Liminal Hypotext-Hypertext Relations in Selected Shakespearean Prequels, Sequels and Gap-Fillers

jafp 14 (1) pp.
87–107 Intellect Limited 2021
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

Volume 14 Number 1
© 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/jafp_00044_1
Received 2 June 2020; Accepted 15 March 2021
EWA KĘBŁOWSKA-ŁAWNICZAK
University of Wrocław
Liminal hypotext–hypertext
relations in selected
Shakespearean prequels,
sequels and gap-fillers
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Liminality is inherent in the adaptation process situated ‘in-between’. Proposing prequel
the ‘biological’ concept of symbiosis, David Cowart distinguishes between the sequel
‘host’ and the ‘guest’ text. Symbiosis as a shape-shifting concept involves a two- gap-filler
directional adaptation process, an ‘epistemic dialogue’, where interest is in how paratext
the later text’s meaning is produced in relation to the earlier and how the overall liminality
production of meaning is affected by the hypertext. To obliterate the lines of influ- adaptation in paratext
ence, temporal distance, privilege and importance, it is possible to conceive of the
relation between hypotext and the hypertextual ‘attachment’ as rhizomatic and
thus to locate the ‘hypertext product’ in a region where historical genealogies either
no longer matter or need to be seriously reconceptualized The article discusses the
hypotext–hypertext relations in a selection of modern and postmodern adaptations
by Maurice Baring, Gordon Bottomley, WTG and Elaine Feinstein and Linda
Bamber, as ‘symbiotic attachments’ or rhizomatic developments whose relation-
ship with the Shakespearean text, or rather ‘aggregate’ can be variously defined in
narrative terms. I argue that texts located in the position of prologues, epilogues or
separately published ‘letters’ – defined as prequels, sequels or gap-fillers and often
www.intellectbooks.com 87
Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak
pointing to an ontological or temporal elsewhere – can be variously defined as

elements of the main text, metatexts masquerading as paratexts or framing borders
and that they function as generators of meaning.
PREQUELS, SEQUELS AND GAP-FILLERS AS ADAPTATIONS

Pointing out the diversity of formulations, Sarah Cardwell observes that liter-
ary adaptations ‘re-write, re-view, re-activate and re-configure’ their source
material (2002: 205). A further view of adaptation and appropriation research
itself shows that relations between adaptation-connected texts have been so
variously defined that, consequently, adaptation practices cannot be easily
reduced to any one fundamental interpretative perspective. Following an
extensive and critical discussion of fidelity-oriented studies (Stam 2000) and
their aporias Robert Stam offers a survey of currently practised approaches
(2005) which either subvert or depart from earlier essentialist conceptual-
izations. The spectrum of approaches, which includes structuralist and post-
structuralist developments, cultural studies, narratology, intertextuality and
transtextuality, is concluded with the proposition of a ‘practical model’ for the
analysis of filmic adaptations of novels (2005: 32). Fredric Jameson explic-
itly attributes this emphasis on multitudinous directions in the theorization
of adaptation practices to a scepticism concerning the notion of an original
text in general, an attitude expressing expectations analogous to what he calls
a ‘universal opprobrium’ surrounding the notion of a centred subject (2011:
215). Peter Brooker complements this claim with observations on the demise
of a centred reader/viewer (2007: 119), in other words, a model audience.
Perhaps, therefore, when listing the taxonomic propositions, Stam mentions
popular ‘rewriting’ not as central, but as a possibility among a myriad of other
terms denoting forms of adaptation (2006: 4).
In Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation, ‘rewriting’ or revisiting and
re-telling – repetition with variation – occupies a central position in the
spectrum or ‘continuum’ of forms of adaptation, so that the ghost of fidelity
returns in her discussion not as practice, but as a significant ‘theoretical ideal’
(2006: 171) that she locates at one end of the spectrum of forms of adap-
tation. Even if irrelevant for aesthetic evaluation, ‘proximity’ to the adapted
work does matter (Bortolotti and Hutcheon 2007: 445 and 452). Adaptation
can stand alone, but as a ‘vehicle’, it may ensure the success of the ‘replica-
tor’ – its survival (2007: 452). In the same vein, Thomas Leitch distinguishes
‘adaptation proper’ which he locates, not unlike Hutcheon, in the middle of
the spectrum of forms of adaptation that are either closer to the ‘replicator’ or
more distant (2012: 86). Both Hutcheon and Leitch call upon the centre and
margin in their reassessments. By proposing the notion of a successful vehicle,
Bortolotti and Hutcheon’s model-oriented approach recognizes the existence
of the notably marginal and potentially less efficient forms, indirectly draw-
ing attention to the often paradoxical status of such liminal forms as prequels,
sequels and gap-fillers. Prequels and sequels – expanding, commenting and
interacting with real or imaginary textual aggregates – may either function
or masquerade as prologues and epilogues. Apart from their more obvious
metatextual engagement with the text proper, they could be additionally
viewed as ‘paratextual adaptations’ or adaptations situated in the otherwise
88 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

Liminal hypotext–hypertext relations in selected Shakespearean prequels, sequels and gap-fillers
‘subservient’ position of paratexts, the ‘empty husks’ Derrida views as both

