The Betty Haigh Shakespeare Prize: winning essays

The Betty Haigh Shakespeare Prize: winning essays

The Betty Haigh Shakespeare Prize is open to all post-16 students and invites a performance-based approach to Shakespeare’s plays. With film and television adaptation now featuring in many university modules, the competition brief encourages students to look forward to what might be in store for them if they go on to study English at degree level. At the same time, it offers them an opportunity to think about a ‘set text’ through a different medium and to develop their film analysis skills. The first of the two competition options requires entrants to engage with screen adaptation through a close comparative analysis of a short clip and a named source text. The second option asks them to write a review of a film version that has had an impact on their interpretation of a Shakespeare play of their own choice.

We are delighted to present below the two winning essays from the 2025-25 competition:

• Thea Dixon, ‘‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers too’: gender, performance, heteronormativity, and homoeroticism in Act 2 Scene 4 of Nunn’s Twelfth Night‘
• Sophia Verai, ‘Ophelia: Fresh eyes and a sound mind’

‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers too’: gender, performance, heteronormativity, and homoeroticism in Act 2 Scene 4 of Nunn’s Twelfth Night’
Thea Dixon

Though the study of homoeroticism in Twelfth Night often focuses on the relationship between Olivia and Cesario/Viola, in Nunn’s depiction their scenes are comic rather than erotic. It is the homoerotic relationship between Cesario/Viola and Orsino that Nunn explores in Act 2 Scene 4. Written in a society concerned with the increasing fragility of gender roles, faced by ‘queens who were kings (Elizabeth) and kings who were queens (James I)’, Shakespeare explores meta-theatrical ideas of gendered costume and performance.[1] Playing into this, Nunn blurs the boundaries of Cesario/Viola’s male and female identity, creating a homoerotic tension with Orsino. Nunn could be seen as reinterpreting Orsino’s performances of love for Olivia as a kind of detached compulsory heterosexuality, beneath which lies a buried homoerotic desire for Cesario/Viola. Within 2;4, Nunn creates a sense of tragedy at the impossibility of homosexual love in the play, comically resolved by Sebastian’s return.

Nunn’s adaptation pushes the boundaries of gender performance, exploring transgender identity not only through Cesario/Viola’s costume, but through male-coded action. While, in the play’s origin, a boy would have played Cesario/Viola, introducing a degree of disorientation for the audience, Nunn makes us completely aware of Cesario/Viola’s original female identity, through a transformation scene. Casey Charles suggests that the cross-dressed Cesario/Viola ‘collapses the polarities upon which heterosexuality is based by becoming an object of desire’.[2] Certainly, as the play progresses, the distinction between ‘Cesario’ and ‘Viola’ dissolves, suggested by the end of 2;4: ‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house,/ And all the brothers too’.[3] While this could be Cesario/Viola lamenting Sebastian’s assumed death, it could also be suggested that Shakespeare is blurring strict divisions of maleness and femaleness; Cesario/Viola is simultaneously ‘daughter’ and ‘brother’.[4] However, Charles’ use of ‘object of desire’ suggests that Cesario/Viola’s gender is passively prescribed upon him/her.[5] This may be true in Shakespeare’s original text, but Nunn subverts the idea of passive identity, suggesting that he/she may actively define him/herself as male. Threatened by cross-dressing on and off stage, the Renaissance moralists believed that outer dress defined inner identity, such as Stephen Gosson, who posed that clothes ‘are set down for signs distinctive between sex and sex’ and that cross-dressing was against ‘the law of God’.[6] In 2;4, Nunn could be seen as exploiting this anxiety, suggesting that ‘Cesario’ surpasses a costume, becoming an inner identity, which he/she occupies not merely through costume, but through male-coded action. Nunn shows Cesario/Viola horse-riding with Orsino. Approaching a fallen tree as an obstacle, Nunn presents a test to his/her male performance, depicting Cesario/Viola’s anxiety through a shaking camera and crescendoing orchestral music, which climaxes as he/she successfully jumps over the tree, cutting to his/her relieved face. Developing this further, Nunn shows Cesario/Viola playing pool with Orsino, whose relaxed, smooth expertise contrasts Cesario/Viola’s shifty uncertainty. Cesario/Viola makes a weak, uncertain play; the white ball runs into the side of the pool table but happens to score a red ball. After an exchange of incredulous glances, Cesario/Viola plays it cool, pleased. The development from Cesario/Viola’s relief to joy could be seen as a journey of his/her increasing comfortability in the male identity. What makes these moments most compelling is their accidental nature. Nunn subverts the idea that Cesario/Viola is performing maleness, instead creating a sense that he/she is occupying it naturally, questioning how gender is defined, but certainly cementing Cesario/Viola’s male identity in the eyes of Orsino, opening up questions of homoeroticism.

