Summary of the Plot of KIng Lear

                King Lear Plot Synopsis

The Two Texts of King Lear–The Quarto of 1608 and the Folio of 1623

An aging King Lear decides to abdicate and divide his kingdom among his three daughters.  He seeks a kind of oath of love before doing so, with which Goneril and Regan falsely comply.  Feeling that any statement of “most love” would be false, Cordelia refuses, provoking Lear to disown her and then banish his faithful steward Kent who comes to her defense. She leaves to marry the king of France.  However, Lear still wants the trappings of kingship, so proposes to move between the now-divided kingdoms of his two remaining daughters while demanding royal privileges, represented by a companion train of one hundred knights. Kent reappears in disguise and takes up service to Lear.  However, Lear gets no further than two weeks at Goneril’s castle. She tires of his knights’ unruly behavior, and threatens to take away half of them. In a rage Lear moves to Regan’s, but she has removed herself to Gloucester’s house, which is too small for one hundred knights.  There she and Goneril gradually reduce his status until he is little more than an unwanted house guest, stirring him to increasingly bitter tirades against their ingratitude. He finally banishes himself, winding up on the heath in a brutal storm.
Meanwhile, Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester, has convinced his father through the ruse of a forged letter and a staged wound from a fight that his legitimate son, Edgar, intends to assassinate him. Edmund also convinces Edgar that he is in danger (of course he is). Edgar flees and disguises himself as a beggar and madman to avoid detection. In this state he hides in a hovel on the heath during the storm. Nearby, Lear rages against the gods, nature, and his daughters.  As the Fool and Kent try to get him shelter, they discover the “mad” Edgar. The quartet carry on in a madcap kind of way until Lear asks “Is man no more than this?” and has his clothes removed (in some performances).  Gloucester finally finds them and leads them to shelter, where Lear conducts a mock trial of his daughters. Sensing danger, Gloucester has Lear led to Dover where (we assume) the French army awaits.
During the same interval (Act III), Edmund has learned from Gloucester of an impending invasion from France, and betrays his father to Regan’s husband Cornwall.  After sending Lear away, Gloucester finds himself seized, strapped to a chair, and then brutally blinded one eye at a time.  Cornwall does the deed, but he is slain by an angry servant in return. Left alive but unable to see, Gloucester crawls towards Dover when he encounters Edgar in disguise. Feigning a helping hand to Gloucester’s desire to commit suicide, Edgar convinces him that he hovers over the cliffs of Dover, over which Gloucester thinks he throws himself.  Saved, Gloucester decides to let nature finish his life. He then meets Lear cavorting about with a crown of weeds. The two have a mad, sad, sublime reunion. Cordelia has meanwhile appeared with the army of France. She finds Lear, takes him in and revives him, and then forgives him in the play’s most shining moment of reconciliation if not redemption. However, she loses the subsequent battle; she and Lear are captured.
Edmund (it turns out) has been engineering a domestic civil war by alternating his sexual favors between Goneril and Regan, both now wanting him. Edmund has also been a leader in the fight against Cordelia. He orders Lear and Cordelia imprisoned, then secretly orders their deaths. Meanwhile, Goneril has poisoned Regan, who staggers off the stage sick to death. At the third trumpet, Edgar arrives, still disguised but now as some kind of warrior. He battles Edmund and kills him. A messenger arrives to disclose that Goneril has killed herself. Before dying Edmund confesses his deeds and his intentions for Lear and Cordelia. However, they are too late. The executioner has hung Cordelia, but he is killed in turn by Lear.  Lear returns to the stage howling, with Cordelia in his arms. Imagining (against hope) that she may still live, he too dies, of grief.  Only Kent, Edgar, and Goneril’s good husband Albany are left to rue the “weight of this sad time.”

Background on Shakespeare's sources and McKellen/Nunn film version of King Lear

Background on King Lear

Shakespeare’s Sources
As was his general habit, Shakespeare borrowed his two plots from previous sources. Holinshed reported in his Chronicles (1577) a story that dates back as far as Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136) in which a supposedly real King Leir who ruled England around 800 BC divides his kingdom between two of his daughters, disowning the third for failing his love test, who nevertheless marries the King of France. Abused thereafter by the successful daughters, Leir goes to France, unites with his third daughter and her husband, and regains his throne by military force. The story took many shapes and variations, including a history play produced before 1595 in which the daughters actually try to murder Leir. The Edmund story came from Sidney’s Arcadia. In both cases Shakespeare made radical changes.

