Download King Lear - Young Vic

A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Contents
1. Synopsis
2
2. Cast List
6
3. A Play of its Time: Shakespeare in 1606
8
4. Interview with Director, Rupert Goold
13
5. Staging Lear
16
6. Interview with Lighting Designer, Howard Harrison
23
7. Playing Lear
24
8. Interview with King Lear, Pete Postlethwaite
26
9. ‘This great stage of fools’: Madness and Lear
27
10. Interview with Edgar, Tobias Menzies
31
11. Interview with the Fool, Forbes Masson
33
12. Women in Lear
35
13. Interview with Cordelia, Amanda Hale
37
14. Production Shots
39
15. Suggested Questions for Discussion
44
16. Bibliography, Recommended Reading and Useful Internet Links
46
If you have any questions or comments about this Resource Pack please contact us:
The Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London, SE1 8LZ
T: 020 7922 2800 f: 020 7922 2802 e: [email protected]
Written by Isobel Simons www.isobelsimons.co.uk
Education Programme Supported by
© Young Vic 2009
First performed at the Liverpool Everyman on October 30th 2008
First performed at the Young Vic on January 29th 2009
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
1. SYNOPSIS
Act One
The play opens with Kent, Gloucester and Edmond discussing King Lear’s plans to divide his kingdom between his
daughters. We also learn that Edmond is Gloucester’s illegitimate son, but that Gloucester sees him as an equal to
his legitimate half-brother Edgar.
The ageing King Lear arrives and immediately asks his daughters to describe how much they love him; the
daughter who says she loves him the most will receive the greatest portion of the land. When Goneril and Regan
both speak eloquently of their supposed love for their father, they are allotted generous portions of his estate.
When it is his youngest and favourite daughter, Cordelia’s turn to speak, she refuses to resort to the insincere
flattery her sisters employed, but is instead reticent, claiming to love her father ‘according to [her] bond’. Lear is
furious with her answer and disinherits her completely, claiming that she has lost her place as his daughter. He
divides her portion between the other two sisters and outlines his plan to retire from the throne in all but name,
placing himself entirely in his two older daughters’ care. Both Goneril and Regan are married, so it is in fact their
husbands who will control the estates. We soon learn that Goneril’s husband, the Duke of Albany, is inclined to be
gentle towards Lear in his old age. On the other hand, Regan’s husband, the Duke of Cornwall, is keen to see
Lear’s powers destroyed.
The only person to speak out on Cordelia’s behalf is Kent, Lear’s faithful subject and friend, but in a rage Lear
banishes him from the kingdom. However, Kent is devoted to Lear and later returns disguised as a servant, Caius,
winning his way into the King’s service once again.
To complete his rejection of Cordelia, Lear even refuses to provide her with a dowry for her future marriage. One
of Cordelia’s suitors, Burgundy, is deterred by this and withdraws his offer of marriage. The other, the King of
France, is truly in love with Cordelia and is moved to protect her after the treatment at her father’s hands. He
takes her back to France as his wife despite her lack of a dowry.
During this time, Edmond has been plotting to discredit his brother Edgar in the eyes of their father Gloucester.
He forges a letter from Edgar stating a plan to overthrow their father. Edmond shows the letter to Gloucester, who
is surprised that his gentle and noble son Edgar could harbour such evil desires. The seeds of doubt that Edmond
has sown in his impressionable father’s mind gradually begin to grow.
Some time later we see Lear staying with Goneril. He is now dependent on her mercy, but she has already turned
against him and tries to force him to leave by instructing all her servants to treat Lear and his followers with
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
disrespect. When Lear realises that he is not wanted, he curses Goneril and leaves for Regan’s house, hoping to
find greater comfort there.
Act Two
Meanwhile, Edmond carries out the second part of his plot against his brother. He manages to convince Edgar to
draw his sword on him and then urges his brother to leave. Once Edgar has fled, Edmund cuts his own arm so that
it looks as though Edgar has wounded him. At this moment their father Gloucester arrives. Gloucester falls for the
trick. He declares that the innocent Edgar must be executed and allots all of Edgar’s future inheritance to
Edmond. As Edgar flees, he discovers that he is being hunted down by his own father. In despair, he takes on the
disguise of a mad beggar called ‘Poor Tom’, hoping that this will save his life.
The villains of the play begin to join forces as Regan and her husband, Cornwall, show their support of Edmond by
inviting him into their service. Meanwhile, Lear’s party has arrived at Regan’s house, and Kent, now disguised as
Lear’s servant, goes ahead as a messenger. Seeking to challenge the two older sisters’ treatment of Lear, he
becomes embroiled in an argument with Oswald, one of Goneril’s servants. When Cornwall comes across the feud,
he is only too happy to place Lear’s ‘servant’ Kent in the stocks, further humiliating Lear.
When Lear arrives, he cannot at first believe that Regan and Cornwall would mistreat one of his servants, but as
the truth slowly dawns on him, he begins to go mad. On talking to Regan, he discovers that she not only supports
the way Goneril treated him, but also plans to be even more inhospitable; on asking to stay with her with his one
hundred knights, she informs him that she will allow only twenty five. When Goneril arrives, they both agree that
they will not allow Lear to keep any of his followers if he stays with them. As Lear realises the extent of his
daughters’ betrayal, ingratitude and unkindness, a fierce storm breaks outside. Weeping and fearing madness, he
goes with his followers into the storm.
Act Three
Whilst Lear, alone except for his Fool, has been raging in the storm, rumours have been gathering: Cornwall and
Albany are forming a bitter rivalry and there is word that Cordelia and the King of France are planning an armed
invasion. As Lear and the Fool are joined by Kent, who urges them to take shelter in a hovel, Gloucester sends a
secret message to Lear about Cordelia’s plans, but he unfortunately sends treacherous Edmond as his messenger,
who instead informs Cornwall immediately. Cornwall promises to support Edmond fully if he helps to have
Gloucester arrested.
Meanwhile out in the storm, Poor Tom joins Lear’s party. Lear is captivated by the philosophical nature of Poor
Tom’s mad outpourings, and he attempts to remove his clothes in order to imitate him. Gloucester has also arrived,
hoping to persuade Lear to seek refuge in Dover. Strangely, he does not recognise his son in the madman Tom.
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Eventually, after resting in a hovel, Lear is taken to Dover by Kent, but when Gloucester leaves them, he is
captured by Cornwall’s men as a traitor. Cornwall advises Edmond that he will not wish to see Gloucester’s
punishment.
With news arriving that France has invaded England, Cornwall and Regan interrogate Gloucester, gouging out
both his eyes and killing one of his servants. As Gloucester is thrown out, Cornwall discovers that he has been
injured in the violence.
Act Four
Edgar, still playing the part of Poor Tom, discovers his blinded father and becomes his guide, leading him to Dover
in pursuit of Lear. As they travel, Gloucester despairs at the way he treated Edgar and muses on the unjust nature
of society. Meanwhile, Goneril’s peaceful husband Albany has joined forces with France. This enrages Goneril, who
sees her husband as weak, and she declares her preference for Edmond as a partner. When she discovers that
Cornwall has died from his injuries, she suspects that Regan will become her rival for Edmond’s affections, and
this is indeed the case.
In Dover, Cordelia, who is based in the French camp, has sent out soldiers to find Lear. Gloucester has also
arrived, planning to throw himself from the cliffs, but Edgar has tricked him into thinking he has climbed up to a
cliff’s edge. When Gloucester goes to fall, Edgar ‘catches’ him, pretending to be a passer-by on the beach below. In
his blindness and distress, Gloucester is easily fooled, and decides he will not attempt death again. As he does this,
Lear appears, wearing wild flowers and raving. As Lear and Gloucester talk, Lear recognises his old friend, but the
two men are too damaged to offer one another much sympathy. When the soldiers arrive to bring Lear to Cordelia,
he runs away. Goneril’s servant Oswald then appears with orders to murder Gloucester, but Edgar fights and kills
him. As Oswald dies, he gives Edgar a letter addressed to Edmond. In it, Goneril asks Edmond to kill Albany and
marry her.
Meanwhile, the soldiers have captured Lear and brought him to Cordelia. He recognises her and asks for
forgiveness, which she gives freely.
