Where There's A Will: Shakespeare Remixed In 'The Gap Of Time'

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

On our program, we often talk with musical artists who release cover albums, their versions of songs made popular by others. Now comes a project where writers, some of the most acclaimed of our time, retell Shakespearean tales in their own words. Jeanette Winterson's new novel is called "The Gap Of Time" and it is a reimagining of "The Winter's Tale." It is the first book in the series to be published. She joins me now from London. Thanks so much for being with us, Jeanette.

JEANETTE WINTERSON: Thank you for inviting me.

MARTIN: Rewriting Shakespeare, no small task.

(LAUGHTER)

MARTIN: Can you explain a little more about the project and the thinking behind it, how it came to you?

WINTERSON: Yeah, I mean, next year's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. And this is Britain, so we're going to go into like barter-mania (ph) next year. It'll be, you know, Shakespeare wall-to-wall. But it was a great idea, I think, of the Random House team to say, OK, let's just take writers from around the world and see what they can do with some of these Shakespeare plays.

Just choose one that matters to you and change it, alter it, play with it. And, of course, it's perfectly right for Shakespeare who never invented a plot and just used to, you know, take apart other people's work and bolt it back together in his own image. You know, he'd think this was exactly the right way to deal with the text.

MARTIN: (Laughter) So why "The Winter's Tale?"

WINTERSON: Well, it's got an abandoned baby in it and I am one. And, you know, abandoned babies in literature do pretty well - and not just in literature, in popular culture, you know, Superman, Spiderman, Han Solo in the "Star Wars" trilogy, you know, he doesn't know who his father is, famously. So the idea of being a foundling, you know, a child with two lives, is very interesting imaginatively, but it's also your reality.

Then you're going to start reading, looking for clues about yourself, because being adopted is like going to the theater after curtain up or getting a book with the first few pages ripped out. You're always looking for the missing story. So when I was a kid - you know, 16 - teenager - I was reading Shakespeare and I thought that, yeah, this one's got a lost child in it. This will give me a clue.

MARTIN: Can you give us a synopsis of this play for those of us - and I will cop to being one of them - but for those of us who have not read "The Winter's Tale?"

WINTERSON: "The Winter's Tale" starts like "Othello" on speed, really. You know, you've got a guy who suddenly becomes insanely jealous of his wife and his wife's best friend. She's pregnant. She's about to give birth. And the king - in Shakespeare's play, the king suddenly thinks it's not my baby. You know, it's my best friend's baby. And I'm going to throw her out. I'm going to try and kill him. I'm going to abandon the child. You know, it's the usual male rage, you know? It's homicide from every pore. So, you know, it's a very modern story.

We all know it's happening on the streets every day. And that's what Shakespeare was looking at. But, of course, the baby, although it's thrown out, you know, then grows up to be a lovely young woman whose survival identity is so necessary, you know, to go on forward with the tale. And, you know, she's taken to another country. She grows up and eventually she's reconciled with her father. And we believe that her mother, the queen, is dead. But, in fact, she's not. And at the end of the story, you know, she comes back and everybody in it finds there's a new ending.

MARTIN: Let's talk about your reimagined versions of these characters.

WINTERSON: So you've got Leontes and Polixenes - Leontes, king of Sicilia and Polixenes, king of Bohemia, you know, invented places. So I thought, OK, I'm going to set it in the present day. But I thought, a king, what's that? It's an alpha male so - and somebody who's in control who thinks he's, like, lord of the universe, a time lord, he can do what he likes. And I thought, who would that be, now? It's got to be a banker, hasn't it?

MARTIN: (Laughter).

WINTERSON: Somebody just saying, do what you like with other people's lives and spend all the money. So I thought, OK, we'll have Leo. And he can run a hedge fund called Sicilia. And we'll have his best friend - we won't call him Polixenes. We'll call him Xeno. And we'll make Xeno a gay guy who designs video games in an imagined American city called New Bohemia, which, yes, is New Orleans in a different disguise. So, you know, that's kind of my setting for it.

MARTIN: Describe their relationship.

WINTERSON: Well, in the play, you don't get any back story for any of the characters. And what I wanted to do was build those stories. And I thought, why are these two guys both - why are they so close and also why are they - what's this jealousy about? 'Cause it's really a triangle. It's not just that Leo's jealous about his wife. He's jealous about his best friend, as well.

MARTIN: He thinks they are having a thing.

WINTERSON: Yeah, he thinks they are having an affair. But he's also - you know, there's a kind of homoerotic impulse behind it, which is just under the surface in Shakespeare. So I sent them off to boarding school together, you know, a couple of young kids from damaged families that - these two guys become friends for life. They have an unusual kind of affair at boarding school, no big deal. Leo goes on to be a rampant heterosexual. Xeno is gay. And for a while, that works beautifully. And then the conflict sets in. So that's the basis of the story.

MARTIN: And the central tension - we don't want to give away too much - but it is about ideas of loyalty, of fidelity.

WINTERSON: Yeah, because, you know, Leo just manages to smash everything up. He betrays his wife, his best friend, the people around him, his business... You know, the fallout of male rage is always huge, isn't it? It's like how much can I destroy in how short a time?

MARTIN: Have you had some angry men in your life, Jeanette?

WINTERSON: Oh, there's a lot of angry men out there. You know, I mean, look, the whole planet's at war, what are you talking about (laughter) you know, gunning each other to pieces. And what Shakespeare's saying is, you know, it takes five minutes to destroy it. How long is it going to take to build this right again, the trust, you know, the love, the lives, you know, the fallout? And in the play, it takes 16 years.

MARTIN: Leo tried to destroy his best friend...

WINTERSON: Yeah.

MARTIN: ...Tried to destroy his wife. He gives away the baby he thinks is not his. And this baby's name is The Lost One.

WINTERSON: Perdita.

MARTIN: Perdita.

WINTERSON: Yeah, Perdita. The little lost one is what the name means.

MARTIN: Because you have this personal experience, because you were adopted, did you find yourself imbuing Perdita with some of your own story?

WINTERSON: The central story is the story of that dislodgment, that abandonment, and having to try and find yourself. And Perdita doesn't know her own backstory, just as I didn't know mine, and eventually she discovers it. And I think when she decides to come to London and look for Leo, she's really struggling with that idea. You know, should I do it? What's it going to be like?

Maybe I'll go and stand across the street so that I can catch a glimpse of him. That's something I can really relate to, you know, when I was looking for my biological mother. What I wanted more than anything was to see her across the street. So looking at, you know, this story where you've got a child searching for an identity, yes, you know, I could really relate to that and put it in.

MARTIN: How many liberties did you take - were you allowed to take in reinventing this Shakespearean play?

WINTERSON: You do what you like. Come on, he's dead (laughter).

MARTIN: (Laughter).

WINTERSON: Absolutely, but you know what, I think Shakespeare would've respected this. You know, if I was channeling him now, you know, through the Ouija board, I think he would be saying, look, this is fine because he never invented a plot. And, you know, he just used to take other people's stuff and rework it. So I, you know, I felt great freedom there.

MARTIN: The new novel is called "The Gap Of Time." It's written by Jeanette Winterson. Thank you so much for talking with us, Jeanette.

WINTERSON: Thank you very much, bye. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.