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�Who is it that can tell me who I am?�: Performing the Role of Lear
Stanley Wells, in a moment of slight understatement, says this of King
Lear, referring to the play but also specifically to the title role: �it has
enhanced�and occasionally diminished�the reputations of innumerable
actors.�1 Perhaps for this reason it has not always been a favorite among
actors; Charles Lamb in the early 19th century stated that �the Lear of
Shakespeare cannot be acted.�2 Shakespeare�s Lear could for quite a long
time not be tolerated in its entirety�as we know, in the late 17th century
Nahum Tate revised the play, cutting out the Fool and developing a love
story between Edgar and Cordelia, who together restore Lear to the throne
(and Cordelia, obviously, survives). King Lear never disappeared entirely
from the stage, but even coming into the 20th century it was not among the
most popular plays to be performed. But as Shakespeare�s full text was
restored and theatre companies, actors, and directors began adjusting
themselves to the play rather than trying to make it adjust to their interests, it regained
popularity and, as I�m sure many of you are aware, its recent
production history is very rich; in his review of the production currently
running at the National, Michael Billington remarks that he has seen now
three productions of Lear in the past seven months. The play perhaps
reflected the zeitgeist of various decades throughout the latter half of the 20th century,
and possibly even into the 21st. For actors, Lear himself looms not
only over the play but also over the Shakespearean canon� Derek Jacobi
says that �if you have ambitions to do the classics, you jump through the
Hamlet hoop when you�re young. And then when you�re old you do the Lear hoop.�
Jonathan Bate remarks, that the �problem with the part� is often �that
by the time you are old enough to play it, you are too old to play it.�
Laurence Olivier couldn�t strike the right balance: in 1946, still in his
thirties, �he seemed to be impersonating a whimsical old tyrant rather than
actually being one,� but in 1963 he was simply too feeble to express the rage we have
come to associate with Lear. Richard Burbage, the key actor in
Shakespeare�s company (and who apparently did not possess a bombastic
style), played the part in the early 17th century, when he was just around the
age of forty. Taking into consideration the changes in life expectancy since
Shakespeare�s time, Bate and others suggest that the early fifties is now a
suitable time for actors to take on the part.4 Simon Russell Beale is playing
Lear at the National right now and is 53 years old. Note: Jonathan Bate was
writing the program note for the National, so take that for what it is. But
other notable Lears have not accepted the part in their early 50�s�the text
suggests Lear is in his 80�s, and so some actors have preferred to be closer to this
range: Derek Jacobi claims to have �always felt slightly young for the role� until
he played it at 72, Nigel Hawthorne was 70, and Ian McKellan was 68. Playing Lear as an
older man has not always been the norm, though. Garrick played the role when he was only twenty-four,
but continued to do so until he was in his late
50�s. John Gielgud was also a young Lear, playing the role at the Old Vic
in 1931 when he was twenty-six, and then again when he was 35. As I�ve said, Olivier, like
Garrick, played the role as both a young and aged man.
Just as Lear has been played by actors of various ages, so too have
actors approached the role differently. For some, Lear is as close as
Shakespeare comes to a Titan a character whose stature and grandeur
�ensures pre-eminence.� Many refer to the role as a treacherous and
unforgiving mountain that must either be ascended or reached by parachute,
as Oliver Ford Davies suggests, also saying that the part is �some sort of
ultimate� � perhaps the ultimate �test, accolade, or exploration of the human
condition,� whatever we may take that to mean. And then there is Olivier�s
take on the role and on the figure of Lear: �No, Lear is easy. He�s like all of
us, really: he�s just a stupid old fart.� �He�s like all of us, really.�
Alexander Leggatt says this about theatre (but is, interestingly enough
writing about the performance history of King Lear): �the theatre is the most immediately
human of the arts� � not the most sublime, or even moving, but the most human, which
seems to somehow be a wonderfully and effectively imprecise way of describing it� he continues,
�[the theatre�s] essential medium is the actor, its fundamental dynamic the relation
between the actor and audience.�
Why I�m interested in highlighting these various quotations�and the
one in the title of my paper, �who is it that can tell me who I am?��is
because I want to explore what kind of relationship exists between Lear as a
character and the audience, and how this is an identity-shaping or reflecting
relationship�if the figure of Lear is as Olivier suggests �like all of us,
really,� then in what ways are we similar, how are we reflected in Lear or he
in us? I�d like to suggest that at least one of the reasons Lear may have a
unique relationship to its audience is because of the simplicity of its plot.