With male homoerotic possibilities taking the fore in Nunn’s adaptation, Nunn seems to suggest that Orsino’s desire for Olivia is not merely courtly love but a performance of heteronormativity. Keir Elam suggests that portrayals of Orsino have historically “fall[en] into a limited range of stereotypes, the most recurrent being the sincerely passionate Petrarchan lover, despite the text’s hints at the instability of his desire.’[7] While Elam is right to suggest that Shakespeare presents Orsino as poetically passionate in his love for Olivia, in 2;4 Nunn poses that the ‘instability of his desire’ is instead due to Orsino’s love being a shallow, performative façade, beneath which lies desire for Cesario/Viola.[8] Back at the pool table, Nunn visually punctures the validity of Orsino’s heterosexual desire. Orsino advises Cesario/Viola with maturity, ‘For such as I am all true lovers are, / Unstaid and skittish in all motions else/ Save in the constant image of the creature/ That is beloved.’[9] Shakespeare’s use ‘constant image’ presents Orsino’s idea of love as something perfectly performed.[10] Orsino says this line as he shoots the ball, and he misses. Orsino’s miss could reflect his failure to make Olivia desire him, but even further it could be suggested that Orsino’s miss serves to puncture his statement, exposing his desire as a false performance of heteronormativity, Shakespeare’s ‘creature’ connoting fictitiousness.[11] Shakespeare emphasises love as a performance through language between Orsino and Olivia, rather than physical intimacy. In contrast, Nunn portrays a physically intimate moment between Orsino and Cesario/Viola during Feste’s song in 2;4, without dialogue between them, emphasising a sense of instinctive erotic connection. Feste’s song, through which Shakespeare explores love as a fatality, may reflect Orsino and Olivia’s courtly relationship, but Nunn’s adaptation suggests it could reflect ideas of dangerous or impossible (and homoerotic) love. As Feste begins playing, Orsino crosses to Cesario/Viola, placing his arm around him/her; Nunn is blurring the boundaries between master and servant, between friendship and desire. Despite Feste’s presence, Nunn cuts to a close-up of the pair’s heads from behind, backlit and shadowed, increasing the sense of intimacy. Nunn creates undeniable tension as Orsino and Cesario/Viola inch hesitantly into a near embrace, before Feste’s song ends and Nunn cuts to a wide-shot, exposing the pair’s near-kiss with a concerned look from Feste. Orsino rushes out of the barn. It is unclear whether his ensuing frustration is caused by the impossibility of his unrequited love for Olivia, or the impossibility of his requited love for Cesario/Viola. Nunn sets most of Olivia’s scenes in ornate rooms or neat gardens, in seeming contrast with this dark, unadorned barn, which could more largely suggest that beneath an elaborate heteronormative performance lies a simple homoerotic truth.

Nunn could be seen as framing Act 2 Scene 4 as a moment of impossible homosexual love with tragic implications. Denise A. Walen suggests that ‘situated in… romantic comedy, the cross-dressed female character provokes humour rather than anxiety’.[12] While it is certainly true that, in scenes between Cesario/Viola and Olivia, comedy is often evoked, allowing Shakespeare to explore female homoeroticism on the Renaissance stage, in Act 2 Scene 4, Nunn’s exploration of the impossibility of homosexual love introduces a sense of tragedy, only comically resolved by Sebastian’s return. No longer in candle-lit, private rooms, this final part of the scene is set outside on treacherously jagged cliffs, backgrounded by sea. Nunn’s change of setting could suggest that an earlier sense of safety and intimacy is usurped by a dangerous, tragic reality. As Orsino questions, ‘And what’s her history?’, while Cesario/Viola tells his/her story of unrequited love in the third person, Cesario/Viola’s response, ‘A blank, my lord. She never told her love,’ feels particularly hopeless.[13] Shakespeare’s choice to have Cesario/Viola speak about his/her present self in the past tense suggests this situation must always end tragically. Nunn’s adaptation brings another layer, suggesting Cesario/Viola may not want to return to a female identity; Cesario/Viola’s history being ‘blank’ can be seen as renouncing his/her past female identity.[14] Conversely, Cesario/Viola’s line, ‘perhaps, were I a woman, / I should your lordship’, evokes more than dramatic irony, creating a sense that Cesario/Viola solely desires to return to womanhood to fit a heteronormative mould.[15] Equally as notable as Cesario/Viola’s hopelessness, is Orsino’s outburst of emotion. His misogynistic speech, while evidently problematic, may be reinterpreted in Nunn’s adaptation, as a frustration with heteronormativity. Orsino’s line, ‘There is no woman’s sides/ Can bide the beating of so strong a passion/ As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart’, could suggest that the love Orsino desires is found in ‘no woman’s heart’ but a man’s.[16] What is particularly compelling about Orsino’s great outburst is that the uncontrolled passion and anger denies any sense of performance. Though suggested to be caused by Olivia’s ‘sovereign cruelty’, Nunn’s adaptation depicts Orsino’s speeches said directly to Cesario/Viola, reaching a climax as Orsino bellows, ‘What dost thou know?’.[17] This question subverts earlier in the scene when Orsino bestows advice; now, he is seeking advice, turning to Cesario/Viola for answers, and for love. Yet, none of this impossibility can be resolved until the return of Sebastian, leaving the viewer tense.

