ᴊᴇᴀɴ ʀʜʏs's ᴡɪᴅᴇ sᴀʀɢᴀssᴏ sᴇᴀ

                28 - 29

Shakespeare's Hamlet has antecedent in Thomas Kydd's
The Spanish Tragedy

Stoppard expand on minor characters while staying faithful
to the text they came from

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea also re-envisions a
character from literature, published in 1966 (same as initial
performance of Stoppard's play)

takes Bertha Mason (Rochester's first wife) from Charlotte
Bronte's Jane Eyre, expands her life in development of text

centers on life of Antoinette Cosway, who lives in Carribean
idland of Dominica, becomes first wife of Edward Rochester
(primary male character of Jane Eyre), given name of Bertha
Mason, can be seen as a plot device of racial "other" with no
rights to a personal history

gives Antoinette family life, status, connection with natural
world and spiritual practices, eventually become minor
figure known as "the madwoman in the attic" on Rochesters'
estate

contemporary reader grows sympathetic to plight of Antoinette
as victim of laws through colonial rule and patriarchy

Ros and Guil would have complex backstories if given the 
same treatment

Stoppard does not invent a life for Ros and Guil before they
appear in Hamlet, their roles as minor characters given
scrutiny, doesn't let us forget that they are secondary,
Shakespeare denied them multidimentionality

subject matter of conversations between Ros and Guil and
the Player involves the nature of reality and performance as
it relates to the dramatic stage