Act Five
With Britain under attack by France, feuding between the two camps reaches its peak. When Edmond succeeds in
arresting and condemning to death both Cordelia and Lear, Albany takes a stand against him and demands that he
hand over the prisoners, though Edmond delays taking action. As all this is taking place, Regan and Edmond
become betrothed, but Albany forbids the union and accuses Edmond and Goneril of adultery. In the ensuing
quarrel, Goneril succeeds in poisoning Regan, and later kills herself.
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Into this scene of chaos, Edgar appears armed and challenges Edmund to a duel, wounding him fatally. Edgar tells
Edmund that their father, Gloucester, died happily after Edgar had revealed himself to him. As Edmund dies, he
confesses all his crimes and is persuaded to send a messenger to cancel the death warrants for Cordelia and Lear.
At the same time, news arrives that Goneril has killed herself and Regan has also died from poison. However,
before the cancelled death warrants can be announced, Lear enters with the hanged Cordelia in his arms: it is too
late. Albany restores the throne to Lear, but he is destroyed by grief and dies as he embraces Cordelia’s lifeless
body. The future of the kingdom of Britain looks uncertain.
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
2. CAST AND CREATIVE TEAMS
Creative Team
Direction
Rupert Goold
Set Design
Giles Cadle
Costume Design
Nicki Gillibrand
Lighting Design
Howard Harrison
Composer and Sound Designer
Adam Cork
Video and Projection Design
Lorna Heavey
Assistant Director
Lisa Spirling
Cast
The Royal House of Britain
Lear Pete Postlethwaite
The King of Britain. Now elderly, he plans to divide his land and rule between his daughters.
Goneril Caroline Faber
His eldest daughter, married to Albany.
Regan Charlotte Randle
His second daughter, married to Cornwall.
Cordelia Amanda Hale
His youngest daughter, later married to the King of France.
Duke of Albany Michael Colgan
Goneril’s husband.
Duke of Cornwall Clarence Smith
Regan’s husband.
The Gloucester Family
Earl of Gloucester John Shrapnel
An old friend of Lear.
Edgar Tobias Menzies
Gloucester’s elder son and heir to the earldom.
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Edmund Jonjo O'Neill
Gloucester’s younger, illegitimate son.
Other Characters
Fool Forbes Masson
In King Lear’s service.
Earl of Kent Nigel Cook
In King Lear’s service. He is later disguised as the servant Caius.
Duke of Burgundy John-Paul MacLeod
Cordelia’s suitor.
King of France Christopher Middleton
Cordelia’s suitor, later her husband.
Oswald Peter Bramhill
Goneril’s steward.
The Boy Jacob Anderson
Lear’s servant
Curan John-Paul MacLeod
A courtier
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
3. A PLAY OF ITS TIME: SHAKESPEARE IN 1606
William Shakespeare
Dating the Play and its Publication
The first recorded mention of King Lear is in the Stationer’s Register on 26th November 1607 where it states that
the play was performed the previous St. Stephen’s Night at Whitehall. This would have been a celebratory
performance before King James I as part of his Christmas festivities, and the actors would have been
Shakespeare’s own company, ‘The King’s Men’. Three years before this, James I had granted a royal patent to the
players, allowing them to perform almost monthly in front of the King.
Just seven years before this, the Globe, a magnificent open-air theatre, had opened on the River Thames in
Bankside, London. So alongside their performance at court, the King’s Men would undoubtedly have presented the
play to the public in the more raucous and bawdy setting of the Globe Theatre.
The text of King Lear has puzzled academics, perhaps more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. There are two
very different, and no amount of scholarly detective work has succeeded in discovering which, if either, is the more
authentic text. Shakespeare probably wrote the play between 1603 and 1606 and it was first published as a Quarto
edition in 1608. Some scholars believe that he later rewrote the play. This is because a markedly more polished
version of the text appeared in Folio in 1623. Other critics attribute this text to other sources.
With any of Shakespeare’s plays, there is significant scope for textual controversy, not least because they often
found their way from the page to stage in a number of ways. For example, the actors were handed their parts
separately on scrolls and once they had begun rehearsals, a prompter recorded the actors’ memorised renditions of
the lines, including reminders of exits and entrances. This production manual would have been collated with other
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
similar ones for the publishers. Therefore, the texts of the plays that we have now are not always the work of one
single pen as we might like to imagine. King Lear is probably the most marked example of this.
As is usual in productions of King Lear, the creative team behind this production have chosen to use both versions
to create their script, a decision they feel is valid, based on the ‘history of textual corruption’ (Ben Power, script
editor).
King Leir of Britain
Like Macbeth and Cymbeline, which were written at a similar time, King Lear is set in a semi-legendary early
Britain. As with all of his plays, Shakespeare drew heavily on a variety of texts for his subject matter. King Lear,
or Leir, was the stuff of myth and legend. The elderly king had been written about since Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
The History of England in 1136. More recently, just fifteen years prior to Shakespeare’s play, he had been the
subject of an anonymous play called The True Chronicle History of King Leir. This Leir does divide his kingdom
unwisely between his daughters, but the play ends happily without tragedy or death. In Shakespeare’s King Lear,
events unfold into a fully blown tragedy. This was Shakespeare’s trademark: to take a relatively straightforward
story and reinvent it with tension, psychological depth and a cast of fully realised and complex characters.
There were reasons why Shakespeare’s choice of the legend of King Leir might have seemed appropriate at the
time. James I had arrived on the throne of England as James VI of Scotland, thereby uniting the British Isles
under one rule. When the King saw the play performed in his palace, he would undoubtedly have been delighted to
witness the ill consequences of a foolishly divided kingdom. Where James I drew England together, King Lear tore
it apart. Whilst Lear suffered every conceivable horror as a result of his foolishness, James, as a far wiser
monarch, hoped to reap the rewards of good governance.
When the King’s Men performed King Lear before the King in Whitehall, it was in all their interests to leave the
King feeling thoroughly satisfied. The players needed royal patronage to pay the bills and ensure the
commissioning of future productions. In fact, just one year before King Lear was first performed, Shakespeare had
purchased tithes in Stratford. He was clearly setting up his financial security, and earning a living would have been
of paramount importance to him. Impressing the King was crucial.
The subject matter of King Lear also marked a departure from the plays Shakespeare had been writing during
Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Up until this point he had focused on chronicling the recent history of England’s
monarchy, mirroring the concerns of the day, such as the issue of inheritance and hereditary right. In 1606, now
that the tortured question of Queen Elizabeth’s successor had been peacefully resolved, Britain was enjoying a time
of relative calm and reassurance, unlike the Britain of King Lear, divided and close to civil war. With James I’s
peaceful succession, Shakespeare turned with this play, as well as with Macbeth and Cymbeline, to Britain in its
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
entirety. Perhaps there was new interest in the mystical history of the ancient isle. Perhaps he chose the subject
matter as a token of respect to the Scottish King. It might also have represented a sense of optimism about the
future of Britain, which expressed itself in a celebration of its long shared history.
King James I
Tragedy
In both the Greek and Roman cultures, tragedy was the lifeblood of the theatre. In early English theatre, however,
tragedy did not feature as a genre at all. Until the reign of Henry VIII and the start of the English Renaissance,
plays were mainly connected with the church and consisted largely of morality tales and biblical retellings. In the
early part of the sixteenth century however, as the theatre began to become acceptable outside of the Church, a
desire for more gritty, gruesome and complex tales led playwrights to the tragedians of Greece and Rome. By the
time Shakespeare was writing, tragedies were a highly popular art form and there were two quite different
traditions to follow: the Roman, following in the footsteps of Seneca and his violent revenge tragedies, and the
Greek, with the more psychologically driven framework set down by Aristotle in his Poetics.
In many respects, King Lear follows the format of a traditional Aristotelian tragedy, as described in his Poetics.
Lear has a tragic flaw or ‘hamartia’ in his character, which expresses itself from the very first scene of the play.
Lear disinherits Cordelia because she will not describe her love for him as her sisters do. This one proud action
triggers the calamities that follow.
He gradually experiences an ‘anagnorisis’ or a recognition of his flaw when he begins to see the evil consequences
of his actions. He first feels madness coming over him as a result of being insulted by his two elder daughters. The
moment when he openly acknowledges his mistakes comes later in the play when he is reunited with Cordelia.
