Can anyone give me some help with King Lear?

Cafe Society
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So this morning I was offered, totally unexpectedly, the chance to direct a stage production of King Lear. It seems that the original director was fired after the first week of pre-production, and my name was suggested as a replacement. This is great, I love working with Shakespeare and have been looking for a new show to direct, so the fact that this fell in my lap is a very good thing.

The bad thing is that I haven’t read Lear in almost 8 years, and have never really given it any study. I have about two weeks to prep this show before I start rehearsing, which is something I would usually take about 6 weeks to do with a play this complicated. So I need to crash course myself in the play (and yes I have a copy I plan on re-reading tonight) in order to get myself on the proper footing to be able to step in and direct the show.

If I remember correctly we have some really good Shakespearean scholars (as well as some great lay enthusiast) so I figured I would add the dope to my usual list of research stops.

So give me what you got, talk to me about King Lear. Tell me what you love most about the play, tell me what you hate about the play. There are two major different versions of the play that I know of (the history of King Lear, and the Tragedy of King Lear) what thoughts do you have about the differences in the text. I am looking for anything that I can use as a wedge to get into this text, so any thoughts or feelings about major themes in the text would be great. Also any references (or web links) to scholarly material that I might want to look at would be appreciated. I need to put together a cutting that runs about 2 hours, if you have suggestions for things I might want to look into cutting, let me know.

I know I need a lot, and am not expecting to get everything that I am looking for from you guys, but anything you can give me is one more piece to the puzzle I am trying to put together. I will take all advice and thoughts with a grain of salt, and ultimately will make all final decisions myself, but I thought it would be fun to get the opinions of live people that I respect and can talk to in addition to just reading scholars that I have no chance of asking follow up questions with.

So tell me about King Lear, I can use all the help I can get.

Thanks much.

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Find some film versions. There’s a good Kurosawa. Use them for cutting ideas. Because:

hates

It’s too long. So it’s difficult to make the end work when the actors are tired.

loves

Kent and the Fool and Edmund are very strong characters, easily outshadowing Cordelia, but possibly taking away good Lear time.

The storm scene and “horrible steep - have I fall’n or no” are pivotal but difficult to do convincingly. If you can make these work you’re on a winner.

casting

Kent and Cordelia need strong actors. Not an easy role for a woman in such a large male ensemble. Sexy helps of course.

Gloucester is a bit superflous. There’s some cutting potential there.

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This probably won’t help you much, but my favorite Shakespeare line is from this play:

Fool: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
Lear: Because they are not eight?
Fool: Exactly. You’d make a fine fool.

The bit I love about it is that the Seven Stars (of the Big Dipper) are, in fact, eight: Mizar, the middle star of the handle, is an optical double, with faint Alkor right next to it. I’ve never seen any confirmation that Shakespeare intended this irony, but I suspect that he did.

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AFAIK, there is only one version attributed to Shakespeare. There is another, anonymous play, “King Leir,” on which Shakespeare probably drew as source material.

Text of “King Leir”: http://pages.unibas.ch/shine/kingleir.html

The two plays compared here: http://users.bigpond.net.au/catchus/chapters.html

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Some people actually replied! I was half certain that this thread would go down without more than a couple of looks.

Sevastopol, I like the idea of going to Kurosawa for cutting ideas. I have always loved Ran, and I can watch it without fear of his choices influencing me too heavily as I don’t plan on using any Japanese influences in my production. And I think I will take some of Regan and Goneril’s husbands parts out of the show. I will take a look at Glouster too, but I think he always ends up giving the audience crucial information when he is on stage. But totally worth a look. Thanks

Chronos that is a cool tidbit of info on that line, even if it was unintentional. So in honor of you and the SDMB I will make sure not to cut it out of the play.

BrainGlutton, you misunderstood me when I said there were two versions. I didn’t mean that Shakespeare wrote two versions, but rather that there are two main version of the one play that are commonly collected.

It gets complicated and I am not going to pretend I fully understand it, but basically his play were collected in what is known as the Quartos. They were later recollected in the Folio manuscripts. The folio version of Lear differs considerably from the Quarto version is some respects. Certain lines and speeches are given to different characters in different versions, each version contains scenes the other doesn’t have etc. It’s the same play, but…different. It was described to me this way… the quartos are closer to what Shakespeare probably wrote, while the folio is probably closer to what the Kings Men performed. How accurate either are is anyones guess, and most productions take a bit from both.

To confuse matters further, in the folio version the play’s name was changed from the History of King Lear, to The Tragedy of King Lear because history plays were only supposed to deal with royalty in post Norman Conquest England.

