One-stop Guide to Appreciating/Understanding Lear

Enjoying "King Lear" by William Shakespeare
by Ed Friedlander M.D.

 

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. -- Edgar If you are a student assigned to read or see King Lear, or an adult approaching it for the first time, your experience will be special. These notes will help you get started.

If there was ever a historical King Lear, his memory has faded into mythology and/or been conflated with others. He is the legendary eponymous founder of Leicester, site of an old Roman fort. Llyr and his son Manannan are Celtic ocean-gods; Llyr is in the backstory of Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" (including "The Black Cauldron" and "The Castle of Llyr"). Manannan reappeared in Yeats's plays and the "Dungeons and Dragons" games. The "children of Lir / Llyr" were transformed into waterbirds in another Celtic myth. Anglo-Israelite lore describes ("Llyr Lleddiarth "Half-Speech", king of Siluria / the Britains, father of Bran the Archdruid, who married Anna, the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea; his close relatives included Cymbeline (Cunobelinus, fictionalized in Shakespeare's later play), and Caractacus (Caradoc), a well-attested historical figure better-known today from the children's song ("It's too late... they just passed by"). In the Mabinogion, one of Llyr's two wives is Iweradd ("Ireland").

Geoffrey of Monmouth ("History of the English Kings", around 1140), who provides our oldest written reference to King Lear (spelled "Leir"), describes him as a pre-Christian warrior king in what is now southwest England. (Click here to read it yourself.) This area now includes Cornwall (origin of cornish game hens.) Saint Albans ("Albany", for which the capital of New York State is named, is farther away. In the old story remembered by Geoffrey, Lear asked his three daughters whether they loved him. Two claimed to do so extravagantly, while the third said she loved him only as a daughter should. Lear disinherited the honest daughter. The story appears elsewhere in world folklore; there is an Eastern European version in which the honest daughter says she loves her father as much as she loves salt. Lear went to live with his first daughter, bringing a hundred followers. She demanded that he reduce his followers to fifty. Lear then went to live with the other daughter, who reduced the number to twenty-five. Lear went back and forth between the daughters until he was alone. Then the third daughter raised an army, defeated the other two, and restored him to his kingdom. (The story appears in Holinshed, who adds that Cordelia succeeded her father as monarch and was deposed by the sons of her sisters.) This tale about how actions speak louder than words had recently been played on the London stage in "The True Chronicle of King Leir." We have seen the essential story once again in the Japanese Ran, and more recently in A Thousand Acres, an intelligent feminist tale, with the two older daughters as incest survivors who have spent their lives cajoling a crazy, abusive father and protecting their youngest sister. A different family problem from the Lear's -- the Fool says the king made his daughters his mothers (disciplinarians) rather than his wives, the rod refers to a stick for spanking ("spare the rod and spoil the child"), and in III ii, King Lear calls on the storm to punish the crimes of others that usually go unpunished -- close pent-up guilts -- including incest and perjury but also planning murders and performing elder abuse.) Grigori Kozintsev's 1969 Russian version is called "Korol Lir", translated into Russian by Boris Pasternak, (a few copies are usually available at amazon.com, and it is now re-released by the BBC). A bit of the fourth act made it into the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" for some reason.


Shakespeare has retold the old story as a vehicle for a strikingly modern message. Many people consider King Lear to be his finest work. Whether or not you agree with his vision of a godless universe in which our only hope is to be kind to one another, you will recognize the real beliefs of many (if not most) of your neighbors.


To find Shakespeare's intent, look first for:

• changes in the plot sources made by the author;


• passages that do not advance the plot or have obvious appeal to the intended audience.

Shakespeare took a story that had a happy ending, and gave it a sad ending. He transformed a fairy-tale about virtuous and wicked people into something morally ambiguous. He took a story of wrongs being righted, and turned it into the story of painful discovery. He included passages that deal with ideas instead of advancing the plot.

                                                           The main plot


Lear is king of Britain. He is an old, highly successful warrior king. (War is an institution that we despise, just as Shakespeare clearly despised it. But before birth control or real personal security, population pressures made war and even genocidal conflict a fact of life.) Like Hamlet and Othello, we are impressed with him because of what others say about his background. (You can find examples. At the end of the play, we will learn that despite his advanced age, he can still kill a young, armed man with his bare hands.) King Lear has decided to retire and to divide his kingdom among his three daughters and their husbands. His stated intention is to prevent future conflict. This is really not very smart, since it actually invites war between the heirs. Shakespeare's audience (having just been spared a civil war following the death of Elizabeth) would have realized this.
King Lear has staged a ceremony in which each daughter will affirm her love for him. Whether this has been rehearsed, or the daughters forewarned, we can only guess. Goneril and Regan may have been embarrassed. Goneril says she loves her father more than she can say. King Lear thanks her and gives her Third Prize. Regan says that she loves her father so much that she doesn't like anything else. King Lear thanks her and gives her Second Prize. Cordelia says that she loves her father exactly as a daughter should. King Lear goes ballistic and disinherits her, and banishes the Earl of Kent for speaking in her defense. First Prize is divided between the other two daughters.

