A fairly quick wrap up on this beautiful beautiful play:
5.1
Sisterly tensions remain high and Regan directly confronts Edmund about his involvement with Goneril:
Now, sweet lord,
You know the goodness I intend upon you:
Tell me--but truly--but then speak the truth,
Do you not love my sister?
Of course Edmund denies it all and is very cool and coy about the whole situation. Edgar sneaks into the scene and gives a letter to Albany then disappears again. there are so many things conveyed via letter/so much importance in these little bits of props in this play!!
ALBANY
Stay till I have read the letter.
EDGAR
I was forbid it.
When time shall serve, let but the herald cry,
And I'll appear again.
ALBANY
Why, fare thee well: I will o'erlook thy paper.
The scene ends with a final zinger of a soliloquy from Edmond:
To both these sisters have I sworn my love;
Each jealous of the other, as the stung
Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?
Both? one? or neither?
Both, one, or neither. what a statement! This would be a great audience interaction teaching moment, and also a great teaching moment about how much more interesting it is to watch an actor decide something in the moment instead of playing it as though their character has pre-decided. and he ends the speech with a very ominous bit of rhetoric:
As for the mercy
Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia,
The battle done, and they within our power,
Shall never see his pardon; for my state
Stands on me to defend, not to debate.
Let's not talk about it or debate what's right. let's just kill "to defend the state" hmmmm.... think on that and on who is saying it.
5.2
A very short scene between Edgar and Gloucester where we find Lear has lost the battle. Gloucester wants to despair and die but Edgar continues to urge him on:
GLOUCESTER
No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.
EDGAR
What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all: come on.
GLOUCESTER
And that's true too.
Men must endure. I think Checkhov would have loved Edgar.
5.3
The epic final scene begins with Edmund sending Lear and Cordelia off to prison. Lear has the most beautiful line about this:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies,
Regan and Goneril continue to fight and regan has this gem (add it to the etsy shop list):
Jesters do oft prove prophets.
but soon her jests stop as she is in a lot of pain- POISON times.
Lady, I am not well; else I should answer
From a full-flowing stomach
Albany challenges Edmund for his villainy:
There is my pledge;
[Throwing down a glove]
I'll prove it on thy heart,But before they can fight Edgar comes in and without saying who he is vows to fight Edmund himself:
Thy valour and thy heart, thou art a traitor;
False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father;
Conspirant 'gainst this high-illustrious prince;
And, from the extremest upward of thy head
To the descent and dust below thy foot,
A most toad-spotted traitor.
Albany has a great zinger to Goneril:
Shut your mouth, dame,
Or with this paper shall I stop it: Hold, sir:
Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil:
What a great stage picture. threatening someone with a letter? And having it actually be a threat? There's something very chilling about that. In what you could contend is one of the worst marriages in the shakespeare canon, Albany continues to call Goneril names to the end.
ALBANY
Most monstrous! oh!
Know'st thou this paper?
GONERIL
Ask me not what I know.
And with an Iago like silence Goneril ends the play refusing to speak more.
Edmund loses the fight and takes the blow of fate with what seems like instant acceptance:
The wheel is come full circle: I am here.
Edgar takes this time while his brother is dying to tell us that Gloucester died:
his flaw'd heart,
Alack, too weak the conflict to support!
'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly.
And Edmund has this beautiful line before he dies:
Yet Edmund was beloved:
The one the other poison'd for my sake,
And after slew herself.
I like to think that realizing he had his own twisted kind of undeserved love, Edmund is transformed. But I suppose you can come up with your own reasons for why he says this next line:
I pant for life: some good I mean to do,
Despite of mine own nature
He tries to save Cordelia and Lear by telling them what he did with the death edict, but of course it is too late. And what we get is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in literature. if any could benefit from Linklater voice work, I think it's this one. There's something in the very nature of "HOWL" and "never" that resonate physically and vocally:
[Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following]
KING LEAR
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
That heaven's vault should crack.
Any of you who have lost someone very dear to you don't need to be told how appropriate howling is to express that kind of heartbreak. The one small consolation Lear gets in this final scene is Kent revealing he was with him and true to him the whole time:
That, from your first of difference and decay,
Have follow'd your sad steps.
A pause for a bit of humor in this heartbreaking scene, soon after the above exchange a Captain enters and let's us know:
[Enter a Captain]
Captain
Edmund is dead, my lord.
Funny story- my dad played this part in college and one night, not paying attention to the lines and letting his mind wander, my dad heard a pause in the action and thinking he missed his entrance, loudly announced Edmund's death- about ten or twenty lines earlier than he was supposed to as it was just someone's dramatic pause. ooops. He then loudly said "oh shit"... bigger ooops. so every time I get to this part in the play where i feel like i can hardly breathe from all the emotion, I think of that story and i can push through to the end...
Lear then continues with a line that really resonates with anyone struggling with the nature and seeming randomness of mortality:
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
Of course Lear dies and Albany tries to fix what's left of the realm and carry on, but Kent is a servant of Lear's to the end and will follow wherever he goes:
ALBANY
Friends of my soul, you twain
Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain.
KENT
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me, I must not say no.
ALBANY
The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The continued rhyming at the end of the play fascinates me. Not just the final closing couplet but all those couplets leading to the end. anyone have thoughts on that? It seems a very strange place to rhyme. And the play ends. Like the quote from Professor Cohen i referenced last post, it gives us no happy endings because it gives us no false consolations. the source text has cordelia live and shakespeare says sometimes the best people don't get to live and that's life and how do we deal with that and move forward? And we are left to sort that for ourselves with only the comforts of grace and undeserved love.
On that note... Dan and I are off to mass.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
King Lear Act 4: miracles & love (the same thing?)
I went digging through my first year notes from grad school and I found part of the lovely things Professor Cohen had to say about Lear. This is one of my favorites:
"In all other tragedies we can say "well- that's a special circumstance" what makes this play remarkable is this is something that happens not BECAUSE you're a king, but IN SPITE OF being a king..."
So keep that in mind as we push on...
4.1
We start with Edgar still pretending to be Poor Tom when he sees Gloucester, his eyes put out and full of dispair:
My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!
There's that BEAUTIFUL use of repetition again. I think i'm going to usurp this phrase. World, world, o world! what else can you say sometimes?! Edgar then overhears his father wishing to "see" him again:
Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I'ld say I had eyes again!
Then there's this incredible human capacity for survival and facing enormous amounts of tragedy, a spirit i'm still trying to tap into and that I think is very brave, one that makes me think of my great aunt surviving concentration camps during WWII:
And worse I may be yet: the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'
But Gloucester does not share this feeling and wants to end his life, he asks for help to get to the cliffs of Dover.
There is a cliff, whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully in the confined deep:
Bring me but to the very brim of it,
And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear
With something rich about me: from that place
I shall no leading need.
"Poor Tom" agrees to lead him there, but Edgar has other plans for his father, plans that culminate in one of my favorite scenes in the play.
4.2
We go back to Goneril who can't wait to get on Edmund. Everyone wants Edmund. all the time... I'm telling you its the Richard III factor...
Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air:
Conceive, and fare thee well.
Goneril then expounds on how much better Edmund is as a lover than her husband and prepares to go head to head with Albany:
O, the difference of man and man! To thee a woman's services are due: My fool usurps my body.
