Turpin: The Notorious

RESEARCH STATEMENT

The life of the 18th-century criminal Richard Turpin has been re-imagined for nearly 300 years across a variety of genres and media: criminal histories, ballads, fiction, comic books, theatre, television and film. The thesis for this practice-as-research project drew from ideas in adaptation studies, biography and history, specific to the context of adapting the life of a real human being, to support the accompanying creative artefact, a four-part television mini-series script.

The thesis examined the ways in which an intertextuality between sources creates a palimpsest of stories, with multiple claims to an emotional or factual “truth.” This palimpsest, which forms a narrative framework for a new retelling of the Turpin mythology, is underpinned by storytelling positionalities such as realism, naturalism and melodrama, and the thesis interrogated the processes through which fidelity to factual source material, or other sources, shapes the structural and emotional evolution of any adaptation of history. The nature of “truth” as a shifting, elusive abstraction was also explored in relation to mythmaking in cultural apprehensions of the nature of the outlaw and the antihero.

Resulting from these inquiries was a new model for creative writing based on a historical subject, the “hierarchy of hypotexts.” The fluidity and adaptability of this model was tested and articulated, alongside the ontological and epistemological positions which lie at its foundation. An exegetical discussion of the creative inspirations and decision-making processes that informed the construction of this model, and its implementation in the development of the artefact, served as a discursive representation of the creative loop inherent in the formation of a practice-as-research project of this kind.

The Subject: Richard ‘Dick’ Turpin

The research subject is the 18th-century English criminal Richard (“Dick”) Turpin, who was born in Essex in September 1705 and hanged in York for horse theft in April 1739. The script artefact is divided into four episodes: Turpin the Butcher, Turpin the Rogue, Turpin the Highwayman, and Turpin the Thief, and is an adaptation of Turpin’s life from childhood to execution.

The practice involved in writing the script drew heavily on the research findings and methods detailed in the thesis. The research sought to answer the following questions: How can an original television script re-fashion the narrative of the life and criminal career of Dick Turpin, using available historical evidence and creative speculation? How can a new model for adapting history, the “hierarchy of hypotexts,” support this process of adaptation?

The literature review began with an overview of current thinking in the area of Adaptation Studies, and then a more specific exploration of the theories surrounding the adaptation of history, particularly in the context of fidelity to sources; this discussion also examines existing work on biographies and “biopics.” The concepts of realism, naturalism and melodrama were reviewed, followed by an interrogation of research on criminal types such as the outlaw, the antihero and the “gentleman highwayman.”

The research methodology chapter delineated the ontological and epistemological positions taken by this researcher in the context of practice-as-research, or the researcher’s preferred term, “creative practice research.” The methodology then outlined how a new model of a “hierarchy of hypotexts” was used to develop the script artefact, and how ideas around the sublime and the uncanny served as a backdrop to the process of adapting the life of a historical figure.

The Devised Model: The Hierarchy of Hypotexts

The research process led to the development of the “hierarchy of hypotexts,” a creative writing model which emerged as the basis for the second research question. If the source-stories of a real person’s life formed a layered, intertextual collage, then those layers could be shuffled in a hierarchy according to the dramatic impetus of any specific scene. This model can be seen as a potentially useful tool for a writer attempting an adaptation of history and can also be considered a device for deconstructing the various textual influences at play during the construction of different scenes in a script. This synthesis of source texts operating in a fluid hierarchy, and the articulation of the artist’s tacit knowledge during the writing process, help foster an empathetic approach to adaptation which can vividly bring a character to life on the printed page.