‘formal refuse’ (1981: 9) and indispensable supplement (1979b). Hutcheon’s A
Theory of Adaptation hesitates over the status of such diverse ephemeral forms
as prequels, sequels and offshoots by stating that they ‘are not really adapta-
tions’ (2006: 9) but continuations or expansions whose objective is to prolong
the story rather than to repeat it. Only further on, in spite of this initial rejec-
tion, does she envision some space for ‘expansions’ placed at the end of the
imagined continuum of forms of adaptation. Within the same system of ‘diffu-
sion’, apart from expansions, she also includes academic criticism and critical
commentary found in films or novels (2006: 171).
The treatment of prequels, sequels and midquels as ‘paratextual’ or quasi
paratextual demands some justification. Even though Genette designs his
theory for the generic framework of narratology and not theatre studies, para-
texts as an intermediary between text and reader can be adapted for under-
standing the ways in which prologues (and epilogues) negotiate between
audiences and performances. Genette makes ample references to the diver-
sity of ways prologues operate, listing them among preludial paratextual forms
(1997a: 58 and 161). Published alongside works proper, prologues can be seen
as peritexts. If they exist outside of the book, they become epitexts. Whether
written by the author of the work proper or not, they create an ‘interpreta-
tive proximity’ (Solomon 2013: 7) controlling the reading experience. In her
study of restoration prologues and epilogues as paratexts, Solomon indicates
both their versatility and their destabilizing function. Whereas prologues can
be expository, they may also divert the audience from the play’s subject (2013:
7), redirecting their attention from the play to the predefined expectations.
Epilogues may unsettle characterizations via acts of retroactive metalepsis
(2013: 8). Altered in response to the gossip of the day, refocalizing the play’s
message, mingling fact and fiction, often delivered by attractive female celeb-
rities, the formerly ‘subservient’ pieces become significant vehicles of early
marketing. Contemporary paratexts, Grainger and Minier suggest, can func-
tion as spaces of adaptation created for the marketing of culture products and
can be conceived in more ‘liberal’ terms as ‘paratextual products’ (2019: 50),
transmedia practices and a ‘paratextual periphery’ (2019: 40) inviting consum-
ers to participate actively by filling semiotic gaps (2019: 43). This paratextual
or rather epitextual periphery comprising a broad spectrum of creative cultural
offshoots may become a space of adaptation marginally engaging the source
text. Referring to disputable cases, Stam points out that scenes excluded from
the released versions should be also categorized as paratextual. They inevita-
bly shape our understanding of the adapted text (2005: 28) and serve as gap-
fillers, the Derridean ergon (1979b: 20) elicited from the once imagined work
and located within the paratextual frames of the released version to provide a
supplementing commentary.
Genette’s theory distinguishes five types of transtextual relations that
Stam finds suggestive for the analysis of adaptations (2005: 27). The following
discussion relies on two of them: metatextuality and paratextuality. All of the
texts considered in the article evoke either an imaginary or a real aggregate
of the Shakespearean texts, however, without referring to specific editions,
particular productions or adaptations. They provide expansions, fill in imagi-
nary gaps, add characters, refocalize, enframe and, in some cases, put empha-
sis on a critical relation, which prompts an openly metatextual engagement.
Metatextuality, Stam argues, assumes a critical relation between two texts.
Paratextuality, on the other hand, distinguishes between a text ‘proper’ and its
1. All references will be paratext. Paratexts, such as prologues and epilogues, do not rewrite the text
to this edition unless
specified otherwise.
proper, but they may contain its elements and include information on the pro-
logos, in that way expanding the viewer’s knowledge and awareness of sources
2. Following Genette’s
formula, paratexts
and contexts. Epilogues may also comment metatextually and provide insights
include peritexts and into what follows beyond the boundaries of the text proper. Such ‘expansions’
epitexts (1997a: 5). New can be generated no matter whether the ‘proper’ text exists or not, as para-
prologues were often
added later while the texts do not assume a specific ontological status of the text proper. Further on,
old ones dropped and as Genette observes referring to notes, they can be ‘assigned to fictional texts
therefore it is assumed and presented in the form of essays or critical reviews’ which follow the same
that the expansions
could also perform the ‘regime as “ordinary” notes’ (1997a: 332). And so do other paratexts, whether
function of peritexts. fictional, ‘real’ or masquerading exercises. Anthologies of diverse fictional para-
textual forms tied to non-existing ‘proper’ texts – including notes, extensions,
gap-filling fragments, introductions and reviews – have been called ‘neanthol-
ogies’ by Teresa Cieślikowska, i.e. anthologies to nothingness (1995: 161). In
lieu of exemplification, the long list includes the famous experiments of Jorge
Louis Borges (Tlön, Babel and Menard – mentioned by Genette 1997a: 332) as
well as Stanisław Lem (A Perfect Vacuum: Perfect Reviewes of Nonexistent Books,
1971; Imaginary Magnitude, 1985) or the more recent ‘neanthology’ penned
by Ivan Vladislavić, The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories (2011). All
these fragmentary fictions, following the regime of paratexts, are liminal cases
producing a sense of distance and sometimes a comic or even parodic effect,
which Genette compares to the ‘silly show’ of a mahout (paratext) without an
elephant (work proper) (1997a: 410). It could be claimed that these marginal
attachments, uninterested in rewriting, sometimes commenting on presup-
posed hypotexts and supposedly filling in gaps and expanding the hypotexts,
produce and engage the audience in the creation of an entirely new textual
aggregate or cultural product that does not yet exist.
If adaptation is recognized as an inclusive process situated ‘in-between’, the
article argues, it is these marginal cases that should provide examples par excel-
lence of how adaptation works. Adopting an inclusive perspective, the follow-
ing discussion looks at four works with the intention of reading them as forms
of metatextual and paratextual adaptation. Two plays, Gordon Bottomley’s
King Lear’s Wife (1916)1 and Women’s Theatre Group and Elaine Feinstein’s
Lear’s Daughters (1987), are written in reference to William Shakespeare’s King
Lear. Both can be approached either as independent plays or as extended
quasi expositions and expansions, prequels, or dramatic prologues, which can
be treated as delayed peritextual additions.2 The two remaining cases consist
in collections of letters: The Dead Letters (1909) by Maurice Baring and ‘Claribel
at Palace Dot Tunis’ (1998) by Linda Bamber. The letters address several plays,
employ prose and at moments mingle and pretend to mingle fact and fiction.
They can be classified as metaleptic midquels and sequels, afterwords and
gap-fillers functioning as or masquerading as epitextual adaptation.
LIMINALITY AND HYBRIDITY

While Hutcheon’s understanding of adaptation proper (product and process)
solidifies essentially as rewriting, the margins of the adaptation spectrum
she proposes are left for continuations and commentaries. Liminal prequels,
sequels and midquels (or gap-fillers) invite multiple forms and literary genres
involving diverse transcodifications, for example, from poetic drama to prose.
Though Hutcheon admits expansions only as part of ‘diffusion’, they are clas-
sified by other critics, notably by Graham Saunders (after Genette 1997b) as

legitimate forms of rewriting involved in transmotivization on the one hand 3. Following the
adaptation of
and in metatextuality on the other hand (2017: 12). This complexity may lead to narratological concepts
a more comprehensive transfocalization and a massive re-vision of the hypo- proposed by Manfred
text. As Julie Sanders observes, ‘seeing things from marginal, or even offstage, Jahn and Roland Weidle
(2009: 225 and 230),
characters’ points of view is a common drive in many adaptations’ (2006: 57). In the supradiegetic or
expansions functioning as quasi prologues, epilogues or afterwords, their very the ‘superordinate
function and often composite form (bringing together onstage and offstage narrative system’ may
or may not have an
material) enhance interest in radical transfocalization. In narrative terms, the anthropomorphic
functions of transmotivization and metatextual comment may address two narrative
consciousness. The
different narrative levels, the diegetic and the supra or extradiegetic3 respec- superordinate agent
tively, and result in the need to develop a narrative structure by adding not may overtly become
only narrators but also narratives of transmission. Lear’s Daughters composed visible as in Isabella’s
Room (2004) by
by Elaine Feinstein and the Women’s Theatre Group makes use of several Needcompany but
narrative voices, a strategy which, among other things, foregrounds the ques- most often remains
tion of voice itself. covert. Whether
associated with the
Introducing the notion of hypertextuality in Palimpsests, Genette hesitates author, implied author
when explaining that the later text, the hypertext, is ‘grafted’ upon the earlier or other agency
remains less significant
‘in a manner that is not that of commentary’ (1997b: 5), a remark which seems than the assumption of
to question, if not eliminate metatextual utterances. Hypertext is further on its presence.
considered as literary – a work of fiction rather than criticism. Still, the author
does admit possible ‘exceptions to the rule’ (1997b: 5). Although no special
prefix is found in Genette’s proposition to subsume the two functions of hyper
and meta, the author calls upon examples that indicate their interlacing. Thus,
it is indirectly suggested that the meta and the hyper may coexist among the
liminal cases of adaptation listed by Hutcheon. The view is cogently posited
by Stam, who observes that metatextuality ‘evokes the entire tradition of criti-
cal rewritings’ (2005: 28). Such a cohabitation or symbiosis invites diversity in
prequels functioning potentially as prologues, where prefatory meta- or extra-
diegetic information can appear alongside diegetic material. Single prologue
figures performing essential introductory, critical and narrative functions may
give way to an increasing number of speakers-characters or may add dialogue,
conflict and action within the prolocutory sequence so that it is transformed
into a dramatic induction. As Genettian thresholds or vestibules, these limi-
nal forms can mediate between ontologically distinct realities and activate
platforms for participation that bring together the onstage and the offstage
producing hybridity.
EXPANSIONS: ADAPTATION IN PARATEXT