That "fool" then comes into the scene with quite a bit to say to Goneril
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd?
I love this image of a tiger coming up over and over again. Women as tigers seem to be parts I'm incredibly interested in exploring- Goneril, Margaret, Evadne. Powerful and HONEST women if not cruel and violent as well The fight continues with insults hurled between the two:
Milk-liver'd man! That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
But to me, the highest insult comes from Albany who calls Goneril a "thing" there's something about hurling that description, as if they are so horrible they are unnamable. just a thing. even the sound of it gets me:
Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame,
Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend,
A woman's shape doth shield thee.
So Albany continues with his I won't hit a woman upbringing but let's Goneril know that she is on the thinnest of ice. Albany is no longer clueless or whishy washy, he has declared his side and knows for whom he will fight:
Gloucester, I live
To thank thee for the love thou show'dst the king,
And to revenge thine eyes
4.3
An exposition scene between Kent and a member of the camp of the King of France. Some rather clumsy hints of plot points ensue:
Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his coming forth is thought of; which imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger, that his personal return was most required and necessary.
Something happened and the king is gone.... it almost feels like this was just meant to be a place holder till that something could be thought up, but perhaps it's just a way to remind us not to focus on that bit, it's not the important part of the story... I always love when messengers get to tell how kings or queens reacted to immensely emotional and important news:
it seem'd she was a queen Over her passion; who, most rebel-like, Sought to be king o'er her.
They just always tell it with such eloquence and perfection! Kent tells us that Lear and his pride and his shame will not let him seek Cordelia on his own:
A sovereign shame so elbows him: his own unkindness,
...these things sting His mind so venomously, that burning shame Detains him from Cordelia.
I love Kent. I love Kent as I grew to love Camillo. I want to play him. It's official.
4.4
A very short scene between Cordelia and the Doctor. Cordelia assures the audience why she brought the King of France to war:
No blown ambition doth our arms incite,
But love, dear love, and our aged father's right:
Soon may I hear and see him!
4.5
Oswald and Regan have a little interchange about Goneril and her army and the letter she's sent Oswald to give Edmund. Oswald let's Regan know outright:
Madam, with much ado:
Your sister is the better soldier.
Regan tells us that Edmund is essentially hunting down his father. of course, she puts it in more politic language:
Edmund, I think, is gone,
In pity of his misery, to dispatch
His nighted life: moreover, to descry
The strength o' the enemy.
Next come the SISTERLY THREATS times. It's clear that Regan knows something is up between Goneril and Edmund and she wants to shut it down. She tells Oswald to remind Goneril that Goneril is still married while Regan is a widow and can marry again freely... There are clear tensions building.
4.6
Edgar tells us how he did not lead his father to the Cliffs of Dover and continues to tell him they are going up a steep cliff when they are clearly on flat ground.
Why I do trifle thus with his despair
Is done to cure it.
He talks with the audience about this and Edmund has not talked with us in a long time. I firmly believe More and more people will start to root for Edgar due to this method. and he has such beautiful language and he continues on this theme of the sanctity of life:
And yet I know not how conceit may rob
The treasury of life, when life itself
Yields to the theft: had he been where he thought,
By this, had thought been past.
So Gloucester "throws himself off the cliff" or so he thinks, and when he wakes at the bottom the "villager" there (still edgar) tells him he must have been saved by angels or the will of the gods and that it was a fiend who tempted him to end his life in the first place. Then this line happens which I want to put as my motto on facebook, website, business cards, cross stitched pillows, I want this to be a daily prayer:
Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again.
Dear Shakespeare: well played. perfection. Gloucester and Lear then meet again and have depressing interchanges:
GLOUCESTER
Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
ain't that the depressing truth... but then Cordelia comes back to the conversation:
Thou hast one daughter, Who redeems nature from the general curse Which twain have brought her to.
Gloucester confirms that he wantsto live again:
You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me:
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
To die before you please!
Edgar takes down Oswald when Oswald attacks Gloucester. I always love when Shakespeare's characters talk to letters:
Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not:
To know our enemies' minds, we'ld rip their hearts;
Their papers, is more lawful.
We also get a bit of Edgar's fierceness there, right? We also get even more evidence that Goneril can't wait to get on Edmund again and put a ring on it...
'Your--wife, so I would say-- 'Affectionate servant,'GONERIL.'
And now...we move to my FAVORITE scene in the whole play
4.7
There is so much love in this scene it makes me cry just thinking about it. It's part of the reason this blog post has been delayed so long because every time I start to write about it my thoughts feel inadequate next to the immense emotion I feel during this scene. So I guess I feel a little out of my league, like Cordelia:
O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work,
To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,
And every measure fail me.
How shall I live and work to match thy goodness? There's another line that could easily be a daily prayer. This continual sense of gratitude and service in a world of such cruelty is breathtaking.
The description of Lear in this scene is heartbreaking:
The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up Of this child-changed father!
The lines also bring in the idea of music and ritual as a kind of magic as far as healing and grace go (church service anyone?)
Please you, draw near. Louder the music there!
Cordelia talks about how she can hardly believe her sisters or that Lear was left out in the storm. There's so much compassion here:
Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire;
Lear cannot believe his eyes or ears and tells us:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
...
Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia.
Of course we all know it really is Cordelia and he is not dreaming at all. And this father daughter reunion is unbelievable, with an overflowing of grace and forgiveness, of confessing wrongs and being told what wrongs? It's already been forgiven:
KING LEAR
Be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
CORDELIA
No cause, no cause.
Even after that exchange, Lear still has trouble believing Cordelia wants to be with him:
Pray you now, forget and forgive
Forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us... I wish for all the wrongs done to me and all the times people have apologized, or even if they haven't apologized, that I could find it in my heart to have the grace to say "no cause"
Here's the key thing that Professor Cohen told us in that class that left us all with soggy tissues:
"This play has no false consolations. What is your one consolation? Life's true consolation? UNDESERVED LOVE. It's the best. And it's all we need."
(I like to link this with the aforementioned abundance of grace.) reading that still moves something in my heart because i think it's completely true. It's the to love another person is to see the face of god motto long before Les Mis came into being (let alone came into being a musical) and it is the reason the Catholic Church thinks marriage is a sacrament. Undeserved love- life's true consolation, our glimpse of the kingdom of heaven at hand...
The final bit of the scene is Kent shifting the focus back to the battle ahead, lest we think that now that the tearful reunion has happened life goes on happily ever after for the good:
KENT
Report is changeable. 'Tis time to look about; the powers of the kingdom approach apace.
...
Gentleman The arbitrement is like to be bloody. Fare you well, sir.
"In all other tragedies we can say "well- that's a special circumstance" what makes this play remarkable is this is something that happens not BECAUSE you're a king, but IN SPITE OF being a king..."
So keep that in mind as we push on...
4.1
We start with Edgar still pretending to be Poor Tom when he sees Gloucester, his eyes put out and full of dispair:
My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!
There's that BEAUTIFUL use of repetition again. I think i'm going to usurp this phrase. World, world, o world! what else can you say sometimes?! Edgar then overhears his father wishing to "see" him again:
Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I'ld say I had eyes again!
Then there's this incredible human capacity for survival and facing enormous amounts of tragedy, a spirit i'm still trying to tap into and that I think is very brave, one that makes me think of my great aunt surviving concentration camps during WWII:
And worse I may be yet: the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'
But Gloucester does not share this feeling and wants to end his life, he asks for help to get to the cliffs of Dover.
