King lear, p.17
King Lear, page 17
The Folio text moves straight to a scene in which Cordelia marches onstage at the head of her army, informing the audience that Lear has been sighted, still mad, crowned with wildflowers and weeds. Cordelia sends soldiers to find him. A Gentleman (Doctor in Quarto) says that sleep will help Lear and that there are medicinal herbs that will achieve this—a benevolent image of nature that contrasts with the violent storm. A messenger brings news that the British are marching toward them and Cordelia makes it clear that France’s armies are not fighting for “blown ambition”—unlike Goneril and Regan—but for love of Lear.
ACT 4 SCENE 4
Albany’s army has set out, although Oswald says that it took “much ado” for Albany himself to join them and that Goneril “is the better soldier.” Oswald has a letter from Goneril to Edmund that Regan wishes to read, but Oswald refuses. Regan expresses concern at Goneril’s interest in Edmund and argues that he is better suited to her, because she is a widow. She asks Oswald to remind Goneril of this and tells him there is a reward for whoever kills Gloucester.
ACT 4 SCENE 5
Lines 1–93: Edgar persuades Gloucester that they are at a cliff top. Gloucester comments that Edgar’s “voice is altered.” With truthful irony, Edgar responds that he is changed in nothing but his garments. Gloucester delivers a suicide speech and then throws himself forward. Edgar pretends to have found him at the bottom of the cliff, claiming that it is a miracle he survived the fall. He asks who was with Gloucester at the cliff’s head, suggesting that “It was some fiend,” but that he has been spared by the gods. Gloucester resolves to “bear / Affliction.”
Lines 94–209: Lear appears dressed in flowers and talking nonsense, still fixated on his daughters. Gloucester recognizes his voice, but Lear does not recognize him, taking him for “Goneril with a white beard.” In a pitifully ironic exchange Lear claims to remember Gloucester’s eyes and demands that he read an imaginary challenge. Lear excoriates women for their sexual indulgence. He shows “reason in madness” as he talks of justice and how it is useless against sin that is plated “with gold.” Lear runs away from Cordelia’s attendants.
Lines 210–299: Edgar is leading Gloucester to safety, but Oswald finds them and tries to kill Gloucester. Under yet another persona, Edgar fatally wounds Oswald, who begs him to deliver a letter to Edmund. Edgar reads the letter from Goneril, urging Edmund to kill Albany so that she may marry him. Edgar buries Oswald, keeps the letter to show Albany, and leads Gloucester away.
ACT 4 SCENE 6
Cordelia thanks Kent and asks him to change out of his disguise. Kent replies that he has a reason to remain as he is. A Gentleman (Doctor in Quarto) asks Cordelia’s permission to wake Lear. Cordelia kisses Lear and laments her sisters’ treatment of him. When he wakes, she addresses him with respect fitting for a “royal lord.” Lear is disorientated and humbled, in contrast to his earlier pride, and calls himself a “foolish fond old man.” He recognizes Cordelia and assumes that she hates him, acknowledging that she has “some cause.” She refutes this and leads him away. Kent reveals that Edmund is leading Cornwall’s army.
ACT 5 SCENE 1
Lines 1–31: Edmund describes Albany’s “alteration” and “self-reproving.” Regan questions Edmund about Goneril and accuses him of adultery with her. Edmund denies this as Albany and Goneril arrive, bringing news that Lear and Cordelia are reunited. Albany is divided between his role as a leader who must defend his country and his personal reluctance to fight Lear. Goneril and Regan are both reluctant to leave Edmund alone with the other.
Lines 32–66: Disguised, Edgar hands Albany the letter and leaves. Edmund informs Albany that “The enemy’s in view.” Alone, Edmund contemplates the two sisters, coldly observing that “Neither can be enjoyed / If both remain alive.” He resolves to let Goneril kill Albany if he survives the battle and swears that there will be no mercy for Lear and Cordelia.
ACT 5 SCENE 2
Edgar leaves Gloucester in safety and goes to fight for Lear. He returns to report that Lear and Cordelia have been defeated and captured. Gloucester wishes to remain where he is to be captured or to die, but Edgar says that men must “endure” until their appointed time.
ACT 5 SCENE 3
Lines 1–114: Cordelia thinks that they will see her sisters now they are captives, but Lear does not wish to, constructing a fantasy where he and Cordelia will live happily and safely in prison. Edmund orders them to be taken away and gives the captain instructions to kill them. Albany, Goneril, and Regan arrive, and Albany praises Edmund’s “valiant strain,” asking for the captives. Edmund says that he has sent Lear away so that he will not “pluck the common bosom on his side.” Albany reproves Edmund for taking authority, but Regan claims that he has proved himself Albany’s “brother” by leading her armies. Goneril and Regan begin to fight over Edmund and Regan claims him as her “lord and master.” Albany arrests Edmund for treason and ironically bars Regan’s claim on Edmund as he is “subcontracted” to Goneril. As Albany challenges Edmund, Regan is taken ill, poisoned by Goneril. The trumpet sounds to summon a champion for Albany who will maintain that Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester, is “a manifold traitor.”