Another way of looking at these liminal adaptations is to approach them as
expansions presupposing rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 21), non-
hierarchical relations obfuscating lines of influence, temporal and topographic
relations. Lanier proposes to conceptualize such an ‘adaptation field’ as proces-
sual, endless becoming with emphasis on potentiality rather than synthesis
or symbiosis (1987: 27). As a type of ‘expansion’, Deborah Cartmell considers
them a form of continuation which does not rewrite but retroactively revises,
developing ‘rather than compressing or rearranging “original” narratives’ (2012:
10). Such a retroactive revision, however, requires that the reader or viewer
knows the source-texts and performs the transformation of what has come
before on her own, in accordance with the ‘guidelines’ incorporated into the
hypertext. This assumes, further on, that, apart from the diegetic material, the
‘ancillary narrative’ (Jess-Cooke 2012: 6) of the sequel cum paratext carries
4. Frames, according to implied or explicit commentary re-framing (Baker 2006: 106)4 the source-texts.
Baker, are ‘structures
of anticipation’ while
Such a retroactive adaptation process, proceeding on more than one narra-
framing is defined as tive level, may take the familiar shape of an exposition, a prologue, a meta-
‘an active strategy that comment revealing knowledge of the future or a summary – in some cases
implies agency and by
means of which we a conflation of fiction and non-fiction. Similarly, Peter J. Rabinowitz under-
[…] participate in the stands prequels and sequels as expansions and interrogates them in terms of
construction of reality’ the attitude of the authorial and the narrative audience to hypotext, claiming
(2006: 106).
that in genuine continuations it is essential that the narrative audience believe
5. Discussions on the the hypotext to be true (1980: 248). This claim can be easily verified in the case
openness and dialogic
nature of texts can be of sequels (if true means compatible, tying in with the preceding narrative),
traced back to Mikhail but in prequels and midquels, which sometimes take the form of metalepsis
Bakhtin’s Problems
of Dostoyevsky’s
and revise the original, the ‘double vision’, i.e. the disparity between what the
Poetics ([1929] 1984) authorial and the narrative audiences know and believe, becomes less tangi-
or to The Dialogic ble. Essential in the propositions put forward by both Cartmell and Rabinowitz
Imagination ([1975]
1981). The notion of the seems to be the recognition of a ‘doubleness’ indicative of an ontological and
‘open text’ appeared epistemological complexity underwriting liminal adaptations. If viewed as
in Umberto Eco’s The fictional expansions engaging in endless productions of potentialities, they
Role of the Reader:
Explorations in the can be seen as a proliferation of metatextual commentary. Considered in
Semiotics of Texts paratextual terms, the liminal forms invite speculations on the coexistence of
([1979] 1981) while the
distinction between
fiction and nonfiction or fiction masquerading as nonfiction. Direct address in
readerly and writerly prologues throws a tangible bridge between stage and audience.
texts was significantly Liminality is inherent in the adaptation process always situated between
announced by Roland
Barthes in The Death the hypertext and the hypotext. Expansions – as forms of adaptation located
of the Author ([1967] on the outskirts of the source-text, or at a greater temporal and spatial distance
1977). The present but in a permanent state of betwixt-and-between (Turner 1967: 97) – can be
discussion converging
around liminal perceived as spaces of negotiation or thresholds enabling passage between
cases of adaptation texts and/or texts and the extratextual. Traffic in these liminal or liminoid zones
(expansions and gap-
fillers), understood as
(Turner 1977: 46) is at least two-directional. As Derrida argues, the very notion
a threshold or frame, of text is no longer ‘a finished corpus of writing’, so that approaching a text
follows mainly Genette whose homogeneity is lost we experience a sense of overflowing (1979a: 84).
(1997a, 1997b), Derrida
(1979b) and Turner The border or edge of the text becomes porous – a host inviting the guest text
(1967, 1977). to a process of negotiations rendering adaptation inevitable. Indeed, not only
Derrida but also Genette emphasizes the openness of texts to influence from
other texts, including the bridging paratextual surround.5 For him paratexts are
‘a zone […] of transition and transaction […] an influence on the public, an
influence that […] is at the service of a better reception of the text’ (1997a: 1),
whatever ‘better’ means. More ‘versatile’ and flexible, for Genette the paratext
becomes literally ‘an instrument of adaptation’ (1997a: 408), a chance for a text
resisting changes to undergo modifications via paratextual adaptation. It may
be a recipe for mobilizing the classics and re-discovering cultural heritage in
a process of re-aggregation. The paratextual frame as parergon functions as a
significant if not indispensable supplement and guarantee of survival. Filling
in some absence in the source-text (ergon), a lack revealed in the course of an
‘epistemic dialogue’, the frame advises the reader or viewer to peruse the text/
work against chronology, in agreement with the proposed order of exposition,
i.e. ordo exponendi (Derrida 1979b: 16) and not the order of creation. Moreover,
it encourages the narratee to revise in accordance with the current episteme.
Hence, it appears that prequels, sequels and midquels become active zones of
adaptation whose meaning is produced in relation to some elsewhere while
the elsewhere is being supplemented and enframed.

DRAMATIC PREQUELS 6. Foulkes also refers

to Bottomley’s play,
Gordon Bottomley’s King Lear’s Wife and Lear’s Daughters by Elaine Feinstein calling it a prequel
and the Women’s Theatre Group have been perceived as either individual filling in earlier
incidents (2002: 129).
pieces – a one-act play and a fourteen-scene dramatic sequence – or as exten-
sions variously defined in relation to the source text. While Simon Trussler 7. Demonic and
transgressive
refers to Bottomley’s play as a ‘prologue’ and a ‘prequel’6 to Shakespeare’s implications of the
tragedy (1983: 64), Lizbeth Goodman defines the feminist performance as a female Centaurus
image, including the
‘radical revision’, a ‘herstory’ or a ‘prestory’ (1993a: 61) so that the latter terms unlawful adaptation
can be translated into the familiar ‘pro-logos’, i.e. preceding logos, and thus a of masculine
part delivered presumably by a woman, or transfocalized to render a woman’s aggressiveness, have
been thoroughly
perspective. In the following, I surmise that both projects take the form of discussed by
prequels but their function verges on that of dramatic prologue or delayed Dijkhuizen (2007:
paratextual introduction – which does make use of metatextual comments 84–85). Lear’s wife.
– resulting in a complexity which justifies their status as composite figures.