There is a cliff, whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully in the confined deep:
Bring me but to the very brim of it,
And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear
With something rich about me: from that place
I shall no leading need.
"Poor Tom" agrees to lead him there, but Edgar has other plans for his father, plans that culminate in one of my favorite scenes in the play.
4.2
We go back to Goneril who can't wait to get on Edmund. Everyone wants Edmund. all the time... I'm telling you its the Richard III factor...
Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air:
Conceive, and fare thee well.
Goneril then expounds on how much better Edmund is as a lover than her husband and prepares to go head to head with Albany:
O, the difference of man and man! To thee a woman's services are due: My fool usurps my body.
That "fool" then comes into the scene with quite a bit to say to Goneril
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd?
I love this image of a tiger coming up over and over again. Women as tigers seem to be parts I'm incredibly interested in exploring- Goneril, Margaret, Evadne. Powerful and HONEST women if not cruel and violent as well The fight continues with insults hurled between the two:
Milk-liver'd man! That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
But to me, the highest insult comes from Albany who calls Goneril a "thing" there's something about hurling that description, as if they are so horrible they are unnamable. just a thing. even the sound of it gets me:
Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame,
Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend,
A woman's shape doth shield thee.
So Albany continues with his I won't hit a woman upbringing but let's Goneril know that she is on the thinnest of ice. Albany is no longer clueless or whishy washy, he has declared his side and knows for whom he will fight:
Gloucester, I live
To thank thee for the love thou show'dst the king,
And to revenge thine eyes
4.3
An exposition scene between Kent and a member of the camp of the King of France. Some rather clumsy hints of plot points ensue:
Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his coming forth is thought of; which imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger, that his personal return was most required and necessary.
Something happened and the king is gone.... it almost feels like this was just meant to be a place holder till that something could be thought up, but perhaps it's just a way to remind us not to focus on that bit, it's not the important part of the story... I always love when messengers get to tell how kings or queens reacted to immensely emotional and important news:
it seem'd she was a queen Over her passion; who, most rebel-like, Sought to be king o'er her.
They just always tell it with such eloquence and perfection! Kent tells us that Lear and his pride and his shame will not let him seek Cordelia on his own:
A sovereign shame so elbows him: his own unkindness,
...these things sting His mind so venomously, that burning shame Detains him from Cordelia.
I love Kent. I love Kent as I grew to love Camillo. I want to play him. It's official.
4.4
A very short scene between Cordelia and the Doctor. Cordelia assures the audience why she brought the King of France to war:
No blown ambition doth our arms incite,
But love, dear love, and our aged father's right:
Soon may I hear and see him!
4.5
Oswald and Regan have a little interchange about Goneril and her army and the letter she's sent Oswald to give Edmund. Oswald let's Regan know outright:
Madam, with much ado:
Your sister is the better soldier.
Regan tells us that Edmund is essentially hunting down his father. of course, she puts it in more politic language:
Edmund, I think, is gone,
In pity of his misery, to dispatch
His nighted life: moreover, to descry
The strength o' the enemy.
Next come the SISTERLY THREATS times. It's clear that Regan knows something is up between Goneril and Edmund and she wants to shut it down. She tells Oswald to remind Goneril that Goneril is still married while Regan is a widow and can marry again freely... There are clear tensions building.
4.6
Edgar tells us how he did not lead his father to the Cliffs of Dover and continues to tell him they are going up a steep cliff when they are clearly on flat ground.
Why I do trifle thus with his despair
Is done to cure it.
He talks with the audience about this and Edmund has not talked with us in a long time. I firmly believe More and more people will start to root for Edgar due to this method. and he has such beautiful language and he continues on this theme of the sanctity of life:
And yet I know not how conceit may rob
The treasury of life, when life itself
Yields to the theft: had he been where he thought,
By this, had thought been past.
So Gloucester "throws himself off the cliff" or so he thinks, and when he wakes at the bottom the "villager" there (still edgar) tells him he must have been saved by angels or the will of the gods and that it was a fiend who tempted him to end his life in the first place. Then this line happens which I want to put as my motto on facebook, website, business cards, cross stitched pillows, I want this to be a daily prayer:
Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again.
Dear Shakespeare: well played. perfection. Gloucester and Lear then meet again and have depressing interchanges:
GLOUCESTER
O, let me kiss that hand!KING LEAR
Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
ain't that the depressing truth... but then Cordelia comes back to the conversation:
Thou hast one daughter, Who redeems nature from the general curse Which twain have brought her to.
Gloucester confirms that he wantsto live again:
You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me:
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
To die before you please!
Edgar takes down Oswald when Oswald attacks Gloucester. I always love when Shakespeare's characters talk to letters:
Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not:
To know our enemies' minds, we'ld rip their hearts;
Their papers, is more lawful.
We also get a bit of Edgar's fierceness there, right? We also get even more evidence that Goneril can't wait to get on Edmund again and put a ring on it...
'Your--wife, so I would say-- 'Affectionate servant,'GONERIL.'
And now...we move to my FAVORITE scene in the whole play
4.7
There is so much love in this scene it makes me cry just thinking about it. It's part of the reason this blog post has been delayed so long because every time I start to write about it my thoughts feel inadequate next to the immense emotion I feel during this scene. So I guess I feel a little out of my league, like Cordelia:
O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work,
To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,
And every measure fail me.
How shall I live and work to match thy goodness? There's another line that could easily be a daily prayer. This continual sense of gratitude and service in a world of such cruelty is breathtaking.
The description of Lear in this scene is heartbreaking:
The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up Of this child-changed father!
The lines also bring in the idea of music and ritual as a kind of magic as far as healing and grace go (church service anyone?)
Please you, draw near. Louder the music there!
Cordelia talks about how she can hardly believe her sisters or that Lear was left out in the storm. There's so much compassion here:
Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire;
Lear cannot believe his eyes or ears and tells us:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
...
Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia.
Of course we all know it really is Cordelia and he is not dreaming at all. And this father daughter reunion is unbelievable, with an overflowing of grace and forgiveness, of confessing wrongs and being told what wrongs? It's already been forgiven:
KING LEAR
Be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
CORDELIA
No cause, no cause.
Even after that exchange, Lear still has trouble believing Cordelia wants to be with him:
Pray you now, forget and forgive
Forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us... I wish for all the wrongs done to me and all the times people have apologized, or even if they haven't apologized, that I could find it in my heart to have the grace to say "no cause"
Here's the key thing that Professor Cohen told us in that class that left us all with soggy tissues:
"This play has no false consolations. What is your one consolation? Life's true consolation? UNDESERVED LOVE. It's the best. And it's all we need."
(I like to link this with the aforementioned abundance of grace.) reading that still moves something in my heart because i think it's completely true. It's the to love another person is to see the face of god motto long before Les Mis came into being (let alone came into being a musical) and it is the reason the Catholic Church thinks marriage is a sacrament. Undeserved love- life's true consolation, our glimpse of the kingdom of heaven at hand...
The final bit of the scene is Kent shifting the focus back to the battle ahead, lest we think that now that the tearful reunion has happened life goes on happily ever after for the good:
KENT
Report is changeable. 'Tis time to look about; the powers of the kingdom approach apace.
...
