Text I read: The complete Works of William Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1982, London.
As our texts get within 1000 years of the current time, I find them more appealing. I've enjoyed the ancient texts and the more of them I read, the more I get out of them but now being able to read Shakespeare felt a bit like coming home. I have only read a couple of his plays (aside from high scool assigned readings that sadly did nothing to make me appreciate Shakespeare - I hope English teaching is more inspiring today in this regard). Every time I see a good production of Shakespeare (and thank god for Bard on the Beach and other Shakespeare festivals) or read one of his plays I'm astounded and thrilled by his language. I hadn't read King Lear before and had never seen it performed so my only knowledge is hazy and pieced together from occasional references. I enjoyed the play and it worked very well to read it the same week as Machiavelli's The Prince. Even before actually knowing what Machiavellian might denote, I would have called Edmund Machiavellian in his plotting and his amoral decisions and actions. I don't think I'd ever heard of Kent before and he was a Scarlet Pimpernel-type character for me.
This play was full of lots of passion and a bit of reason. King Lear seemed to make his decisions solely based on passion. He may have been a more reasonable leader in his prime but in his dotage he seems a creature of impulse and passion. He throws years of love away with Cordelia based on her very reasonable and thoughtful (and NOT passionate answer to his question about how much his daughters love him). Yet he is more than taken in by Goneril and Regan's fawning and hypocritical replies - he obviously didn't study Machiavelli's chapter 23 on "How Flatterer's Must be Shunned".
Goneril and Regan, the two eldest daughter's (why are the eldest always the evil siblings?), seem to just be evil. It's hard to say whether they are governed by passion or reason. They seem motivated by greed and though they can plan and act amorally, I'm not sure it qualifies as reason. I think it is just evil passions and animal cunning.
Edmund is motivated by anger, jealousy, greed, feelings of vengeance, bitterness. He can reason much more effectively and in a very Machiavellian way. He probably balances passion and reason but in all their negative connotations - which for me puts him more in passions camp and less in reasons camp. We haven't really been considering qualifying passion and reason into good passion and bad passion; good reason and bad reason but Edmund would end up solidly in the BAD camp for both qualities/emotions.
Kent has both passion and reason in a good way. He is passionate in his devotion to King Lear and in his bravery and integrity bu he is also very reasonable in his ability not to have his judgement clouded by passion. He seems more to act based on HONOUR and we haven't discussed where this falls in the passion or reason camp. That would be an interesting discussion.
I have to include some favourite lines to remember:
Act 1, Scene 1
40-41 ...while we unburdened crawl towards death...
56 ...dearer than eyesight, space and liberty
60 ...:A love that makes breath poor and speech unable
90 Nothing will come of nothing (A "shout out" to Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius, Epicureans and Stoics)
148 ...when majesty stoops to folly
164 kill thy physician, and the fee bestow on the foul disease
181 Freedom lives hence and banishment is here
199 ...but now her price is fall'n
205 Dowered with our curse and strangered with our oath
249-251 ...that art most rich, being poor; most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised
279-280 Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides, who covert faults at last with shame derides
Act 1, Scene 2
14-15 th' creating a whole tribe of fops got tween a sleep and a wake
21 Now, gods, stand up for bastards
51 the oppression of aged tyranny
30 by an auricular assurance (I have to admit I like this turn of phrase solely for its medical interest); also Act 1, Scene 4 child of spleen
134-135 An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
136 My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, my nativity was under Ursa Major.
151 How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
Act 1, Scene 4
185 and be athwart disnatured torment
289 sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child
Scene 5
as a crab's like a apple
In Act 2, Scene 2, Kent has a wonderful speech where he recitesa long list of epithets about Oswald.
70 anger hath a privilege
81 epileptic visage (I'm not sure what this means, contorted?)
51 Fortune that arrant whore
116 I'll beat the drum till it cry sleep to death
130 sepulchring an adultress (you have to admire Shakespeare's economy of language - he says so much so succintly and pithily)
165 you fen-sucked fops
Act 2, Scene 4
221 Thou art a boil, a plaque-like sore or embossed carbuncle
232 for those that mingle reason with your passion (Regan speaking about her father's old age)
275 women's weapons (tears)
Act 3, Scene 2
I am a man more sinned against than sinning
70 The art of our necessities is strange and can make vile things precious
79 a brave night to cool a courtesan (about a cold night)
Scene 3
21 o, that way madness lies
75 pelican daughters
Act 5, Scene 3
137 A most toad-spotted traitor
173 The wheel is come full circle
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