bdn, you seem to want to faithfully replicate the novel Masterpiece Theatre style in musical form. Would that necessarily be successful?
If Les Mis, a much more sprawling and episodic epic novel, can be a successful two act musical, why not Tale of Two Cities?
I also don't understand an objection to Carton as the clear protagonist of a musical. The character's celebrated cynicism-to-generosity through-love arc and ultimate sacrifice seem well suited to a character who grounds and carries a libretto.
CAVEAT: I didn't see the show and I don't doubt it had many problems.
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Gmerchant, I'm not quite sure how one would begin to examine diction in an 1859 English novel set in Paris and London in the years surrounding 1789. My best bet would be to study the use of dialect and syntax in the novel for each of the characters, high born, professional class and servants, French and English-speaking, how Dickens conveys character through these rhythms and choice of words, and how his choices resonate with the historical events he is describing. For instance:
Jerry Cruncher: If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counterprayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck.
What does the mixture of extravagant language, malapropisms (circumwented) and improper usage ("a unnat'ral") say about Cruncher as a worker, as a man leading a double life, about how he sees and presents himself, about a time of social mobility, social climbing and class conflict?
Miss Pross:
On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!
Consider the use of ten words all mono-syllabic. Does this reflect a sing song jingoism or an admiration of patriotic simplicity? How does the choice of these and other tough and zealous phrases by Pross reflect the author's feelings about Pross's dogged loyalty and her acceptance of her social role as a servant and a subject?
Why is this significant in the context of revolutionary social unrest portrayed in the novel?
Sydney Carton: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
How does the double use of "far, far" - not the easiest phrase to utter - reveal Carton's state of reflection and resolve to action at the end of the novel. Why has the sound of these words repeated twice made such an important contribution to pop culture? How does the famous double repetition of "It is" compare to Dickens's equally famous and repetititve use of "it was" in the opening passage of the novel? How does Carton's resolved assurance of who he is and what he is doing contrast with the famous use of opposition and ambiguity in the opening passage? What if anything is Dickens saying about the collective character of an era as opposed to the specific character of an individual as revealed by the opening and closing passages?
I don't see how watching 20th century film adaptations, let alone the 21st century musical, would help you explore the way Dickens treated diction in the text. However, it might be fun and could helpfully lead you in the right direction back to the text itself. To watch Edna Mae Oliver and Ronald Colman - two masters of diction - explore Pross and Carton on film might lead you to an understanding of how they saw the characters and what they took from the text to develop the characters, as reflected in the dialogue given them in the novel (dialogue sometimes but not always repeated verbatim in the film).
Updated On: 1/25/13 at 12:06 PM