Gentleman The arbitrement is like to be bloody. Fare you well, sir.
Monday, June 10, 2013
King Lear Act 3: THE STORM
3.1
THE STORM.
First, your daily dose of slings and arrows:
I've put this video at the beginning because really, that's at the heart of anything I could think of or write about the storm... The first scene has Kent telling us that Lear's fool will not leave Lear in the storm alone:
who labours to out-jest/ His heart-struck injuries.
Kent also makes a secret plan with this servant, Kent is basically becoming for me a more powerful and higher status Camillo. AKA I'm falling in love with this character:
For confirmation that I am much more Than my out-wall, open this purse, and take What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia,-- As fear not but you shall,--show her this ring; And she will tell you who your fellow is That yet you do not know.
EVERYTHING is building up to seeing cordelia again. cordelia cordelia cordelia.
3.2
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
As we heard in the slings and arrows clip, the words really do create the storm just with their sounds. Lear continues to talk to nature about his daughters
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
We get another Cordelia echoe with the "nothing" theme again:
I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.
and then Kent comes on being badass as always:
Alas, sir, are you here? things that love night Love not such nights as these;
And Lear continues to fight off madness, finding an anchor in noticing the suffering of his fool and caring for him. Salvation through service, not to be earned, but because service to others can't help but change us. C.S. Lewis once said, when talking about joy, that "our best havings are wantings" but I think that maybe our best havings our givings... Lear's been giving away kingdoms, but all along what he needed to give was himself, right? It's something his youngest daughter has already found and will show us soon...
My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.
The fool sings a song that is almost straight out of 12th night (or is the 12th night song straight out of this? or is this a super popular chorus? either way, I read this play first and it made the ending of 12th night seem a lot darker than most people play it...)
[Singing]
He that has and a little tiny wit--
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,--
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Speaking of the fool... anyone know whats up with the fool's soliloquy at the end of this scene? Most of the time I can follow fool function/joke set ups but this one is a mystery to me... of course not as much a mystery as the poor tom speeches but we'll get there...
3.3
A short scene between Gloucester and Edmond, laying groundwork for Edmond's next trick. Gloucester talks about the conflict between Albany and Cornwall and we can assume the letter has to do with what Kent talked about regarding France coming to the rescue. of course, Edmond is going to show the letter to everyone instead of keeping his father's secrets. what a bastard...
3.4
Everyone is still trying to get Lear out of the storm:
KENT
Good my lord, enter here.
KING LEAR
Wilt break my heart? KENT
I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.
There's something painfully sweet about that exchange. Lear tells us again that the storm is nothing to his inner turmoil:
the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
and again he continues to fight for his sanity (there's a sense that he must know himself very well since he is so keen on walking the madness line...)
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.
And then there's the found compassion and humanity the slings and arrow clip talked about. This is one of my favorite sections in the show:
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this!
And in the shelter they find Edgar pretending to be Poor Tom. And.... well... I can't make heads or tale of it. Especially since we are told that this is an act of madness and not actual madness... and HOW do you play the two of those differently onstage? or DO YOU? Edgar is a serious mystery to me. Insights? anyone?
Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold,--O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking!
Another favorite line of mine, perhaps because I hate the cold. Add this to our etsy shop list:
This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.
Eventually Lear has his moment that just echoes Hamlet to me:
Is man no more than this?
and then there's even more Poor Tom stuff that baffles me.
3.5
This entire scene is basically Edmund turning on his father:
EDMUND
If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty business in hand.
CORNWALL
True or false, it hath made thee earl of Gloucester. Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our apprehension.
Then Cornwall decides to trust Gloucester in ways he really shouldn't:
CORNWALL
I will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love.
ha. yeah... you can play his father and Edmund will play some Oedipal times...
3.6
Again, maybe it's all the game of thrones reading i've been doing, but this line of the Fool's particularly gets me:
He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
After this we get more CRAZY CRAZY LEAR TIMES. The madness really seems to have won at this point as he is seeing Goneril and Regan and evil in practically everything... The best part of this scene is Edmund's soliloquy at the end:
Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind: But then the mind much sufferance doth o'er skip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
I really can't tell you how much I relate with this sentiment. It's amazing how much perspective and realizing you are not alone changes your struggles.
3.7
The last scene in this act, Cornwall sends Edmund with the ladies (just what edmund wants) while they go do horrible things to Gloucester:
Edmund, keep you our sister company: the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding.
We get the question of the rules of hospitality from the opposite end we got it in Macbeth- how a guest should treat their host:
Naughty lady, These hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin, Will quicken, and accuse thee: I am your host: With robbers' hands my hospitable favours You should not ruffle thus.
And then we get a "one scene wonder" character. seriously. The servant that confronts Regan and Cornwall is an amazing part that i would love to play any day. an awesome fight AND standing up for justice.
First Servant
Hold your hand, my lord:
I have served you ever since I was a child;
But better service have I never done you
Than now to bid you hold.
REGAN
How now, you dog! First Servant
If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'd shake it on this quarrel.
I always wonder if the beard line is to Regan or Cornwall...
Other servants in this scene have some choice things to say about Regan as well:
If she live long,
And in the end meet the old course of death,
Women will all turn monsters.
The main event of this scene is not one I can use lines to illustrate well because it's action- they put out Gloucester's eyes and its an insane staging challenge/suspension of disbelief with serious payoff. Few things creep me out more than thinking about popping someones eyes. ugh.... ok, now that i'm sufficiently creeped out... i'm done for the night.
the next act has what i think is the most beautiful scene in all of literature. If I can't get to it tomorrow with my schedule just know that it's because i want to really enjoy it. Go on, read ahead, I give you permission. You'll know the scene I mean when you get to it...
THE STORM.
First, your daily dose of slings and arrows:
who labours to out-jest/ His heart-struck injuries.
Kent also makes a secret plan with this servant, Kent is basically becoming for me a more powerful and higher status Camillo. AKA I'm falling in love with this character:
For confirmation that I am much more Than my out-wall, open this purse, and take What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia,-- As fear not but you shall,--show her this ring; And she will tell you who your fellow is That yet you do not know.
EVERYTHING is building up to seeing cordelia again. cordelia cordelia cordelia.
3.2
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
As we heard in the slings and arrows clip, the words really do create the storm just with their sounds. Lear continues to talk to nature about his daughters
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
We get another Cordelia echoe with the "nothing" theme again:
I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.
and then Kent comes on being badass as always:
Alas, sir, are you here? things that love night Love not such nights as these;
And Lear continues to fight off madness, finding an anchor in noticing the suffering of his fool and caring for him. Salvation through service, not to be earned, but because service to others can't help but change us. C.S. Lewis once said, when talking about joy, that "our best havings are wantings" but I think that maybe our best havings our givings... Lear's been giving away kingdoms, but all along what he needed to give was himself, right? It's something his youngest daughter has already found and will show us soon...
My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.
The fool sings a song that is almost straight out of 12th night (or is the 12th night song straight out of this? or is this a super popular chorus? either way, I read this play first and it made the ending of 12th night seem a lot darker than most people play it...)
[Singing]
He that has and a little tiny wit--
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,--
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Speaking of the fool... anyone know whats up with the fool's soliloquy at the end of this scene? Most of the time I can follow fool function/joke set ups but this one is a mystery to me... of course not as much a mystery as the poor tom speeches but we'll get there...
