Category: King Lear

King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies and has been a cornerstone of Western literature for centuries. Its enduring importance lies in its exploration of universal themes such as power, betrayal, family, and the human condition. The play challenges traditional notions of hierarchy and exposes the flaws and vulnerabilities of those in positions of authority. King Lear also delves into the complexities of human relationships, particularly the bond between parent and child, and the consequences of greed and ambition. Its profound insight into human nature has resonated with audiences and influenced countless literary works, films, and other art forms. Its themes and characters continue to be relevant to contemporary society and have sparked discussions on topics such as mental health, aging, and societal injustice. King Lear‘s enduring impact on Western society is a testament to its powerful storytelling, complex characters, and timeless themes.

Browse the text of King Lear entire play here.

Shakespeare Geek’s Top 10 Shakespeare Plays

~ duane ~ 10 Comments

Over the years I’ve seen many Shakespeare lists.  Instead of linking to yet another one I thought it would be fun to combine several and come up with my own, the Shakespeare Geek Top 10.  This is not my opinion, this is the mathematical analysis (according to my own algorithm :)) from a variety of places, some here and some elsewhere, that people have voted on a general “top 10” for Shakespeare’s plays.

How you define “best” is up to you and I fully expect that people use different scales all the time.  That’s why I’m looking at it statistically – if most people pick Dream as the best play, then does it really matter why they think they picked it?

Ready?

#10. The Tempest.   Maybe it’s the fascination with “Shakespeare’s last play”, maybe the fairy tale, happy ending nature of the story (I know it’s the latter that gets my vote), but I’m happy to see one of my favorites just make the top 10.
#9. Julius Caesar.  I appreciate that this is one of the great tragedies that most of us will read in high school, but I was surprised at the showing it made.  I don’t understand.  If the Twilight lady announced that she was filming a new version of Julius Caesar I’d bet you can hear the crickets chirp.

#8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I know there are folks out there who will put Dream up against Hamlet as one of the best, and I have to concur.  I’ve ranted at times that I get sick of seeing it, but really, as I called it the other week after seeing a production, it’s “pretty near perfect on the page.”

#7. Richard III.  I’m not familiar enough with this one to have cast a vote on it.  Tell me why you love it?  Just the evilness of the title character, or something more?

#6. Henry V.  Do we all love it because of the Crispin’s Day speech and the Muse of Fire, or is there more to it?

#5. Romeo and Juliet.  Now we get into some of the more obvious ones, will there be any surprises in the top 5? Does Romeo and Juliet deserve a spot this high or is it just because we’re all so familiar with this high school favorite?

#4. Othello.  I’ve seen many people speak of Othello as one of the great underrated tragedies, and I have to agree.  When you really take the time to dig into it, it’s far better than the more shallow analysis might suggest.

#3. Macbeth. Glad to see the Scottish play fare so well, it’s one of my top choices.

…and the big question *still* not answered:

#1 King Lear and Hamlet
We have a statistical tie for the #1 spot with Hamlet and King Lear both getting the exact same score!  (That just means I need more data, hint hint hint.)

Disclaimer : Only 7 of my top 10 made the final list, so I’m not skewing the results to my own personal choices.

I can’t say there are many surprises.  If I pulled it out to a top 15 we’d start to see some of the popular comedies, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night … but at some point I run out of numbers to make a meaningful argument, too.

Disagree?  Make your own top 10 and post it in the comments!  I’d love to keep my statistics up to date and have a true and accurate top 10 list, as defined by the audience of Shakespeare geeks as a whole and not just one person’s personal opinion.  I may have even added you already, if you’ve made a list. Who knows? 🙂

Daddy, Can I Read Your Book?

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That’s what my 3yr old asked me this morning while I was getting ready to go to work.

“Sure,” I told her.

The thing is, the book was King Lear. More specifically, it was one of the comic versions of Shakespeare that I have.  I also have The Tempest as I’ve mentioned, Taming of the Shrew, and Romeo and Juliet. In general I have refused to actually read them the story of King Lear, as we don’t do that degree of violence in my house (hence my emphasis on the non-violent Tempest).

