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King Lear Folger Shakespeare Library William Shakespeare Barbara A Mowatt Paul Werstine Books

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King Lear Folger Shakespeare Library William Shakespeare Barbara A Mowatt Paul Werstine Books

King Lear is one of the bloodiest plays in Shakespeare's body of work. And it is a harrowing play. Not just death, but cruelty and brutality reign. Lear, as father, makes an ill-conceived choice in rewarding his three daughters--Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.

This sets in motion Lear's downward spiral and begets conspiracies, betrayals, and murder. By the play's end, several leading characters have died. And, by that time, Lear has come to understand the folly of his choices regarding his daughters. By then, too late. . . .

A powerful and dark tragedy. . . .


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King Lear Folger Shakespeare Library William Shakespeare Barbara A Mowatt Paul Werstine Books Reviews

"King Lear" is Shakespeare's most profound utterance. It is a work whose theme is love; its major concern is with the centrality of love in the formation of character and with justice, both social and divine. The final scene, which confirms this reading, is one of the great achievements of world literature. The play opens with the aging king dividing his kingdom among his three daughters in return for their declarations of love. King Lear gives love uncontrollably and expects to be loved in the same fashion. He tells us that he loved the little one, Cordelia, best (I.i.137, 245, & 336) and we must thus assume the most violent resentment on the part of the two elder daughters, who have learned to say not what they feel but what they ought to say. Cordelia's honestly proclaims that her future husband will of necessity have to share in her love with her father and this is understood by the latter as a complete rejection, worthy of curses and banishment. The "subplot" concerning Gloucester's two sons, Edgar and Edmund. We can understand Gloucester's love for both of his children as a relatively recent phenomena having required the gradual overcoming of his embarrassment at his younger son, Edmund's, illegitimacy (I.i. 10). That Edmund has overheard his father's disparaging opening comments to Kent is confirmed by his paraphrasing of them in the second scene (I.ii. 18) and that this shaming has been a part of Edmund's experience since childhood appears probable in light of his final, transformative reaction to the unexpected and unknown feelings of love and pity experienced by him at the end of the play.

The motif of "nothing," "nothingness" is hammered throughout the play. Having given away his love and receiving none from his remaining daughters Lear becomes 'nothing,' ontologically empty ("Lear's shadow"). Edgar, likewise experiences his rejection by his father - on faulty and conspiratorial premises - as an annihilation of his being ("Edgar I nothing am"). "He childed like I fathered," says Edgar of his godfather Lear. The comparison is that between two egos who know only the need to love and have been annihilated by the rejections they have experienced from the individuals whom they love. Edgar's transformation into Tom of Bedlam is not only a practical disguise but an acting out of this loss of identity (consider that he continues to use mad Tom's vocal mannerisms even in soliliquy [III.vii.126]) and his refusal to reveal himself to his father perhaps until he is ready to undertake an act which will justify his being loved again (III.vii. 121-124).

Those who love give away all; those who feel no love take everything in order to make up for the emptiness. Edmund, Regan, Goneril and Cornwall seem always conscious of their desire to conquer even more power. Yet those who suffer hardship in this play seem to react in two ways - 1) they experience *ever increasing degrees of empathy,* by which they commit themselves to the relief of others through acts of, and belief in, social justice, and 2) they *imagine a system of divine justice,* by which they attempt to reconcile themselves to what's been lost. Edgar testifies that he has witnessed madmen, buffeted by nature, threatening others to do them enforced "charity" by piercing their own numbed arms in terrifying display. We have just seen such a thing occur with Edmund in Act II, scene i. We also know that he has called upon Nature as his goddess. Thus what we have here (like 'the Turk' in "Othello") is a rare Shakespearean metaphor Edmund is Nature. King Lear's own pronouncement to the howling storm on the heath - "Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters... I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children/ You owe me no subscription then, let fall/ Your horrible pleasure" further illustrates the point. In "King Lear," Nature is the lack of love. It is loveless and existential. It is godless; god and the astrological being an ego defense. It is "nothing."