3.3
A short scene between Gloucester and Edmond, laying groundwork for Edmond's next trick. Gloucester talks about the conflict between Albany and Cornwall and we can assume the letter has to do with what Kent talked about regarding France coming to the rescue. of course, Edmond is going to show the letter to everyone instead of keeping his father's secrets. what a bastard...
3.4
Everyone is still trying to get Lear out of the storm:
KENT
Good my lord, enter here.
KING LEAR
Wilt break my heart? KENT
I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.
There's something painfully sweet about that exchange. Lear tells us again that the storm is nothing to his inner turmoil:
the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
and again he continues to fight for his sanity (there's a sense that he must know himself very well since he is so keen on walking the madness line...)
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.
And then there's the found compassion and humanity the slings and arrow clip talked about. This is one of my favorite sections in the show:
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this!
And in the shelter they find Edgar pretending to be Poor Tom. And.... well... I can't make heads or tale of it. Especially since we are told that this is an act of madness and not actual madness... and HOW do you play the two of those differently onstage? or DO YOU? Edgar is a serious mystery to me. Insights? anyone?
Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold,--O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking!
Another favorite line of mine, perhaps because I hate the cold. Add this to our etsy shop list:
This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.
Eventually Lear has his moment that just echoes Hamlet to me:
Is man no more than this?
and then there's even more Poor Tom stuff that baffles me.
3.5
This entire scene is basically Edmund turning on his father:
EDMUND
If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty business in hand.
CORNWALL
True or false, it hath made thee earl of Gloucester. Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our apprehension.
Then Cornwall decides to trust Gloucester in ways he really shouldn't:
CORNWALL
I will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love.
ha. yeah... you can play his father and Edmund will play some Oedipal times...
3.6
Again, maybe it's all the game of thrones reading i've been doing, but this line of the Fool's particularly gets me:
He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
After this we get more CRAZY CRAZY LEAR TIMES. The madness really seems to have won at this point as he is seeing Goneril and Regan and evil in practically everything... The best part of this scene is Edmund's soliloquy at the end:
Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind: But then the mind much sufferance doth o'er skip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
I really can't tell you how much I relate with this sentiment. It's amazing how much perspective and realizing you are not alone changes your struggles.
3.7
The last scene in this act, Cornwall sends Edmund with the ladies (just what edmund wants) while they go do horrible things to Gloucester:
Edmund, keep you our sister company: the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding.
We get the question of the rules of hospitality from the opposite end we got it in Macbeth- how a guest should treat their host:
Naughty lady, These hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin, Will quicken, and accuse thee: I am your host: With robbers' hands my hospitable favours You should not ruffle thus.
And then we get a "one scene wonder" character. seriously. The servant that confronts Regan and Cornwall is an amazing part that i would love to play any day. an awesome fight AND standing up for justice.
First Servant
Hold your hand, my lord:
I have served you ever since I was a child;
But better service have I never done you
Than now to bid you hold.
REGAN
How now, you dog! First Servant
If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'd shake it on this quarrel.
I always wonder if the beard line is to Regan or Cornwall...
Other servants in this scene have some choice things to say about Regan as well:
If she live long,
And in the end meet the old course of death,
Women will all turn monsters.
The main event of this scene is not one I can use lines to illustrate well because it's action- they put out Gloucester's eyes and its an insane staging challenge/suspension of disbelief with serious payoff. Few things creep me out more than thinking about popping someones eyes. ugh.... ok, now that i'm sufficiently creeped out... i'm done for the night.
the next act has what i think is the most beautiful scene in all of literature. If I can't get to it tomorrow with my schedule just know that it's because i want to really enjoy it. Go on, read ahead, I give you permission. You'll know the scene I mean when you get to it...
Saturday, June 8, 2013
King Lear Act 2: curses, nothingness, and mumford & sons
The scene starts with Edmond receiving word that the Duke of Cornwall and Regan are coming with Gloucester, so Edmond sends Edgar away as seeming to help him, then:
Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion.
[ Wounds his arm]
Of my more fierce endeavour: I have seen drunkards
Do more than this in sport.
(in this way he kind of reminds me of the anti-Parolles...)
Edmond then tells Gloucester how he got this wound arguing with Edgar, and how he told his brother:
Spoke, with how manifold and strong a bond
The child was bound to the father;
On the note of parents and children, can I just say that I'm interested in the nature/nurture arguments to be had about both edmond and his brother as well as cordelia and her sisters... that could be a fun classroom discussion.
Regan and her husband then join the scene and hope to turn Edgar's accusation to their own good:
REGAN
What, did my father's godson seek your life?
He whom my father named? your Edgar?
GLOUCESTER
O, lady, lady, shame would have it hid! REGAN
Was he not companion with the riotous knights That tend upon my father?
Then Cornwall offers commendations to Edmund he will probably come to regret:
For you, Edmund,
Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant
So much commend itself, you shall be ours:
Natures of such deep trust we shall much need;
You we first seize on.
2.2
Before Gloucester's gates Kent meets Osmund and gives Osmund some more fabulous insults:
OSWALD
What dost thou know me for?
KENT
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition. and then later on: Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him
Oswald is upset by this until Kent draws his sword and Oswald runs away like the fops Edmund hates.
their arguing draws a crowd and out come Regan, Cornwall, Edmund, and Gloucester.
Kent is put in the stocks and tells Gloucester not to bother pleading for him. and then, left alone on stage, Kent continues to be amazing:
To the warm sun! Approach, thou beacon to this under globe, That by thy comfortable beams I may Peruse this letter! Nothing almost sees miracles But misery: I know 'tis from Cordelia, Who hath most fortunately been inform'd Of my obscured course; and shall find time From this enormous state, seeking to give Losses their remedies.
2.3
OK, maybe act II is slightly shorter than act I, or else I reigned myself in a little after yesterday (doubtful though, my favorite parts are still to come...)
This whole scene is Edgar's chance to soliloquize and a lovely one it is, he gives us his general plan of how he's going to survive while everyone thinks him guilty of trying to kill his father:
my face I'll grime with filth; Blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots; And with presented nakedness out-face The winds and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms ... Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom! That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.
And we're back to the theme of nothing and nothingness. The greatest acts in the play get to come from those who experience this "nothing" paradox. I'm beginning to wonder if this is part of why I immediately loved playing Anne Dexter in The Queens... she is called nothing right and left...
2.4
Kent returns to Lear in the stocks and they have a dialogue that I'm fairly sure inspired dr. seuss, including:
KING LEAR
By Jupiter, I swear, no.
KENT
By Juno, I swear, ay. KING LEAR
They durst not do 't;
They could not, would not do 't
The Fool then has this little insight:
Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne'er turns the key to the poor. (does this remind anyone else of Ben from Lost and his commentary on Fortune's good friend Destiny???)
When Kent asks the fool where Lear's train went, he get's this little ditty as part of his answer:
That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm, But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy.
Eventually Lear gets to see Regan and Cornwall and remember when I said I think Regan and Goneril are quite different? Goneril had long roundabout coils of sentences blaming mostly her father's knights and was begins quite passive aggressive towards Lear, Regan on the other hand, almost immediately starts in with this:
O, sir, you are old.
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine: you should be ruled and led
By some discretion, that discerns your state
Better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you,
That to our sister you do make return;
Say you have wrong'd her, sir.
