be, and just not being as tragic and overly dramatic as the characters that might be seen here, or as heinously villainous and/or as naturally chaotic and destructive is, for historic man, a civil achievement of grand and universal scope.
Plot:
The story revolves around Constance Ledbelly, a Ph.D. student in literature who’s appointed as an assistant professor and a teacher’s assistant at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Canada. The author grows increasingly frustrated at not being able to add much to her field, seeing as to how — as she deems it — everything has been extensively covered in the field. Her thesis is about the two Shakespearian tragedies, Othello and Romeo & Juliet. More specifically, her task was to break a code in the writings, in the folios and quartos from which we have inherited the texts [1]. However, when the Professor she was assisting and editing his works gained a scholarship with his young student, she was left alone here. Frustrated and depressed, and feeling unappreciated and unhelpful, she decided to quit. She tore her manuscript and threw them in the trash bin, only to be magically absorbed into the bin.
The second act opens with Constance being transported into the world of Othello in Cypress. Being more of a fretting and nervous girl than a scholar of Shakespeare, she immediately confronts Othello trying to convince him not to fall prey to his blinding rage, which saves Desdemona from her death in the classic. She keeps interfering with history in a manner similar to what can be seen in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The main difference here is that just as soon as she interferes, she realizes that she has ruined a timeless classic of English literature. Still stuck in this world, she tries to repair her damages, but soon discovers that the characters here exhibit the same fervor and fury in the plays, and cannot be so easily talked out of their actions.
Constance faints at the sight of a beheaded man and is transported in the third act to Romeo and Juliet’s Verona. In this final act, she becomes more careful about ruining another Mona Lisa, but eventually alters the events of the play so dramatically, and unintentionally enters a love triangle from which she cannot escape.
Style and themes:
The play jumps between verse and prose in a very elegant matter, Shakespearian at times, and always fresh and modern. It is one of the most interesting plays of the 20th century, and it is funny when it needs to be, and dramatic and mature at just the right moments.
This comedy is tragically anachronistic in the funniest manner, and it keeps playing with every word, every term, every event in a fashion reminiscent of Shakespeare’s works. I couldn’t stop laughing at how the characters kept misinterpreting her every word either due to the terms used by Constance being modern and therefore unfamiliar, or because of old habits of thought that are hostile to valid reasoning. (Much of this style of comedy reminds one of Mark Twain’s hilarious King Arthur novel.)
I have been interested in Shakespeare ever since I read his Romeo and Juliet in 2014. I thought that I would find him impossibly hard, what with his indecipherable English. It turns out that Shakespeare was really not so hard to read if one gets used to the language, and learns some of the terms that we consider today archaic, or whose meanings have changed. This play took me back to those days, and to the days when I sat next to my grandmother while she was sleeping or reading the Qur’an in the hot Summers of Kuwait. I still remember those days, and I kept remembering her, knowing I would really miss her.
I truly admire the works that go the extra distance. In this play, we see that Shakespearean style adopted to the modern stage and we also see those Shakespearean themes modernized and refreshed. I have felt a mastery of the Shakespeare pen, and that was something I truly admired.
Criticism and Conclusion:
The characters here are so memorable and each with his distinct and to a large degree looney personality. Each serves one great function in the grand scheme of the play. In my analysis of the text, my thoughts instead of being self-absorbed and self-focused, took on a universal look at the whole of the world and of history. We really are self-absorbed people, and we forget the progress we have taken as a species. In going to Verona or to Cyprus, we saw how simplistic and violent we were. We are still as simplistic and as violent as we always were, but satisfying that Freudian suppression, we have learned how to handle and conduct ourselves.
Constance would do well to understand how she can be creative and useful. Her shy persona is very attractive, and she is a humble woman — though quite depressive and gloomy. In her, we see that Steinbeck who has cheered on Ed Ricketts and tried to lighten up his melancholy sphere. The world is not so sad when we see ourselves in the grand scheme of things, and I believe that I have benefitted from reading this play by being reminded of this most important lesson.
Score: (9.2/10)
[1] Every modern edition (Penguin’s, Oxford University Press’, Yale University Press’, Wordsworth’s, etc.) consists of selections from the quartos and the folios which contained the original scripts, some adjustments by the author after watching the play being acted, and after several adjustments from the actors themselves or future directors. The Shakespearean plays, in this regard, can be considered collective work, though the inspiration and originality may be singularly attributed to the main author himself, without suffering injustices on any party.