In the capacity of prequels, they expand the source text on the diegetic level
of the sequence of events understood as a particular selection, arrangement
and focalization to tie in with the aggregate of the source text or to encour-
age its revision, for instance by revealing gaps or absences and supplying new
motivation. On the superordinate level of their narrative function – without
necessarily visualizing the agent – and in the capacity of dramatic prologues/
introductions, the texts reveal the ideological background (the architextual) or
conceptual policy the hypertext proposes for the adaptation of the hypotext.
Bottomley’s ‘prologue’ focuses on postulating an adulterous love affair
between the king and a young attendant named Gormflaith. Adultery and
betrayal enter Shakespeare’s exposition in King Lear via the subplot mate-
rial, notably through Gloucester’s confessional story of adultery that later cost
him his eyes, to return in Lear’s attack on his diseased, absent wife whose
supposed betrayal (King Lear 2.4) would justify the monstrous ingratitude
of the presumably bastard daughters. While the women (Lear’s wife and
Gloucester’s women) remain absent and/or offstage in Shakespeare’s story,
in Bottomley’s prequel the beautiful Gormflaith (the beloved), introduced as
a negligent servant and ‘wicked woman’ (1915: 17), appears onstage bearing
the name of the ‘blue princess’ to refer the readers/audience to a sovereign
goddess or one of the genuine historic queens (Bhreathnah 2009: 276). As a
consequence, the attractive image develops an acute awareness of something
mysteriously absent from Shakespeare’s play and therefore may function as
a supplement. Though we do hear about the riotous behaviour of the king’s
companions, their ‘epicurism and lust’ making the place more like a ‘tavern
or a brothel’ (KL 1.3), no story of Lear’s amorous adventures is mentioned.
On the other hand, the king belittles adultery by depoliticizing the poten-
tial crime and reducing it to a natural act of copulation which he contrasts
with the dangerously transgressive, ‘riotous appetite’ of the demonic female
centaur, the pit of ‘darkness’ (KL 4.6., 112 ff.).7 It is an accusation Bottomley’s
adaptation of Goneril explains by providing new motivation – she worships
the ‘harsh men-gods’ (1915: 23) as opposed to the ‘mean and cunning’ women
gods (1915: 23). Marianne Novy points out that Peter Brooke’s 1963 produc-
tion was the first to portray Goneril as justified in her complaints (2013: 141),
but it seems that both Bottomley and Baring revise the prevalent unfavourable
interpretation of Goneril somewhat earlier.
Bottomley’s dramatic induction is a palimpsest of intertextually invoked
fictitious and historical material that enters the in-between zone to remain
8. The correspondence seemingly latent except in the figuratively evoked medieval and esoteric
between Gordon
Bottomley and Paul
atmosphere of the poetic play and its carefully negotiated stage set designed
Nash, edited by Claude by Paul Nash.8 Apart from Gormflaith, introduced as physically attractive but
Colleer Abbott and ‘servile’ (Bottomley 1916: 50), there are other references, including the tell-
Anthony Bertram,
reveals the details of ing names and figures of saints, sometimes mentioned in prayer (St Cleer, St
the 1921 process of Elid or St Merryn as well as the Cornish Merryn and Hrogneda), figures that
designing costumes open up the prologue to multiple texts and stories. Ruby Cohn sums them up
and interiors as well as
the magnificent bed for somewhat reductively as ‘characters in their pre-Shakespearean years’ (2015:
the production of King 63). However, the spectrum of historical footnotes is broad, covering a time
Lear’s Wife (Abbott and
Bertram 1955: 128–29).
period that starts well before the Roman invasion, mingling Christian, Celtic,
Designing the set Nash Irish and Scandinavian history with folk tales to finally reach Shakespeare’s
used Pre-Raphaelite King Lear. As a threshold, Bottomley’s play becomes a Janus-faced site of
postcards to build the
‘grayish pinky brown’ passage inviting a traffic of extratextual facts and fictions which immerse the
model (Abbott and temporal and topographic relations in a no-space of a limbo. The prequel acti-
Bertram 1955: 128). vates a ‘region of intensities’ (Lanier 2014: 29) whose central organizing intel-
9. Qtd. Bradley (2010: 102). ligence is lost.
10. King Lear’s Wife The task of the invisible superordinate agency – be it the author, the
was first published implied author or the abstract ‘narrative agency’ – is to control and select
in Georgian Poetry, material for the expansion, a text grafted upon the hypotext only to initiate the
1913–15.
process of adaptation, notably by foregrounding, in Bottomley’s case, a sense
of the mystery and esoteric concepts that Shakespeare’s adaptation seems
to have suppressed. In a review for the Nineteenth Century P.B. Mais praised
Bottomley’s play for clearing the ground by making ‘perfectly plain’ what was
puzzling in Shakespeare’s play (November 1916).9 Appreciating the favour-
able review but more sceptically inclined, Paul Nash comments (in a letter to
the poet) on the ‘miserable ineffectualities’ of the favourably reviewed perfor-
mance where actresses, in particular, made mistakes (Abbott and Bertram
1955: 81) simplifying the poet’s concept. Bottomley refers to the production
much later, in a 1922 letter, explaining that Viola Tree (playing the Queen)
cut a considerable part of the finale by herself, apparently not understanding
its importance (Abbott and Bertram 1955: 133). Hence Bottomley’s ‘ancillary
narrative’, a porous frame, ushers in stories and images adding to King Lear’s
complexity rather than simplifying the source-text. Understanding the prequel
would inevitably depend on reception as well as on actors and producers,
but instead of clarifying and simplifying Shakespeare’s King Lear, the poet’s
primary objective is to address its mysteries and to encourage a revision.
No matter what its genre, paratextual writing par excellence requires that
authors, or their associates, assume responsibility for the text (Genette 1997a:
3). Analogously, prologues in the theatre can become the poet’s embodied
introductions (Bruster and Weimann 2004: 7) thus representing his ‘liter-
ary authority’ as well as his power extending over the politics of the theatre,
the company and its policies (2004: 25). Signs of this authority in Elizabethan
times include the black velvet robe and the sceptre suggesting academic,
ecclesiastical or even judicial expertise (2004: 25). If the prequel functions as a
paratext, a prologue enframing Shakespeare’s King Lear to initiate its re-vision,
it is worthwhile knowing what such an emanation of the poet’s broadly
defined professional authority involves and what literary concepts or inter-
pretations it postulates. These may be traced in the text of the prequel itself or
in other related epitexts, including reviews. King Lear’s Wife is certainly writ-
ten with the intention of reviving poetic drama, an idea justified by Bottomley
being primarily a Georgian poet looking up to William B. Yeats. The piece was
first published in Georgian Poetry (1915).10 However, in the case of King Lear’s

