The Tragedy of King Lear
The Year of Lear | Lear front matter
The Tragedy of King Lear
The last podcast I listened to summed it up one way, I liked, “Sad, then maybe not so sad, but then, very sad. Or sadder, still.”
The Tragedy of King Lear
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 scourg’d by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d ’twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there’s son against father: the King falls from bias of nature; there’s father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund, it shall lose thee nothing, do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish’d! His offense, honesty! ’Tis strange.
Gloucester 1.2.57
I tried recording just that line, and the one after it, and each take I did? I would stumble. Makes me more in awe of the current group reading at Winedale Shakespeare.
The Tragedy of King Lear
It’s been a very long time since I last saw Lear. 20 years or more? At the time, it was almost too painful to watch, as I was still sorting through issues with my own father. And my own father used to compare himself to King Lear, Shakespeare’s main character from the play usually titled, The Tragedy of King Lear. Makes me wonder what he was driving at.
The Tragedy of King Lear
The crew, class, group of this year’s actors? Superlative job with their version of Lear. The delivery was good, and on the way to the show, we drove through a brief smattering of rain, so during Lear’s thunderstorm, the madmen on the heath, when the prop rain started to fall, I was sure it was raining. Mostly, though, that was due to me being caught up in the action — language and action — the acting — on stage. Really talented group, and very evocative show.
The Tragedy of King Lear
Shakespeare. Oh yeah, play doesn’t end well. In this one version’s amazing production, though, there was some sense of catharsis, which might’ve been the original intent.
The Tragedy of King Lear
2017 Cow