I happen to have a text that has both versions, so I can make my cutting drawing from both if I want, which is both totally cool and a bit overwhelming at the same time. I am not sure I am qualified to make those kinds of choices, but will that stop me?*
Thanks for the input guys. I hope a few other folks wander through, but its nice to hear what other people think.

*no of course not, what are you looking down here for?

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Get a really strong actor for Lear, but one whose performance won’t steal the show–you need a good lead, but a strong ensemble as well.

Ditto for the Fool–and if they could resemble each other (costumes, props, appearance) that would be even cooler.

I’ll have more and better ideas in the morning, I’m sure.

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WHen you cut the play down, try not to cut any of the fool. He has some very important ideas.

Lear MUST be good. He should be strong, but not overact the role. (And it is reaalllll easy to go over the top with Lear.)

General advice for all Shakespeare, Make sure your actors know and understand what they are saying. Even if you have to go through their lines word by word. It is very easy for actors to get caught up in the music and poetry and forget what the characters are actually saying. (And how they should be feeling as they say the lines.) I don’t know how many times I have seen actors “reciteing” Shakespeare without understanding what the words truly mean. It makes for a tedious night.

By all means cut. Due to the nature of theatre in his day, Shakespeare would “recap” the plot points every so often. Important when theatre goers were wandering in and out during the performance. In todays theatre, our audiences tend to sit through the whole thing. Therefore you do not need the plot points repeated every so often. It’s been a year or two since I’ve read Lear, but you should not have any trouble figuring out where these speeches happen. (Also, todays audiences have trouble sitting through three hours of tragedy.)

Two weeks is an impossibly short time to get up to speed on Lear. :eek: I wish you a “Good Show!” You will need it. :smiley:

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Yeah, but this one goes to eleven.

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I had King Lear as a text during high school, and while I can’t honestly say that it’s my favourite Shakespeare, it certainly had a tremendous impact. I think the most powerful sense I had was of tragedy building up inexorable momentum; of events grown terribly out of proportion in their wrongness.

It’s a hard play to get to grips with, because several of the characters (notably Lear and Cordelia) invoke both pity and extreme irritation at their seeming stupidity and blindness. Lear particularly is quite easy to turn into a character who is more despised than empathised with, and it took several readings and sessions of watching the play before I began to see the essential tragedy of the man, and in the end, to feel sympathy for him.

Will reflect on this and post a little more later on.

Anu

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BTW, NAF1138, I strongly recommend you read George Orwell’s essay, “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool” – http://www.george-orwell.org/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool/0.html.

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I have seen King Lear three times on stage plus film and TV versions. It is my favourite. My small piece of advice is as a watcher of plays, not an actor or director.

The opening scenes are crucial. It is easy to lose the plot early on. Yes, I know I should have read up on the play beforehand (and always do so for Shakespear now), but if you think you may have an audience new to Lear, then they will be grateful if they can understand what’s going on.

I’ve seen the opening scenes with a large map on disply for the audience to see, drawn into 3 parts then torn into 2 in Lear’s rage - two sisters getting half a map each; Cordelia getting nothing. Dramatic and hardly in need of words at all.

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The Orwell essay is fascinating BrainGlutton although I am not sure that I agree with him that Lear is about renunciation in the way that MacBeth is about ambition. Still, interesting stuff, and who knew that Tolstoy went so crazy towards the end of his life? I do agree that the best clue we have as to what Shakespeare really thought about the play is in the character of the fool and in Lear’s lunatic ravings. And there is something about the idea that people behave altruistically for selfish reasons that I find very intriguing.

I am still in sponge mode so I haven’t quite figured out how I want to do the whole thing, but I can start to see the outline of an idea.

It’s been a fun 48 hours I have been spending with this text. Thanks again to all of you who are chiming in with thought on the play, keep em coming.

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What I love about King Lear: Edmund! Sexiest villain ever, beating out even Richard III.

Edgar is interesting too – he’s got a tricky, devious side that glories in disguises, and I suspect that the (half) brothers are more alike than either of them would be willing to admit :slight_smile:

To be honest, the Gloucester clan interests me more than the royal family, and the servant who bumps off Cornwall fascinates me (but my dissertation is about commoners on the Renaissance stage, so this is a highly idiosyncratic fascination).

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I remember reading an essay by either Fritz Leiber or L. Sprague DeCamp about King Lear. It had been included in a group of essays in a series of books showcasing the works of Science Fiction authors and had been included to show that author also wrote volumes of non-science fiction.