Wife, one may refer to the poet’s correspondence with Paul Nash, a collec- 11. Lynne Bradley assumes
a significant and
tion of letters (epitexts) wherein he justifies some of his literary decisions. And lasting influence of
so it seems that Bottomley’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s characters – includ- character criticism on
ing those in a later prequel to Macbeth, Gruach (1921) – were not designed adaptations. Hence, she
claims that Bottomley
to follow the nineteenth-century fashion for characters as real people with (as well as Tom
believable biographies, an opinion shared by Cohn (2015: 64) and Bradley Stoppard much later
(2010: 78).11 The poet comments disapprovingly on current theatrical fashions in Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead)
including those followed by English audiences ‘swamped by the French bien depicts Shakespearean
faite play of the 19th century’ (Abbott and Bertram 1955: 133), a construc- characters ‘offstage’,
as if they were real and
tion which allowed for no freedom by imposing a strong ending, a convention therefore imaginable
Viola Tree probably took for granted. On the contrary, referring to his creation outside the text (2010:
of ‘Mrs Lear’, Bottomley emphasizes the aspect of discovery so that writing 78). She roots her
concept of realism in
becomes for the poet an epistemologically charged experience of reveal- the eighteenth century.
ing ‘a secret world’ of which he and Paul Nash have acquired some ‘initiated
knowledge’ in the process of ‘setting […] free’ something that commenced for
Bottomley with the writing of ‘Mrs Lear’, an exercise the poet hopes to pursue
(Abbott and Bertram 1955: 132). An interest in alchemy and hermetic concepts
underwrites the insertion of such motifs as the royal emerald. Therefore, writ-
ing becomes experience, a never-ending process, a formulation that disagrees
with simplifying rationality and firm endings. An analogous confession comes
many years later from Joan Didion’s personal essay, ‘Why I write’, where the
novelist admits that she writes ‘entirely to find out’ what she is thinking and
what it means (2021: 49). Hence Bottomley’s instructions for the production
of King Lear’s Wife warn against putting weight and significance on the main
action. Instead, as opposed to what Viola Tree accomplished during her perfor-
mance, the acting should be light and rapid ‘like an afterthought’ (Abbott and
Bertram 1955: 133). Afterthought is a delayed preface, a rereading of oneself
(in the text) after one has forgotten the text and acquired ‘the impartiality of
the future’ (Genette 1997a: 253). Instead of vigorous polemic and revisions,
there is a soul-searching examination. Such a concept of adapting underscores
the significance of the supra or extradiegetic guidelines understood as encour-
agement to pursue a never-ending cognitive process inherent in adaptation,
rather than venture a rewriting exercise and a rational elucidation of the plot.
The degree to which an adaptation is concerned with the very process of
adapting varies.
The order of exposition Bottomley’s prequel proposes correlates with its
ontological liminality of an in-between. Indeed, in their titles, both prequels
(Bottomley’s and Feinstein’s) foreground the theme of ‘possession’ – all the
women, wives and daughters seem to be the property of the king – anticipat-
ing, indirectly, a process marked by painful dispossession. Lear’s dragon-like
self-indulgence, a strong anti-communal attitude, lets him insist that Hygd is
his queen and so is her affection (Bottomley 1916: 13), a conviction he bases
on ‘a woman’s duty and a queen’s’ (Bottomley 1916: 13). As nothing is ‘denied
to kings’ (Bottomley 1916: 13) Lear insists that a healing potion must be found
to cure his wife. However, by keeping his precious emerald intact and not
letting it be powdered, the king shirks responsibility for his queen consort.
Later on, driven by lust, he betrays Hygd by offering the precious stone to
Gormflaith, whom he tellingly names ‘Goldilocks’, a fairy tale figure epitomiz-
ing unlawful infringement on somebody’s legitimate property, here the crown.
King Lear’s Wife introduces a liminal reality, with Hygd as the centrally
located figure of loss thus focusing our attention on the rite of passage as a
cognitive process leading to self-knowledge. The prequel as a liminal zone
12. Turner refers to the invites interstructural situations and characters (Turner 1967: 93). Hence the
‘community of liminary
outcasts’ or liminaries
‘represented reality’ in Bottomley’s work is dream-like, fluid and topographi-
when discussing cally indefinite. The stage set interior designed by Nash complies with poetic,
communities in aestheticized and esoteric representations of the early medieval but avoid-
crisis or in progress,
in association with ing specific historical connotations. Central for the stage set is Hygd’s enor-
beginnings and mous bed, refocalizing attention from the plot to the apparent inactivity of the
transitions, genesis and queen. With all the extratextual references (including the historical Hrogneda),
exodus (1977: 52).
time remains indefinable, while characters seem interstructural rather than
realistic. A Freudian interpretation of the Physician’s diagnosis is tempting as
a sign of modernization. Still, it boils down to the earlier expressed conviction
that the ‘trouble’ has no source in the ‘perishing flesh’ (Bottomley 1916: 10)
and invites the reader/audience, once again, to focus on a generally conceived
‘inwardness’. Hygd remains the indisputably central figure, a symbol of limi-
nality itself. It involves the queen’s journey leading through gradual depriva-
tion and a divestment of all external attributes of status, to ultimate physical
erasure. It is a shift from a disintegrating community to a reaggregating future
communitas, the queen’s in the after world and Lear’s in Shakespeare’s adapta-
tion of the story, where the king and his equally unaccommodated compan-
ions (Kent, Edgar, Fool) meet in the wilderness of the heath, establishing a
community of liminaries.12 Diseased, between life and death, Hygd becomes
structurally invisible – as opposed to Gormflaith, the waiting woman who
snatches the crown away from the dying empress to enjoy its possession
even if only for a moment. Deprived of her social position and neglected by
the waiting women (Bottomley 1916: 71), no longer the potential mother of
a new king, lacking her husband’s affection, and sexless, Hygd finds herself
reduced to a ‘husk’ (Bottomley 1916: 27). In accordance with Turner, she is no
longer classified and not yet classified, but reduced to prima materia (1977:
47) or sacred poverty. The backdrop collection of saints, hermits and monks
mentioned in King Lear’s Wife includes St Cleer (St Clarus), St Elid (Bottomley
1916: 4), St Merryn or St Marine (Bottomley 1916: 23) – figures whose monas-
tic lifestyle involves a rejection of carnality and materiality. Hygd’s ultimate
dispossession finds its climactic moment in the final scene Lady Tree decided
to cut, a display of the queen’s naked body: disrobed to be washed before
the burial, dishonoured by the fleas crawling up her armpit and by the wash-
ers fighting over the few possessions left. The scene, later on perceived in
the disturbing context of the Second World War, was written in 1913 so that
its reading haunted by traumatic war experiences is a matter of later recep-
tion, not Bottomley’s intention. In terms of such a liminality-oriented read-
ing, Regan associates it with a carnality which makes her content (Bottomley
1916: 24) while the immature Cordeil represents an insatiable desire for trifles
(heron’s feathers, a horse ride) as well as for her father’s affection (Bottomley
1916: 31–32). She is an ‘afterthought’ (Bottomley 1916: 32) to be developed in
the future of Shakespeare’s text.
From the rite of passage, Goneril emerges as the only daughter whose
process of transformation has been advanced. Goneril’s fierce virgin-
ity (Bottomley 1916: 23) – a Diana-like image of a huntress (Bottomley
1916: 18) – signals a purity the king fears, especially in the light of his own
transgressions. Betrayal and loss of royal prerogative result in a vulnerabil-
ity symbolized by the royal emerald he squanders. The king is no longer the
‘cruel flawless man. […] and dreaded judge’ (Bottomley 1916: 73). Hence his
abdication in Shakespeare’s play is well-grounded in the prequel and corre-
sponds to the deposition of Hygd that the king fails to announce before she

has passed away, the dark ‘purpose’ (Bottomley 1916: 69), a phrase that reap- 13. Annamária Fábián
observes that the
pears in the source text as well. The marriage of the daughters in the source- main source of
text serves as a contract to guarantee Lear’s safety: they are to be ‘wedded and motivation in King
broken’ (Bottomley 1916: 94). However, Goneril, like her mother, is ‘not born Lear is the ‘avoidance
of love’, which
for wedlock’ (Bottomley 1916: 75). It is in the rite of passage that the gender prevents King Lear
and sexual identity of the initiand can become fluid (Turner 1967: 96; Turner from ‘self-recognition,
1977: 37) and it does so in the case of Goneril who ‘worship[s] harsh men- self-revelation and self-
sacrifice’. Avoidance
gods’ on the ‘height’ (Bottomley 1915: 23), a place Regan never visits as her becomes, the author
interest is limited to the kitchen. Hygd recognizes in Goneril a wiser follower argues, a writing
technique and a means
who will not lead the life of Christian denial so that the two, mother and of creation which
daughter, discover the mysterious bond that brings them together to ensure stands behind Lear’s
continuity and a partial restoration of the queen’s dignity. Goneril’s liminal Daughters as a prequel
adaptation avoiding
androgyny reappears in King Lear as repulsive, monstrous and transgressive – the origins, notably the
an interstructural, multifaceted figure that cannot be reincorporated into the author and the main
reaggregating communitas. The Elder Woman in Bottomley’s play identifies character (2013:110).
Goneril as Hrogneda’s follower, a historical character whose turbulent life