You can decide whether King Lear is showing early signs of mental illness (as his other daughters think), or whether he just wanted an excuse to give Cordelia the best share of the kingdom and she just spoiled it. Cordelia has been courted by the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France. Burgundy says he will not marry a woman with no property. France is more clever. He swears that he loves Cordelia, and marries her. This is an obvious plan to make a claim on the British throne, and Shakespeare's audience would have realized this. We'll see the proof later. France may or may not be sincere in loving Cordelia. We won't know.

As the basis of his retirement agreement, King Lear has stipulated that he will live alternately with his daughters, who will support him and 100 followers. When he leaves, Goneril and Regan express their understandable concern about hosting a mentally-imbalanced father and his personal army.

King Lear goes to live with Goneril. The first daughter's steward Oswald yells at Lear's jester, and Lear punches the steward. Goneril decides to assert control. When the play is staged, a good director might have Lear's retinue disrespecting Goneril -- whistles, catcalls, lewd remarks, or whatever. Kent returns in disguise to serve Lear, and we meet the jester ("Fool"). For some reason, just like Kent, the jester is loyal to the king. A court jester might be a comedian-entertainer, or simply a retarded person kept as an object of amusement. Lear's jester is specially privileged to speak the truth, which he does ironically. Both the king and the jester make reference to the jester being whipped at times -- Ian McKellen makes it clear that this is a joke, with the king tapping the face on the jester's mock scepter (bauble / marotte). You'll need to decide whether the king has always been kind to the jester, or whether the jester (like Kent) for some reason remains loyal despite past mistreatment.


Oswald is rude to Lear, and one of Lear's knights makes an indignant speech about the king not being cared for properly. (This knight, and all the others, will soon abandon their king.) Lear yells at Oswald, Kent trips Oswald, and a scene ensues in which Goneril demands that Lear reduce the number of his followers -- evidently to 50. Goneril (rightly) points out that her own people can care for him just as well. (There's a subtlety here. In the original story, the daughters send the knights away, i.e., refuse to pay to support them. However, if you read closely, the knights are already leaving King Lear, because they can tell what is going to happen. The king is showing lapses in judgement, and has no way of forcing his daughters to honor their promise to support him. In a time of warlords, soldiers will desert when the leader shows signs of being unable to lead and/or guarantee their salaries.) Lear curses Goneril and departs for Regan's. He sends Kent before him, and Goneril sends Oswald.

Regan and her husband have gone to visit the Earl of Gloucester, and when Kent and Oswald meet at the Earl's castle, Kent picks a fight and Regan's husband puts him in the stocks. This is a serious breach of protocol, and when Lear arrives, he is furious. (Kent's difficult phrase "Nothing almost sees miracles but misery", by its context, seems to mean that when things seem to be going really badly, it's common to receive unexpected, seemingly-miraculous help.) Goneril arrives and Lear curses her again. Regan says she will allow him only 25 followers. Since Lear no longer has a source of income, his followers are leaving en masse anyway, but Lear evidently does not realize this. Lear says he will return to Goneril, but now she will not even allow 25, and the daughters re-enact the fairy-tale plot by alternately reducing the numbers, and asking "Why do you need even one follower, when we can care for you ourselves?" Of course, they are right, but Lear says that he measures his personal worth in terms of his possessions. "Reason not the need! Our basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's." Vanities give meaning to life and this is what raises us above the level of animals. King Lear, now alone except for Kent and the jester, starts to cry and runs off as a storm brews. The daughters lock him out of the castle to teach him a lesson.


Lecturers who enjoy talking about "The Elizabethan World Picture", in which orders of nature reflect human law and its breakdown, will tell you that the ensuing storm mirrors the chaos in Britain. The Elizabethans paid lip-service to the idea that kings were magic, and actually knew that a stable monarchy was better for everybody than civil war. (Lawful democracy would be devised later.) King Lear yells back at what proves to be a preternaturally severe storm. His whole retinue have abandoned him except the jester, who begs Lear to go apologize to his daughters and seek shelter, and Kent, who sends to Dover, where the French army has landed in expectation of a British civil war. Even though the jester pretends to be foolish, he always knows exactly what is going on, and what's more, he is loyal to the old king. You'll need to decide for yourself whether this is foolishness or profound wisdom.
In the first storm scene, which is difficult, Lear is going crazy. He:

• first calls on the power of the storm to sterilize the human race;


• then accuses the storm of taking sides with his daughters against his dignity and being their degraded slave;


• then, realizing that people have deceived him, says the storm must be "the gods"'s way of finding and punishing secret evildoers, and that he is "a man more sinned against than sinning";


• then comments, "my wit begins to turn", i.e., he realizes he is going crazy -- in literature, becoming insane is often a metaphor for changing the way you look at yourself and the world;


• notices the jester is cold, and comments that he is also cold; this is the first time Lear has been responsive to the needs and concerns of someone else;


• accepts Kent's suggestion to take shelter in a hut.