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
He is subject to a ‘peripeteia’ or reversal of fortune when Cordelia comes to England to save his Kingdom and
restore order, but as is prescribed in tragedy, this salvation comes too late, and Lear is already too deeply
embedded in his madness. Despite the breakdown of order, there is a glimmer of hope that both Cordelia and
Lear’s lives will be saved when the dying Edmond sends a messenger to reverse their death sentence, but again,
this comes too late, and Lear’s tragic demise becomes inevitable.
According to Aristotle, the audience should experience a ‘catharsis’ or purgation in watching a performance of a
tragedy. The desired effect is one in which the theatregoer experiences all the sufferings of the tragic hero, but
leaves the theatre uplifted and cleansed. They would have explored the darkest sides of their character and
morality, and suffered in almost equal proportions to the benighted character themselves, but as the play ends,
they realise that their experience has been purely artistic.
Tragedies were a popular form in Shakespeare’s day. He wrote more than ten, and these are some of his best-loved
and most frequently performed plays. Shakespeare’s tragedies are generally complex and sophisticated meditations
on human passions and failings. A few other playwrights of the period (see below for examples) wrote plays of
comparable depth and complexity, harking back to the Greek tradition of tragedies such as Euripides’ Medea and
Sophocles’ Oedipus, but many of the popular tragedies of the time were Revenge Tragedies, which followed in the
Roman tradition. These were generally bloodbaths full of two-dimensional villainy. Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy,
Titus Andronicus, was a sophisticated version of this genre, featuring rape, cannibalism and hideous mutilation,
and Hamlet also takes many features from the revenge genre. There are also elements of the revenge tragedy in
King Lear too: the removal of Gloucester’s eyes is the kind of dramatic event that is typical of a revenge tragedy,
as are the quick succession of horrible deaths in the final scenes. But all these plays are combined with
psychological depth and emotional complexity.
Plays of the Time
The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd (1585)
The first well-known English revenge tragedy, The Spanish Tragedy was a sell-out success. It features a character
called Revenge as well as a ghost, and is very violent. It also contained a play within a play, which has marked it
out as a notable influence on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe (1587)
With a sophisticated plot this emotionally complex tragedy tells the story of Tamburlaine, based loosely on a real
historical figure, and how he meets his downfall. He begins the play as a Scythian shepherd, rises to become
conqueror of all of Africa, and is destroyed by his own anger and greed. After killing one of his own sons, he dies in
misery.
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1589)
One of the few tragedies of the period to gain as much critical acclaim as Shakespeare’s, Dr Faustus is based on
the legend of Faust. Consumed by materialistic desire, the doctor conjures Mephistopheles into his study. He
makes a deal with the devil and sells his soul to him in return for all the riches of the world. After twenty-four
years of increasingly tortured consumption of worldly delights, Faustus’ time runs out and he is carried to Hell.
Sejanus by Ben Jonson (1603)
Ben Jonson’s only tragedy, Sejanus, is set in the Roman Emperor Tiberius’ court. Sejanus is a favoured courtier.
The play was thought to have been a mockery of the corruption in James I’s court, and was not a great stage
success, unlike Jonson’s many very successful masques and comedies.
The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (1614)
Like King Lear, The Duchess of Malfi was performed in The Globe Theatre. The play is a violent and complex
tragedy which has divided critics over the years. Some find the twists and turns of its plot too implausible, whilst
others see it as a masterpiece of subtle characterisation. The plot centres on a Duchess who marries beneath her
status and is persecuted by her two brothers as a result.
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A Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman
and Playhouse co-production
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
4. INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR, RUPERT GOOLD
In what ways do you see King Lear as a product of what was taking place in 1606?
Well, when I directed Macbeth last year, I was hugely influenced by what was going on in 1606 in terms of the
Gunpowder Plot and the fear of Catholic revolt and the rise of spy culture. With King Lear, I felt that this was
much less useful. I was more interested in the fear of female authority. Like Britain in the late 70s and 80s, they
had had this de-sexualised female leader and icon in Queen Elizabeth I, and yet there was also ongoing fear of
Mary Queen of Scots as a counter to that. I think there is an ongoing anxiety about women in power.
But, I think there is actually a lot in what we know of Shakespeare’s own biography that I feel is more of a clue to
why King Lear was important to him. He was a very litigacious man, spending the last part of his life constantly
fighting legal disputes over land. He was also very aware of his will, and I think he took the idea of how to
organise and dispose of his possessions very seriously.
In what ways do you think the issues within the play are relevant to the modern age?
I think they are fairly timeless. I was interested in where the super violent and sadistic strains of society find their
outlets, whether that is state violence or personal violence, and this is very relevant now. Not just with rising street
crime now, but also our fascination with horrific aspects of super-violence.
But also, it’s a play about family and a family who fight each other, and that’s relevant in 1606 and 2009.
What are the most important concepts for you in the play, and how did you set about rendering them on the
stage?
I wanted it to feel familial rather than political. I wanted Lear and his family to feel like real people, rather than
monumental figureheads. What the production has wrestled with, is how do you balance these two things – how do
you give a political and ceremonial and God-King reading of the play alongside a human one. Our starting point
was with the familial.
Initially, I was also interested in what happens in the transition of the power. Partly due to the Everyman space
and Pete as an actor, we were going to go for a subconsciously northern production, drawing on the British
countryside that felt appropriate to Lear, and looking at the relationship between the city and the countryside, or
the urban and the mad rural in the play. I thought that it was interesting in the context of those towns in
Lancashire or Yorkshire which butt up against the mountainsides and the moors.
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
There is also that key line of Gloucester’s, ‘As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods’ – this notion of when adults
behave like children really interested me, and what proper behaviour for children is like in corrupted families, and
how then society can demonise itself. I wanted the fight between Edgar and Edmund to feel like two brothers these two brothers who are never brothers, should fight like I fought with my brother, yet in an extreme and
horrible way. So, there was work done on the relationship between children, and that has fed into the production’s
idea of Goneril being pregnant and the journey of her baby. The two figures in our play are Goneril’s abandoned
child, and this boy figure we have created [played by Jacob Anderson].
You chose to set the play in the late Seventies. What was your process in arriving at this decision?
Initially it was from the Everyman in that we wanted the play to be informed by the company that Pete was part of
at the Everyman who were doing this wild, rough theatre, and slightly anarchist Shakespeares. I was interested in
a sort of wilfully left-wing or Marxist reading of the play, which says that if you set a language of economy for
emotion – by saying that love has a value – the you let forces of avariciousness, (Edmund represents this the
most), out of the box which can lead to the death of society. This leads too to Thatcher and what she said about
that. In the Everyman we opened with Thatcher’s Assisi speech for a tonal device about a transition of power. But
we got widely derided for that choice! I still do miss the texture of that moment, but I think it was fairly derided
because the play wouldn’t support that reading. This is the most problematic thing with Lear, whatever reading you
try and put on it. Because of the double story of the Gloucester’s and the Lear’s, and the movement from the
domestic to the warlike and political, and from the interior to the exterior, it resisted giving a kind of unity that I
was able to do with The Tempest and Macbeth. So what we have tried to do now in London, is strip some of the
more socio-specific elements out and concentrate on the storytelling. But I think actually an enormous set of
textures that informed my sense of the 70’s, northern Lear from Lowry through to Ken Loach, are actually still
there, they are just less explicit. The way I work is that I try and shoot a very direct arrow at quite a specific thing,
but often the ultimate destination isn’t at that target at all, but it is the force that you approached the target that
gets you where you end up.
What are the particular challenges of setting the play in a modern context?
A lot of it is about weaponry and what you can say about swords, heralds and trumpets. I think we have covered
most of these, and we’ve had fun with that.
There is something about the question – what is a king? To be honest, I don’t think putting someone in a medieval
robe tells us any more, we just don’t understand the concept of king in the same way as Shakespeare and his
contemporaries did. However, I was very struck by Obama’s inauguration and the way Bush was left, in that the
role of the President in the popular American cultural imagination is sacrosanct, so there is still some sort of Godhead at the head of the body politic which we don’t have in Britain at all. So the idea of Obama losing his mind in
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
America would be incredibly upsetting – it’s the father of the nation’s family going mad. So not only is it very hard
to create that in a modern context, I also think it’s hard in a contemporary British culture to communicate that.