The poetry of "King Lear" is magnificent, perhaps not quite achieving the measureless heights of "Macbeth" or "Othello," but sonorous and extraordinarily beautiful. The two feuding brothers, Edgar and Edmund, are among Shakespeare's most profound creations. The Duke of Cornwall is one of his great monsters. And King Lear is one of his most tragic heroes. The Folgers editions conflates the Quarto and Folio editions. This is common practice for Shakespeare but both versions are so different (Shakespeare died before he could edit his complete ouvre for publication) that many editors have recommended to their readers that they embrace either one or the other. I personally would not recommend this since I think thematically the work is more difficult to interpret without the combining of a few lines found in only one or the other of the two editions (Q's "He childed like I fathered," not found in F, goes a long way towards explaining Edgar's character). There are so many classic scenes in this masterpiece of masterpiece, and so much characterization filled with insight and wisdom, and subtlety in its construction and beauty in its poetry, that reading or re-reading this play is an experience quite unlike any other. It is *the* major work by one of *the* major artists in world culture.
The Modern Library/RSC Shakespeare series IS a very valuable addition. Inexpensive edition of the plays, helpful scene-by-scene summaries of the action, etc. But by far the most valuable part of the half dozen volumes I have studied is the "In Performance" sections. This is what sets this series apart from most others. Here, are performance histories detailing a variety of historic interpretations, interviews with contemporary directors and actors, revealing how they interpreted the text, and turned it into a stage drama.

This Lear volume, unfortunately, is marred by the "temporally ethnocentric" and gross overemphasis upon the 1970 Peter Brook production, which perversely saw Lear as a Beckett or Brecht play. Instead of Shakespeare's profound, nuanced picture of a complex world of good and evil, with glimpses of transcendent, redeeming dimensions, we are given--as the proper touchstone to all future presentations--an absurdist, nihilistic vision of life, deliberately removing all affirmation of the worth of life, and of a distinction between good and evil! Hard to believe? Cf. pp. 166 ff. "Productions of Lear would {could?} never be the same after this." ??

Even in this flawed volume, there is much to learn. And most of the other volumes I have studied in this series are not marred by such imbalanced "Mod" decadence. I hope the volume on TWELFTH NIGHT, with its gratuitous, stressed homosexualizing of several relationships, is not a sad omen for future volumes in the series.
Like I say about all Shakespeare the Arden versions are my favorite. I own about a third of the Canon in them already. The footnotes are my favorite parts about it, and they're great because I don't have to carry my Lexicon around everywhere.
King Lear is a brilliant play, all around. Between the family ties, the love and lust, and just the crazy existential dialogue, it's just a great read all-around.
This 'interpretation' alongside the original makes for much easier reading, while making the original so readily available also gives one the 'texture' of how the original felt. There is so much meaning and so much feeling contained in this play that the interpretation is essential unless one is able to interpret all the old English terms by oneself. So, I will certainly purchase further editions by this author's interpretations for more appreciation of the many plays of Shakespeare.
The Tragedy of King Lear is a gem with keen insights into the ways that people can be superficial at their own peril and the peril of those they love. Unfortunately, I read the version. As with many books that involve formatting, the playscript was very difficult to follow due to erroneous breaks in the lines of text. Read King Lear as a physical book.
King Lear is one of the bloodiest plays in Shakespeare's body of work. And it is a harrowing play. Not just death, but cruelty and brutality reign. Lear, as father, makes an ill-conceived choice in rewarding his three daughters--Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.

This sets in motion Lear's downward spiral and begets conspiracies, betrayals, and murder. By the play's end, several leading characters have died. And, by that time, Lear has come to understand the folly of his choices regarding his daughters. By then, too late. . . .

A powerful and dark tragedy. . . .