Already inside the hut is "one of the homeless mentally-ill." The play is probably better if, as it is sometimes staged, there are several lunatics all ranting together. (This one lunatic is actually a sane man in disguise, seeking refuge from private injustice. The "extras" who served as knights in the first and second act and who will be in the battle scenes at the end can be the extra lunatics.) When he sees the hut, and before seeing the lunatic(s), King Lear realizes that what is happening to him now is what he has allowed to happen to the poor throughout his reign. "Oh, I have taken too little care of this." He suddenly realizes that his luxuries have been maintained at the expense of his poorest subjects, and that justice is only now being served on him.
When he sees the lunatic(s), Lear cracks, and says he/they must have given everything to their daughters and been turned out also. But the onset of madness confers a deeper insight. Lear sees in the naked lunatic someone who has taken nothing wrongfully from anyone, and is the essential human being. Saying that "unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art," the king rips off his clothes.

In the third storm scene, King Lear holds a trial of his two daughters, evidently mistaking a stool for Goneril, something else (I've seen a chicken used) for Regan, and so forth. In one Royal Shakespeare Company production, the king mistook a pillow that the jester was holding for Regan, and stabbed the jester to death through the pillow. The good Earl of Gloucester comes and urges Kent to take the king (who has passed out) to Dover, since his daughters' people are planning to kill him. At the end, Kent tells the jester to follow Lear. As often played, Kent discovers the jester to be dead. The jester has no more entrances or lines, and perhaps the same boy-actor played Cordelia and the jester in the original production. You can read more about Robert Armin, the beloved comedian who played Shakespeare's jesters at the time, elsewhere online.
Kent and Lear reach Dover and Cordelia, who loves him. Cordelia accompanies an invading French army. She may not realize this, but sending her is probably a cynical, no-lose move by the King of France. If his forces win and kill the other heirs, he is now also King of Britain. If his forces lose, the heirs will kill Cordelia and he will be rid of a wife who is no longer of any political value. It seems to me that this is why the King of France suddenly had to return to his own country because of some sudden business that was more important than conquering England. Uh huh. He has left his wife either to do it for him, or be killed. (Shakespeare's English audience mostly did not like the French. Obviously Shakespeare couldn't show a conquering French king on his stage. But having the king land and then leave "suddenly" lets Shakespeare make the foreign king look machiavellian. You'll have to decide about this for yourself.)


Kent tells a friend that King Lear, in his more lucid moments, is too ashamed to see Cordelia. The king reappears in a field where the Earl of Gloucester lies, his eyes having been gouged out by Regan and her husband. King Lear is now crowned and decorated with weeds and wild flowers. He wavers between hallucinations and accurate perception. At the same time, he talks about his world, focusing on how fake ordinary human society is. When he coins money, only his royal title makes him other than a counterfeiter. People pretend to be modest and virtuous, but in private are as amoral and dirty-living as animals. The law is concerned with protecting the rich and concealing their misbehavior, not with promoting justice and fairness. Regan and Goneril have played and humored him. He learned the truth only in the storm. He says that "when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools." Cordelia's people come to bring him back to their camp, and they chase him down.

We next see King Lear asleep under the care of Cordelia. He awakes, and thinks -- correctly -- that he recognizes her. But he thinks that they are both dead. "Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound upon the wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead." Cordelia kneels, Lear tries to do the same (as in the older play), but Cordelia prevents him. Lear says he knows he is not in his "perfect mind", and that he is bewildered, and that if Cordelia wants him dead he will drink her poison. When Cordelia says she has no cause to be angry, but merely wants to help him, Lear says "Pray now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish."

King Lear is not about wrongs being righted. If Shakespeare were a Hollywood writer, his king might have returned to rulership and ("having learned to be sensitive, and that it is all right to cry") become a champion for the poor in his own country and set up a social agency to deal effectively with other dysfunctional families.

 In contrast to the happy ending in the source, Shakespeare has the French army defeated by the British, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. King Lear looks forward to happy time with his daughter in prison, merely laughing at the rest of the world. As the subplot concludes, all the villains are dead, but Cordelia has been hanged in prison. King Lear kills the hangman with his bare hands. He comes onstage, carrying Cordelia's body and howling. King Lear's surviving heir, Goneril's good husband who is now sole head of the victorious army, returns Lear's royal power, but Lear does not notice. Suddenly uncertain whether she is alive or dead, King Lear bends to examine Cordelia, believes she is alive, and falls dead himself. The good survivors see the passing of a man who was larger than life.