Nunn’s exploration of how gender and love may or may not be performed questions how we may reinterpret Act 2 Scene 4, exploring homoerotic tension between Cesario/Viola and Orsino. Nunn creates a sense that there is a romantic love present between them before the reveal of Cesario/Viola’s female identity, after which Orsino continues to refer to him/her as ‘boy’, a nod to a homoerotic relationship and a blurred gender identity that transcends Shakespeare’s safe, comic resolution.[18]

 

 

Word count: 1500

Act 2, Scene 4 is spread throughout the film, interspersed with other scenes. Please find the time stamps for the relevant moments below.

Horse riding: 56:56 – 57:15

Pool playing: 1:16:59 – 1:17:31

Feste’s song: 1:17:32 – 1:20:11

The cliffs: 1:20:25 – 1:23:11

 

 

Bibliography:

Charles, Casey, ‘Gender Trouble in “Twelfth Night”’, Theatre Journal, 49, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press), 1997.

Elam, Keir, ‘Introduction’, in Twelfth Night, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc), 2008.

Gosson, Stephen, Playes Confuted in Fiue Actions (1582), in Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson, ed. Arthur Kinney, (Salzburg), 1974.

Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night, ed. Keir Elam, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc), 2008.

Walen, Denise, ‘Constructions of Female Homoerotics in Early Modern Drama’, Theatre Journal, 54, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press), 2002.

[1] Casey Charles, ‘Gender Trouble in “Twelfth Night”’, Theatre Journal, 49, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 126.

[2] Ibid, p. 128.

[3] William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ed. Keir Elam, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2008), p. 235.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Casey Charles, ‘Gender Trouble in “Twelfth Night”’, Theatre Journal, 49, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 128.

[6] Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in Fiue Actions (1582), in Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson, ed. Arthur Kinney (Salzburg, 1974), p. 175.

[7] Keir Elam, ‘Introduction’, Twelfth Night, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2008), p. 138.

[8] Ibid.

[9] William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ed. Keir Elam, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2008), p. 227.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Denise A. Walen, ‘Constructions of Female Homoerotics in Early Modern Drama’, Theatre Journal, 54, (Baltimore: John Hopkins Universtiy Press, 2002), p. 419.

[13] Ibid.

[14] William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ed. Keir Elam, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2008), p. 234.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, p. 233.; ibid, p. 233.

[17] Ibid, p. 232.

[18] Ibid, p. 234

 

Ophelia: Fresh eyes and a sound mind
Sophie Verai

Shakespeare’s Ophelia in ‘Hamlet’ is a passive victim of circumstance, tragically driven mad as she drowns under the weight of the tension and betrayals she experiences at Elsinore. Her function is to be affected by the plot, bolstering its effect on the audience as she is offered up as a narrative punching bag. She is designed to be pitied, activating that essential element of Aristotelian catharsis and thereby underpinning the audience’s emotional investment. For greater drama, her lack of agency is almost flaunted, such as in Act 1, Scene 3 when she complies to Polonius’ instructions to avoid Hamlet: “I shall obey, my Lord.” She exists to act and react in relation to the men around her, to the extent that even the act of suicide bestows her with minimal agency – a madwoman is not accountable for her own actions.