Summary . . . Geoffrey of Monmouth . . . Holinshed . . . Spenser . . . Sidney. . .  King Leir the play

Bizarre Stage History
Shakespeare wrote King Lear around 1605. His version held the stage until 1681. In that year Nahum Tate introduced a radical rewrite to satisfy changing stage fashion. Tate struck many lines and the Fool, rewrote many others, added a love affair between Cordelia and Edgar, and fashioned a happy ending. With a few exceptions Tate’s version and versions of it held the English and American stages until 1838, more than 150 years. Restored to Shakespeare’s original, the play subsequently went through many interpretative variations, including enormous stage spectacles (more mechanical thunder and lightning than words), radical Christian treatments (Lear dies happy in his redemption), radical dark treatments (Lear as emblem of human horror and emptiness), a Russian film version with music from Shostokovic, and superb adaptations (say, Kurosawa’s Ran). It is in this sense the most refashioned play Shakespeare wrote.
Reading the Tate version of the play, given here in synopsis and full text forms, can be quite rewarding. It is not a bad play—it probably comes closer to our present popular movie sensibilities than Shakespeare’s version. But it is not a great play. Comparing the two can suggest some reasons why Shakespeare’s is a great play.
The Two Text Problem
There are two texts for King Lear, a Quarto
published in 1608, some two years after the play was first produced (Q), and a Folio published in 1623 (F), seven years after Shakespeare died. (Quarto and Folio refer to book sizes, which depend upon the number of times a printed sheet is folded, a Quarto four times for eight pages, a Folio twice for four pages. The Folio is larger and more expensive.) There are more than 360 lines, and more than 1000 words that are different from one text to the other.
It is commonly accepted today that both were written by Shakespeare.  Thus we have two King Lears.  For three centuries editors have pushed the two together, for a third conflated text.  However, this text would require four hours to stage.  So all film and most stage productions cut the play substantially (as would have been the practice of Shakespeare himself).

“Nothing, my lord.”
Perspectives on the McKellen/Nunn film version of King Lear
King Lear has been interpreted over its 400 year history with greater variety than any other play from Shakespeare.  Described alternately as Shakespeare’s “Everest”, and his deepest plunge into the human soul, there is no intrinsic, coherent view of the play’s meaning. In attempting to stage King Lear, a director must decide at least three things: to emphasize the spectacle of Lear’s behavior, or his state of mind; how to characterize the changes in Lear’s state of mind as the play progresses;  and how to portray Lear’s condition in the context of the human spirit —hopeful, or hopeless?  Meaningful, or meaningless? Known or unknown?  Should the 80 year-old king be be portrayed as majestic, yet enraged (as opposed to mad); childish and mad; or enfeebled by age to the point of senility; or somewhere in between?
Trevor Nunn  chooses the last of these alternatives. This helps to makes sense of the play’s opening scenes, but it creates the most difficult task for the actor; Lear has to be clear and quite rational at crucial moments, he must develop and change, and he must in the end be responsible for what he says and does. On the human spirit Nunn chose a kind of agnosticism, symbolized most graphically by Edgar’s plea to heaven at the end, which goes unanswered. (The film cuts Edgar’s line, “the gods are just.”)  But it is less a declaration of hopelessness than a suspicion. Nunn steers clear of  both the unmitigated darkness of Peter Brook’s 1971 film version and the of the virtual beatitude ending Olivier’s 1985 film version. But he also avoids the hope of rebuilding the world one feels at the end of Kozintsev’s 1971 Russian film. The bodies pulled into the mist ending Ian Holm’s 1998 film create an impression much like Nunn’s, but Holm’s Lear is radically different from McKellen’s. Fortunately, we have all these films to see, each rewarding, each expanding our own sense of the play’s many possibilities. To this library we can only welcome Nunn’s prodigious effort.
Nunn’s film  production departs considerably from his stage production, particularly the one at Stratford-on-Avon. The latter created a considerable degree of spectacle, including half the side-rear wall crashing down mid way through. The film is comparatively quiet. It is played with backgrounds dissolved in darkness until the beginning of Act IV when we see Gloucester, blinded, wandering towards Dover; suddenly the sky is bright and blank, the ground visible. Between this and persistent close-ups, the film loses a sense of spectacle but gains a sense of chiseled psychological space. While the film has cut at least a thousand lines from the full play, it has taken them from longer speeches, retaining all but one of the scenes, and all of the relevant action. (See the comparison of the play’s full text and that of the film for comparison. The British release of the film is half an hour longer, but still a good hour short of the play with every word.)
The minimal sets and costuming reflect a number of periods, hence no period at all (guns appear from time to time amidst the candles and suggestions of a pre-Christian era). The film does retain Nunn’s most shocking innovation relative to Shakespeare (not to be disclosed here). And to remove any curiosity about the film’s most publicized but least interesting possibility, McKellen does appear to undress completely, but the film cuts him off at the waist; there is no spectacle here.  For those fond of Waiting for Godot, look for the tree—the connection must be intended.
Finally, without giving a real review of the film until it has been broadcast on 25 March, it can be said that this film works, and any film of King Lear that works is a great film.
There are presently ten film versions of King Lear on DVD. Each is worthwhile, but each differs from the others, at times considerably. For a first film, one should not choose Orson Wells or Paul Scofield. Rather, one should see Ian Holm or Lawrence Olivier. However, after the first taste, one should see the Kozintsev Russian version, Scofield (really Peter Brook) in the darkest version, and Orson Wells (also directed by Brook) in a radically abbreviated version, but with the words spoken like no other.
Note that the McKellen version will likely be released in DVD this year. Next year Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino will release their versions of King Lear for theaters, both in performances that begin life as screen plays, not stage plays.
King Lear has also been adapted to other stories or forms, most notably in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (which means “chaos.”)