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian actress who starred in several movies and TV shows before switching to the stage. She wrote many novels and plays, of which the two most famous are Fall on Your Knees, and this one. This particular play caught my attention in 2014 because of its cover. I read it on three consecutive nights in early April, and it is one of the most fascinating plays I’ve read.
Banuta Rubess introduces the play with the work’s inception, as a joke. The title (which is very clever and appropriate) was the spark that initiated the play. The two used to work as director and writer, but in this work, MacDonald wrote the play and Rubess directed it. And it is always a curious thing when an actor on the stage writes the play, as was the case with Shakespeare since actors have an intimate knowledge of how plays function from the inside. This gives a special character to this play and makes it a very enjoyable and funny one. (It is really funny!)
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is a modern comedy that reflects the modern man’s anxieties, especially that special problem we all face: The sense, and belief, of being inefficient, wasteful, unhelpful, and always, an imposter. There are very few modern works that deliver these messages as great as how this book does, and in the plays of Shakespeare, we may see the contrast that helps us put ourselves in the big historical picture to see that we don’t really have to be who we think we have to be, and just not being as tragic and overly dramatic as the characters that might be seen here, or as heinously villainous and/or as naturally chaotic and destructive is, for historic man, a civil achievement of grand and universal scope.
Plot:
The story revolves around Constance Ledbelly, a Ph.D. student in literature who’s appointed as an assistant professor and a teacher’s assistant at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Canada. The author grows increasingly frustrated at not being able to add much to her field, seeing as to how — as she deems it — everything has been extensively covered in the field. Her thesis is about the two Shakespearian tragedies, Othello and Romeo & Juliet. More specifically, her task was to break a code in the writings, in the folios and quartos from which we have inherited the texts [1]. However, when the Professor she was assisting and editing his works gained a scholarship with his young student, she was left alone here. Frustrated and depressed, and feeling unappreciated and unhelpful, she decided to quit. She tore her manuscript and threw them in the trash bin, only to be magically absorbed into the bin.
The second act opens with Constance being transported into the world of Othello in Cypress. Being more of a fretting and nervous girl than a scholar of Shakespeare, she immediately confronts Othello trying to convince him not to fall prey to his blinding rage, which saves Desdemona from her death in the classic. She keeps interfering with history in a manner similar to what can be seen in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The main difference here is that just as soon as she interferes, she realizes that she has ruined a timeless classic of English literature. Still stuck in this world, she tries to repair her damages, but soon discovers that the characters here exhibit the same fervor and fury in the plays, and cannot be so easily talked out of their actions.
Constance faints at the sight of a beheaded man and is transported in the third act to Romeo and Juliet’s Verona. In this final act, she becomes more careful about ruining another Mona Lisa, but eventually alters the events of the play so dramatically, and unintentionally enters a love triangle from which she cannot escape.
Style and themes:
The play jumps between verse and prose in a very elegant matter, Shakespearian at times, and always fresh and modern. It is one of the most interesting plays of the 20th century, and it is funny when it needs to be, and dramatic and mature at just the right moments.
This comedy is tragically anachronistic in the funniest manner, and it keeps playing with every word, every term, every event in a fashion reminiscent of Shakespeare’s works. I couldn’t stop laughing at how the characters kept misinterpreting her every word either due to the terms used by Constance being modern and therefore unfamiliar, or because of old habits of thought that are hostile to valid reasoning. (Much of this style of comedy reminds one of Mark Twain’s hilarious King Arthur novel.)
I have been interested in Shakespeare ever since I read his Romeo and Juliet in 2014. I thought that I would find him impossibly hard, what with his indecipherable English. It turns out that Shakespeare was really not so hard to read if one gets used to the language, and learns some of the terms that we consider today archaic, or whose meanings have changed. This play took me back to those days, and to the days when I sat next to my grandmother while she was sleeping or reading the Qur’an in the hot Summers of Kuwait. I still remember those days, and I kept remembering her, knowing I would really miss her.
I truly admire the works that go the extra distance. In this play, we see that Shakespearean style adopted to the modern stage and we also see those Shakespearean themes modernized and refreshed. I have felt a mastery of the Shakespeare pen, and that was something I truly admired.
Criticism and Conclusion:
The characters here are so memorable and each with his distinct and to a large degree looney personality. Each serves one great function in the grand scheme of the play. In my analysis of the text, my thoughts instead of being self-absorbed and self-focused, took on a universal look at the whole of the world and of history. We really are self-absorbed people, and we forget the progress we have taken as a species. In going to Verona or to Cyprus, we saw how simplistic and violent we were. We are still as simplistic and as violent as we always were, but satisfying that Freudian suppression, we have learned how to handle and conduct ourselves.
