| Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Ann-Marie MacDonald |
| Characters | Desdemona Othello Juliet Romeo Constance Ledbelly Chorus Student Iago Ramona Tybalt Mercutio Professor Claude Night A soldier of Cyprus Juliet's Nurse Servant Ghost |
| Date premiered | March 31, 1988 |
| Place premiered | Toronto |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | Constance's Office Othello's citadel at Cyprus Verona, a public place |
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is a 1988 comedic play by Ann-Marie MacDonald in which Constance Ledbelly, a young English literature professor from Queen's University, goes on a subconscious journey of self-discovery.[1]
Constance theorizes that Shakespeare's tragedies, Othello and Romeo and Juliet, were originally comedies, and believes the ideas for the plays originate from the indecipherable Gustav Manuscript. She believes this because, if a wise fool archetype were reinstated into the plays, they could not remain tragedies. However, she is too timid to show her skeptical boss, professor Claude Night, that she is right. In a moment of despair, Constance is thrown into both her subconscious mind and the two Shakespearian tragedies to discover the truth about herself, and to find the lost fool with the help of Desdemona and Juliet.
MacDonald received the Governor General's Award,[2] the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award[3] and the Canadian Authors Association Drama Award[4] for the play.