                                                      The secondary plot


King Lear's story is paralleled by the story of the Earl of Gloucester. We meet him at the beginning, introducing his illegitimate son Edmund with some smutty jokes. We do not need to see Edmund's face to imagine how often this must have happened, and how Edmund's feelings must have been hurt by it. Perhaps this is part of how he got his attitude toward the world. Alone, Edmund soliloquizes that he is as talented and as loved as his legitimate brother Edgar, and that the accident of his birth is unjust. He professes allegiance to "nature" rather than law or love, and decides that he will try to gain control of the earldom by removing his father and brother.

Edmund takes a minute to ridicule astrology. We can ask ourselves whether Edmund is simply making fun of superstition, whether he is talking about "self-empowerment" like a 1990's person, whether he is disavowing a role for heaven (God, the supernatural, transcendent values, the ideals of religion, whatever) in his life, or whether he is denying their reality altogether. Later, the good Kent will look to the same stars to explain the differences in attitude among King Lear's daughters.

Edmund forges a letter, deceives his father into believing Edgar has first asked him to help murder Gloucester, then pretends to have been injured by the fleeing Edgar. Gloucester declares Edgar an outlaw and Edmund his heir. Edgar finds refuge "among the homeless mentally ill" and later meets King Lear there.
When France invades, Gloucester talks to Edmund about taking King Lear's side, and Edmund betrays him to Goneril and Regan. Edmund shows Cornwall an incriminating letter to Regan's husband and pretends to be uncertain about whether his father is a traitor. "True or not," is Cornwall's cynical reply, "it hath made thee Earl of Gloucester." Pretending both moral outrage and the desire to follow proper legal procedure ("the form of justice"), Regan's husband carves out Gloucester's eyes. He stomps one eyeball flat on the ground for fun, but is stabbed to death by one of his own horrified servants, who is killed in turn by Regan's backstab. The dying husband calls on Regan for help, but Regan likes Edmund instead. As the scene is often staged, she merely walks off and lets him die. The director may even have her stab Cornwall again herself.

Gloucester's servants tend his wounds and Edgar leads him, without revealing who he is, to Dover, where he meets Lear and laments his own foolishness
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 Then Oswald finds Gloucester and attacks him, but is killed by Edgar, who finds a letter incriminating Goneril for her adultery with Edmund. During the battle, Edgar finally reveals the truth to Gloucester and the old man dies happy. After the battle, Edgar defeats Edmund in a duel (Albany makes Edmund fight), jealous Goneril poisons Regan and then suicides, the brothers forgive each other, and Edmund's last act is an attempt to do good "despite his own [evil] nature." He calls -- too late -- for Lear's and Cordelia's lives to be spared.
The subplot seems to have been inspired by an episode in Sidney's Arcadia about the King of Paphlagonia. Many details match, including the good son persuading the blinded father not to jump to his death off a cliff.

Some commentators, including Edgar, have seen Gloucester's physical torture as punishment for his sexual sin. Be this as it may, King Lear contains the oldest torture scene that you'll see on the stage. Sensitive Victorians cut it from production. Even by today's movie standards, it is a shocker.
Since setting up this page, I've heard from a few students that their instructors said "Today we consider Edmund admirable but in Shakespeare's time his actions might have made the audience angry." I am not making this up. Evidently Edmund is admirable because he has a grievance and talks about illegitimate sons being discriminated against, and is some kind of nature-worshipper. This overshadows the way he treats everybody around him. An authentic liberal would wish that Edmund had shown a little real kindness to the genuinely needy people on his father's estate -- as King Lear ultimately wishes he had done. Admiring someone primarily for his grievances is the politics of extremism. Feel free to speak up in class. Your decent-minded classmates will appreciate it.

 

      Themes and Image Patterns
  Who is it that can tell me who I am? -- King Lear   Nature
The Elizabethans believed, or pretended to believe, that the natural world reflected a hierarchy that mirrored good government and stable monarchy. This is a common enough idea in old books from various cultures. Even our scientific age talks both about "laws of nature" and "good government through good laws", although of course we know the essential difference.

Shakespeare's era contrasted "nature" and "art" (i.e., human-made decorations, human-made luxuries and technologies, human-made artistic productions), just as we talk about "essential human nature" contrasted to "culture". Shakespeare's era also contrasted "natural" and "unnatural" behaviors; the latter would include mistreating family members, opposing the government, and various sexual activities not intended for procreation.

King Lear deals with how children and parents treat each other, whether human society is the product of nature or something we create so as to live better than animals do, and whether human nature is fundamentally selfish or generous. Not surprisingly, you can find various ideas about the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

• You already know that 57 different animals are mentioned in the play.


• Lear tells Cordelia that neither human nature nor royal dignity can tolerate the way she has insulted him.


• Lear tells the King of France that "nature is ashamed" to have produced a child like Cordelia, whose lack of love is so contrary to nature. King Lear expects people to be naturally virtuous, in other words, to tell him the lies he wants to hear.


• The King of France suggests that Cordelia has a "tardiness in nature", i.e., that sometime's it's natural to be inarticulate. France sees nature as the source of human frailties, rather than vice.