For all the ways it removes itself even from Shakespeare�s time by being set
in a pre-Christian and non-classical era, and for all the grandeur with which
Lear is associated�A.C. Bradley believes the play belongs �with works like
the Divine Comedy . . . with the greatest symphonies of Beethoven and the
statues (by Michelangelo) in the Medici Chapel� despite all of this, it
strikes me that the structure of the story, at least as it relates directly to Lear,
is itself remarkably unadorned. Here�s Howard Brenton�s summary of the
narrative of the play�s main figure: �you have a terrible family row and slam
out of the house in the rain; you shout at the rain for a bit, and then think �
right. What am I going to do now?� Of course this kind of plot summary is overly
reductive, but on some level it�s also tellingly accurate and might
help to address the simplicity of the narrative. And exploring the play�s
simplicity can actually offer some inroads into discovering more about it subtleties.
It is the simplicity of a plot from which such abject suffering arises
that makes the play devastating and, for many, nearly unbearable. Wells says
that �King Lear is so widely regarded as the most intensely serious and
profoundly moving of Shakespeare�s plays . . . that going to see a
performance is in danger of seeming like participating in a religious ritual.�
If we can attempt to suspend our knowledge of the play and any pre-
conceived notions (Oliver Ford Davies recounts, albeit with some
skepticism, the story of Peter Brook being approached by an audience
member who complained that he was �not moved by the production.� Brook
responded by asking, �Where is it printed on your ticket that you should be
moved by King Lear?�) and if we can just think for a minute about what
happens in the beginning and persists through at least the first half, perhaps
we would sense that the play does not necessarily signal utter ruin from the
beginning or even throughout but rather that its tragedy rises, perhaps even
surprisingly, to levels of catastrophe at the end from the relatively mundane.
Lear�s errors and the general drama of the first few scenes are perhaps
underwhelming: he gets angry at Cordelia�s perceived slight or perhaps feels
humiliated and thus banishes her and also banishes Kent for defending her.
Eventually we find Lear arguing bitterly with his daughters over the size of
his retinue of knights. I�m not suggesting at all that the play is boring or
uninteresting but rather that there is nothing remarkable about the
circumstances�that they do not themselves signal the onset of a horrific
tragedy. One of the aspects of Lear that I am trying
to touch upon, then, is a sense that it is perhaps uniquely tragic�that
there is something about the way the drama unfolds that does not warrant
the kind of ending the play
offers, and that this attribute is somewhat distinctive among Shakespeare�s
tragedies; some of the other plays that spring to mind involve circumstances
that drive the plot and are also far less easily resolved, thus signaling a
disastrous end: Macbeth has killed Duncan and sets out to shed more blood,
Hamlet�s father is dead and Hamlet has learned about his treacherous
***; revenge must follow; even Romeo and Juliet face more ostensibly
ominous circumstances from early in the play than those that appear in the
early portions of Lear. These that I�ve just listed are circumstances or
choices that can�t necessarily be �undone� in the same way that, say,
Cordelia and Kent could be restored to the court, or either Lear or Gonoril &
Regan could acquiesce to the other party�s requests. No, it seems that, up
until advanced stages of the play and really very close to the end, it need not
end quite so badly. Sam Mendes remarks on what he calls the �glorious
scenes at Dover� that offer hope for redemption, but ultimately, and here I�m
quoting Mendes, �all the seeds Lear has sown cannot be unsown, the world
has changed irretrievably and [he] can�t go back.�
It seems that at this point I�m in danger of implying or stating out
right that the tragedy and horror of Lear�s ending does not match up with the
circumstances of the plot�this is the argument T.S. Eliot makes against
Hamlet, that it is not a successful attempt at a play because Hamlet�s anguish
and behavior lacks a suitable or believable �objective correlative.� What I�d
like to suggest about Lear is actually the opposite. Because it lacks the
obvious signs of catastrophe that are present in say, Macbeth or Hamlet,
Lear forces us to consider how the domestic or mundane can be occasions
for tragedy, and in this way I think lives up to its reputation as among or
perhaps the most harrowing of Shakespeare�s plays. I spoke earlier about
the pettiness of some the play�s earliest scenes, and specifically about Lear�s
disagreement with Goneril concerning the number of knights he is entitled to
and their rowdy behavior, from which springs, in my opinion, one of the
play�s most shocking moments: Lear�s curse of Gonoril:
Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear: Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful. Into her womb convey sterility
Dry up in her the organs of increase, And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her. If she must teem, Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her. Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks, Turn all her mother�s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel How sharper than a serpent�s tooth it is
To have a thankless child. (1.4.230-244).