How do you and your actors work with Shakespeare’s language to enable it to resonate with a modern
audience?
We’ve been lucky that we are performing in two very intimate spaces so we don’t need to proclaim very much. The
most important thing is what does the line mean, and why has he chosen those words, and when the words are odd
or unusual, they are the ones that need to be explored and committed to.
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King Lear
By William Shakespeare
5. STAGING LEAR
A Long History
Throughout its stage history King Lear has received many different interpretations, from lavish sets to bare stages,
from versions that have edited out all glimmers of optimism from the text to those that have rewritten the play as
a romance. Often the choices directors have made about the staging of the play have reflected the time that they
lived in. In the Victorian period, for example, there were very fixed codes about how the theatre should look.
However, in the twenty-first century, directors have more choices than ever before: they are able to choose the
shape of the stage, from the formal proscenium arch to an intimate studio setting, and they can choose any period
or style that they wish for the set and costumes of the production.
Palaces and Playhouses
In 1606 the original productions of King Lear took place at Whitehall Palace and at the Globe Theatre1. The two
settings would have been very different. The Whitehall performance would have been in a hall within the palace
with a small purpose-built stage. The audience would have been a select gathering of royalty and dignitaries. The
most important member of the audience was of course James I, the King, whose approval would have been vital to
the future success of the play.
The Globe, however, was an open-air Elizabethan theatre with a large yard for standing tickets and wooden
galleries rising high above the stage. Similar theatres had been springing up around London over the previous
thirty years, but the Globe would still have felt very modern and thrilling to theatergoers. Rather than being
composed of a select private gathering, the Globe was open to the public, and attracted a range of people from all
sectors of society. Whilst the play would have been the main attraction, the occasion would have been made festive
with the selling of food and drink, music performances, and other attractions such as cock fighting and bear
baiting. Many of the audience would have been just as preoccupied with observing other audience members as with
following the action of the play.
Due to the crowding, theatres such as the Globe were hotbeds of disease. Partly because of this, but also because
of the bawdy content of many of the plays, many Protestants, especially those in public office, viewed the theatres
with deep suspicion. As a result, theatres such as the Globe were frequently being closed down, especially during
the summer months. During this time, the companies would tour the countryside with their productions.
King Lear himself would have been played by Richard Burbage in Shakespeare’s own company, The King’s Men.
He would have been well known to most of the audience as he had played the lead in many of Shakespeare’s plays.
Another actor who would have been well known was Robert Armin, who was the company’s comic actor, playing
1
There is no written evidence of a performance at the Globe, but it is almost certain that it would have taken place.
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parts such as Lear’s Fool, as well as Feste (Twelfth Night), Touchstone (As You Like It) and Trinculo (The
Tempest).
Robert Armin
Richard Burbage was one the most famous actors of the day. In 1606 he would have been about forty two and he
was noted for ‘restraint not bombast’2. Nonetheless, his style would have been very declamatory. He would have
stood centre stage, using elaborate hand gestures, and pronouncing the lines formally, adhering strictly to the
metre. This would seem strange to a modern audience, but the Jacobeans were used to hearing poetry spoken
aloud, and would have found Burbage’s style easy to follow.
Richard Burbage
The costumes would have been very much of the Jacobean period, with Kings such as Lear dressed in the style of
James I. Little attention was paid to the era or location in which the play was actually supposed to be set. The Fool
2
Playing Lear p64
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would have worn the traditional jester’s outfit of a three-peaked hat (coxcomb) and a colourful coat (motley). The
set would have consisted mainly of an ornate curtain as a backdrop, with occasional props, such as torches and
swords.
Rewriting Tragedy
In 1681 the poet Nahum Tate directed the most infamous of King Lear’s stagings. In the eighty years between
the play’s first performance and Tate’s production, King Lear had only been staged a few times, mostly with little
success. Nahum Tate was able to create a highly successful version of the play, but at the expense of Shakespeare’s
text and plot. Tate described King Lear as ‘a heap of jewels unstrung and unpolished’. In his version, he cut the
Fool completely, deeming him inappropriate to a tragedy. Both Lear and Cordelia survive and are reunited, with
Cordelia and Edgar being joined in love. Finally King Lear is safely restored to the throne.
Bearskins and Thunderclaps
In 1820 the actor Edmund Kean staged Lear with Nahum Tate’s happy ending, but included many more of the
tragic elements that had previously been cut. He even tried to put on the play with the ending as Shakespeare had
written it, but he was forced to revert to his original production after only three days. He won critical acclaim in
the title role, but critics were unnerved by the intensity of the storm. The Times described this scene as:
‘less effective than many others, because the manager, by a strange error, had caused the tempest to be
exhibited with such accuracy that the performer could scarcely be heard amidst the confusion. He should
have recollected that it is the bending of Lear’s mind under his wrongs that is the object of interest, and
not that of a forest beneath the hurricane.’
In 1838, actor William Charles Macready marked a turning point in King Lear’s stage history by restoring the
tragic ending to the play after more than one hundred and fifty years’ of productions with a happy ending. He also
focused on a spectacular staging of the play, and was the first director to place a woman in the role of the Fool.
In 1858 actor and theatre manager, Charles Kean produced another epically staged King Lear. He set out to
achieve complete historical accuracy with his set and costumes. The stage was a large proscenium arch, with a
painted backdrop that changed frequently throughout the play. The overall effect was of a picture frame for the
audience. The sets were so elaborate that there were also long delays between scenes whilst the stage was
rearranged. Kean’s supposedly authentic Anglo-Saxon production contained such delights as boar skins, antlers
and castles. Interestingly, as with several other productions of the period, a woman was cast as the Fool.
In 1892 another actor, Henry Irving directed King Lear in a manner typical of Victorian theatre. He cut nearly
half the play, including the blinding of Gloucester, not wishing to offend the audience’s sensibilities with references
to sex and violence. Victorian directors often appeared more interested in the grand spectacle of the theatre than
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in the content of the play. This production was no exception, with a setting in early Britain that included ruined
Roman villas and temples.
Bare Stages and Bleakness
In 1961 Peter Brook directed a very famous production of King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He
used a bare stage, and explored the concept of Lear as an expression of nihilistic despair. One of the most
redemptive moments of the play, in which a dying Edmond repents his crimes, saying ‘some good I mean to do’ (V
iii 217) was cut. In the 1971 film version, Brook also put many of the gruesome moments of the play that
conventionally take place out of sight, back onto the stage. He included scenes of Regan killing Goneril and then
herself, and of Cordelia being hanged.
Reviewers described the play as ‘an eerie world somewhere between an antiseptic operating theatre and a concrete
segment of nowhere’ (London Evening Standard) and ‘a little harder than need be on the heels of Brecht’ (Oxford
Mail). Overall the production received mixed reviews, with some reporting that the gloom of the production was
too unrelenting. Others however, felt that it was the right context for Paul Scofield to deliver a definitively
powerful rendering of Lear.
Brook’s uses of costume were interesting. His whole production was as minimalistic as possible, with an eclectic
but pared down selection of costumes designed to create an illusion of coherence but actually coming from a
number of different historical periods. His thinking behind this was that placing any Shakespeare play within a
fixed historical context, by providing, for example, a consistent set of period costumes was ‘a fantastic imposition forcing the play in certain directions’3. Therefore, unlike later directors, Nunn and Goold, who set the play in
definite historical periods, Brook’s version of the play was outside any historical framework. Brook noted that
directors who set the play in pre-medieval costumes, in order to be true to Shakespeare, are actually not achieving
their aim, as Shakespeare’s actors in 1606 would have been dressed in the contemporary outfits of the day.
Brook described the character of King Lear as "a mountain whose summit has never been reached, the way up
strewn with the shattered bodies of earlier visitors - Olivier here, Laughton there: it's frightening".
Twenty-first Century Lear
In 2007 Trevor Nunn staged a very different version of King Lear in Stratford upon Avon for the Royal
Shakespeare Company. Nunn chose to set the production loosely in late nineteenth century. His set was comprised
3
On Directing Shakespeare, p145
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of an ostentatious palace complete with heavy curtains and a theatrical balcony. The impression of pomp was
furthered by organ music and rows of courtiers. Reviewers described the location as ‘Ruritania’: a mythical country
with a loosely Germanic and monarchical feel to it. As the action moved forward, the settings became starker and
more dishevelled, mirroring the collapse of order. The Guardian review stated that Nunn’s ‘Lear occupies a
kingdom steeped in elaborate, meaningless ritual.’