• Edmund begins, "Thou, Nature, art my goddess." Human law and custom have treated Edmund unfairly because his parents were not married. Edmund intends to look out for himself, like an animal. Edmund sees nature as the opposite of human virtue.


• Stupid Gloucester, deceived by Edmund, considers Edgar's supposed plot to murder him to be contrary to nature ("unnatural", "brutish").


• Gloucester believes in astrology. Gloucester thinks that the eclipses, which result from natural causes, still have unnatural effects, causing the breakdown of human society. Edmund doesn't believe in astrology. He says he was born rough and self-centered, and that the stars had nothing to do with it. Later, Kent believes the stars must account for the inexplicable differences in people's attitudes. Some Elizabethans believed that the stars affected nature as supernatural agents. Others believed that they were powerful natural forces.


• Edmund remarks that Edgar's nature is gentle and naive, and (at the end) that he will do one last good deed "in spite of mine own nature." (Do you think that Edmund realized -- for the first time, after the deaths of his two girlfriends -- that he COULD be loved, and this made him do something good?" Edmund's remark about acting against "his nature" reminds us of the ongoing scientific and political controversies over how much of an individual's behavior is genetically programmed, how much is learned and conditioned, and how much one is responsible. ("Nature vs. nurture"; "innate vs. cultural", and so forth.)


• King Lear, thinking of Cordelia's "most small fault", laments the way it scrambled his mind ("wrenched my frame of nature from its fixed place").


• King Lear also calls on "nature" as a goddess, to punish Goneril with infertility, or else give her a baby that grows up to hate her ("a thwart disnatured torment").


• Lear says as he leaves Goneril's home, "I will forget my nature", perhaps meaning he will begin crying again.


• Gloucester jokes that Edmund is "loyal and natural". The latter means both "illegitimate", and that he cares for his own flesh-and-blood as a son should. Regan's husband speaks of Edmund's "nature of such deep trust", i.e., his trustworthy character is inborn.


• Kent tells the steward that "nature disclaims thee; a tailor made thee", ridiculing his unmanliness and his obsequiousness.


• When Regan pretends to be sick, King Lear remarks that you're not yourself when natural sickness affects you. "We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body." There's a foreshadowing here.


• Regan tells King Lear that "nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine." In other words, you're getting too old to make your own decisions, and Regan's behavior is only that of a good, natural daughter.


• We've already seen ("allow not nature more than nature needs...") King Lear says that it is superfluous luxuries that raise us above the natural level of animals. He will soon change his mind.


• Kent and the other basically good characters see the treatment of Lear and Gloucester as unnatural. Albany says to Goneril, "That nature which condemns itself in origin cannot bordered certain in itself" -- i.e., if you mistreat your own parent, what kind of person must you be? Writers who talk about the Elizabethans believing in cosmic hierarchy and so forth will see a moral warning against deviating from nature: If you have violated nature by being less than generous to your parent, your self-centeredness will grow and you will become morally worse than an animal.


• King Lear calls on the storm to "crack nature's moulds" and end the human race.


• Kent urges King Lear to seek shelter, since "man's nature cannot carry the affliction nor the force" and "the tyranny of the open night's too rough for nature to endure."


• King Lear, crazy, asks whether Regan's hard-heartedness is the result of natural disease or chemistry or something perhaps cultural or perhaps supernatural. "Is there any cause in nature that makes this hardness?"


• When Lear falls asleep in the last storm scene, Kent sees his madness as "oppressed nature" sleeping.


• Cordelia is said to "redeem nature from the general curse" brought by the other two daughters. With people like Cordelia in the world, one could not say the human race is generally bad by nature.
• The physician calls sleep "our foster-nurse of nature." Readers may remember Macbeth, who after committing the "unnatural" crime of killing a king, becomes an insomniac.


• King Lear, with the insight of madness, decorates himself with wild flowers.

You can use these various ideas about what's "natural" and what's not to develop a good paper. Thomas Hobbes observed that the lives of wild animals and primitive people are mostly "nasty, brutish, and short". Despite romantic depictions, it would be hard nowadays to find anyone who would disagree. Nowadays, most people believe that culture is something that we invent so that we can fall in love, create works of art and music, remember the past, and enjoy a reasonable prospect of good health, personal security, and choosing our own paths through life. If most of us no longer believe that a king's sovereignty mirrors the harmony of a well-run natural world, we can still find fundamental human issues treated in King Lear.

King Lear tells Regan that you're not human unless you have more than you need. ("Allow not nature more than nature needs...") Then in the storm, King Lear cries out that only the poorest person, who owes nothing to anyone (not even the animals), is truly human ("... the thing itself.") Which do you think is right?
In I.iv., King Lear himself introduces the question, "Who am I?" in the passage that begins "Doth any here know me?..." and ends with "Who is it that can tell me who I am?"
And if you want to keep it very simple, just notice this. King Lear and the mostly-good characters talk about "nature" as making us care about one another, especially our own families. Edmund talks about "nature" as making us care only about ourselves.
Who is right? I can't tell you. You have a lifetime to decide for yourself.