As the writing of the script progressed, a need arose for a creative writing model to manage the conundrums which arose around adapting the life of a real human being, which grew like amorphous sinew and viscera upon the more solid osteology of the chronological skeleton beneath. The organic flow of this process became more and more interesting to me; every new scene was an organelle fertilising an additional creative process that would incubate during time away from the writing routine. It occurred to me that ideas about how a scene could be constructed had their own molecular weight, and could rise and fall in the base solution of the wider narrative; when agitated by adjacent ideas, they could be pushed downwards or propelled upwards in a fluid hierarchy of competing constituents. In one scene, details from a witness deposition would exert supremacy – there seemed a solemn responsibility to ensure that the victims of Turpin’s crimes should be given space to tell their stories – while in others, historical detail was reduced to sensory accents lending authenticity to imaginative speculation. This concept of a “hierarchy of hypotexts” as a competitive micro-ecosystem within each scene, where different texts jostled for supremacy, asserted itself as the core inquiry of my research question.

In an historical adaptation, this understanding of the nature of a text can be applied to any “readable” material used in the palimpsest formed in the recreation of time, character and mythology; these hypotexts can also often be seen to belong to a complex web of intertextuality, whereby a source regarded as a hypotext for this adaptation can also function as a hypertext for another source, and so on.

Thus a hierarchy of hypotexts can be utilised as a tool for establishing priorities amongst the competing needs of different sources germane to a particular scene. In this researcher’s model, the hierarchy has an approximate default “mould” or framework: a foundation of assumed “truth” which anchors all other combinations, with recorded historical depositions at its highest stratum.

This “anchoring” should not be seen as a restriction on research-driven creativity. These secure positions of agreed historical fact are instead analogous to the fixed fastening points utilised by a climber engaged in a planned but risky ascent. The creative trajectory can change, be re-evaluated or course-corrected, but the writer/researcher is still able to rely on the “safety” of such anchors as he seeks to chart an inventive course forward. As a working model, this allows the researcher to shuffle hypotexts in the hierarchy, examine and make use of the new synergies they potentially produce, and reflect on what is disclosed about the elusive, mutable truth about a real human being whose identity is (in this case) splintered across three centuries. For example, due to this writer’s own positionality as a journalist, the hierarchy privileges deposition at the top for its hermetic judicial silo, into which imagination cannot easily enter or penetrate, and which is thus likely to be as close to the “truth” as we can apprehend: almost a frigid “extratextuality.”

The “hierarchy of hypotexts” model has the potential to be utilised not only as a creative writing tool, but also as an analytic methodology within adaptation studies for deconstructing other adaptations of history in different genres other than film or television scripts. For example, comparative studies of outlaw / antihero mythologies as ballads, criminal histories or novels may reveal congruent in approach and application.

PEER REVIEW 1

Which aspects of the submission are of interest/relevance and why? 

With the current comedy version of Dick Turpin running on Apple TV, this was a much darker and more engrossing version because the world created felt naturalistic and visceral.

The intentions behind this creative practice research - of writing a 4-part historical drama that allows the concepts of realism, naturalism and melodrama to be layered within the writing, and to present the anti-hero in a way that does not whitewash their crimes and brutality - are largely realised.

The writer used a “hierarchy of hypotexts” to foster an empathetic approach to adaptation, vividly bringing a character to life on the printed page, and certainly the combination of what feels like well-researched naturalistic historical details made this story feel much more immediate and alive than many adaptations that lack that gritty realism.

The writer’s exposition of criminal types such as the outlaw, the antihero and the “gentleman highwayman” are not just relegated to separate characters, but embodied by the central character Turpin himself during the course of the four episodes. This complexity helped compensate, to some degree, for the limited traditional character arc of the central character as the layers of his identity seem to shift and flow, in the same way that our view of him as a human being is challenged through the shocking realism of his crimes and those who suffered because of them.

My main concern with this approach to a historical character is the length of the work. Without the traditional structure of a central character the audience can root for, with a clear character arc, it is difficult to sustain dramatic interest.

If this work was condensed to a feature length, that may allow for the academic intentions of the writer to shine more clearly within a dramatic framework that is better able to maintain the curiosity of the audience.

Does the submission live up to its potential? 

Although the accompanying statement explains how a “hierarchy of hypotexts” was used to create a layered, intertextual collage, and the writer posets that this synthesis of source texts create a fluid hierarchy which is a model that could be useful for writers adapting historical subjects, there is no breakdown or examples given from the thesis this was drawn from, which would have been good to see.

