King Lear, by William Shakespeare.
I listened to the exceptional recorded CD set produced by Arkangel Shakespeare, and supplemented the performance with the Everyman Shakespeare edition of the play.
I loved the play and the production. I hope to listen or see it performed again soon.
There are lots of oddities and logical lapses, however, none of which prevented me from the loving the thing.
In the play's opening, when Cordelia fails to express her filial love for Lear in the exaggerated fulsome terms used by Goneril and Regan, Lear throws himself into a rage. He disowns her. Yet, isn't she his favorite daugher? She is. So he must already know how she feels about him. Dramatic foreshortening and all that aside, it's an odd premise that he decides to demand this kind of vocal fealty from the daughters. I suppose this establishes our view of him as an aged arrogant fool.
And Cordelia -- I don't quite understand her coldness. "Nothing" is her reply. We understand that she sees through the oily praise of her sisters, but isn't her reply needlessly cold? If she's the favorite and most loving daughter, wouldn't she express that love a bit more warmly?
So Goneril puts up Lear and his one hundred rowdy camp followers. They like to party. She can't take it any more. Well, who could? Put up a hundred fun-loving knights indefinitely? After three days the fish stinks, the Mediterranean saying goes. Hard to blame Goneril for clamping down on the old blowhard. It's hardly abusing him!
Of course, he does eventually understand what an arrogant bastard he's been, in those sad scenes out in the storm, in the open, and finally with the dead Cordelia in his arms.
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