By fundamentally recentering the narrative, the 2018 film ‘Ophelia’ reconstructs this tragic persona. It extends Ophelia’s temporal continuity, providing her with an original backstory and a life after supposed death. We see the world of the Danish court entirely through her eyes, first as a boisterous young girl with dirt on her face, then as a well-groomed lady-in-waiting to Queen Gertrude. This lays the groundwork for a rewriting of her character’s significance and purpose. The film begins and ends with her voice addressing her audience directly. She characterises herself: “…I was always a willful girl, and followed my heart, and spoke my mind,” a declaration that counters the line of submission from the source play quoted above. Daisy Ridley plays a woman with depth, autonomy, intelligence and resourcefulness who uses her mind to navigate the treacherous social environment she finds herself in, while Hamlet is paralysed by vacillation.

The redirecting of both character and narrative trajectory is concentrated in the film’s crowning alteration of the play. Ophelia makes the same choice and is put in the same psychological situation as Hamlet – feigning madness as a strategy. What is more, she lives to tell the tale. Crucially, her pretend mental state remains pretence and her true character is uncompromised. Her insanity is not the collapse of a grief-stricken mind and broken heart, but a tool for her to move through Elsinore without suspicion and ultimately defy her doomed fate. Hamlet on the other hand falters, consumed by uncertainty to the point that his external presentation tampers with his internal being, so torn is his sense of self.

In the film, then, Ophelia succeeds at what Hamlet does not: maintaining the mental border between concrete reality and maddening equivocation for both her character and her audience. There is no ambiguity as to her sanity by the end of the film – McCarthy grants her that dignified assertion of wellbeing. Meanwhile, critics continue to disagree on the precise nature of Hamlet’s final mental state in the play. Ophelia thus acquires the “masculine” trait of psychological resilience in McCarthy’s film, illuminating the “feminine” nature of the male protagonist with an ironic twist.

This narrative divergence does more than reimagine and rescue Ophelia’s character; it alters the entire thematic resonance of the plot. Ophelia’s survival reframes the story from one of fated death, so often the mechanism behind Shakespearean tragedy, to one of rebirth which ends in the breaking of a cycle of violence and madness. This asserts the film’s markedly optimistic interpretative decision, ensuring that one central character ultimately survives the treacherous world of Elsinore and doing away with the depressing aftertaste of the final frenzied bloodbath which Shakespeare indulges in. Ophelia’s identity is not bound to the doomed fate imposed on her by the original play: she is shown to be capable of outwitting destiny and forging her own path in the world.

A new protagonist means a fresh gaze on the play’s concerns. “Hamlet” explores its themes of power, corruption and deceit through the actions of male characters—Claudius’s usurpation of the throne, Hamlet’s duty for revenge, and the political machinations at court. Ophelia and Gertrude largely amount to collateral damage in this power struggle. By shifting the focus to Ophelia, the film allows such themes to be interpreted by the young woman who must witness and navigate this moral outrage. As for innovation, the film introduces the theme of female solidarity via Ophelia’s relationship with Gertrude, which is depicted with a richer intimacy and nuance through scenes such as Ophelia reading to the Queen.

When putting on productions of Shakespeare’s plays, visual cues like costumes and setting are generally at the director’s discretion rather than dictated by the script, as Shakespeare is said to have been present at his own rehearsals and would have expressed any preferences directly. As a result, any symbolism attributed to Ophelia in the source text is limited to the flowers she scatters across the stage in Act 4, Scene 5, a morbid celebration of her newfound madwoman status. The film benefits from cinema’s inherently greater visual freedom, using props, costumes and sets with intentionality to mirror the character’s journey, status and emotions. The motif of flowers is picked up on; they are dotted throughout the screenplay – white lilies in particular – as a means to cultivate a sense of Ophelia’s identity. Water is similarly present in her surroundings, from the lake she bathes in to the jug she carries for the Queen’s bath, as a form of foreshadowing referencing her choice of death – or rather escape.

Regarding costuming, her clothes evolve from simple, earthy tones in childhood, reflecting her freshness and connection to nature, to the luscious jewel green of the first court dress we see her in, which in an allegorical scene she removes to bathe in the lake. Darker, more elaborate outfits are introduced as she becomes entangled in the court’s intrigues.

The settings, too, shift to reflect her inner state—lush, natural settings when she is free-spirited and in love, contrasted with the stony, oppressive interiors of Kronborg Castle when she feels trapped and endangered. These visual elements externalize Ophelia’s psychology and emotionality in a way that the play cannot, facilitating the film’s objective of immersing us in her world.

A bold, self-assured reinterpretation of character roles, gender-based power and the hand of fate in tragedy, ‘Ophelia’ offers a refreshing dose of well-executed originality in its retelling of the Elizabethan classic. While respecting the confines of the play’s tragic status, the film is inspiring in its essential message of endurance and asserted identity, choosing to see in ‘Hamlet’ the potential for a new, female protagonist to lead a new life.