But I did miss (and this may be an inevitable consequence of the writer’s approach) having a central character who I really cared about. His relationships with others seemed to lack emotional realism.

This in itself is not an issue - it does give us an unpolished view of Turpin as a criminal - but it does also make it harder for us as an audience to want to watch his journey towards the gallows.

How does the submission expose practice as research? 

Some references would have been good to include, or at least a link to the thesis from which this project sprung and which was referenced as a source, without telling us how to access it for a deeper understanding of the writer’s core concepts.

The idea of a hierarchy of layers driving the dramatic impetus of a scene - a stated intention of the writer - was not evident to me reading the screenplay, so a more detailed exampled explanation by the writer of how their approach drove the dramatic impetus in practice, would be really helpful.

However, to my mind, the work does successfully resonate with the writer’s theoretical approach. 

PEER REVIEW 2

Which aspects of the submission are of interest/relevance and why?

Alastair Hagger’s Turpin: The Notorious is a large scale ambitious four-part television mini-series that is the artefact of a creative practice research investigation into the storytelling possibilities of utilising a new creative writing model, the “hierarchy of hypotexts,” for adapting the lives of historical figures to works of scripted narrative. The “hierarchy of hypotexts” is a devised model of creative writing that considers the intertextuality and “multiple truths” thrown up by a plethora of historical sources, each with their own claim to emotional or factual “truth.” In terms of the narrative scripted television adaptation of the life story of a historical figure, in this case the infamous 18th century criminal Richard “Dick” Turpin, the author posits that “If the source-stories of a real person’s life formed a layered, intertextual collage, then those layers could be shuffled in a hierarchy according to the dramatic impetus of any specific scene.”

The idea appears to be those layers, which I presume amount to incidents or aspects or significant moments or insights into a historical figure’s life, can be viewed as signposts to their inner life, their character so to speak, which can assist the screenwriter. This appears to have led the author to consider how such shuffling of layers might be used to inform the structure of individual scenes in each of the four-episode screenplays. “It occurred to me that ideas about how a scene could be constructed had their own molecular weight, and could rise and fall in the base solution of the wider narrative; when agitated by adjacent ideas, they could be pushed downwards or propelled upwards in a fluid hierarchy of competing constituents.” This is an interesting idea, that a screenwriter can shuffle the hierarchy of a real person’s life to inform the construction of a scene, and the wider screenplay. For example, as the author says, “In one scene, details from a witness deposition would exert supremacy – there seemed a solemn responsibility to ensure that the victims of Turpin’s crimes should be given space to tell their stories – while in others, historical detail was reduced to sensory accents lending authenticity to imaginative speculation.” However, how these judgements might be ethically navigated is touched on only lightly at the end of the research statement when the author states “For example, due to this writer’s own positionality as a journalist, the hierarchy privileges deposition at the top for its hermetic judicial silo.” It would be good if the author spent a little more time considering the ethical consequences of “shuffling intertextual layers.”

Does the submission live up to its potential?

There is genuine potential in the researcher’s idea of a “hierarchy of hypotexts” and to an extent that potential is evident in the creative artefact, the 4-part television mini-series screenplay. The screenplay is rich with visual and aural texture, as it gives distinctive voices to its many characters. The screenplay’s gradual journeying of Turpin as a boy, young man, and unsuccessful butcher, to entering the criminal world must be assumed to be evidence of the application of a “hierarchy of hypotexts,” as we are not privy to any of those hypotext sources. But there is a strong air of authenticity in the world and the characters that the researcher /screenwriter has created. However, there appears to be unlocked potential in execution of the screenplay, which I will address below.

How does the submission expose practice as research?

• Is there evidence of a particular question, issue or problem that is explored? YES

• Is there evidence of innovation (in form or content for example)? YES

• Is the work contextualised within specific social/artistic theoretical fields? YES

• Is there evidence of new knowledge, interpretation, insights or experiences? YES

RESPONSE TO PEER REVIEWS

I would first like to express my gratitude to the peer reviewers, who undertook a close, thorough and sensitive reading of the script, and offered such valuable, balanced and constructive feedback. As a neophyte script writer, I am aware I still have an enormous amount to learn, and engaging with the academy in this way is a vital part of my creative and professional evolution.