Constance would do well to understand how she can be creative and useful. Her shy persona is very attractive, and she is a humble woman — though quite depressive and gloomy. In her, we see that Steinbeck who has cheered on Ed Ricketts and tried to lighten up his melancholy sphere. The world is not so sad when we see ourselves in the grand scheme of things, and I believe that I have benefitted from reading this play by being reminded of this most important lesson.
Score: (9.2/10)
[1] Every modern edition (Penguin’s, Oxford University Press’, Yale University Press’, Wordsworth’s, etc.) consists of selections from the quartos and the folios which contained the original scripts, some adjustments by the author after watching the play being acted, and after several adjustments from the actors themselves or future directors. The Shakespearean plays, in this regard, can be considered collective work, though the inspiration and originality may be singularly attributed to the main author himself, without suffering injustices on any party.
October 21, 2021
It is seldom that I’ve read a more thoroughly laugh-out- loud play than this conglomeration from the late 1990s. I say ‘conglomeration’ since it is so many different things: an examination of whether two of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies were originally comedies, a blending of the real and the imaginative in which the protagonist finds herself actually seeming to be a character in Othello and Romeo and Juliet, a thoroughly outrageous transformation of Desdemona from blushing victim into warlike Amazon, a realization by Romeo and Juliet on the morning after their marriage night that they really don’t care for one another, a completely cynical exploitation of an underling by her superior in a University English department, a spoiled dream of both professional and personal advancement which makes its victim decide to resign, get evicted, smell bad and sell pencils on the street and, most importantly, a thoroughly endearing heroine.
An associate professor, Constance Ledbelly wears a toque. She drinks Coors Light, despite the admonition by one of her students that this beer represents one of the bulwarks of right-wing infrastructure. She snacks on Velveeta cheese. She smokes Players Extra Light (when they don’t run out, forcing her to scrape together the butt end she finds on her floor). She writes longhand in green ink on foolscap with the sharpened quill of an ostrich feather. And she has an opinion that both Romeo and Juliet and Othello were originally comedies from each of which Shakespeare removed the critical character of the Fool, and by doing so turned them into tragedies. Specifically, the Fool would have told Othello that Iago got the handkerchief from his wife and would also have enlightened Tybalt that Romeo didn’t want to fight him since he’d just married Juliet, Tybalt’s cousin. Thus, the major turn toward tragedy in each play could have been avoided, leaving but a comedic situation of mistaken impressions which the audience could find humorous.
Knowing this, Shakespeare had an alchemist friend of his transcribe the original of these plays into the 'Gustav Manuscript', the translation of which Constance believes will prove her theory, allow her to get her doctorate and possibly win the honest appreciation and/or affection of the exploitive full professor Claude Night, who is off to England to assume a position at Oxford which Constance once coveted.
There is some truly madcap humour which verges on the slapstick. . Replete with awful puns, a quirky Chorus, a magical wastebasket, a surfeit of quite bawdy double entendres and a general air of enchantment which allows Constance to find herself inexplicably speaking in iambic pentameter, one never knows what to expect from one scene to the next. Except, of course, the unexpected.
The only element limiting my judgment to a four instead of a five is that I wished there was some resolution of the subplot involving the self-serving professor.
Thoroughly, thoroughly delightful. Absolute fun. Highly recommended.
An associate professor, Constance Ledbelly wears a toque. She drinks Coors Light, despite the admonition by one of her students that this beer represents one of the bulwarks of right-wing infrastructure. She snacks on Velveeta cheese. She smokes Players Extra Light (when they don’t run out, forcing her to scrape together the butt end she finds on her floor). She writes longhand in green ink on foolscap with the sharpened quill of an ostrich feather. And she has an opinion that both Romeo and Juliet and Othello were originally comedies from each of which Shakespeare removed the critical character of the Fool, and by doing so turned them into tragedies. Specifically, the Fool would have told Othello that Iago got the handkerchief from his wife and would also have enlightened Tybalt that Romeo didn’t want to fight him since he’d just married Juliet, Tybalt’s cousin. Thus, the major turn toward tragedy in each play could have been avoided, leaving but a comedic situation of mistaken impressions which the audience could find humorous.
Knowing this, Shakespeare had an alchemist friend of his transcribe the original of these plays into the 'Gustav Manuscript', the translation of which Constance believes will prove her theory, allow her to get her doctorate and possibly win the honest appreciation and/or affection of the exploitive full professor Claude Night, who is off to England to assume a position at Oxford which Constance once coveted.