In planning the production, Trevor Nunn said that he extensively researched the play’s stage history:
‘I read extensively what's around. I'm influenced by what's around but I also find myself disagreeing in
some ways with what's around, and that's absolutely healthy and absolutely as it should be. Whatever one
does with a Shakespeare play, the great thing that you bear in mind all the time is that when your
production is finished, there is the play, absolutely as it was before you found it, ready for the next 300
productions that will go off in all sorts of different directions. No damage can be done to Shakespeare.’ 4
Rupert Goold’s 2008/9 Young Vic / Headlong Theatre / Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse production of Lear is
set in the late 70’s and has been performed in two medium-sized theatres – the Liverpool Everyman and the Young
Vic. The Young Vic is a very flexible space in which both the stage and the audience often move from production to
production – sometimes in the round, sometimes end on. In this production, one side of the theatre has been
blocked out to create an end stage and the audience is close to the actors and on the same level. This proximity to
the actors creates a more intimate experience than one in a theatre where the stage is raised high above the
audience, some of whom might be seated a long way away from the actors.
This production is very different to Trevor Nunn’s recent staging. Whereas Pete Postlethwaite wears a brown suit
at the start of the play, Ian McKellan wore a gold and velvet robe. Goold’s Fool wears a bowler hat, whilst Nunn
chose to portray the role as a much more conventional jester with tassels.
The set, designed by Giles Cadle, consists mainly of a wide and open grey staircase upstage which the actors are
able to use throughout the play to create different levels. The stage has a largely grey concrete appearance, which
gives a sense of a dilapidated and decaying urban space. This versatile setting is used to portray indoor and outdoor
scenes in the play, as well as the famous storm scene. In the outdoor scenes, the lighting highlights patches of
yellowing grass growing between paving stones. Indoor scenes are created simply by the addition of a few simple
props. Poor Tom’s hovel is depicted as an open drain on the side of the stairs. The most challenging scene of the
play to stage - the storm scene - is created using real rain but also through a movement and sound sequence in
which the actors create the impression of ghosts fleeting across a moor.
4
Interviewed on 2 April 2007 by Jonathan Bate in front of an audience at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.
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Photo of the model box of Giles Cadle’s set design
Goold’s production highlights the social trends in King Lear that apply to both 1606 and the late Seventies. In
particular the 70’s setting of the play allows the exploration of the issues of status, hierarchy and power in both
periods.
King Lear explores the effects of misrule upon all strata of society. During his madness, Lear realises, with the
help of Poor Tom, that many of his subjects have been living in great suffering and degradation. The division of
power between his daughters and the subsequent war makes this even more apparent.
In 1606, England was deeply divided between rich and poor. The theatregoers at the Globe inhabited a totally
different world to those who attended the court performances in Whitehall. Yet even the poorest street beggar was
affected by the decisions made by the King and his court.
In the 1970s there was a similar divide between the classes. In the early 1970s, trade unions had campaigned for
greater rights for Britain’s working classes, particularly those working in heavy industry such as construction and
mining. There had been many strikes, and the governments of both Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath were
frequently crippled. The infamous three day week of the 1970s was caused by a lack of vital resources such as
electricity, and the economy was severely crippled. In the last year of the decade, Margaret Thatcher’s
Conservative government attempted to undermine the power of the trade unions by instigating the privatisation of
state-run organisations. She also deflated the currency in order to try and restore the country’s failing economy.
The result of her actions, initially at least, was a debilitating recession.
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It is against this backdrop of rivalry between the classes, poverty and disempowered government, that Rupert
Goold has set his King Lear.
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6. INTERVIEW WITH HOWARD HARRISON, LIGHTING DESIGNER
Before you started, what particularly interested you about the design possibilities for this play?
Obviously, it was a great play that I hadn’t done before. We started up at the Everyman in a difficult space, and
worked with an epic concept from Rupert Goold.
How did you work with the director’s ideas about the production to come up with your design for the
lighting?
We had meetings and we discussed, I went away, formulated some plans, showed them to Rupert and he looked at
them and liked them. There are big set pieces such as the scenes on the heath. Rupert was clear that he wanted it
to look very non-naturalistic. So we all worked together to create that effect.
How did presenting the play in the late Seventies work in a practical way?
It gave it more of a sense of realism. The play can be mythic, with an almost Greek essence. Making it in the late
Seventies made it a more tangible period. We used a muted colour palette. All the designers looked at images of
that time, from films and so on, which helped to set the colour palette. It meant that we were all on the same page
working from the same references.
Did King Lear’s vivid stage history influence your choices? If so, how?
I have seen King Lear performed several times, but no, it didn’t. A play is a play; if other productions get into
your mind they can affect your approach. We were setting out to tell a new version without old references.
How did the space you were using influence your ideas?
The Young Vic is a fantastic space. The set is the same as it was in Liverpool, with a wide, almost Grecian staircase
leading up to a sky behind it and stage in front. The Liverpool Everyman is much smaller and is a low space, with
the audience on three sides and is almost claustrophobic. With that space we had to turn what could be a
disadvantage into an advantage. With the Young Vic we will be able to be a lot more ambitious.
Which part of the play did you find most challenging/dramatic to stage?
The storm on the heath was very interesting to stage. We used lighting in a non-naturalistic way, which fitted with
the non-naturalistic nature of the whole scene. Rupert uses the whole cast to embody the storm. It is a great visual
interpretation.
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7. PLAYING LEAR
The roll call of the actors who have played King Lear reads like a history of the most celebrated male actors
throughout history. Most actors consider it one of the greatest, if not the greatest role to perform on the stage. As
Lear is not a young man, most actors who tackle the role do so when they have years of stage experience behind
them. Unlike Hamlet or Othello, who are usually played by young actors, King Lear requires maturity and gravitas.
One of the greatest challenges facing an actor playing Lear is to strike the right balance between humanity and
cruelty. The actor then needs to be able to maintain this balance whilst depicting the onset of, and finally the full
realisation of madness, but to do all this without making Lear a comic character, or a villainous one. Furthermore,
the actor must portray a character that is deeply flawed, who both moves the audience to pity him and to loathe
him.
Richard Burbage, one of the leading actor’s in Shakespeare’s own company, was the first actor to tackle the role.
Indeed the role was probably written with him in mind. He would have been well known to audiences as a
restrained and powerful performer. We know from contemporary records that he also played Richard III, Hamlet
and Othello.
After a long lull in performances of King Lear, the play began to be staged again in its Nahum Tate version (see
above). The most illustrious actor to take on the role during the hundred and fifty years in which this version
dominated the stage was David Garrick. He was one of the most famous actors of his day, first tackling Lear aged
just twenty four, and then continued to play the part on and off for the next thirty five years. It is thought that he
was the first actor to portray Lear as feeble and well intentioned. Perhaps this was more to do with his young age
and slight frame than his analysis of the part. Henry Bate wrote in 1776 that Garrick was able to cause ‘a kind of
momentary petrifaction in the house, which he soon dissolved as universally into tears’. 5 Throughout Garrick’s
career he tried to restore more and more of the original Shakespeare text to the stage, but he never succeeded in
completing revising Tate’s reworking of the play.
Edmund Kean was the next actor/director to make the part fully his own in the 1820s, drawing such praise from
reviewers as ‘a scene more perfect or pathetic has never been represented on the stage’.6. Kean was also the first
director for over a hundred years to reinstate the deaths of Cordelia and Lear, as he felt Lear could not properly
be understood until he had been seen holding the dead Cordelia in his arms. The public were not ready for this
5
Playing Lear, Oliver Ford Davies
6
ibid
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radical move however, and he soon reverted to the Tate ending. He was nonetheless one of the first actors to fully
appreciate the necessity of the final realisation of Lear’s tragic downfall for the dramatic unity of the play.
Henry Irving played the part in 1892, but he took the notion of a feeble old man too far: audience members on his
opening night claimed that he had been totally inaudible, so authentically had he portrayed Lear’s aged mumbling.