As invited by the peer reviews, I have added additional material from my PhD thesis to the final statement which I hope will more clearly articulate the theory behind the devised model of the “hierarchy of hypotexts” underpinning the creative practice. I have also provided a link to the PhD thesis itself, so that interested readers and researchers can access the theoretical references cited throughout.

Though both reviewers were complimentary about the grittiness and authenticity of the worldbuilding in the script artefact, one expressed concern that the protagonist’s brutish villainy sometimes made it difficult to maintain a sustained emotional interest with his narrative arc, or with his relationships with other characters. This was always the central “problem” of the story from an audience perspective – how does one relate to a man whose historical behaviour was so consistently repellent? In my research thesis, I cite Will Storr’s (2019) understanding of the catharsis of observing the tragic journey of the villain; we do not necessarily need to relate to the specificity of the main character’s motivations, and it was my challenge to at least make the journey we embark upon with them vicariously satisfying. “This, perhaps, is the subversive truth of stories about antiheroes,” Storr (2019, 168) writes. “Being free to be evil, if only in our minds, can be such a joyful relief” (Storr 2019, 168). The catharsis, in all tragedy, is then fully fulfilled in the character’s eventual demise.

I am aware this may also be an intractable issue of audience expectations; there is a reason most adaptations of Turpin’s life have reconfigured him as a comical rogue, dashing heartthrob or benevolent outlaw. This is something I resolutely refused to do in my own adaptation, for better or for worse. I hope I will one day be able to have this thrilling, thorny conversation with an actor able and willing, through their performance, to attempt an unlocking of the audience’s latent empathy for Turpin – in a manner that arguably might not have quite been achieved in the writing. A restructuring of the narrative, by breaking the story into shorter episodes over a longer series, would perhaps allow me to spend more time developing the arcs of the other characters, in order to give their relationships with the protagonist greater depth – empathy by proxy, in other words.

In their feedback, one of the peer reviewers cited formatting decisions in the script which they described as outside “industry standard.” First, it is important to state that my own loyalties here lie with Batty and Baker’s (2018) championing of the script as a finished creative work in its own right, regardless of its status in the industrial process.

Second: notwithstanding the ambiguity and subjectivity surrounding this contested idea of an “industry standard,” I would like to argue that my intention was to a) make the script as readable as a standalone narrative as possible, and b) allow room for a director and script supervisor to make fluid decisions about how scenes could be shot (or how the script could be adapted into other media). In attempting to strike a compromise between the “industry standard” of conventional formatting and a pleasurable reading experience, I confess to making formatting decisions which may sometimes irk the seasoned industry professional, or the casual reader, or both. My guide throughout was Syd Field’s (2017) exhortation to prioritise the reading experience. “The writer’s job is to write the screenplay and keep the reader turning pages,” he says, “not to determine how a scene or sequence should be filmed” (Field 2005, 217). With this in mind, I have made the decision not to make the peer reviewer’s suggested changes to scene headings, and to instead leave myself at the mercy of any potential future script supervisor (with my humble apologies in advance!).

Thank you again to the peer reviewers, and to the editorial team at Sightlines, for breathing new life into my story of a long-dead man, and for allowing my creative practice to be part of such an exciting discussion within the academy of screen production education and research.

REVISED RESEARCH STATEMENT

Introduction

The life of the 18th-century criminal Richard Turpin has been re-imagined for nearly 300 years across a variety of genres and media–criminal histories, ballads, fiction, comic books, theatre, television and film. The doctoral thesis for this practice-as-research project drew from ideas in adaptation studies, biography and history, specific to the context of adapting the life of a real human being, to support the accompanying creative artefact, a four-part television mini-series script.