And so forth...

Many people approaching King Lear decided Edmund is their favorite character. Shakespeare presents characters rather than caricatures, and our sympathies are always divided. Edmund is charming, clever, clear-headed (when others are not). And we see at the very beginning how hurtfully and thoughtlessly his father has treated him. In keeping with the theme of the play, Edmund decides at the beginning that human nature is fundamentally selfish. And Edmund decides to act accordingly. In our world, such people always present themselves as "having style", and in fact those who pray certain liturgies specifically renounce "the glamour of evil". Edmund treats others horribly. Yet at the end, Edmund finds the decency he thought he didn't have, and tries to do good "in spite of [his] own nature." I've seen this sort of thing in real life, and perhaps you have too. There's a good paper right here.

Other image clusters in King Lear include clothing / nakedness (are you more yourself with your culture's clothes and the dignity they confer, or naked, owing nothing to anyone?), fortune (is what happens to us dumb luck, predestined, or whatever?), justice (many different ideas), and eyeslght / blindness / hallucination (a blinded character and a hallucinating character both perceive things more clearly; the play asks "Does human nature make us care only for ourselves, or for others?", our natural eyes may not give us the best answer.)

And there's the recurrent theme of nothing. Cordelia can add nothing to her sisters' speeches. Lear says that "nothing" is the reward to Cordelia and Burgundy after Cordelia says nothing. Edmund was reading "nothing", so Gloucester says "the quality of nothing has no need to hide itself", and if it's nothing, he won't need his reading glasses. Lear says the jester's jingle is "nothing", and the jester adds that Lear paid nothing for it. Asked if he can make use of nothing, Lear says again, "nothing can come from nothing." The jester calls Lear a zero without a preceding figure, or "nothing." Deprived of his identity, Edgard is "nothing". The storm makes "nothing" (should this be "knotting?") of Lear's hair. But in the storm, Lear first decides to "say nothing", then admires the poor man who owes nothing to any other creature as the true human being. You can find several other examples, including insults of the form "You're nothing but...". But King Lear's speech on owing nothing ends the image cluster. Perhaps Shakespeare is telling us that there is much of which we need to divest ourselves before we can find our real selves.

                                            What Shakespeare Could Not Say Openly?

Meantime, we shall express our darker purposes. -- Lear

You'll need to decide for yourself about what follows.
The last lines of the play are puzzling, especially "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

In Shakespeare's era, custom required that the first and last lines of a scene be given to the highest-ranking character on stage. The Quarto gives these to Albany (who is a duke, outranking an earl). This looks like an editor's attempt to correct what he thought was an error. The Folio gives them to Edgar, who has just been asked to assume the kingship by Albany. Giving Edgar a final word along with Kent and Albany seems right.



I think I understand what Edgar is saying.
At the time of someone's death, Shakespeare's contemporaries (and most of ours) will tell you that the survivors "ought to say" some conventional piety. Edgar says, "Let's just tell the truth. This happened. This is sad."


Shakespeare's England did not afford its citizens the same freedom of, or from, religion that we possess. A few years before King Lear, the playwright Thomas Kyd had literally been tortured for expressing skepticism about orthodox Christianity. Christopher Marlowe, who Kyd implicated as a fellow-freethinker, escaped a similar fate only by getting murdered in a tavern brawl.

Characters in King Lear often talk about "the gods" (the setting is pagan Britain); "God" is mentioned only once by King Lear, who fantasizes (unrealistically) that he and Cordelia will be allowed to live and look at ordinary people without being involved "as if we were God's spies". Hypocritical Edmund pretends that he's warned Edgar of "the gods'" wrath, King Lear swears by Apollo and Jupiter (and Kent, as a bitter joke, swears by Jupiter's wife Juno), and of course Gloucester says that the gods play with us as boys play with flies, killing us for fun. Edgar says (to Edmund, but for the benefit of the simple, good Albany) that "the gods are just", and that Gloucester was punished for an episode of nonmarital sex by having his eyes gouged out. This is obviously NOT justice.

In the most puzzling scene in the play, Edgar pretends to escort the blind Gloucester to the white cliffs of Dover, where Gloucester intends to jump to his death. Edgar tells him he is at the summit, Gloucester jumps, and faints. Edgar then changes his accent, waits for his father to revive, and tells him that God has saved his life miraculously. Of course this is a lie, but it helps Gloucester find emotional peace. Shakespeare changed his source material -- in the original, the son merely talks the father out of suicide.

Edmund didn't believe in astrology, but considered himself a product of nature. Edgar's skeptical expression is kinder but seems even deeper.

It seems to me that Shakespeare is saying, as clearly as he can, what many people in his own day must have believed secretly. There is no God. The comforts of religion are make-believe. Nor are we good by nature, or through our laws and customs. The only hope for human beings is that we can be try to be decent and generous with one another.

