About the Play
ACT Theatre's Artistic Director, Kurt Beattie, played the most
misled liege in all of literature. "Come not between a dragon
and his wrath," but audiences came prepared to marvel at an
unraveling and his demise.
About King Lear - by Bob Papsdorf
King Lear is a story that takes place in three distinct, concentric
universes. It is first a political story: it tells of what happens
when an absolute ruler unwisely parcels out all of his property
and power without making any allowances for unexpected results.
King Lear is also a domestic story: it tells of what happens when
an aging father puts his children in competition with each other
and encourages them to deceive him. And King Lear is ultimately
a psychological story, which shows us how rage and suffering can
destroy a man’s mind. At all three levels, King Lear is a story
of dis-integration, where something that was whole and coherent
falls into pieces that no longer fit together.
There is not much “backstory” in King Lear. No mention
of a Ms. Lear, and hardly any references to the world before it
disintegrated. This is more than just dramatic economy. As Lear
fails to recognize how the past has made the present, that past
ceases to exist in the play.
"Come not between a dragon and his wrath." - Act I
We can look for clues to what has come before, but it’s like
looking around corners. For example, we can surmise that Lear must
once have been a noble and magnificent king because of the love
and respect shown him by his youngest daughter Cordelia and by the
earls of Kent and Gloucester. We see his former majesty reflected
in them.
We can also sift through the play, looking for the pieces of the
great man that Lear once was. We can see his missing intellect in
Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester’s illegitimate son and the play’s
chief (but by no means only) villain. Edmund lies, cheats, and destroys
as though he were playing chess. He’s got the serial killer’s
indifference to the suffering of others.
The Fool seems to be in possession of Lear’s wit and self-awareness:
FOOL: If thou wert my Fool, nuncle,
I’ld have thee beaten for being old before they time.
LEAR. How’s that?
FOOL. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been
wise.
LEAR. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in
temper, I would not be mad!
Finally, we see the King’s goodness in his youngest daughter,
Cordelia. For much of the play, Cordelia is in France, out of Lear’s
realm; during this time virtue is in complete eclipse in Britain.
Only after Cordelia returns to English soil does the mood of the
play begin to lighten a bit.
Not that events necessarily begin to turn to the advantage of the
King’s supporters. Indeed, the action of King Lear is a string
of disasters, from beginning to end, a bitter pill to swallow not
just for our generation, but even to earlier generations that we
would suppose could have taken their tragedy unsugared. For two
hundred years the version of King Lear that was acted on the stage
was a fixed-up version that spared the audience the final tragic
blow in act V. Today we see the play as Shakespeare wrote it, and
must find our solace not in the events of the story but in the emerging
resilience of the characters, who, in acts IV and V, are at least
no longer deceived about the nature of the universe they inhabit:
As flies to wanton boys are we to th’
gods
They kill us for their sport
Once you are able to look at the world from that perspective, it’s
pointless to anticipate the ultimate victory of good over evil.
But if good does not triumph, understanding does, for all the illusions
and lies that tormented Lear and Gloucester in Acts I and II are
swept away. The rage and bluster of the earlier action are replaced
by stoic acceptance of a cruel world and notes of irony and compassion:
Men must endure
Their going hence even as their coming hither
Ripeness is all.
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