The thesis examined the ways in which an intertextuality between sources creates a palimpsest of stories, with multiple claims to an emotional or factual “truth.” This palimpsest, which forms a narrative framework for a new retelling of the Turpin mythology, is underpinned by storytelling positionalities such as realism, naturalism and melodrama, and the thesis interrogated the processes through which fidelity to factual source material, or other sources, shapes the structural and emotional evolution of any adaptation of history. The nature of “truth” as a shifting, elusive abstraction was also explored in relation to mythmaking in cultural apprehensions of the nature of the outlaw and the antihero.

Resulting from these inquiries was a new model for creative writing based on a historical subject, the “hierarchy of hypotexts.” The fluidity and adaptability of this model was tested and articulated, alongside the ontological and epistemological positions which lie at its foundation. An exegetical discussion of the creative inspirations and decision-making processes that informed the construction of this model, and its implementation in the development of the artefact, served as a discursive representation of the creative loop inherent in the formation of a practice-as-research project of this kind.

The Subject: Richard “Dick” Turpin

The research subject is the 18th-century English criminal Richard (“Dick”) Turpin, who was born in Essex in September 1705 and hanged in York for horse theft in April 1739. The script artefact is divided into four episodes: Turpin the Butcher, Turpin the Rogue, Turpin the Highwayman, and Turpin the Thief, and is an adaptation of Turpin’s life from childhood to execution. The practice involved in writing the script drew heavily on the research findings and methods detailed in the thesis.

The research sought to answer the following questions:

• How can an original television script re-fashion the narrative of the life and criminal career of Dick Turpin, using available historical evidence and creative speculation?

• How can a new model for adapting history, the “hierarchy of hypotexts,” support this process of adaptation?

The literature review began with an overview of current thinking in the area of Adaptation Studies, and then a more specific exploration of the theories surrounding the adaptation of history, particularly in the context of fidelity to sources; this discussion also examines existing work on biographies and “biopics.” The concepts of realism, naturalism and melodrama were reviewed, followed by an interrogation of research on criminal types such as the outlaw, the antihero and the “gentleman highwayman.”

The research methodology chapter delineated the ontological and epistemological positions taken by this researcher in the context of practice as research, or the researcher’s preferred term, “creative practice research.” The methodology then outlined how a new model of a “hierarchy of hypotexts” was used to develop the script artefact, and how ideas around the sublime and the uncanny served as a backdrop to the process of adapting the life of a historical figure.

The Devised Model: The Hierarchy of Hypotexts

The research process led to the development of the “hierarchy of hypotexts,” a creative writing model which emerged as the basis for the second research question. If the source-stories of a real person’s life formed a layered, intertextual collage, then those layers could be shuffled in a hierarchy according to the dramatic impetus of any specific scene. This model can be seen as a potentially useful tool for a writer attempting an adaptation of history and can also be considered a device for deconstructing the various textual influences at play during the construction of different scenes in a script. This synthesis of source texts operating in a fluid hierarchy, and the articulation of the artist’s tacit knowledge during the writing process, help foster an empathetic approach to adaptation which can vividly bring a character to life on the printed page.

As the writing of the script progressed, a need arose for a creative writing model to manage the conundrums which arose around adapting the life of a real human being, which grew like amorphous sinew and viscera upon the more solid osteology of the chronological skeleton beneath. The organic flow of this process became more and more interesting to me; every new scene was an organelle fertilising an additional creative process that would incubate during time away from the writing routine. It occurred to me that ideas about how a scene could be constructed had their own molecular weight, and could rise and fall in the base solution of the wider narrative; when agitated by adjacent ideas, they could be pushed downwards or propelled upwards in a fluid hierarchy of competing constituents. In one scene, details from a witness deposition would exert supremacy, while in others, historical detail was reduced to sensory accents lending authenticity to imaginative speculation. This concept of a “hierarchy of hypotexts” as a competitive micro-ecosystem within each scene, where different texts jostled for supremacy, asserted itself as the core inquiry of my research question.