• 1953 Orson Welles as Lear, McCullough / Brook, directors
• 1971 Paul Scofield as Lear, Peter Brook director
• 1971 Juri Jarvet as Lear, Grigori Kozintsev director, in Russian
• 1974 Patrick Magee as Lear, Tony Davenall director,
• 1974 James Earl Jones as Lear, Edwin Sherin director
• 1982 Michael Hordern as Lear, Jonathon Miller director, BBC
• 1982 Mike Kellen as Lear, Mike Kellen director
• 1985 Lawrence Olivier as Lear, Michael Elliot director
• 1998 Ian Holm as Lear, Richard Eyre director, BBC
• 1999 Brian Blessed as Lear, Brian Blessed director
• 2008 Ian McKellen as Lear, Trevor Nunn director
• 2010 Anthony Hopkins as Lear, Joshua Stern director
• 2010 (?) Al Pacino as Lear, Michael Radford director

Film Adaptations

• 1983 The Dresser, Albert Finney, Peter Yates, director
• 1985 Ran, Akira Kurosawa, director
• 1987 King Lear by Jean Luc-Godard
• 1997 A Thousand Acres, Jason Robards, Jocelyn Moorhouse director
• 2001 My Kingdom, Richard Harris and Lynn Redgrave
• 2002 King of Texas, Patrick Stewart as John Lear, Uli Edel director (TV)
• 2007 Baby Cakes Sees a Play, Brad Neely

Students' Reactions to the Tragedy of Lear

Finally Teaching King Lear

By Paula Marantz Cohen

  For years, I avoided teaching King Lear. The play struck me as too bleak for college students. But I’ve learned that when I think a work isn’t right for students, it usually means that it isn’t right for me—that I haven’t come to terms with it. Early in my career I decided not to teach The Merchant of Venice because, I told myself, I didn’t want to offend Jewish students (although I had almost none in my classes at the time). In reality, I didn’t want to grapple, as a Jewish teacher, with the difficulty and embarrassment of the complex stereotype of Shylock. When I grew more confident as a teacher, I taught the play with illuminating results, which I have written about in a longer piece.
Similarly, my unease with Lear was less because my students couldn’t relate to such a bleak landscape than because I couldn’t. The few times that I tackled the play I didn’t get it: the behavior of Lear’s daughters Goneril and Regan seemed too heartless, the reserve of Cordelia too inexplicable, the suffering of Lear and Gloucester too extreme. I didn’t buy it.
A few years ago, however, when I decided to teach the play again, I found the power in it that I had missed before. My students did as well. Perhaps I had become a better teacher; I had certainly become a better teacher of this particular play.
What most struck me now was the depth of the play’s violence. What had seemed artificial and over the top now felt extraordinarily real and disturbing. I wasn’t sure why this was until I talked to my students about their response. Their reaction to the play’s violence was, if anything, stronger than mine. Several said they were deeply unnerved by the scene in which Gloucester’s eyes were plucked out. One student said she had to put stop reading midway through the play and take a walk. Another said she was so repulsed by the behavior of Goneril and Regan toward their father that she felt she would be sick. Others agreed.
I asked them how this could be when they had had a steady diet of violence from television and movies. How could a 16th-century play, in which the stage directions are minimal, be so unsettling?
Partly, it seems, they simply didn’t expect such viciousness in what they assumed was a gentler, more innocent age. Also, they explained, because they were reading the play they had to imagine the violence. What the mind’s eye perceives can be more vivid than anything the literal eye sees. But most affecting of all, they said, was the degree to which these characters existed within a family: Goneril and Regan as Lear’s daughters, Edmund as Gloucester’s son. We discussed the perversion of these family relationships in the play, and the students felt that the violence arose from a sense of distorted intimacy. This was not cartoon violence; it was family violence of the sort that they could recognize in more oblique forms in their own lives. King Lear gave that psychic violence a concrete, physical form. I realized that this is what had so disturbed me as well.
Shakespeare’s work allows us to tap into our most intimate sense of ourselves—to face our anxieties or fears. This is one reason why it endures.