This speech is precisely the kind of �seed� that �cannot be unsown.� It
illustrates not the obviously calamitous effects of physical violence, but a
more insidious kind of violence which, rather than releasing the victim from
life seeks instead to make life itself torturous. This is a kind of *** that
one could say affects the soul rather than the body, and it irrevocably
destroys the bond between two human beings (even more catastrophic when
the bond being shattered is between parent and child) and breeds the kind of
hatred, contempt, and cruelty that we experience and shudder at as the play
progresses. But perhaps we might also shudder because, as we watch it
played out on stage by a father and daughter, it has the feeling of something
we�ve seen before, is so reflective of our own capacities. It�s useless and
wrong to suggest that elements of say, Macbeth�s tragedy, are less moving
or affective given the fact that most of us have not orchestrated murders for
our own political gain, but there is an intimacy to the tragic elements of King
Lear that is intensely disturbing precisely because the tragic elements arise
from arrogance, cruelty, misguidedness, and feebleness of mind, all of which
can feel deeply and personally reflective. Up until the storm on the heath
Lear is a foul human being, as are Gonoril and Regan. One could justify
saying that none of them deserve mercy, and yet this is precisely why it is so
desperately needed.
In preparing for this paper I�ve noticed a tremendous amount of
interest in Lear as a political play�and indeed the production that is on at
the National that I�ve referenced a few times emphasizes this aspect of the
play. But it is so very striking how often it is the case that directors or actors
(or indeed critics) when hoping to emphasize the political turmoil, use
phrases like, �we must remember� or �we must not forget� that this play
begins with significant political change and upheaval. And while I agree
wholeheartedly that it is important to recognize this side of the play, it seems
significant that such phrases need to be repeated; perhaps we need reminding
of the play�s deep political elements precisely because so much of the early
conflicts are so pressingly domestic and personal. It seems that rather than offering a clear
glimpse into the variety of acting techniques or choices that have been
used to �crack� �the part� or the play more generally, I�ve instead used notes,
interviews, and reflections on performances by actors or directors as points
of departure for understanding the play more intimately. I realize that I
haven�t offered a complete picture of how different actors have approached the
role of Lear and that the latter part of my paper departed somewhat from direct
considerations of performance, but my hope is that I�ve illuminated
some sense of why performance�why acting�and thinking about
acting matters to this play, to
Shakespeare�s work generally, and to us, the audience. And that is because
performance illuminates�perhaps even relies entirely on�the personal
elements that connect a play and its characters to us, the audience. Again to
rely on Stanley Wells, who irritatingly always seems to have expressed a
thought more eloquently than I can, Lear �is a poetic drama whose poetry
can be fully apprehended only through performance.� This is because it is
in performance that we most clearly sense the play�s contradictions�its
moments of bitter hostility or cruelty and also those of sincere tenderness,
the way in which it can at times be terrifying, ironically funny, or simply
devastating�and through all of this, the way it is supremely human. Thank
you.