ends safely in a monastery.
While Bottomley wrote a one-act play, the postmodern multi-scene
prequel, Lear’s Daughters, avoids universalizing categories including genre.
Dubiously classified as a ‘feminist rewrite’ or ‘reinvention’ (Goodman 1993b:
220), it is a prologue rather than a prequel. It introduces what follows in
Shakespeare’s play, prompting a new reading as well as a looking back nostal-
gically to reflect on what has happened earlier, a story of an unhappy child-
hood. Greed and possession dominate family relations in Lear’s Daughters13
but, as opposed to the early Modernist prequel, no rite of passage leads to a
cleansing dispossession and no prospect of renewal is promised. Prevailingly
static, the sequence recollects the childhood of Lear’s three daughters in the
light of feminist concepts – a supradiegetic agency voicing the demand for
a replacement of the ‘false fathers’ genealogy with that of the ‘new mothers’
(1993b: 220). However, the process of reification dominates, so that it becomes
a story wherein both fathers and mothers are missing. Lear, in a Prospero-
like manner, spends time in the library when his daughters are born (scene 2)
while the absent queen, a busy accountant doing ledgers, hardly ever sees her
daughters. Brought up in isolation, fear and respect for the king, the daughters
suffer from emotional deficits, a subject Bottomley’s prequel tackles only in
reference to Cordeil. Treated as an ‘investment’, a notion clearly foregrounded
in the title of scene 10, the daughters remain possessions and assets, not
unlike the prisoners or slaves discovered in the bowels of the castle’s prison
side by side with the stock of food and gold. It is the secret of a dragon’s cave
(1993b: 228) the girls visit to perform for their royal father, a motif which reap-
pears in Shakespeare’s exposition. It is Goneril, once again, who inherits her
mother’s position, here as an accountant, when after the queen’s death she is
granted control of the ledgers (1993b: 229). However, this version of the ‘bond’
does not involve a desirable change as Goneril follows in the footsteps of the
false genealogy. The final scene, when all three princesses reach for the crown,
is at least ambivalent in the context of the underground collection of ‘crowns,
coins, breastplates, gold bars’ (1993b: 228) piled up not to serve the people.
The story of the ‘Pied Piper’ sums up the growing sense of moral ambivalence
and its consequences. However, in the nostalgia infected story, stasis prevails
and prevents any decisive transformation, so that neither a rite of passage nor
reaggregation takes place on the level of diegesis.
14. Fishlin and Fortier The function of a prologue is signalled in the opening scene, ‘The
comment on the
different ways of
beginning’. Starting with the Prologue’s introductory words (imperson-
attributing authorship ated by the Fool), scene one evolves into a dramatic induction with analo-
in programmes, gously constructed first-person addresses delivered by Lear’s daughters. The
handbills and
publications (215). sequence converges on the present condition of the three characters rather
than on revealing their future. Further on, the Prologue expresses the intention
of going back and telling the story preceding logos to, presumably, reveal the
‘beginnings’. Additionally, in the capacity of a peritext, a theatrical vestibule,
the piece opens up to the extratextual reality (literally preceding the produc-
tion) by addressing the audience directly and pointing to tickets and payment
for the show. This invocation of the ontologically distinct offstage reality redi-
rects attention to theatrical policies and, paradoxically, to the only reaggregat-
ing communitas, the WTG and the communal authorship they assert. Although
Feinstein had been commissioned as a writer, WTG claimed a significant
contribution to the text, so that the credits became disputable.14 Considering
the composite ‘authority’ of authorship embodied by the Prologue, the situa-
tion requires a special actor. Hence the Prologue impersonated by the Fool, a
character denoting awareness and complexity, partly an outsider, is rendered
as androgynous and must end in the obliteration of the Fool as a charac-
ter. Licensed, clad in a particoloured black and white costume, the prologue
emphasizes its position beyond class, gender and ethnicity. Androgynous
beings, tricksters, clowns, maskers and sexless novices belong to the limi-
nal due to their between-and-betwixt status (Turner 1967: 98). The Fool in
the role of the Prologue ceases to be a character, unless interstructurally, and
becomes an empty fluid signifier capable of impersonating all genders, speak-
ing as Lear, the queen, Fool (WTG and Feinstein 2005: 220), Pied Piper or a rat
and imagining itself as a dog. Interested, as admitted in scene one, in ‘money
[…] myself. And money’ (WTG and Feinstein 2005: 218), the Fool, like money,
has no identity and becomes a liminary figure of exchange tying in with the
community of liminaries in Shakespeare’s King Lear.
What is staged is the experience of togetherness involving the community
of stage, actors and audience. Its hybridity is conveyed by the narrative system
the sequence of scenes employs. The porous narrative framework is gener-
ated by the androgynous figure oscillating between the extradiegetic level of
a storyteller and communal author on the one hand and the intradiegetically
located voices of the characters it generates and impersonates on the other
hand. It is the extradiegetic narrator that decides to tell the story in the form
of a tale: ‘There was an old man called Lear’ (WTG and Feinstein 2005: 217),
and in that way, the play avoids the historical narratives of the ‘false fathers’ as
well as the universalizing concepts of tragedy. A composite figure, the narra-
tor enters the supradiegetic level of the feminist discourse. The narratives
of the Nurse and the daughters remain basically locked on the level of the
intradiegetic. Still, the opening addresses to the audience (marked as such in
the stage directions) delivered by the three daughters, a confessional work of
memory, build a bridge between the fictional and the real-life situation of the
spectators (Pavis 1998: 15). The status of the characters becomes ambiguous
as it shuttles between ‘in character’ and ‘out of character’ expanding the inter-
nal communication of character to direct communication with the audience.
What is more, address to the audience may be perceived as a form of authorial
intervention enhanced, in this case, by the communal authorship and, in the
original production, by the conflation of author/actor roles. Nevertheless, the

generative narrative energy is mainly in the androgynous Prologue/Fool and

the demand for a revisionary reading of Shakespeare’s King Lear the sequence
openly voices.
SEQUELS AND ‘GAP-FILLERS’ OR MIDQUELS: COLLECTIONS

OF LETTERS
Letters are used in drama as messengers and provide an important chan-
nel of communication. Very few of these letters are quoted. More often are
they mentioned, a strategy which produces gaps. ‘Claribel at Palace Dot Tunis’
(1998) by Linda Bamber consists of a collection of 21 e-mail letters written by
a character named Miranda (who signs the last letter), a heterodiegetic narra-
tor as well as a character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The addressee is
Claribel, the daughter of Alonso, the King of Naples and the wife of King
Tunis. Their arranged marriage and the ceremony are significantly referred
to in The Tempest (1.2.107-131) introducing in that way the subject of forced
marriages with views on political benefits. In the letters characters from The
Tempest revisit the island briefly after Alonso’s death, a moment dated in the
first letter as 23 or 400 years after they have left the place. The obvious discrep-
ancy in dating is said to be dependent ‘on how you measure time’ (Bamber
1998: 238), thus indicating the ‘double vision’ or perspective both the narra-
tor and the reader can adopt depending on whether the hypotext–hypertext
relation is considered fictional or masquerades as factual (a report, a memoir).
Considering the narrative complexity of the sequel, this paratextual adapta-
tion may be involved in juxtaposing ontologically different realities by stag-
ing an interplay of metacommentary, quasi-factual (or extra-fictional) report
and purely fictional narrative. The collection poses dilemmas when it comes
to classification and may be variously defined as an extracompositional allo-
graphic frame or a paratext. In paratextual terms, it is a delayed epitext or acto-
rial preface, an afterword or postscript written after many years. It shuttles
between the past and the present, the old patriarchal and the new anti-patri-
archal episteme as well as between the textual and the supposedly extratextual.
The Janus-faced dynamics Linda Bamber’s text pursues is typical of para-
textual thresholds as places of transition and transaction. Martin Esslin calls
them preliminary or framing devices, which belong to a higher order (1994:
55), whose function is to set expectations (implied guidelines). Hence they
are defined as framing structures of expectation (Wolf 2006: 3) or thresholds
of interpretation (Dembeck 2006: 265), whose function, among other things,
is to adapt.
Submitting ‘Claribel at Palace Dot Tunis’, Linda Bamber offers not a rewrite
but an extradiegetic paratext that seems to be a fictional preface encouraging a
necessary re-reading of the hypotext (The Tempest). To trigger and facilitate the
process, the framing device creates a fictional context. Yet as the preface (as a
paratext focusing on circumstances) takes the form of a collection of letters, or
an archive, it functions accordingly, producing an illusion of a reality around
the text and developing in that way ‘a textual society of letters’ (Duyfhuizen
1992: 46). Therefore, even though topographically or otherwise letters turn out
to be grossly inaccurate (not to say false), famous collectors, like J.J. Rousseau,
would insist on perceiving them as ‘facts’ (1992: 56). This causes an inherent
indeterminateness which renders distinctions between the fictional and the
supposedly non-fictional, or even the extratextual, difficult. As a result of this
indeterminateness, the status of the narrator becomes unclear, which affects
his reliability. The inherent ambivalence raises questions concerning the collec-
tion’s editor. Is it the contact character of Miranda? The absence of an editorial
preface to claim authenticity may appoint Bamber to the supradiegetic edito-
rial position rendering her responsible for the selection and sequencing of
the letters, i.e. the narrative of their transmission. However, perhaps to avoid
the complication of traditional forms of transmission (snail mail, messengers,
undelivered letters, etc.), aided by Trinculo (a former alcoholic turned cyber
addict), Miranda begins to use the impersonal electronic mail suggesting that
the correspondence must have been stored in a digital archive. Nevertheless,
though stored in an archive, the collection is gapped – a trace indicative of
selection – since it contains not a single reply letter even though Miranda’s
writing clearly indicates an exchange of correspondence (letter 3). Finally
then, instead of an anthropomorphized agent, the editor can be identified as
the superordinate narrative system (Weidle 2009: 225) that becomes responsi-
ble for selection and sequencing. In spite of this ambivalence, it seems that the
author of the letters is Miranda, a ‘contact character’ (Duyfhuizen 1992: 159)
authenticating the documents and assuming the double role of an extra- and
intradiegetic narrator. Therefore there is Miranda recalling an episode from
The Tempest and Miranda revisiting the enchanted island after 400 years. The
identity of Miranda reflects the Beckettian dilemma of who is speaking when
the first-person narrative is used.
The letters provide a narrative of events as well as a narrative about
events, assuming the mode of a confessional memoir. Claribel is treated as
an analogue and a mirror for Miranda’s introspective analyses engaging the
hypo and the hypertext to demand a transmotivization in the latter. Assuming
such a symmetry the inclusion of actual reply letters might be redundant.
Addressed as ‘Dear Ear’ (letter 6), Claribel invokes an ancient votive image
whose purpose was to encourage the deity to listen rather than speak and to
grant the donor’s request/prayer. As letters of confidence, the correspondence
withdraws from the dramatic function of an immediate stimulation of events.
Instead, there is a shift towards recollections and reassessments in the mode
of a balanced afterword, i.e. commentaries revealing Prospero’s transgressive
behaviour and Ferdinand’s diplomatic potential. Looking back, the paratextual
adaptation engages in a recollection of The Tempest in the context of revisit-
ing the island, which in the meantime has become a theme park, called The
National Park of Prospero, a museum immersed in heritage nostalgia where
information ‘follows the official Prospero-line’ (Bamber 1998: 241). The order
of the museumizing collection (also an adaptation), contradicting the inher-
ent order of the exhibits (Sycorax, Caliban, Miranda), implements patriarchal
gender, race and class oppression sold as heritage nostalgia and thus offers
Shakespeare’s play in souvenirs: ‘spiky coral necklaces and egg timers filled
with bright yellow sand’ (letter 10).
Apart from memories sold to tourists in cheap trifles, the park produces
collectable ‘re-enactments’ of episodes from The Tempest. What the paratextual
adaptation proposes with the aid of Miranda as extradiegetic narrator, author
and stage director is a metaleptic intrusion, i.e. a frame-breaking exercise
probing into the hypotext. The former contact character, now the writer and
editor, proposes a revision of the hypotext in accordance with the anti-patri-
archal episteme, notably a re-enactment of the rape scene which reveals the
unexpected affinity of Caliban and Prospero, dismantling in that way the false
dichotomies of racial difference and ungrounded social hierarchies. Caliban
and Prospero must become friends.

