Week 11: King Lear (BBC Production 1982)



King Lear poster & movie trailer link



While I can appreciate and applaud the actor’s abilities to memorise the Bard’s poetry and perform it scene by scene with no mistakes, I missed the modern day filmic rendering’s use of music and settings. This production was filmed as it would have been seen by the original Elizabethan audiences on stage. Sparse set designs, historically accurate costumes, and a complicated play that really relied only on the words of the script to tell the story. It was confusing for me, and very complicated. The contrast of the Gloucester sub-plot was clever.

Vanity:

King Lear is vane. Deciding to step down from the throne and divide the kingdom between his three daughters, he arranges a love test between his three daughters,asking each to tell him how mush she lobes him. Th first two daughters barrge the king with flattery.

Leadership/power:

King Lear enjoys the power of commanding the people below him. He commands his daughters to tell him how much they love him, commands the banishment of his third daughter and a loyal subject, commands dinner on the table after a day of hunting. However he so easily gives up his responsibilities to his country to his scheming daughters, only to regret it later when they no longer follow his commands.

Ambition:

·         Edmund is dissatisfied with the attitude toward bastard children, and that they cannot claim estates from the family as an heir. He plots an elaborate scheme in order to discredit his legitimate half brother and stand to inherit his father’s estate. Also enters an affair with the married Regan, now queen of half the realm, in an effort to obtain more power.

·         Regan and Goneril, even with full control over the kingdom, still plot to damage the reputation of the rule of their father by claiming Lear is unreliable in his old age..

Loyalty and betrayal:

Edgar is loyal to his father Gloucester.

Edmund betrays Edgar by framing him.

Cordelia is loyal to King Lear, King Lear betrays Cordelia.

King of France is loyal to Cordelia and marries her

King Lear betrays Kent and banishes him.

Kent & The Fool are loyal to King Lear, following him.

Discussion Question: Our first impression of Lear is of a grumpy old man grown tired of being in charge: ''tis our fast intent/ To shake all cares and business from our age; /Conferring them on younger strengths, while we/ Unburden'd crawl toward death' (I, i, 35-37). Were Lear's intentions so unreasonable? Was there anything he had forgotten?

It is not unreasonable for an aging man to want to retire. I believe his intentions were good, he wanted to divide the kingdom up evenly between his daughters and spend his remaining days visiting them at their homes and enjoying life. What was unreasonable was his estimate of his conniving daughter’s honesty and love to him. He did not see that they were conspiring against him until it was too late to do anything about it.

What he had forgotten was his love of power. Giving up his kingdom meant giving up his power. He cannot command anyone to do his biddings, and he cannot even command his daughters as a father, as they do not respect him.

What he also did not take into consideration is if he was ready to give it all up. His weird retirement plan was a sound idea, however, just because people tell you you’re old and senile does not mean that you are. I believe it was the constant referral to this, and King Lear’s fear of it, that lead him to his senility.

Week 12: The Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare Book)




The Tempest book cover & BBC animated production link

 

Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be watched, not read, and I found it hard to try to imagine the magic and illusions that were happening. The main theme that I picked up on was the great power that comes with great wisdom. Prospero’s power comes from his wisdom, which has come from his books. This is a great portrayal of the education revolution, and the connection it had to the obedience of citizens, that was happening before, during and after Shakespeare’s time.

“Prospero's Island is inherently theatrical,” says Moore (2002), “unfolding in a series of spectacles that involve exotic, supra-human, and sometimes invisible characters that the audience can see but other characters cannot.”

·       Prospero’s grand scheme is a pedagogical process for all those that land on the island, and throughout the play he manipulates, trains and schools them to be made ready to reinstate him to his position of Duke of Milan. He separates them from the others, disorientates them from past knowledge, and prepares them for new knowledge.

·       He was Miranda's teacher on the island: ‘Here have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit than other princes can that have more time for vainer hours, and tutors not so careful’. Where education is beneficial for Miranda, its effects on Caliban's low nature were extremely harmful.

·       Prospero and Miranda were the beastly Caliban’s teachers, however his new found knowledge of words did not empower him, rather it has served as self knowledge of how he is different from them. Miranda: “When thou didst not, savage, know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes with words that made them known”. Education changed him into an expert curser: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language!” He may have been born to serve agrees Moore (2002), but learning had made him hate serving.

Discussion Question: David Smith argues that Caliban employs a range of qualities that Prospero denies in himself: rage, passion, vindictiveness, sexuality. Do you agree? How is this coded within the play?

I think Shakespeare created a great contrast between civilized, educated morals and uncivilized, savage desires. In the sexual desire for Miranda, Ferdinand and Caliban are the same however in their restraint they are different; Caliban’s desire leads to an attempted rape of Miranda while Ferdinand professes love and agrees to marriage. Prospero gives more lessons, teaching Miranda and Ferdinand about the peril of uncontrolled desire and the substance of sexual purity. This is indicative that education is the difference between us and them, between civilized and savage.