He never had great success in the part despite tackling it several times. There was perhaps some justice in this
though, as he had deliberately rewritten the play to increase his own role, which included cutting most of the
Gloucester subplot.
In 1959 Charles Laughton focused on Lear’s fury in the latter half of the play, playing him as a petulant and
spoilt father in the first two acts. One of his innovative ideas was to omit any dramatic staging of the storm, but
simply to allow his own words to create its effect. Three years later Paul Scofield played a seminal version of
Lear in Peter Brook’s stage production. His Lear was hopeless and dark. Critics ranged from seeing him as ‘an
unremittingly belching boor’ (G.K Hunter) to an ‘edgy, capricious old man’ (Kenneth Tynan).
In the last sixty years, Lear has been played by Laurence Olivier, Corin Redgrave, John Gielgud, Anthony
Hopkins, Ian Holm, Ian McKellan, Eric Porter, Michael Hordern and now Pete Postlethwaite. Each
production has allowed the lead actor to explore very different interpretations of the role.
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8. INTERVIEW WITH PETE POSTLETHWAITE, KING LEAR
What process did you go through to arrive at your interpretation of Lear?
The three things you look at mainly, directly to do with the text, are firstly what your character says, secondly what
other characters say about your character, and thirdly, what does your character do, how does he behave. You also
need to read, digest and examine as many texts and as many essays that have been written about Lear since it was
first written, and that way you begin to get an extraordinary insight into how other people have seen it, and you
make your own decisions after that. But those first three things are essential in creating any character – what you
say, what other people say about you, and what you do.
What are Lear’s most interesting qualities to you?
He doesn’t have any to start with you, whatsoever! He’s a fascist, tyrant, and a bully and a misogynist to boot. But
his most endearing quality is that through madness, he’s able to find some humanity, not just in himself but in
other people and in caring for other people. I think that discovery and that journey is one of the most beautiful
things in theatre.
How did you transpose your character into the context of the late Seventies?
I was given a suit that does it all for us! All the set and the costumes are really anonymous – I’m not sure it is
exactly the 70s, there is a general feel that it is that area, but it is not specific. The costumes are meant as a kind
of a palette in front of which we work. Hopefully, they don’t speak more than the characters speak. That’s what
Nicky went for when she was designing the costumes.
How do you see your interpretation of Lear in the context of other famous renderings?
That’s a very difficult and personal question – it’s very difficult to be objective about that. That will be down to
other people to assess, I think. At the moment, I am just thrilled, and enjoying the journey and the work at dealing
with such extraordinary literature.
What do you think the greatest challenges are in playing Lear?
Having the stamina, both emotionally and physically, to go through what that character has to go through in order
that the audience gets the proper play. You have to be older, you need to have lived a bit, and that means that
you’re not quite as strong and energetic as you thought you were. So, it’s emotional and physical staying power
really, and it’s great to have such a fantastic team about you.
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9. ‘THIS GREAT STAGE OF FOOLS’: MADNESS AND LEAR
Madness in Shakespeare’s Plays
Shakespeare returns over and over to the theme of madness in his plays. He explores it from many angles; from
feigned madness to true madness, from comic foolery to the crazed passions of romantic love. In his earlier plays,
his fools are more whimsical and his presentations of madness more fleeting, but as he developed as a playwright,
his fools become more profound, and the madness of his characters take a more central role in his plots. In two of
his later and greatest plays, King Lear and Hamlet, he presents what could be described as a detailed study of
mental illness. In nearly all his plays that deal with the subject, madness is used as a means to turn the
assumptions of society on their head. As Touchstone says in As You Like It, ‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the
wise man knows himself to be a fool’.
In the early seventeenth century, the diagnosis and treatment of people with mental illnesses was misunderstood.
Many were simply locked up behind bars or in chains. In general they were feared, distrusted and outcast members
of society because it was thought that madness was a result of sexual profligacy, possession by spirits and religious
extremism.
A great deal was written about madness in Shakespeare’s day, who undoubtedly took inspiration from these texts.
However, it is widely accepted that Shakespeare’s understanding of mental illness was far in advance of his time.
Hamlet, for example, is thought to be the first literary character to be suffering from depression, and Lear’s
madness looks remarkably like the symptoms of dementia.
Madness in Lear
In King Lear there are three key depictions of madness. Most centrally, there is the degenerative madness of King
Lear himself. This state is brought on by a number of factors: old age, the bad treatment he receives from Goneril
and Regan, and his own realisation of the mistakes he has made. There is nothing feigned or comic about Lear’s
mental fragility, despite his own absurd appearance later in the play wearing a garland of flowers.
Unlike Lear’s madness, the ravings of Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom o’Bedlam, are feigned. As with other of
Shakespeare’s characters (such as Hamlet and Malvolio in Twelfth Night), he takes on the guise of a madman or
‘natural fool’ to conceal his true purpose. As an exile from Lear’s kingdom, Edgar is determined to remain in order
to right the wrongs done to him. He also intends to protect and guide his father Gloucester, as well as the ageing
Lear.
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The Fool’s madness, on the other hand, is entirely licensed. He is an ‘allowed fool’ derived from a longstanding
tradition of court jesters. Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, fools are often the only characters who are able to
speak honestly and without censure about their masters’ and mistresses’ failings. Through wit, bawdiness, song and
riddle they provide comic relief, but also act as a commentator, or even dramatic chorus.
The History of the Fool
In Medieval and Elizabethan England, wealthy households commonly employed ‘fools’. The fools posed as lowly
household servants but were in fact educated and sharp witted, with a range of skills from making witticisms to
singing and playing instruments. Queen Elizabeth had her own private fool. He would have worn the coxcomb
(three cornered hat) and motley (coloured coat), and was allowed to criticize the Queen in a way that no other
courtier could possibly have done. He was also, like Lear’s fool, allowed close access to his employer.
The fool began to move from the courts to the theatres during Elizabeth’s reign. One of the most well known fools,
Richard Tarleton, began his career clowning in private households and later moved onto the stage. As life in the
court was often very theatrical, filled with ceremonies, rituals and applauding or bowing audiences, this would not
have been an unnatural transition.
As the fool became a more common occurrence in plays, he developed in sophistication as a character and as a
device. The fool in Shakespeare’s early plays, for example, tended to be an innocent, bumbling and clownish
character. As Shakespeare’s style developed, his fools became much more incisive, prophetic and even cruel in
their honesty.
During Shakespeare’s writing career he worked with two comic actors who would have played the role of the fool
in his plays. The first was William Kemp, who was known as an all-singing, all-dancing comic entertainer. In one of
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his most renowned publicity stunts, he danced all the way from London to Norwich. The second actor Shakespeare
worked with was Robert Armin, who was, whilst still being a comic actor, a much more serious man than Kemp.
He also saw himself as a member of an ensemble, rather than a virtuoso solo performer like Kemp. It is more than
likely that Robert Armin’s more intellectual approach to foolery influenced Shakespeare’s writing in the latter
years of his career. Many critics even suggest that Shakespeare’s characters were written with specific actors, such
as Armin, in mind for the role.
Lear’s Fool
Lear’s fool operates outside society’s censure, but also outside morality, law, religion and social nicety. As a result,
he is able to be both barbarically honest and a source of comfort to Lear. As Lear falls further and further into
madness and despair, the Fool continues to point out Lear’s follies and to draw comparisons between them and his
own fooling. Some critics have suggested that the Fool is one of the few, if not the only, voice of true sense and
reason: with political intrigue turning common sense on its head, the only valid position is to recognize that the
world itself is totally irrational7.
Interestingly, as Lear becomes weaker, the fool also appears to weaken and become more reticent. After Act III
Scene vi, the Fool disappears altogether from the script. There is also a strong school of thought linking Cordelia
and the Fool. Some scholars even suggest that in the King’s Men, the boy actor playing Cordelia would have also
played the Fool. For many years, the part of the Fool was cast as a woman, creating parallels between the two
characters. In the latter stages of the play the Fool ‘pines’ for Cordelia, and when Lear says ‘and my poor fool is
hanged’, the audience is left unsure as to whether he is referring to Cordelia or the Fool.