The Dead Letters by Maurice Baring, first published in 1909 by Martin Secker,
provide another example of liminal adaptation following the epistolary genre
with its specific conventions, possibly a form of essay adaptation. As opposed
to Bamber’s collection of Miranda’s letters where electronic media reduce the
narrative of transmission, Baring’s collection develops a frame expanding the
transmission so that the collection acquires additional levels of enframing.
Among the 24 groups of letters, reprinted by permission of The Morning Post,
four letters can be treated as expansions, intrusions, midquels or gap-fillers
related directly to Shakespeare’s plays. The remaining texts engage other ficti-
tious characters, pseudo-historical and historical characters. The ‘Letter from
Goneril, daughter of King Lear, to her sister Regan’ derives from references
in the hypotext (1.2), and consists in a complaint on the unruly behaviour of
the King, addressed as ‘Papa’, and of his followers. The letter modernizes the
representation of family relations, rendering them as Victorian middle class
so that Goneril believes in Regan’s ‘angelic nature’, while Cordelia’s silence
is reduced to speech disorders and sly tricks of mumbling (Baring 1920: 98).
By analogy to Bottomley’s revision of Goneril, Baring perceives her complaint
as justifiable. The letters rooted in Shakespeare’s plays are not related to one
another. The following one is the ‘Letter from Rosaline to her Friend Olivia’,
which reveals the ‘truth’ about the relationship of Rosaline and Romeo. Claims
to truth and authority on what has happened are voiced by Rosaline writing
a confessional letter to Livia, a person mentioned on the list of guests invited
to attend the supper at the Capulet’s house (1.2). The letter is preceded by
two quotations from Shakespeare’s play invoking the characters of Juliet and
Rosaline. Next is the ‘Letter from Lady Macbeth to Lady Macduff’, which does
not specify its location in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Classified as ‘Most Private’,
it is indicative of some offstage communication between Flora (Lady Macduff)
and Harriet (Lady Macbeth), who invites the latter with her young son Jeamie
to visit Inverness briefly after Duncan’s assassination. The first names used in
the letters are modern inventions. The motivation for the visit is safety (Baring
1920: 100) after Macduff’s departure for England and a desire on the part of
Lady Macbeth to restore normality, i.e. ‘to see a child in the house’ (Baring
1920: 106). The letter paraphrases familiar descriptions of Inverness found in
Shakespeare’s play and intends to provide insights into ordinary private life.
The fourth letter entitled ‘From a Player’s Letter’ is located at the court of King
Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. From the point of view of an outsider, a
player on his way to Hamburg, the excerpt comments in a gossipy manner on
the bad atmosphere at the court in Elsinore and on the unsuccessful perfor-
mance. All of the letters use modern language, combining narratives with
detailed journalistic observation.
Maurice Baring belonged to the triumvirate of newspaper correspondents,
writers and poets including also Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Having
discovered his interest in people and travelling, Baring abandoned diplo-
macy and became a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post. His oeuvre
of over 40 publications (drama, poetry and prose) has been largely forgot-
ten. The documentary-style pervading The Dead Letters is paralleled by the
peculiarity of The Lost Diaries and The Lost Lectures, spoofs pretending to be
collections of discovered diaries of historical and fictitious figures including
Sherlock Holmes and George Washington or fictitious lectures. The former is a
collection originally published by the Morning Post (Dulwich Society Archive).
The author spent several years in Russia covering the Russo-Japanese war
in Manchuria. Hence the Dedicatory preface preceding The Dead Letters is
15. It is not my intention signed by Baring in the capacity of a correspondent writing from Sosnofka in
to claim that Baring’s
letters should be taken
1909. Lynn Bradley explains that Maurice Baring, like Gordon Bottomley and
for genuine archival Tom Stoppard, wrote in response to character criticism expanding ‘character
material. However, criticism into the creative field’ (2010: 93). However, considering the author’s
his journalistic
experience enables general anti-intellectualism, it can be argued that it is his journalistic inspira-
him to create such an tions rather than an interest in literary theory that contributes to his style of
illusion. Moreover, the writing. Baring was writing from his experience as a correspondent scribbling
paratextual surround
of the collection and in his diary, combining the narrative with observations on people. Often on
around the collection the verge of parody and satire, he seems to be writing for sheer pleasure.
he creates is bound to
puzzle and amuse the
While Bamber’s hypertextual collection contains a sample scene, providing
reader. To ‘convince’ the supplementation for the Shakespearean hypotext, supposedly incomplete due
reader Baring makes to gender, race and class-oriented suppression, The Dead Letters function more
use of conventions, the
regime Genette refers importantly as a collection whose narrative of transmission assumes signif-
to when commenting icant agency. Baring’s letters can be classified as gap-fillers, but the collec-
on fictitious notes. tion belongs to a much more comprehensive ‘society of letters’ than Claribel,
to a community of writers which includes a myriad of historical and fictitious
personae whose letters arranged chronologically, even if fictional, strive to
acquire the status of ‘facts’. Apart from J.J. Rousseau’s claim, the mechanism
is corroborated by Hutcheon, who observes that postmodern historiographic
metafiction makes use of paratextual insertion of historical data, assuming
that paratexts such as incorporated documents, notes etc., certify facts.15 It is
the prerogative of their genre. Thus the narrative of transmission (a surviv-
ing archival collection) that Baring provides persuades the receiver about
the potentially non-fictional status of the collected texts which, in turn, he
persuades the reader, tongue in cheek, to be treated as documents. Even if
‘deliberately awkward’, the use of paratextual conventions in fiction is indica-
tive of a tendency to read literature as historical document, which may, some-
what paradoxically, result in a parodic effect (Hutcheon 1996: 303–04). Even if
incorporated into a fictive context, Hutcheon writes, the prefaces, epilogues,
epigraphs and footnotes tend to retain their status of a ‘historical documen-
tary’ (1986: 302). Hence it can be argued that the hypertextual letters, when
referred to their ‘pseudo-original’ hypotextual contexts, will turn out to be
disruptive, advocating their reading in terms of a historical document rather
than fiction although their status is obviously non-historical.
The narrative of transmission Baring construes within the paratextual
frame pretends to juxtapose fact and fiction. A note stating that the letters
are reprinted from The Morning Post with the permission of its Proprietor
and Editor persuades the reader that they are undelivered letters published
for some reason in the press. The following ‘Dedication’, an extended dedica-
tory letter, looking back to a much earlier tradition, adopts a prefatory func-
tion (Genette 1997a: 125) explaining further that the bundle was ‘collected’
from the Dead Letter Office, a declaration which partly contradicts the earlier
note. The dedication, normally the right of the author, seems to have been
issued by an editor, or by the author pretending to be an editor. Hence Baring
seems to withdraw from openly claiming authorship. At the time when the
author publishes the collection, the dedicatee is no longer a patron, but either
a mentor or a colleague. Here, the dedicatee, Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas,
is Baring’s close friend and colleague – also a war correspondent cover-
ing the Boer War. ‘Bron’ remained a close friend whose ‘In Memoriam’, writ-
ten by Baring, was published in The Morning Post. Following the author’s and
the mentor’s professional status, the letters are introduced as neither strictly
historical documents nor as historical studies proper but effects of journalistic