Whether or not you agree (and I do not), this deepest message explains for me why the "cosmic" tragedy of King Lear still speaks to us so powerfully.


Links
Nahum Tate adapted King Lear so it would have a happy ending. Restoration themes ("Love Conquors All", "Virtue is Rewarded", etc.) From the same milieu that produced the corny William Dyce painting of Lear and his jester enjoying the countryside. You can find it online here. Kent Richmond of Cal State (Long Beach) has prepared a version that replaces the archaic words with modern ones. Looks good; does not dumb the play down.
King Lear Audio at publicliterature.org.
Spark Notes
Mrs. Jee's King Lear Wikispace -- classroom project.
King Lear -- "Online Literature"; text and some notes
No Fear -- text along with 21st-century English translation
Teri Bannerman -- literature site under construction

Cordelia -- did she stay behind in disguise as King Lear's jester? Ed says...

Yes!
• Cordelia and the jester never appear onstage at the same time, and the jester disappears without explanation after act III;


• Other Shakespearean heroines disguise themselves as men, though only in the non-tragedies;


• King Lear seems to identify the jester and Cordelia in the last scene ("My poor fool is hanged!");


• Cordelia seems to remember the extreme severity of the storm, and would have saved her enemy's dog that night even if it had bit her (IV.vii)


• It's quite playable. Having Cordelia reveal herself at the end of III.vi. is an audience-pleaser.

No!
• It is hard to explain "Cordelia"'s choice of jokes, which run from the bitter to the off-color to very harsh criticism of the King, and it is hard to explain why Cordelia would want to rub her beloved father's face in his own stupidity;


• "Since my young lady's going into France, sir, the fool has much pined away." "No more of that, I have noted it." -- I.iv.


• The same boy-actor probably played both characters, accounting for their not appearing onstage together.
You decide!

Kathi Vosevich's site for teachers
Encyclopedia Brittanica. "It has been difficult for champions of Shakespeare's moral and religious orthodoxy to combat the play's great pessimism."
Larry A. Brown -- Evangelical and professor of theater, has his thoughts and the full texts of the quarto and folio versions
Shakespeare Illustrated
King Lear and his Fool -- artwork
Another James Barry Painting
Watch "King Lear" on video clips:
."

Christopher Plummer's King Lear

The King is Alive" "King Lear" in the Namibian desert

Korol Lir Russian

Do you busy yourself with THAT?!

Japanese Schoolchildren Like Hamlet -- and all of Shakespeare

Table manners: 'Hamlet' from Seisuke Yamasaki's Shakespeare for Children series.

Stage

‘Hamlet’ marks take #18 in Shakespeare for Children series

by Nobuko Tanaka

Special To The Japan Times

“When I acted a nursemaid in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in the first program of this Shakespeare for Children series, I was surprised that no children made fun of a man in that role — they naturally accepted that theater is fundamentally fiction and just enjoyed the play,” Seisuke Yamasaki recalled in a recent interview.
Reflecting further on that 1995 launch of his ongoing project to introduce the Bard’s works to youngsters, Yamasaki — who’s a top actor and director in the wider theater world as well — continued, “I realized then that we mustn’t underestimate children’s capability, because they can enjoy Shakespeare plays just as adults do.”

Now an established and hugely popular series, whose productions invariably end with tremendous applause, Shakespeare for Children was first staged at the rate of roughly one play per year at the former Panasonic Globe Theatre in the city’s Shinjuku district.

Then, after that venue was sold in 2002, the series that’s now racked up 18 productions — including “Twelfth Night,” “Cymbeline,” “Richard III” and “Hamlet” (now being reprised) — started playing at theaters across the city before settling since 2008 at Owlspot in Ikebukuro.
Meanwhile, though in that debut production of “Romeo and Juliet” he just acted, Yamasaki has also directed every play since — as well as reconstructing the Bard’s originals into two-hour dramas from translations by the renowned Yuushi Odashima.

Yet though Yamasaki’s target audiences range in age from 10 upward, there’s nothing patronizing or simplistic about his stagings. In fact his trademark sets — featuring seven typical wooden classroom tables and 10 chairs that can be lined up, stacked, made into platforms or whatever — would be considered cutting-edge in many other productions.

As well, he incorporates a “black-coat chorus,” which sees any of the actors in the roughly 10-strong cast who are not involved in a scene — though many play minor roles as well as their main one — discreetly donning big black hats and coats and chanting together, acting as a crowd or sometimes individually as a voice of conscience or inner fear.

And then there’s a child-size Bard puppet worked by Yamasaki that often takes a key role he’s added to the original. In the current production, for instance, it plays an alter-Hamlet that brings an extra dimension of introspection to the prince’s self-doubts.