Yikes. I like to think of Regan as a vicious Lion (mostly because a Tiger will always be Evadne or Margaret for me...) and Goneril as a snake... and shortly after this exchange we get to see the two sisters in action together:
REGAN
I dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers?
Is it not well? What should you need of more?
GONERIL
Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
From those that she calls servants or from mine?
REGAN
Why not, my lord? If then they chanced to slack you,
We could control them. If you will come to me,--
For now I spy a danger,--I entreat you
To bring but five and twenty: to no more
Will I give place or notice.
KING LEAR
I gave you all--
(CUE MUMFORD AND SONS REFERENCE I really don't know how you can hear that song and not think of Lear...)
REGAN
And in good time you gave it.
KING LEAR
Made you my guardians, my depositaries;
But kept a reservation to be follow'd
With such a number. What, must I come to you
With five and twenty, Regan? said you so?
REGAN
And speak't again, my lord; no more with me.
The sisters continue to outbid each other on lowering the number of Knights Lear should have with him until Regan forbids him even one.
After that Lear really starts to spiral into dark places:
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks! ...
No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
The fool has no lines during the horrible exchange Lear has with his daughters but I think whatever the fool is left to do/how the reactions happen while the fool listens will speak volumes to any audience. The desperation and profound disillusionment and confusion and just... ALL THE FEELINGS.
And then THE STORM begins. but we'll really get into all that next time...
Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion.
[ Wounds his arm]
Of my more fierce endeavour: I have seen drunkards
Do more than this in sport.
(in this way he kind of reminds me of the anti-Parolles...)
Edmond then tells Gloucester how he got this wound arguing with Edgar, and how he told his brother:
Spoke, with how manifold and strong a bond
The child was bound to the father;
On the note of parents and children, can I just say that I'm interested in the nature/nurture arguments to be had about both edmond and his brother as well as cordelia and her sisters... that could be a fun classroom discussion.
Regan and her husband then join the scene and hope to turn Edgar's accusation to their own good:
REGAN
What, did my father's godson seek your life?
He whom my father named? your Edgar?
GLOUCESTER
O, lady, lady, shame would have it hid! REGAN
Was he not companion with the riotous knights That tend upon my father?
Then Cornwall offers commendations to Edmund he will probably come to regret:
For you, Edmund,
Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant
So much commend itself, you shall be ours:
Natures of such deep trust we shall much need;
You we first seize on.
2.2
Before Gloucester's gates Kent meets Osmund and gives Osmund some more fabulous insults:
OSWALD
What dost thou know me for?
KENT
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition. and then later on: Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him
Oswald is upset by this until Kent draws his sword and Oswald runs away like the fops Edmund hates.
their arguing draws a crowd and out come Regan, Cornwall, Edmund, and Gloucester.
Kent is put in the stocks and tells Gloucester not to bother pleading for him. and then, left alone on stage, Kent continues to be amazing:
To the warm sun! Approach, thou beacon to this under globe, That by thy comfortable beams I may Peruse this letter! Nothing almost sees miracles But misery: I know 'tis from Cordelia, Who hath most fortunately been inform'd Of my obscured course; and shall find time From this enormous state, seeking to give Losses their remedies.
2.3
OK, maybe act II is slightly shorter than act I, or else I reigned myself in a little after yesterday (doubtful though, my favorite parts are still to come...)
This whole scene is Edgar's chance to soliloquize and a lovely one it is, he gives us his general plan of how he's going to survive while everyone thinks him guilty of trying to kill his father:
my face I'll grime with filth; Blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots; And with presented nakedness out-face The winds and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms ... Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom! That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.
And we're back to the theme of nothing and nothingness. The greatest acts in the play get to come from those who experience this "nothing" paradox. I'm beginning to wonder if this is part of why I immediately loved playing Anne Dexter in The Queens... she is called nothing right and left...
2.4
Kent returns to Lear in the stocks and they have a dialogue that I'm fairly sure inspired dr. seuss, including:
KING LEAR
By Jupiter, I swear, no.
KENT
By Juno, I swear, ay. KING LEAR
They durst not do 't;
They could not, would not do 't
The Fool then has this little insight:
Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne'er turns the key to the poor. (does this remind anyone else of Ben from Lost and his commentary on Fortune's good friend Destiny???)
When Kent asks the fool where Lear's train went, he get's this little ditty as part of his answer:
That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm, But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy.
Eventually Lear gets to see Regan and Cornwall and remember when I said I think Regan and Goneril are quite different? Goneril had long roundabout coils of sentences blaming mostly her father's knights and was begins quite passive aggressive towards Lear, Regan on the other hand, almost immediately starts in with this:
O, sir, you are old.
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine: you should be ruled and led
By some discretion, that discerns your state
Better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you,
That to our sister you do make return;
Say you have wrong'd her, sir.
Yikes. I like to think of Regan as a vicious Lion (mostly because a Tiger will always be Evadne or Margaret for me...) and Goneril as a snake... and shortly after this exchange we get to see the two sisters in action together:
REGAN
I dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers?
Is it not well? What should you need of more?
GONERIL
Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
From those that she calls servants or from mine?
REGAN
Why not, my lord? If then they chanced to slack you,
We could control them. If you will come to me,--
For now I spy a danger,--I entreat you
To bring but five and twenty: to no more
Will I give place or notice.
KING LEAR
I gave you all--
(CUE MUMFORD AND SONS REFERENCE I really don't know how you can hear that song and not think of Lear...)
REGAN
And in good time you gave it.
KING LEAR
Made you my guardians, my depositaries;
But kept a reservation to be follow'd
With such a number. What, must I come to you
With five and twenty, Regan? said you so?
REGAN
And speak't again, my lord; no more with me.
The sisters continue to outbid each other on lowering the number of Knights Lear should have with him until Regan forbids him even one.
After that Lear really starts to spiral into dark places:
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks! ...
No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
The fool has no lines during the horrible exchange Lear has with his daughters but I think whatever the fool is left to do/how the reactions happen while the fool listens will speak volumes to any audience. The desperation and profound disillusionment and confusion and just... ALL THE FEELINGS.
And then THE STORM begins. but we'll really get into all that next time...
Friday, June 7, 2013
King Lear Act 1: Too much today. I'm in love with this play.
Intro:
So... I have already slightly messed up my order by doing Comedy of Errors before King Lear. I read Lear in anticipation of seeing it over my spring break Junior year. I was touring colleges with my soul twin and my mother and one was Pepperdine, where my dear friend Zac was in his first year and playing, if I remember correctly... the King of France? I fell in love just reading the play, so maybe that's part of why I fell in love with Pepperdine when I saw it. I remember my mom wouldn't sit through 3 hours of Shakespeare so Zac's mom offered to drive me through the canyon to our hotel after the performance so I could stay and watch. I LOVED it. It's kept a very tight grasp on my heart ever since then and many days I will say it's my favorite Shakespeare, or at least my favorite tragedy. Then, I revisited it during REN 500 and one of my favorite grad school memories is doing a group reading of this play in Grafton Library. Asae "cast" the reading and asked me to read Lear and during the storm scene everyone made the sound effects and it was so wonderful and we got so into it that the librarian had to interrupt because our sound was carrying from the enclosed study room out to the whole library. As for the class on Lear... to be honest, Professor Cohen's lecture on this play was a total blur because all I can remember is over half the class crying and crying by the end. So hold onto your tissues, and if you're a Lannister lover get ready for some ladies who can give Cersei a run for her money in femme fetale style and daddy issues...