Lines 115–264: Edgar answers the summons but does not identify himself, except that he is “as noble” as Edmund. They fight and Edmund is mortally wounded, but Goneril argues that he is not defeated because he was not bound to fight “An unknown opposite.” Albany demonstrates the shift in power between them as he tells her to “Shut [her] mouth” and produces her letter to Edmund. Goneril flees. Edmund admits the charges and wishes to know his killer, as he will forgive him if he is noble. Edgar reveals his identity and says that they should “exchange charity.” He argues that “The gods are just,” perhaps a response to Gloucester’s lament in Act 4 Scene 1. Edgar relates how Gloucester died on being told of the true identity of the man who has led him in his blindness: his heart was too weak to support the extremes of “joy and grief” provoked by the knowledge. A messenger brings news that Goneril has poisoned Regan and stabbed herself. Their bodies are brought onstage as Kent arrives, seeking Lear. Edmund resolves to do “some good” before dying and reveals that Lear and Cordelia are condemned to death, and that Cordelia’s hanging will be made to look like suicide. He sends his sword as a “token of reprieve” and is carried out.
Lines 265–348: Howling, Lear carries in Cordelia’s body. He tries to revive her, ignoring Kent’s attempts to speak to him, and reveals that he killed the executioner, remembering “the day” that he “would have made [them] skip,” a brief return to his previous, regal self before he disintegrates once more. He dies believing that he sees Cordelia breathe, and Kent begs his own heart to break. Edmund’s death is reported and Albany asks Kent and Edgar to rule and sustain “the gored state,” but Kent refuses, feeling death is near. Despite Albany’s assertion that “All friends shall taste / The wages of their virtue, and all foes / The cup of their deservings,” any sense of justice, human or divine, seems scant, and the play’s resolution is bleak.
KING LEAR IN
PERFORMANCE:
THE RSC AND BEYOND
The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.
We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.
Finally, we go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director. He or she must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways.
FOUR CENTURIES OF KING LEAR: AN OVERVIEW
The first Lear was Richard Burbage, the leading actor with Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men. He was described by an anonymous elegist listing his best-known roles as “Kind Lear.”1 Little is known otherwise of the earliest performances. The Fool is thought to have been played by Robert Armin, the company’s leading comic actor after the departure of Will Kempe. A talented singer and musician, Armin was noted for his witty paradoxical fooling. Some scholars have, however, suggested that Armin may have played Edgar, since Tom o’Bedlam speaks a kind of fool’s language and Armin was equally capable of the multiple role changes that the character puts himself through. This casting would have opened up the possibility for a boy actor to double the roles of Cordelia and the Fool, who never appear on stage together. Such doubling would give added poignancy to the line “And my poor fool is hanged,” but it remains counterintuitive to suppose that Armin was cast in any role other than that of the Fool.
There is a record of a court performance at Whitehall on St. Stephen’s night, 26 December 1606. It was a bold choice to play the mad king and the image of a “dog obeyed in office” before the court. A play of “king Lere” was performed at Gowthwaite Hall in Yorkshire in 1610. This was probably Shakespeare’s version, not the old Leir play (which recently scholarship has ascribed to Thomas Kyd, author of the highly successful Spanish Tragedy). A company of English actors in Dresden in 1626 played the “Tragoedia von Lear, König in Engelandt,” probably also Shakespeare’s version.
The play was revived briefly after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and subsequent reopening of the theaters, but in 1681 Nahum Tate staged a production using a text that he himself had adapted. In his dedicatory epistle Tate emphasized the idea of the rough and unfinished nature of Shakespeare’s work. It was a “heap of jewels” that needed to have order, regularity, and polish applied to it for its true beauty to be revealed. Tate simplified language, plot, and character, eliminating the Fool and much of the play’s complexity. He included a love story between Edgar and Cordelia, together with a confidante for Cordelia, Arante. The play’s happy ending concludes with Lear restored, handing his throne over to Edgar and Cordelia. Tate’s Lear and various revised forms of the adaptation, including one by David Garrick, replaced the original on stage, except possibly in Dublin, where the Smock Alley promptbooks are based on Shakespeare’s printed text. The authentically Shakespearean original was not performed on the London stage again, save for a handful of performances by Edmund Kean in the early nineteenth century, until Macready’s restored (if heavily cut) production of 1838.
2. William Charles Macready as Lear in 1838, with the dead Cordelia: until this revival, the stage was dominated by Nahum Tate’s reworking with a happy ending in which Cordelia survives and marries Edgar.