Edgar: the Bedlam Beggar
When Edgar disguises himself in Act II Scene iii, he covers his face in grime, dresses in only a loincloth and
tangles his hair. He is taking on the character of a Tom o’Bedlam, a name given in Shakespeare’s day to the
former inmates of Bethlem Royal Hospital for the mentally ill. Bethlem Priory had been in existence in London
since 1247 and had admitted the mentally ill since about 1330 when it became a hospital. By 1606 it would have
had around thirty inmates, and was notorious for its inhumane and insanitary conditions. Londoners would have
known the institution by the word ‘Bedlam’ which is now synonymous with chaos and confusion. Some years later,
the inmates themselves made a petition to improve the living conditions, which included such horrors as
permanently blocked drains in the kitchens and overflowing cesspits.
7
Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Jan Kott
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‘Bedlam beggars’ were also notorious. Discharged inmates would frequently take to begging on country lanes, and
were known for cutting themselves to attract more sympathy. When Edgar first takes on the disguise, he describes
the practices of the beggars of the time:
‘The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numbed and mortified arms,
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,
Sometimes with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity.’ (II iii.13-19)
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10. INTERVIEW WITH TOBIAS MENZIES, EDGAR
How did you go about the process of portraying the madness of Poor Tom?
It’s a performative madness: he is not actually mad. My starting point was what would I do if I wanted to pretend I
was crazed? I looked at playground portrayals of ‘spastics’- crass representations of mentally deranged people- not
an accurate picture of mental illness, but a layman’s view- something that someone would come up with off the top
of their head. What Edgar does is very off the hoof- he thinks ‘I am going to do impression of what I have seen’.
He goes out into the wasteland and pretends, and through that process becomes slightly deranged and loses his way
mentally. Very quickly it was about working with the text that I had. One of the hardest jobs is to make that
language clear. It was about finding an idiom that unlocked the language and gave it a kind of theatricality. I
came back again to a sense of an almost childish, playground portrayal version of madness. When I was a child
people talked about a ‘Joey’. He had cerebral palsy and he featured on Blue Peter. He became a byword of mental
illness in some way.
I also looked at images of people with autism and dyspraxia - their physicality and rhythms - and I was quite
magpie-like in taking different characteristics from them. His physicality is a real mixture. I used Iggy Pop and
Ian Curtis from Joy Division. They explored the edges of acceptability. There was something anarchic and punkish
about Edgar going out into the wilderness and experiencing it, just as there is something of the mystic about Iggy
Pop. I wanted to find something full of rage, not just ‘poor little Tom’. There is something self-punishing in Edgar’s
decision. He thinks, ‘I want to internalise the abuse that I have received’ and show them the extent of what they
have done to him.
Why do you think Edgar takes on such an elaborate disguise, and what do you think he gains from it?
It is a very intuitive choice and not one that is particularly well thought through. When someone has done
something bad to you, it is perverse that you sometimes destroy yourself as a reaction: you think that then everyone
will see how badly that person has behaved. What does he gain? He becomes quite fanatical, for example when he
leads his father to an imaginary jump off the cliffs of Dover. It is about a rigorous and at times cruel re-education
of someone, he loses a certain naïveté about how humans behave, he becomes a lot harder. I see him as having
some kind of epiphany; although it leads him to a harder place- perhaps he becomes closer to God. There is
something messianic about him.
Do you think Jacobean audiences would have seen the figure of Tom o’Bedlam very differently?
They probably would have reacted differently. The figure of Tom o’Bedlam had more resonance for the
contemporary audience of the day, which would be less powerful now. That is partly why I resisted a
straightforward interpretation, and went for something more punky. When I have seen him done very authentically
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to the period, he doesn’t resonate in the same way as he would have done at the time. However, we do understand
rock stars pushing the boundaries; we look on with admiration and fear. Shakespeare was embodying an anarchic
fear, which just looks a bit different now.
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11. INTERVIEW WITH FORBES MASSON, THE FOOL
The Fool talks a mixture of sense and nonsense. What process do you imagine is going on in his head when
he speaks?
As far as I can I see the Fool as the only person who is allowed to tell the truth. He wants to get to the truth. He
says the truth is a dog who must be whipped out. When the Fool first appears he harangues Lear, saying he has
given his lands away to his daughters. In Shakespeare, the Fool tends to tell the truth.
How did you transpose a Jacobean, motley wearing jester into a character from the Seventies that a modern
audience can relate to?
We had a big debate about this. His first speech is about his coxcomb- we didn’t want to do that – we bought lots
of hats- but they were trying too hard to be funny. Then the designers brought a small bowler hat and it just does
the job. I looked at stand ups like Frankie Boyle who uses his humour to tell the truth about things, and others like
Lennie Bruce and Bill Hicks: people who used their humour in quite a biting way. I wanted to avoid hopping about
with bells on my feet. I have a megaphone, that’s my prop.
When you do your research you can get lots of images of past and present fools. In Shakespeare’s company there
was a change of actors - William Kemp did a lot of ad-libbing whereas Robert Armin was much drier. Armin
developed a drier, more sarcastic humour. When I played Feste (Twelfth Night) and the Porter (Macbeth), I tried
not to be afraid of the humour and actually make it funny. At first, I am quite aggressive and nasty. It is great to
avoid sentimentality; the Fool takes the mickey out of Lear. That is what the Fool is for - pricking the pomposity
and telling it as it is.
The Fool provides much more than just comic relief. How do you see his function in the play as a whole?
He wants to make Lear see sense. There is an interesting link between the fool and Cordelia - John Gielgud said
the Fool and Cordelia were the same person. He is instrumental in reuniting Lear and Cordelia, and he tells him he
shouldn’t have banished his youngest daughter.
There is definitely the function of humour, though; it would be a long three and a half hours without a gag, but
there is a darker element to it as well. It is interesting that the Fool disappears in a mysterious way. When Lear
loses his wits, the Fool loses his wits- without them there is no Fool. Interestingly, in this production, the Fool
takes on the role of the gentleman in Act IV Scene vi, portraying him as a doctor. He is beside Lear until he
disappears at the end.
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Why do you think the Fool appears less and less as the play goes on?
The fool is perhaps as old as Lear, so he is getting older and weaker too. Shakespeare was playing with the storythe audiences of the time all knew the story of King Leir and it had a happy ending. There is no happy ending here
- in fact he lays it on with a trowel at the end.
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12. WOMEN IN LEAR
Women in Shakespeare’s time were subject to different rules from their male counterparts. They were not able to
exercise power outside of the home unless backed by either their father or their husband, and relied upon these
figures entirely for their financial wellbeing. The issue of inheritance was therefore one of great importance. The
succession of Lear’s power goes, via his daughters, straight to their husbands. They have no legal decision making
power in the Kingdom at all.
When Lear strips Cordelia of her inheritance and her dowry, he is condemning her to what would, in all likelihood,
have been a lifetime of unwedded poverty. That the King of France chooses to marry her, despite her dowerless
state, is a surprise and a ray of hope for Cordelia, but nonetheless she is powerless to decide her own fate: she
must rely on the men who surround her.
This production of King Lear does not seek to create sympathetic portrayals of Regan and Goneril, but it does,
unlike many productions, avoid presenting them as motiveless and cruel villains. Goneril (Caroline Faber) is
depicted as pregnant and gives birth during the storm sequence. Perhaps there is a suggestion that Goneril is
fuelled by some kind of protective instinct towards her child. Regan (Charlotte Randle) is also conceived as
character with a history that might give some explanation, if not rationalisation for her cruelty in disowning her
father, killing a servant and taking part in Gloucester’s blinding.
Whilst it is the actions of the three sisters that propel the plot, what they are really doing is eliciting actions from
their father and husbands. Without these men as vehicles for their wishes, all of the sisters, even Cordelia, would
be powerless to act at all. When Albany does not share his wife Goneril’s plans to remove Lear from power,
Goneril is forced to turn to another man, Edmund, to help her realise her aims, even if this means committing
adultery or even bigamy.
The women in King Lear find themselves enmeshed in an unrelentingly patriarchal society. With no examples of
thoughtful or compassionate leadership in the play, as well as the complete absence of mothers, the future for
women in Lear’s Britain, even after his death, looks set to be bleak. Women in Jacobean England would often have
felt themselves to be of similarly low status.
Everybody, male and female alike, was preoccupied with making sure their titles, wealth, houses and livelihoods
passed on to suitable heirs. A man who had not fathered any legitimate sons would have worried that his daughters
would be left penniless after his death, and his home and savings would be passed into the wrong hands.