1.1
Going right along with my Game of Thrones reference (because honestly, who ISN'T referencing it right now...) we get to start the play talking about bastards. Within the first 20 seconds of the play we hear Gloucester and Kent discussing Gloucester's bastard son Edmond. Kent immediately seems uncomfortable with the subject and I believe he tries to relieve that by playing dumb and when Gloucester then makes himself painfully clear, Kent has to try a new tactic:
So not only does Gloucester go on and on about his bastard son and how he was conceived- but surprise- did I forget to mention that Edmund has been right there this whole time!This, again, is a gold mine for an actor. What is your face giving away or witholding? Where on stage is this bastard? and do we know how much he lives up to his name? All staging/acting choices but what we do know is that from the moment he speaks there is awesomeness:
Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight!
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
So... I have already slightly messed up my order by doing Comedy of Errors before King Lear. I read Lear in anticipation of seeing it over my spring break Junior year. I was touring colleges with my soul twin and my mother and one was Pepperdine, where my dear friend Zac was in his first year and playing, if I remember correctly... the King of France? I fell in love just reading the play, so maybe that's part of why I fell in love with Pepperdine when I saw it. I remember my mom wouldn't sit through 3 hours of Shakespeare so Zac's mom offered to drive me through the canyon to our hotel after the performance so I could stay and watch. I LOVED it. It's kept a very tight grasp on my heart ever since then and many days I will say it's my favorite Shakespeare, or at least my favorite tragedy. Then, I revisited it during REN 500 and one of my favorite grad school memories is doing a group reading of this play in Grafton Library. Asae "cast" the reading and asked me to read Lear and during the storm scene everyone made the sound effects and it was so wonderful and we got so into it that the librarian had to interrupt because our sound was carrying from the enclosed study room out to the whole library. As for the class on Lear... to be honest, Professor Cohen's lecture on this play was a total blur because all I can remember is over half the class crying and crying by the end. So hold onto your tissues, and if you're a Lannister lover get ready for some ladies who can give Cersei a run for her money in femme fetale style and daddy issues...
1.1
Going right along with my Game of Thrones reference (because honestly, who ISN'T referencing it right now...) we get to start the play talking about bastards. Within the first 20 seconds of the play we hear Gloucester and Kent discussing Gloucester's bastard son Edmond. Kent immediately seems uncomfortable with the subject and I believe he tries to relieve that by playing dumb and when Gloucester then makes himself painfully clear, Kent has to try a new tactic:
KENT
I cannot conceive you.
GLOUCESTER
Sir, this young fellow's mother
could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son
for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?
KENT
I cannot wish the fault undone, the
issue of it being so proper.
GLOUCESTER
But I have, sir, a son by order of
law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this
noble gentleman, Edmund?
noble gentleman, Edmund?
KENT
I must love you, and sue to know you
better.
EDMUND
Sir, I shall study deserving.
Add that to sayings for our etsy shop. "I shall study deserving" brilliance.
Shortly thereafter, the King and the rest of the royal family enter and after sending Gloucester to grab Cordelia's potential husbands we get the gist of the set up for the rest of the play:
KING LEAR
Meantime we shall express our darker
purpose.
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death.
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death.
OK, this makes sense to me... why you would rather not still be Kinging it up when you are really old. But I was also pro-Pope Benedict stepping down. Where the trouble seems to come is here:
Tell me,
my daughters,--
Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state,--
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,
Our eldest-born, speak first.
Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state,--
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,
Our eldest-born, speak first.
Dude... YOU NEVER divide a kingdom between rulers. House divided not standing and whatnot. Never good for the people of the realm. Clash of Kings and all that (or QUEENS?!) I get that you didn't have a son and the patriarchal inheriting thing is proving tricky for you but still... and THEN you are going to base the dividing of your country on how well people can flatter you? Even if this was somehow an exercise in how much people legit love you instead of claiming they do this is still a TERRIBLE idea. But Lear doesn't see that. and at this point no one is speaking up about it so on we go.
GONERIL
Sir, I love you more than words can
wield the matter;
Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e'er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e'er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
CORDELIA
[Aside] What shall Cordelia do?
Love, and be silent.
OK, so Goneril's speech is really beautiful. Beautiful enough that its one of those speeches that out of context, if you don't know what's coming, she seems like this lovely daughter, or hell, you could steal that, cut the lines about children and fathers and use that on your significant other. it's great. But you know Cordelia is a winner straight off b/c she uses these simplistic lines that you almost miss if you aren't paying attention, and they hold these grains of incredible wisdom. Love, and be silent- it's very "preach the gospel at all times, when necessary use words" to me. (of course the when necessary part Cordelia never quite accomplishes)Love, and be silent.
Moving on to the last sister, Regan uses the opportunity to piggy back on Goneril's clear success:
REGAN
I find she names my very deed of love;
Only she comes too short: that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys,
Which the most precious square of sense possesses;
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear highness' love.
Only she comes too short: that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys,
Which the most precious square of sense possesses;
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear highness' love.
CORDELIA
[Aside] Then poor Cordelia!
And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love's
More richer than my tongue.
And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love's
More richer than my tongue.
I will say right now that it always astounds me that people confuse Goneril and Regan and I think they are very different in their manners and cruelty. but more on that as the play progresses.
Now HERE's a twist. going along with the theme of talking about things you maybe shouldn't in front of your children, Lear says IN FRONT OF EVERYONE including his two other daughters that Cordelia is his favorite. He calls her his joy. He says although she was born last she is not least, etc. then the trouble starts:
KING LEAR
what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak
again.
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth
My heart into my mouth
I hear the nothing will come of nothing line in casual speech all the time, some from people knowingly referencing this and some from people I'm pretty sure have no idea it's even Shakespeare. and every time I want to tell them "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth". I LOVE that. There's something so perfectly painful and beautiful about not being able to express just how important someone is to you. Cordelia goes on to talk about how not marrying and not having a husband shows that she loves her father more. Logic that I find troubling... and again all this in front of her sisters who are both married and who she calls out for being married. Not the nicest sisterly thing to do but who knows what the sisterly history is there...
Lear then freaks the flip out and disowns Cordelia, and Kent finally speaks up against the madness and what is Lear's response?:
KING LEAR
Peace, Kent!Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight!
Again, not being subtle with the who the favorite child was here...
KENT
Thy
youngest daughter does not love thee least;
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.
KING LEAR
Kent, on thy life, no more.
KENT
My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being the motive.
Kent is not killed but banished and then the marrying off of Cordelia commences. Burgundy goes first but for him it was all about the dowry apparently because now he's not thrilled with marrying cordelia. France, though, steps it up:To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being the motive.
KING OF FRANCE
Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being
poor;Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
So Cordelia is about to leave for France and her goodbye with her sisters is less than tender:
GONERIL
You have obedience scanted,
And well are worth the want that you have wanted.
And well are worth the want that you have wanted.
Once Cordelia leaves the true colors come through:
REGAN
'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet
he hath ever but slenderly known himself.
GONERIL
The best and soundest of his time
hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.