But she does like to look at the pictures.  So there she sat, doing her morning business, flipping through the pages.  Like any 3yr old she was also carrying around what if she were a boy I would call “action figures” – small statues of her favorite Disney princesses, including Belle and Ariel.

“Her name is Cordelia,” my daughter tells me, pointing at the Belle figure.    Then she points to the cover of the book and asks, “Is that Cordelia with the red hair?”

I look at the cover and sure enough, Cordelia is in fact the one with the red hair.  “That is Cordelia,” I tell her.  “And those are her sisters, Regan and Goneril.”

I think I reached her limit, though, as I never heard the names of the evil sisters mentioned.  She did go off playing, speaking of Cordelia’s friends Jossa, Brak and Ryda, which I thought was rather unusual.  At first I thought she was getting in to the imaginary friends stage (her older sister’s imaginary friends were named Cartlyn, Neejin and Lonoze).  But then I wondered if maybe hearing all the weird names in Shakespeare that she hears nowhere else, she’s tuned to thinking that names can in fact be any stream of sound, and not just repetition of the same names she’s heard over and over again.

 

King Lear : Lebanon, NH

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

So today, Kerry and I drove 100 miles (each way!) to go see a performance of King Lear.  

I’d never seen an actual production of the play – I’ve certainly read it and read about it, and in college, I had a movie version that I honestly can’t remember watching through to completion.  But to repeat a phrase I found myself saying to friends and coworkers for the past month, “But it’s King Lear for God’s sake!”  How could I miss that?

Having never seen a production before, I have no frame of reference to really explain what I saw.  The King was portrayed as very….frail?  Downright skeletal, really.  A very gaunt old man.  Trembled quite badly.  I’m not sure that’s what I expected.  I thought that there would be flashes of a true king (particularly when he was angry), but really, he was pretty much a very old and weak man from the very first scene.  When he did get angry, it was more or less “indignant”, if that makes sense. 

Let me put it as a question.  The famous quote, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!”…how is it typically portrayed?  I always thought such a line would be strong, forceful, and defiant.  What I got was….well, bargaining.  “Go ahead and blow, wind.  Nice wind.”  That sort of thing. I was much more impressed with the acting of Gloucester, Burgundy, Kent, and Edgar.  Those four, in particular, were not afraid to put a little energy (and volume!) into their performance.  You knew when they were angry or sad.  The actor doing Edgar, I thought, did a particularly fine job of conveying emotion via facial expressions.

At over 3 hours, it was longer than I expected, but maybe that’s my fault.  I think the audience was a little desperate for a laugh – during the very final scene when Edgar announces that Edmund is dead and Burgundy says, “That is a mere trifle to us now” (or something similar to that), that was actually one of the bigger laughs of the night.  During the final scene of a great Shakespearean tragedy.  Hmmmm. I was trying to listen closely to Lear’s last words.  Nobody was making much of an effort to project to the back row, so when he whispered, you practically had to read his lips.  I was watching for references to a feather but heard none.  I did hear “Look on her, look, her lips, look there!” and I could swear one of the lines was “Her lips move”, but that’s not in my copy of the script so I’m not sure if I heard it wrong. 

Somebody tell me – does Lear die thinking that Cordelia is still alive, or merely wishing that she were?  Or is that dependent on how the last line is played? I know that Rosenbaum had much to say on the different versions, but I don’t have the time right now to dig through that audio interview to find the actual comments (and my book is not at hand). All in all I’m glad I saw the play, because now I have a baseline from which to look at other Lears.   

King Lear as a graph, for your convenience

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

Who killed whom, and who merely betrayed whom in King Lear? Now you can see it all in one easy graph. Comes with a description of all the characters and relationships so you can follow along a little more deeply than just “Oh, green means married, ok…”

I’ve always thought it would be neat to have this sort of “map” for the plays. Naturally not as the only way you read the play, of course. More like a roadmap so that when you think you’re lost you can refer back to it and gain some confidence that you understand what’s going on.