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Recent events in politics had shown that even the most powerful family in the country was not exempt from the
same concerns. Queen Elizabeth had inherited the crown after a tumultuous period following her father Henry
VIII’s death. The throne had swung between Protestantism and Catholicism. It went from the hands of a ten year
old boy, Edward VI, who died soon after, to Lady Jane Grey, who was only sixteen, and ruled for nine days, to the
unpopular Catholic Queen Mary I. Elizabeth’s arrival on the throne had ended this chaotic crisis of succession, and
she went on to have a glorious and much admired reign.
However, as Elizabeth grew older, anxiety increased: she did not marry, and therefore had no direct heir to the
throne. England was largely content to have a stable Protestant Queen, but some people felt that Elizabeth’s halfsister, the Catholic Queen of Scotland, Mary, was a better choice for the crown. When Mary was hounded out of
Scotland, she sought refuge in England, but Elizabeth feared that there would be an uprising to place Mary on the
throne. Mary Queen of Scots remained imprisoned for nineteen years and was eventually beheaded.
It was a great stroke of luck for Elizabeth I that Mary had borne a son, James, who had become a Protestant. He
became the heir to the English and Scottish thrones. When Elizabeth died in 1603, James VI of Scotland became
James I of England, thus uniting the two countries in peace, and continuing the years of Protestant rule. In King
Lear, Shakespeare may well have been revisiting many people’s worst fears about the succession to the throne with
his story of a father with daughters whose crisis of inheritance triggers a terrible war and the breakdown of
society.
The predicament of women in Shakespearean England is only portrayed in part in his plays. With their powerful
rhetoric, wit, education and intelligence, Shakespeare's women are often able to achieve much more than their
counterparts outside of the theatre would have done. Nonetheless they each face an epic struggle within the plays,
and none more so that Lear’s three daughters.
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13. INTERVIEW WITH AMANDA HALE, CORDELIA
What justifications do you think you can give Regan and Goneril for their actions, if any?
It is hard to justify what they do, but you can maybe empathise, by understanding that Lear is a very difficult man,
and they probably had a very difficult childhood. Their childhood would have unbalanced them and before they
know it something sparks within them and they see an opportunity for revenge. Then they are hurtling down a path
and they cannot stop, though you can’t justify plucking out an old man’s eyes.
What kind of world do you think Lear’s England is for Cordelia?
In this production it is very interesting. It is ostensibly set in the late 1970s but it is both a real world and a fairy
tale world at the same time. It is interesting for Cordelia because she is aware of feminism and other new waves of
thought coming out. They influence her in standing up to Lear and not wanting to be his doll any more. She thinks,
‘if this is the way it is going to be, that I will care for you in your old age, even if I do get married, then things will
have to change and we have to be honest with each other and not hide behind these role play scenarios any more.
Do you think the absence of mother figures in the play has any impact on your characters?
Absolutely. We were talking about how we lost our mother in childbirth with Cordelia. We thought that Cordelia
must feel a bit of guilt, and perhaps this is what brings her back at the end. She feels a duty to her father- he lost
his wife when she came into the world. It is like she is atoning for her family sins. I don’t see her as purely good,
but that she knows that she is as inclined to do bad things as the rest of her family. In some ways she is atoning for
the sins her family have committed.
Would you describe Cordelia as powerful? If so, how?
She does become the Queen of France. She is definitely really brave and courageous. She has the guts to say in
front of the whole court that she is not going to take part in her father’s games. I based her on Bob Dylan in some
ways. People thought he was almost martyring himself but he was just standing up for what he believed. A lot of
people see her as a martyr or somehow a bit priggish, but I see her as someone who doesn’t want to play a game.
That is really brave, she is quite amazing in that respect.
How did you transpose your character to the period?
Well, she would be unusual anyway, because she is a princess and she lives at court. She has had a sheltered
upbringing and a lonely childhood. The Fool was probably her only friend, and apart from him, she has had no
contact with men except authority figures. I imagined that she had a tutor who slipped in books like The Female
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Eunuch8 into her reading list, and she developed a conscience about what Lear is doing to his country. I read a lot
of books about the Seventies and I found it really strange how well it fitted the play- there was an oil crisis, a fuel
crisis, young people seemed to be getting more violent. Politicians in the House of Lords proclaimed that the
country was going to ruin and that we were heading towards the Apocalypse. It would seem really sentimental to
talk in that way now. When power and authority is breaking down, people do extreme things which are more about
keeping themselves safe than helping others. When Lear realises that he hasn’t paid enough attention to the poor
and wretched, that seems to fit really well to the late Seventies period too.
8
The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer, 1970, is a seminal work for the Feminist Movement, which redefines female sexuality in both political and
social terms.
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14. PRODUCTION SHOTS
Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear
Clarence Smith as Duke of Cornwall and Charlotte Randle as Regan
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By William Shakespeare
Caroline Faber as Goneril
Amanda Hale as Cordelia and Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear
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By William Shakespeare
John Shrapnel as the Earl of Gloucester
Nigel Cooke as the Earl of Kent
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Jonjo O’Neill as Edmund
Tobias Menzies as Edgar / Poor Tom
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Forbes Masson as the Fool
Nigel Cooke as Kent, Amanda Hale as Cordelia, Michael Colgan as Albany, Pete Postlethwaite as Lear,
Tobias Menzies as Edgar and Jacob Anderson as the Boy
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15. SUGGESTED QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
When you have seen the play, you might find some of these questions useful as starting points for a discussion.
These questions are not intended as essay questions in response to a particular syllabus, but as starting points for a
class to explore their reactions to this production in particular.
Personal reactions:
•
What emotions did you find yourself going through as the play progressed?
•
How did you feel at the end of the play?
•
Can you identify with any of the experience of catharsis in your reaction?
•
What do you think you might have felt about the play if the director had decided to change the ending to
make it happy? Would you have preferred this? Why?
•
Did you find anything at all funny in the play? If so, what?
•
How did you respond to the violence in the play? If you were the director, what might you have done
differently?
Responding to characters:
•
How did your reactions to King Lear himself change as he grew frailer and more desperate?
•
There are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters in the play. Identify which is which, then discuss whether you think
any of the ‘bad’ characters had any good qualities and vice versa.
•
What did you think of the Fool? Why do you think Shakespeare included this character?
•
What do you think the purpose of Edgar’s disguise is? Did you find it effective?
•
Were you convinced that Edmond was sorry for what he had done at the end of the play? Do you think it
would change the meaning of the play if the section in which he tries to make amends was cut from the
script?
•
The director decided to make Goneril pregnant and then have a baby in this production. How does this
change your view of her behaviour?
Using all the senses:
•
What can you remember about the music, sound effects and lighting in the production? What did you think
was particularly effective and why did you like it?
•
Describe the set. What impression did it give you of what kind of place Lear’s kingdom is?
•
What different locations can you remember from the play? How were props, sound and lighting used to
create these different places?
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•
The storm scene is the theatrical high point of the play. How did the director use sound, lighting and
movement to create an effect? What was your reaction to the storm?
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16. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING
Cambridge School Shakespeare: King Lear (CUP 1996)
King Lear Casebook, ed. Frank Kermode (Macmillan, Basingstoke 1992)
New Cambridge Shakespeare (CUP 2003).
On Directing Shakespeare, Ralph Berry (Hamish Hamilton 1989)
Playing Lear, Oliver Ford Davies (Nick Hearn Books 2003)
Shakespeare An Illustrated Stage History, Jonathan Bate and Russell Jackson (OUP 1996)
Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom (Riverhead Books, 1998)
Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, Jan Kott (University Paperbacks, 1967)
Stagecraft, Trevor R Griffiths (Quarto 1992)
Teaching Shakespeare, Rex Gibson (CUP 1998)
The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate (Picador 1997)
William Shakespeare, A.L Rowse (Macmillan 1963)
USEFUL INTERNET LINKS
www.youngvic.org
www.everymanplayhouse.com
www.rsc.org.uk/lear
www.shakespeares-globe.org/globeeducation
www.globelink.org/resourcecentre/kinglear2001/
www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/kinglear/
www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/bedlam/f_bed.htm
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