1.2
My current FAVORITE male monogue- Edmond's stand up for bastard's speech. If you have any love of Shakespeare You should go read/memorize it all. It's certainly on my list. Here's a higlight:
Why
bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
OK, so that was more than just a higlight, that was at least half the speech, but COME ON it is SOOOO GOOD!!!! and you really can't beat this speech for teaching alliteration and the beauty of plosive consonants
So, much like Richard III, Edmond has this kind of sex appeal based out of his utter honesty with being a villain. Unlike Richard III he shares his reasons and they are pretty interesting/ good discussion points. Succession passing only through married issue, being born strong and feisty, etc.
So then Gloucester comes in and Edmond begins his work screwing over his brother using a fake letter and reverse psychology.
Gloucester seems to blame the universe/the weather for all this hubbub:
These late eclipses in the sun and
moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father.
Edmond immediately makes fun of this:
This is the excellent foppery of the
world, that, when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
Did you notice that was all one sentence? (according to the punctuation of this edition at least) Edmond has an incredible way of words and using complex structure to make his point. Probably something else that I think makes him sexy.
Edmond's brother Edgar (yeah, that's not confusing for new people. Shakespeare loves his super similar names doesn't he?) enters and there's an incredible bit of dramatic irony as edgar tries to figure out what's wrong and confides in his scheming brother:
EDGAR
Some villain hath done me wrong.
EDMUND
That's my fear.
After toying with Edgar a bit more, Edmund has another badass soliloquy:
A credulous father! and a brother
noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms,
That he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty
My practises ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
Whose nature is so far from doing harms,
That he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty
My practises ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
Add that to the etsy list: all with me's meet that I can fashion fit. Perfect.
1.3
a short scene where Goneril meets with Oswald (I knew there was a reason I took so much time to trust the original disney rabbit) and basically plans to intentionally piss her dad off enough that he will leave her place early and go to her sister's.
1.4
The execution of Goneril's plan. Kent comes back disguised to keep serving the king even though he's banished. I love love love Kent's lines. When Lear asks what he wants with him the answer is:
to serve him truly that will put me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.
the comedic "and to eat no fish" is actor gold.
maybe I just love Kent because I've been meditating on service quite a bit recently. There's a lot of discipleship language in this play and beautiful moments of agape so that's on my mind and heart a lot as I read through these scenes.
There's also some heartbreaking moments and quick turns from Lear throughout this scene:
KING LEAR
But where's my fool? I have not seen him this two days.
But where's my fool? I have not seen him this two days.
Knight
Since my young lady's going into
France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.
KING LEAR
No more of that; I have noted it
well.
The switch between no more of that -the not wanting to think of Cordelia to the I have noted it well, it cannot be ignored is incredible. Cordelia's absence permeates this play.
Of course, this play also shows some horrific and cruel sides of humanity, and along with that there are some FANTASTIC curses. Let's start with Lear's:
'My
lady's father'! my lord's knave: your whoreson dog! you slave! you cur! …
and then Kent's very odd but delightful one:
… you base football player.
When Lear's fool does come onto the scene he is very pointed and beautiful and odd. He is constantly shaming the choice to divide his kingdom and give his crown away. there are also echoes of cordelia throughout:
KENT
This is nothing, fool.
Fool
Then 'tis like the breath of an
unfee'd lawyer; you gave me nothing for't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
KING LEAR
Why, no, boy; nothing can be made
out of nothing.
(Something to consider: a common doubling in this play is Cordelia with the Fool. So that makes this exchange even better...)
and there's this:
and there's this:
KING LEAR
Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool
All thy other titles thou hast given
away; that
thou wast born with.
thou wast born with.
KENT
This is not altogether fool, my
lord.
Going back to the Nothing theme, the fool has this speech:
I marvel what kin thou and thy
daughters are:
they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt
have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am
whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any
kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be
thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides,
and left nothing i' the middle:
they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt
have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am
whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any
kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be
thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides,
and left nothing i' the middle:
Goneril enters and in a very wordy, roundabout way tells her father to go away and that she wont put up with his knights anymore Lear's response is killer:
Are you our daughter?
followed by:
KING LEAR
Doth any here know me? This is not
Lear:
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied--Ha! waking? 'tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied--Ha! waking? 'tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Fool
Lear's shadow.
That exchange gives me chills. And what a pertinent question. Who is it that can tell me who I am?
So Lear decides to leave:
Darkness and devils!
Saddle my horses; call my train together:
Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee.
Yet have I left a daughter.
Saddle my horses; call my train together:
Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee.
Yet have I left a daughter.
…
O most small fault,
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!
That, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature
From the fix'd place; drew from heart all love,
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!
That, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature
From the fix'd place; drew from heart all love,
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,
And
thy dear judgment out!
Firstly, Darkness and devils is SUCH a good swear! Secondly, I always wonder if the yet have I left a daughter is about Cordelia not Reagan. Finally, watching an actor beat at his head (especially in a play written after the onstage insanity in Tamburlaine...) is always a tense and heightened experience for an audience member. and a challenge for an actor.
Of course, Lear won't go before he places this horrifying curse on Goneril:
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess,
hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her
and then one of the most famous lines of the play:
How sharper than a serpent's tooth
it is
To have a thankless child!
But amid all the horrible, angry things, the lines that break my heart in this scene (aside from the ones I addressed above about Lear's shadow):To have a thankless child!
Life
and death! I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them.
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them.
Life and death is another awesome swear. and the sentiment that I wish i wouldn't cry because you are not worth my tears is so painful on both sides. Meanwhile, poor Albany seems totally clueless about all that has just happened and ends the scene with trying to keep his wife in check:
How far your eyes may pierce I can
not tell:
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
1.5
The journey to Reagan's is about to commence and there's more heartbreaking interchange between Lear and his fool:
KING LEAR
I did her wrong--
Fool
Canst tell how an oyster makes his
shell?
KING LEAR
No.
Fool
Nor I neither; but I can tell why a
snail has a house.
KING LEAR
Why?
Fool
Why, to put his head in; not to give
it away to his
daughters, and leave his horns without a case.
It kills me that Lear recognizes his mistake so early in the play but does nothing to remedy the situation. Whether it is pride that keeps him from reaching out to Cordelia or that he's convinced that she would reject his apology or what.daughters, and leave his horns without a case.
Fool
If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I'ld
have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
KING LEAR
How's that?
Fool
Thou shouldst not have been old till
thou hadst been wise.
And then an incredible performance line for an actor to walk:
KING LEAR
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet
heaven
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!
How wonderful that instead of trying to play mad you get to play fighting for your sanity. SO. BEAUTIFUL. and so strong to actively choose to fight the madness which would probably be a lot of emotional comfort given the situation.
And that's Act I. Buckle up because all the acts are at least this long and I'm in love with ALL OF IT so there are a lot of lines I want to include. And here's a picture of the Pepperdine production of Lear that I saw a decade ago (and somehow i've never seen a production of lear since... must remedy that):
Additionally... I have been delayed in posting as I have been lesson planning fairly constantly for the four classes I am teaching at Brophy this summer. I am so excited to share my love of theatre with these wonderful young people in a community of faith!!
Additionally... I have been delayed in posting as I have been lesson planning fairly constantly for the four classes I am teaching at Brophy this summer. I am so excited to share my love of theatre with these wonderful young people in a community of faith!!
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