In the exegesis of my PhD thesis, I describe in detail how this concept shaped the development of a specific scene at the beginning of Part Four of the script, in which Turpin attempts to rob a group of female actors on their way to a rehearsal of the popular 18th century ballad musical The Beggar’s Opera:

The scene… is probably the most layered example in the artefact of the interplay of a number of different elements in the fluid hypotextual hierarchy; these texts rise to the top of the hierarchy at different moments in the scene, like playing cards shuffled in a deck… This molten palimpsest of textual references, from classic literature to pop culture iconography, allowed me to play with a deeper hierarchy of hypotexts than in other scenes. I was aiming for a heightened, melodramatic energy which would plunge the Turpin of this narrative in a cauldron of competing cultural influences, where ideas would bob to the upper surface of the hierarchy like disassembled ingredients in a heady broth.

 (Hagger 2022, 125-126).

In an historical adaptation, this understanding of the nature of a text can be applied to any “readable” material used in the palimpsest formed in the recreation of time, character and mythology; these hypotexts can also often be seen to belong to a complex web of intertextuality, whereby a source regarded as a hypotext for this adaptation can also function as a hypertext for another source, and so on.

Thus a hierarchy of hypotexts can be utilised as a tool for establishing priorities amongst the competing needs of different sources germane to a particular scene. In this researcher’s model, the hierarchy has an approximate default “mould” or framework: a foundation of assumed “truth” which anchors all other combinations, with recorded historical depositions at its highest stratum.

This “anchoring” should not be seen as a restriction on research-driven creativity. These secure positions of agreed historical fact are instead analogous to the fixed fastening points utilised by a climber engaged in a planned but risky ascent. The creative trajectory can change, be re-evaluated or course-corrected, but the writer/researcher is still able to rely on the “safety” of such anchors as he seeks to chart an inventive course forward. As a working model, this allows the researcher to shuffle hypotexts in the hierarchy, examine and make use of the new synergies they potentially produce, and reflect on what is disclosed about the elusive, mutable truth about a real human being whose identity is (in this case) splintered across three centuries.

For example, due to this writer’s own positionality as a journalist, the hierarchy privileges deposition at the top for its hermetic judicial silo, into which imagination cannot easily enter or penetrate, and which is thus likely to be as close to the “truth” as we can apprehend–almost a frigid “extratextuality.” I am aware of the ethical implications of this approach–how does a writer ensure that this hierarchy of sources does not overwhelm a responsibility to moral integrity, a more profound ethical truth, particularly within a historical narrative which re-imagines horrible crimes with real-life victims? Again, this is addressed more fully in the thesis, in which I write that “there seemed a solemn responsibility to ensure that the victims of Turpin’s crimes should be given space to tell their stories” (Hagger 2022, 109). In Turpin’s death scene, for example, I ensured the hanging was witnessed by the victim of one the gang’s most brutal and egregious crimes– an invented hypotext that sought to redress the moral balance (and provide a measure of moral catharsis to the reader).

However, there is no prescribed ethical modus operandi within the “hierarchy of hypotexts” model itself–the application of this concept would differ wildly from writer to writer, and change according both to the writer’s own moral framework and the nature and availability of specific source texts. The curation (and hierarchisation) of these texts is as likely to be as fickle as the curation of news stories in any modern newspaper.

The “hierarchy of hypotexts” model has the potential to be utilised not only as a creative writing tool, but also as an analytic methodology within adaptation studies for deconstructing other adaptations of history in different genres other than film or television scripts. For example, comparative studies of outlaw / antihero mythologies as ballads, criminal histories or novels may reveal congruent in approach and application.

REFERENCES

Batty, Craig, and Dallas J. Baker. 2018. “Screenwriting as a Mode of Research, and the Screenplay as a Research Artefact.” In Screen Production Research, edited by Craig Batty and Susan Kerrigan, 67-84. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Field, Syd. 2005. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. New York: Dell Pub. Co. 

Hagger, Alastair. 2022. “Turpin: the Notorious – Practice as Research PhD in Creative Writing”. Doctoral thesis, University of West London. https://doi.org/10.36828/vdjn3248.

Storr, Will. 2019. The Science of Storytelling. London: William Collins.