Thomas Betterton had been Tate’s Lear. David Garrick, the most celebrated actor-manager of the eighteenth century, restored parts of Shakespeare’s text in his own production at Drury Lane but retained Tate’s ending. His performance was acclaimed for its pathos and humanity. In his diary James Boswell records: “I was fully moved, and I shed abundance of tears.”2 The Shakespearean editor George Steevens, after confessing his view that “Tate’s alteration … had considerably improved the great original,” went on to extol the virtues of Garrick’s acting: “Were we to inquire in what particular scene Mr. Garrick is preeminently excellent it would be a difficult circumstance to point it out.” He did, though, single out Garrick’s “mode of speaking the curse at the end of the first act of the play.” In his view Garrick “gives it additional energy, and it is impossible to hear him deliver it without an equal mixture of horror and admiration.”3 John Philip Kemble (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1788) played Lear with his tragedian sister, Sarah Siddons, as Cordelia. The critic and poet Leigh Hunt was disappointed: “He personated the king’s majesty perfectly well, but not the king’s madness … he is always stiff, always precise, and he will never, as long as he lives, be able to act any thing mad unless it be a melancholy mad statue.”4
During the Regency period, when old King George III was mad, the London theater managers tactfully abstained from staging the play. Soon after the king’s death in 1820, the fiery Romantic actor Edmund Kean played the role at Drury Lane later to mixed reviews. The London Times objected that the storm scene “was less effective than many others” chiefly because it was “exhibited with so much accuracy that the performer could scarcely be heard amidst the confusion,” but the reviewer was better pleased by the fifth act in which “there was scarcely a dry eye in the theatre.”5 William Hazlitt felt that “Mr. Kean chipped off a bit of the character here and there: but he did not pierce the solid substance, nor move the entire mass.”6 Hazlitt reviewed Junius Brutus Booth’s production at Covent Garden in the same year more favorably: “There was no feebleness, and no vulgarity in any part of Mr. Booth’s acting, but it was animated, vigorous, and pathetic throughout.”7
When Macready, who had played Edmund to Booth’s Lear, restored Shakespeare’s text in his Covent Garden production of 1838, the Fool, reintroduced for the first time in more than a hundred and fifty years, was played by a young woman, Priscilla Horton. Macready set the play in a pagan Saxon Britain replete with Druidic stone circles. Critics were generally enthusiastic:
Mr. Macready’s Lear, remarkable before for a masterly completeness of conception, is heightened by this introduction of the Fool to a surprising degree. It accords exactly with the view he seeks to present of Lear’s character.… Mr. Macready’s representation of the father at the end, broken down to his last despairing struggle, his heart swelling gradually upwards till it bursts in its closing sigh, completed the only perfect picture that we have of Lear since the age of Betterton.8
It may be asked how someone writing a century and a half after the event could have known that Betterton’s was a “perfect picture” of Lear, but the point here is to stress how much the characterization of Lear gains from the restoration of his foil, the Fool.
Samuel Phelps produced the play at Sadler’s Wells in 1845 using simpler staging and a fuller version of the text than that of Macready, which had remained heavily cut despite the rejection of Tate. The naturalism of Phelps’ performance was praised but the storm was thought excessive: “It is not imitation, but realization.”9 Charles Kean staged a successful production at the Princess’s Theater in 1858. Set in Anglo-Saxon Britain, it boasted a strong supporting cast including Kate Terry as Cordelia. Meanwhile in New York, Edwin Booth, son of Junius Brutus, revived the play using Shakespeare’s text, giving a performance described by William Winter as “the fond father and the broken old man. It was the great heart, shattered by cruel unkindness, that he first, and most of all, displayed.”10 The great Italian actor Tommaso Salvini, also won praise for his performances at Boston’s Globe Theatre in 1882 and London’s Covent Garden in 1884, despite the fact that he spoke in Italian while the rest of the cast spoke in English, a proceeding that the novelist Henry James described as “grotesque, unpardonable, abominable.”11 Henry Irving’s elaborately staged production at the Lyceum in 1892 was set in a Britain of Roman ruins with Druidic priests and Viking warriors. Using a heavily cut text that reduced the play’s violence and sexuality, Irving emphasized Lear’s age and paternalism in a performance that attracted mixed notices, although Ellen Terry’s Cordelia was widely praised.
At the end of the nineteenth century directors such as William Poel and Harley Granville Barker promoted the simple staging of Shakespeare’s plays, attempting to recreate the conditions of the Elizabethan playhouse, with its fast continuous action in contrast to the spectacular staging of the Victorians, which involved lengthy scene changes. In his Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927), Granville Barker argued vigorously against critical prejudice toward the play in performance and insisted on its theatrical viability, a judgment borne out by the many productions since. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have produced a number of distinguished Lears but have also concentrated on more balanced productions that give greater weight and opportunity to lesser roles.
John Gielgud first played Lear in Harcourt Williams’ production at the Old Vic in 1931 at the age of twenty-six. Despite his obvious talent, critics thought him too young for the part. In 1940 Gielgud had a second opportunity to play the part, again at the Old Vic, in a production set in early modern Europe, based on the ideas of Granville Barker, who oversaw the early rehearsals and personally coached Gielgud. In an essay of 1963 Gielgud claimed that the ten days in which Barker worked with the company “were the fullest in experience that I have ever had in all my years upon the stage.”12 The production was a success, although the noted critic James Agate concluded that Gielgud’s performance was “a thing of great beauty, imagination, sensitiveness, understanding, executive virtuosity, and control. You would be wrong to say—this is not King Lear! You would be right to say that this is Lear every inch but one.”13