Maine Fishing Novel: Retelling of "King Lear"

THE LOBSTER KINGS

Author:

Alexi Zentner

Publisher:

Norton

Number of pages:

352 pp.

Book price:

$26.95

‘The Lobster Kings’ by Alexi Zentner

By Laura Collins-Hughes

 | Globe Correspondent   June 19, 2014

Laurie Willick

Alexi Zentner’s novel “The Lobster Kings” is a tale about family inheritance on a small New England island.

“Shakespeare,” Woody Kings tells his favorite daughter, Cordelia. “All the good lines are from Shakespeare.”

The good lines, yes, and strong narrative frameworks, too. In Alexi Zentner’s “The Lobster Kings” — a novel about inheritance, steeped in familial legend and dusted with maritime magic — Woody is a lobsterman who rules a New England island.
Scale of their dominions aside, he has plenty in common with Shakespeare’s King Lear: the imperious, autocratic style; the touch of madness; the three daughters, though Woody’s wife wouldn’t let him name their other girls Regan and Goneril. “She pointed out that Goneril might be too close to gonorrhea,” Woody says.

His kingdom is the fictional Loosewood Island, population somewhat short of 2,000. Near Lubec, Maine, it’s so far north that both the United States and Canada claim it. To Woody and Cordelia, however, it’s obvious whose territory it really is: theirs. Which is to say, his as long as he lives, then hers to take over.
On Loosewood — which seems to have no harbormaster, no police force, not even a volunteer fire department — Woody’s word is law. The threat of poachers and drug traffickers spurs the action of “The Lobster Kings,” but what matters in the long run will be a transfer of power from father to daughter that keeps the island safe.
Their family traces its line straight back almost 300 years to the arrival of Brumfitt Kings, a fisherman painter who would become famous for his canvases of the island and the surrounding sea. Was his wife a selkie — a woman on land, a seal at sea? The Kingses seem unruffled by the rumor that they’re descended from a mythological creature. Art tourists come from around the world to see the place Brumfitt painted, and Zentner tells his story partly by describing those pictures.
Like Woody, and unlike her younger sisters, Cordelia is a lobsterman, born to be on the water. She is our narrator, and through her we come to understand both the steady gentleness and the cruel, unhinged wrath of her father, who is beloved but only partially benevolent. A believer in magic, he is a bit like Prospero from “The Tempest,” and Cordelia — a woman in a male milieu, devoted to her father, in love with a washashore — is a bit like Miranda.
Woody taught Cordelia to see Loosewood through Brumfitt’s eyes and his own, so she understands that the Kings family, ever since Brumfitt, has carried a blessing twinned with a curse: They will reap the sea’s bounty, but they will also lose to the water one son from each generation. So far, family history has borne out that prophesy.
Cordelia’s little brother, Scotty, drowned as a boy. This cleared the way for her inheritance, but she has never stopped feeling wounded that her father — blind to her worth, oblivious to Scotty’s discomfort on the water — put his son first just because he was a son. Without that old psychic injury, would she feel the need to swagger quite so much? As the captain of her own lobster boat, she more than once endangers everyone on board in order to prove herself.
It’s on one of those occasions that “The Lobster Kings” veers suddenly into utter absurdity, briefly becoming a bad detective novel, complete with murdered man. When Woody arrives, his is the voice of reason. “Call in the Coasties,” he commands, and we are stunned at this display of common sense. “It’s one thing to handle a turf war on our own, but it’s another thing entirely when we’re finding dead bodies.”
But mostly Zentner keeps a firm grip on his tale, and Loosewood, for all its particular mythology, is recognizable to anyone who’s lived in a tiny New England town bordered by salt water. That’s part of the reason that Brumfitt Kings’s paintings make such good narrative sense — because on Loosewood Island, as in so many of those real-life towns, “being an artist was almost as common as being a fisherman.” It’s a sensible downtime activity. “There were enough people who took up drinking or smoking pot, but arts and crafts came in a pretty popular second to self-destruction.”