Battle of the Lears: ‘King Lear’ (1999) dir. Brian Blessed

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Edmund Spenser, English Renaissance, King James I, King Lear, maps, Shakespeare, tragedy

Following Michael Elliott’s version of King Lear, Brian Blessed creates a menacing Medieval world. Images of the full moon, Stonehenge-like stone slabs, naked flames, white-robed priests and sharp blades profilerate. He also uses a rug-like map spread on the floor. At this point, a jovial Lear (played by Blessed) enjoys Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery. He responds by dividing the map with a stick, an insignificant act if it wasn’t for Lear’s linguistic flourish that first rewards Goneril for her professed love:

 

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched,

With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,

We make thee lady. (I.i, lines 63-6)

Blessed’s Lear is not a tired aged king who looks forward to relinquishing power. Instead, he is a loving though deluded father bestowing on his daughters an inheritance based on the wealth generated by bountiful land. In this context, the ‘shadowy forests’ and ‘plenteous rivers’ recall Irenius’s description of Ireland in Edmund Spenser’s A View of the State of Ireland (1595 publ. 1633):

And sure it is yet a most beautifull and sweet countrey as any is under heaven, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish most abundantly, sprinkled with many very sweet ilands and goodly lakes…(Spenser 27)

Ireland is sold to potential New Englanders as ‘a most beautifull and sweet [and profitable] countrey’, perhaps in order to justify the needless death of thousands and the cost of the ‘Irish problem’ for the Elizabethan government. Therefore, Ireland is reduced to its property value, an island to be ravaged for its resources. Although Lear already owns the land he is dividing through being its ruler, he breaks it down further into monetary units for his daughters to enjoy. Monarchical power is seemingly usurped by a landlord’s property rights. My interpretation of the map scene teased from Blessed’s film is similar to that of

Review: The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare, performed by Propellor, dir. Edward Hall at The Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays

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bear, English Renaissance, female roles, Propellor, Shakespeare, Sheep

In the midst of the Battle of the Lears series, it seems appropriate to review Propellor’s version of The Winter’s Tale. The Shakespeare’s company award winning director Edward Hall perfectly communicates Charles Marowitz’s belief that:

 

The modern director is the master of the subtext as surely as the author is of the text, and his dominion includes every nuance and allusion transmitted in each moment of the performance. He is not simply a person who imposes order upon artistic subordinates in order to express a writer’s meaning, but someone who challenges the assumptions of a work of art and uses mise-en-scène actively to pit his beliefs against those of the play. Without that confrontation, that sense of challenge, true direction cannot take place, for unless the author’s work is engaged on an intellectual level equal to his own, the play is merely transplanted from one medium to another – a process which contradicts the definition of the word ‘perform’ – which means to ‘carry on to the finish’, to ‘accomplish’, to fulfil the cycle of creativity begun by the author. (Marowitz 3)

Before the performance begins, Hall challenges the audience by directing an all male, and might I add adult, company. Propellor’s all male cast may be fulfilling ‘the cycle of creativity begun by the author’ by inviting a comparison to the Jacobean theatre company, The King’s Men (formerly the Lord Chamberlain’s men), who performed The Winter’s Tale in Whitehall’s Banqueting House in 1612-13. The play was one of fourteen celebrating the wedding of King James I’s daughter Elizabeth to Prince Frederick the Elector Palatine (Orgel 80). Although Shakespeare’s theatre company used boys in the female leads, Propellor

Battle of the Lears: ‘King Lear’ (1982) dir. Jonathan Miller

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English Renaissance, King Lear, maps, Ptolemy, Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare

Directed by Jonathan Miller in 1982, King Lear is part of the BBC’s project to film all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is performed as though on a theatre stage with minimum props. At Lear’s court, the players are attired in black Jacobean costumes that reflect the king’s ‘darker purpose’ (I.i, line 35). Though Cordelia wears a white headdress and shawl to indicate her purity. The overall effect is that the court is aggressively banal with nasty schemes being hatched in a disturbingly calm and superficial space. Even the characters speak in the same moderate tone, a featureless wall Michael Hordern as the frustrated Lear can only rail against.

Amidst this trite behaviour, the Fool supposedly provides witty relief as he satirises Lear’s decision to handover his kingdom to his two eldest daughters. However, Frank Middlemass is a lifeless Fool who delivers his lines perfunctorily. The sharp-tongued exchanges Shakespeare wrote for the king and Fool become