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King Lear: Shakespeare Festival
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The story of King Lear and his three daughters existed in some form up to four centuries before Shakespeare recorded his vision. Lear was a British King who reigned before the birth of Christ, allowing Shakespeare to place his play in a Pagan setting. Predated by references in British mythology to Lyr or Ler, Geoffrey of Monmouth recorded a story of King Lear and his daughters in his Historia Regum Britanniae of 1137. Dozens of versions of the play were then written up, highlighting certain events, such as the love test, or expanding upon the story, such as creating a sequel where Cordelia committed suicide. Most of these versions had a happy ending, though untrue to the story, where peace was restored under the reign of Lear and Cordelia. Shakespeare ... had no interest in writing a tragicomedy.
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Even before King Lear begins, it is clear the Classical Theatre of Harlem has put together a tribal, tense production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. As the audience takes their seats, an actor (Ty Jones as Edmund) anxiously paces the stage. The lights dim, and a militant drum begins to beat. It’s the beginning of a visceral, powerful production, expertly staged by Alfred Presser and performed with energy and dedication from its sizable cast.
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The modern text of King Lear derives from three sources: two quartos, published in 1608 (Q1) and 1619 (Q2) [10] respectively, and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F1). The differences between these versions are significant. Q1 contains 285 lines not in F1; F1 contains around 100 lines not in Q1. Also, at least a thousand individual words are changed between the two texts, each text has a completely different style of punctuation, and about half the verse lines in the F1 are either printed as prose or differently divided in the Q1. The early editors, beginning with Alexander Pope, simply conflated the two texts, creating the modern version that has remained nearly universal for centuries. The conflated version is born from the presumption that Shakespeare wrote only one original manuscript, now unfortunately lost, and that the Quarto and Folio versions are distortions of that original.
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The first great 21st century Lear may be Christopher Plummer, who became the first actor to receive a Tony Award nomination for playing King Lear in the 2004 Broadway production at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Ian McKellen (who had performed the play twice before in the roles of Edgar and the Earl of Kent, winning a Drama Desk Award for the former) has ... been triumphant as King Lear after opening in the play at the Courtyard Theatre at Stratford-Upon-Avon for the Royal Shakespeare Company in April of 2007 before taking the production on a world tour with a cast that includes Sylvester McCoy as the Fool, Frances Barber as Goneril and Jonathan Hyde as the Earl of Kent. Other recent Lears were Stacy Keach in a production at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and Kevin Kline in a critically reviled production at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
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King Lear is replete with metaphors involving animals. Usually the animal is a reference to a behavior. Students should be familiar with this device as own their language carries similar metaphors-"Sly as a Fox," "Busy as a Bee,"... Students can search through the play for metaphors that decode behavior. Discussions can involve why Shakespeare chose that particular animal rather than another, leading to a more abstract concept of writing effective poetry. After these discussions, a natural activity would be for students to write animal metaphors of their own.
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A 5 page paper which analyzes the original William Shakespeare play, "King Lear," then compares it with the interpretation of the TV film version starring Sir Laurence Olivier. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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