There is some truly madcap humour which verges on the slapstick. . Replete with awful puns, a quirky Chorus, a magical wastebasket, a surfeit of quite bawdy double entendres and a general air of enchantment which allows Constance to find herself inexplicably speaking in iambic pentameter, one never knows what to expect from one scene to the next. Except, of course, the unexpected.
The only element limiting my judgment to a four instead of a five is that I wished there was some resolution of the subplot involving the self-serving professor.
Thoroughly, thoroughly delightful. Absolute fun. Highly recommended.
November 30, 2025
A metatheatrical mashup of Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and modern graduate study in English, this clever Canadian piece of Shakespeare fan fiction has puzzled and delighted academic audiences for decades since its debut in 1988. It reminds me of the silly gallimaufry of Macbeth and My Fair Lady that a group of college professors presented for giggles at the Folger Shakespeare Institute in 1992.
In MacDonald's first act, beleaguered young professor Constance Ledbelly struggles to deal with interruptions from her students and squelch her fruitless crush on her professorial boss while struggling to finish her doctoral thesis and win a prime Oxford lectureship. Ledbelly is so disheartened - by the lack of respect both for herself and for her belief in a mysterious ancient manuscript - that she throws her work and herself into her office trash can. Soon she is magically transported to Cyprus and Verona, on a quest to discover the true author and genre of the plays, as well as her own true strength.
Immediately she is thrust like Viola into the midst of love stories already under way but headed for tragedy. In act two she meets Desdemona and the men who misunderstand and abuse her, before in act three she zooms on to meet the most famous pair of star-crossed lovers in history. The cross-dressings and romantic mix-ups that ensue propel the play to its novel conclusion.
The closer one is to the academic study of Shakespeare - the authorship controversy, the crucial roles of fools and ghosts in the plays, the pressure to publish, the competition for tenured faculty positions - the more one is likely to appreciate this work. Its reliance on a tiny, agile cast of five playing 16 roles has made it popular in small-scale performances often in academic settings. I regret missing the American Shakespeare Center's 2017 touring cast of 11 bring the script to life before a rowdy young audience of Shakespeare and Performance students.
In MacDonald's first act, beleaguered young professor Constance Ledbelly struggles to deal with interruptions from her students and squelch her fruitless crush on her professorial boss while struggling to finish her doctoral thesis and win a prime Oxford lectureship. Ledbelly is so disheartened - by the lack of respect both for herself and for her belief in a mysterious ancient manuscript - that she throws her work and herself into her office trash can. Soon she is magically transported to Cyprus and Verona, on a quest to discover the true author and genre of the plays, as well as her own true strength.
Immediately she is thrust like Viola into the midst of love stories already under way but headed for tragedy. In act two she meets Desdemona and the men who misunderstand and abuse her, before in act three she zooms on to meet the most famous pair of star-crossed lovers in history. The cross-dressings and romantic mix-ups that ensue propel the play to its novel conclusion.
The closer one is to the academic study of Shakespeare - the authorship controversy, the crucial roles of fools and ghosts in the plays, the pressure to publish, the competition for tenured faculty positions - the more one is likely to appreciate this work. Its reliance on a tiny, agile cast of five playing 16 roles has made it popular in small-scale performances often in academic settings. I regret missing the American Shakespeare Center's 2017 touring cast of 11 bring the script to life before a rowdy young audience of Shakespeare and Performance students.
November 4, 2023
A slay of a play. I personally don't get what people were saying here about the Romeo and Juliet section being slow/poorly paced (). The Desdemona section is still decidedly stronger though, and I liked how it hints at the fact that despite Constance's intervention, the beats of the play will continue on with or without her, something that then occurs throughout. The ending was admittedly a bit rushed, but at 100 pages chock full of text (at least by play standards), I can see the runtime going over while actors desperately scurry about backstage in front of my very eyes.
If you take Shakespeare seriously, you probably won't enjoy this. But as someone who likes the comedic elements present in his tragedies, this was great. If you read this like a book, I think you'd be disappointed-but if you go in knowing its a play & read it as such, you'll probably have fun. There are probably more intense/thorough critiques of Shakespeare out there, but I was here for a romp with some heroines and its what I got!
If you take Shakespeare seriously, you probably won't enjoy this. But as someone who likes the comedic elements present in his tragedies, this was great. If you read this like a book, I think you'd be disappointed-but if you go in knowing its a play & read it as such, you'll probably have fun. There are probably more intense/thorough critiques of Shakespeare out there, but I was here for a romp with some heroines and its what I got!
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