Commenting on his stagings, Yamasaki said, “I am especially aware of children at the scriptwriting stage, but I take the same approach to direction and rehearsal as if the play was for adults. So, as the words of are often even difficult for grown-ups, I carefully select the vocabulary to vividly appeal to children.”
For the upcoming “Hamlet,” for instance, he explained how he created a special trigger at the start to capture children’s attention by having actors deliver different Japanese translations of the world- famous line, “To be, or not to be …”

“There are several quite different interpretations in Japanese,” Yamasaki explained, “for example there’s ‘To live or die’ or ‘Is it okay as it is, or not?’ Yet though it’s so famous, the line doesn’t especially matter to children — and anyway, most of them will be hearing it for the first time. So I intentionally repeated it in various different translations to make a strong impression at the start and grab their interest.”
Then the director went on to share his view of the work as a whole, saying, “Ultimately, the play is about Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, being torn between conflicting emotions. As the agonized young man tries to find an answer to his questions, he delivers seven monologues that express his inner voice — but which he thinks no one else can hear. However, the audience knows what he’s saying — unlike the cast members, who all think he’s going mad. So there’s always different dimensions and sympathies in play.”
With all this talk of conflicting emotions and Hamlet’s inner voice, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Shakespeare for Children plays actually attract at least as many adults as kids. Reflecting that, indeed, in 2010 the company won the prestigious Kinokuniya Drama Award for this series and another popular Yamasaki project that staged the works of Anton Chekhov.

Modest as ever, though, Yamasaki would only say this about his work: “I just want to make Shakespeare plays more familiar for anyone to enjoy as a great entertainment — and for the cast to enjoy acting in, with nobody left standing alone behind the curtain for ages.”

Important Dates in Shakespeare's Life

 Timeline of Shakespeare's Life

1564. William Shakespeare is born in Stratford upon Avon to local tanner John and Mary Shakespeare. His actual birthday is unknown but assumed and celebrated today on April the 23rd, just three days before his baptism was recorded in the Parish register of the Holy Trinity Church on April the 26th. April 23 is the Feast Day of England’s patron saint, St. George.

1571. Shakespeare is likely to have begun his formal education. By local tradition, boys in the Stratford area, entered the local grammar school at age seven.

1582. Shakespeare is in love... At age 18, he marries the considerably older Anne Hathaway (26 years old) from Shottery on November the 27th at Temple Grafton, a village just five short miles (8 km) from Stratford.

1583. Susanna, William and Anne Shakespeare’s first child who lives a full 66 years, is born just five months after Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s wedding (May 26th). Illegitimacy was not uncommon in the 1500s.

1585-1592. Shakespeare is believed to have left his family in Stratford to join a company of actors as both playwright and performer, starting his career in theatre.

1585. Shakespeare’s twins, Judith and Hamnet are born, (February 2) Hamnet living only eleven years whilst Judith lived 77.

1589-1590. Shakespeare is believed by most academics to have written his very first play, Henry VI, Part One in this year.

1592. Shakespeare begins to be noticed as a force within London theatre; Robert Greene’s Groatworth of Wit famously calls Shakespeare an "upstart crow". He attacks Shakespeare as lacking originality since he borrows ideas from other for his own plays. Academics see this criticism as proof that Shakespeare was in London at this time..

1593. Shakespeare begins to compose the first of what will amount to a 154 sonnet collection. His narrative poem Venus and Adonis is his first ever published work.

1597. Shakespeare buys the New Place, one of Stratford’s most preeminent homes

1598. Shakespeare’s reputation as an actor is confirmed his performance in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humor which clearly lists his name as a principal actor in the London play.

1599. The Major shareholders of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men lease land from Nicholas Brend, The Globe theatre opening later that same year.

1603. A Midsummer’s Night is performed at Hampton Court before Queen Elizabeth who dies later that year. James I originally James VI of Scotland proves to be an enthusiastic patron of the arts granting The Chamberlain’s Men a patent to perform. In return the Company renames itself The King’s Men to honour James I and they quickly become a favorite with the new king.

1605.. King Lear is believed to have been composed in this year and as is Macbeth, the play’s Scottish background and kind portrayal of ancestor Malcolm being intended as a celebration and honoring of King James Scottish ancestry.

1607. Hamlet and Richard III are performed aboard the British ship Dragon off the west coast of Africa at Sierra Leone.

1608. The King’s Men take on a twenty-one year lease of London’s first permanently enclosed theatre, the Blackfriars Theatre in this year. Notes on stage directions, suggest The Tempest was penned with a performance at this theatre in mind.

The return of the plague forces a closure of all playhouses and theatres from the spring of 1608 through to early 1610.

1612-1613. Shakespeare is thought to have written Cardenio, his only lost play during this period and with John Fletcher as a likely contributor, composes Henry VIII.

1613. The Globe Theatre burns to the ground. The Two Noble Kinsmen is penned. Co-authored by Shakespeare and John Fletcher..

1614. The Globe Theatre reopens.

1616. William dies on April 23rd, his burial being recorded in the Stratford Holy Church Register two days later.

1623. Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway dies, the same year, and fellow actors John Hemminges and Henry Condell gather together and publish for the first time, 36 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays in a collection known as The First Folio.

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.”