observation, historical ‘impressions’ which may contain ‘a few grains of histori-

cal truth’ (Baring 1920: v), a blend of ‘memoirs’, i.e. private memory, and
‘fiction’ (Baring 1920: vi).
As ‘dead letters’, the documents never reached their addressees and there-
fore, as hypertexts, theoretically, had no impact on the texts they suppos-
edly supplemented. However, considering the fact that the true addressee
of the correspondence is the implied reader, whose participation has been
enhanced by the letters once they have been published in the press (Baring
1920: vi), their book publication is to stimulate further response and in that
way to trigger adaptation processes to be performed by the prospective read-
ers. The epigraphs following the Dedication claim that history is a pageant,
a ‘vast procession of human lives’, true regardless of their either fictional or
factual character. Hence the epistolary-hypertexts, as little theatres, are insets
embedded in history – another grand narrative of transmission – which turns
out to be a pageant as well. The letters focusing on fictitious and histori-
cal figures provide links developing rhizomatically, networks drawing and
incorporating Shakespeare’s plays, together with the remaining part of the
archive, into this larger theatre of history. It results in a reversal of relations,
wherein the order of presentation (inscribed into the paratextual function of
the epistolary hypertext) prevails over the order of invention, the hypotext of
Shakespeare’s work.
CONCLUSION
This article considered the hypertextual relationship between a selection of
Shakespeare’s plays (the hypotext) and chosen ‘Shakespearean’ prequels,
sequels and midquels (the hypertext) through the prism of their liminal, para-
textual or quasi paratextual status. These delayed attachments, situated on the
outskirts and presumably grafted onto the ‘main body’ of the text (here the
hypotext), function as frames focusing on both the source text they precede
(Bottomley, WTG and Feinstein), follow (Bamber) or penetrate metaleptically
(Baring) and on the extratextual reality, thus inviting a two-way traffic which
sets off the process of adaptation. Regarded as paratextual frames or masquer-
ading as paratexts, performing their specific functions, these marginal adapta-
tions seem to encourage a diversity of the strategies their form admits. They
partake in creating a diversity of relations resulting in hybrid composite forms
such as Baring’s letters, which bring together supposedly historical fact and
fiction, or Feinstein’s prequel, whose function as prologue brings the embod-
ied communal author onstage, where the offstage and the onstage meet once
again. Both trigger a potentially endless process of creative involvement on
the part of the audience by offering bridges between the paratextual frag-
ments and the reader (or audience). The collections of letters tend to be open
(notably Baring’s) and capable of producing further gaps. As structures of
expectation, these liminal adaptations control the reading/reception, provid-
ing some keys to understanding the source text dependent on the current
épisteme (Bamber). At the same time, however, as metaleptic intrusions and
metatextual comments, they are capable of aesthetic distance resulting in
comic relief (Bamber) and often in mildly parodic effects (Bamber, Baring).
Strongly encouraging the viewers/readers’ participation, the adaptations may
be perceived as prologues and gap-fillers addressing texts yet to be written.
From a narratological perspective, these liminal adaptations employing
diverse narrative agencies and bestowing characters with unstable narrative
functions of extra and intradiegetic narrators (Miranda) make us consider to

what extent they matter and how they affect the epistemological dialogue
between the hypo and the hypertext. Redirecting to valid conceptual frame-
works for ordering knowledge (in the sense of the current épisteme) and
proposing new interpretations, they also reveal their limitations (Bottomley
and Bamber) by pointing to the openness of the collections and, finally, indi-
cating endless ‘lines of flight’ (Lanier 2014: 29) leading beyond their bounda-
ries. In a gently parodic manner, Miranda refers the reader to a recommended
‘bibliography for further reading’ which lists articles on Sycorax (Bamber 1998:
248), signalling in that way an ongoing intertextual process of adaptation.
Capitalizing on the openness of paratextual framing, instead of producing
evidence and answers, they aim at generating questions.
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Kębłowska-Ławniczak, Ewa (2021), ‘Liminal hypotext–hypertext relations
in selected Shakespearean prequels, sequels and gap-fillers’, Journal of
Adaptation in Film & Performance, 14:1, pp. 87–107, https://doi.org/10.1386/
jafp_00044_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak is professor of English literature and comparative
studies at the University of Wrocław, Poland. Her research interests include
the exploration of intersections between visuality and literature; life writing
and adaptation in paratext. She is the author of The Visual Seen and Unseen:
Insights into Tom Stoppard’s Art (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego,
2004), From Concept-City to City Experience (Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut, 2013),
‘Adaptations of visual material: Paintings, drawings and maps’ (Contemporary
Drama in English, 2009) and ‘The exhibited in the order of exhibition:
Adaptations for the stage’ (Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary
and Language Studies, 2010). Her recent publications include ‘From peritext to
text: Constructing authorship in David Hare’s selected plays’ (AJMP, 2018),
‘From roots to routes: Women playwrights negotiating their authorship in
paratexts’ (AJMP, 2020) and ‘The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories:
Towards a collection of creative paratextual writing or literature in potenta’
(English Studies in Africa, 2020).
Contact: Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Kuźnicza 21-22,

50-138 Wrocław, Poland.
E-mail: ewa.keblowska-lawniczak@uwr.edu.pl
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2708-1552
Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak has asserted their right under the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in
the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

Liminal Hypotext-Hypertext Relations in Selected Shakespearean Prequels, Sequels and Gap-Fillers

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jafp 14 (1) pp.

87–107 Intellect Limited 2021

Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

pointing to an ontological or temporal elsewhere – can be variously defined as

PREQUELS, SEQUELS AND GAP-FILLERS AS ADAPTATIONS

88 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

‘subservient’ position of paratexts, the ‘empty husks’ Derrida views as both

LIMINALITY AND HYBRIDITY

90 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

EXPANSIONS: ADAPTATION IN PARATEXT

92 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

DRAMATIC PREQUELS 6. Foulkes also refers

– resulting in a complexity which justifies their status as composite figures.

94 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

96 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

Goneril as Hrogneda’s follower, a historical character whose turbulent life

98 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

generative narrative energy is mainly in the androgynous Prologue/Fool and

SEQUELS AND ‘GAP-FILLERS’ OR MIDQUELS: COLLECTIONS

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102 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

observation, historical ‘impressions’ which may contain ‘a few grains of histori-

functions of extra and intradiegetic narrators (Miranda) make us consider to

104 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

Cieślikowska, Teresa (1995), ‘Wstęp do “neantologii”, czyli rzecz o quasi-

Hutcheon, Linda (1986), ‘Postmodern paratextuality and history’, Texte-revue

106 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

Contact: Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Kuźnicza 21-22,

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak has asserted their right under the Copyright,

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