"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.
No comments:
Post a Comment