Shakespeare's KING LEAR

Assigned text: Shakespeare, King Lear  Oxford Paperbacks, 2008
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

PHEDRE by Racine

PHÉDRE by Jean Racine, Tr by Ted Hughes

This book was quite interesting.  Before reading it, I had looked at some links to movie clips that Stephen had sent out.  There are a few clips and a movie trailer on youTube for  PHEDRE directed in 1962 by Jules Dassin and starring Anthony Perkins and Melina Mercouri.  The clips were very melodramatic.  Black and white with a voice-over describing Phedre in sharp, dramatic terms.  The scenes are emotional, Phedre pacing restlessly and throwing herself on the bed weeping, gazing longingly at Hippolytus, slapping her maid.  These may have coloured my perception of the play and of Phedre.

The language of the play seemed very different.  Phedre was written in the 17^th century by Racine, then translated in the last century by Ted Hughes, poet laureate in Great Britain – and this may be where the stylistic difference comes from.

It is the story of Phedre, married to Theseus.  When she married him, she met his son Hippolytus for the 1st time and fell in love with Hippolytus.  She tried to block out this love by living away from Hippolytus and treating him harshly so that he would take against her.  As the play opens, Theseus has been away for a long time and is reported dead.  This news causes Phedre to confess her love to Hippolytus, who in turn has fallen in love (secretly) with a young hostage, Aricia.  Just as all these conflicting events are unfolding, Theseus returns.  Phedre's loyal nurse convinces Phedre to allow Theseus to believe that Hipploytus has been importuning Phedre. Father and son have a fight and Theseus fatally curses his son.  Hippolytus speeds off in his chariot and dies bravely fighting a sea monster, the nurse commits suicide and Phedre confesses her illicit love to her husband and unable to face the wreckage she has caused, she takes poison (brought to Athens by her "sister, Medea") and dies.

While this play had all the elements of tragedy, it seemed a bit empty - I'm not really sure why.  When I look for reason and passion here, passion has the upper hand.  Theseus' absence and presumed death is the spark that sets off the chain of events.  He likely has been away indulging his passions.  Phedre is tormented by her passion for Hippolytus, which her reason tells her is wrong.  Hippolytus has a reputation for being chaste but he has a passion for Aricia.  He also has the impetuous passion of youth, that causes him to bolt when he is unjustly accused by his father, and which, along with his bravery, leads to his death.  His father Theseus loses his son when he allows his passion and anger at being betrayed cause him to fatally curse his son.  Though he quickly regrets this and tries to undo the curse, it's too late.  The nurse gives in to her passionate love (loyalty, jealousy?) for Phedre and plots to throw the blame on Hippolytus to save Phedre. When this causes more grief for Phedre, the nurse kills herself.  Phedre allows her passion for Hippolytus to ruin her life though when she tried reason to put distance between herself and Hippolytus, she was able to cope and survive, albeit very unhappily.  At the end when she sees what she has caused and what she has allowed to happen, she kills herself (helped by her very passionate sister, Medea).