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Dec. 7th, 2010 02:53 amFlu and other ailments have eased - just weak with a headache now. I read King Lear aloud to myself today, and that's definitely how to read it.
Things noticed, this time: the play is completely exhausting and then heartbreaking - the one happens for the sake of the other, to some extent so that you think the ending will be a happy one since the happy-seeming things start to come about around when the play should be ending, i.e. when you're out of audience juice. The other shoe drops seemingly arbitrarily so that it surprises you. Surprises you like death. Shakespeare anticipatorily out-Tennyson's Tennyson with bewilderment at how death is in that last scene - he passes staring at her lips to see if they'll move, somehow breathe. (Why do I feel I never noticed that? I obviously noticed it every time I read it, but I have no memory, it's like I never had.)
He rubs your face in it the way it does.
I'll correct that, the thing about expecting a happy ending - I wouldn't say you ever feel things won't end tragically, but you maybe feel they'll end a bit less tragically or more composedly tragically. Sure, Lear will die, but maybe after learning something! This is flip, but I just mean the play leaves tragedy to be something worse. And, hints aside, you're not convinced it will until it does.
The knave/fool division, that that's all one can be. Time and again someone steps forth surprisingly as good or as bad, as better or worse than you'd think. Shakespeare even gives the balance to good, which feels true, but he makes it not matter. The bad plus the world plus death makes the good just fools, though better than the bad. Who are all fools too - it never works out for them. Which also to me feels true.
Everyone left alive is familyless.
I'd been thinking of the play all year. Mostly because when my father was alive but old when I saw or contemplated old men hurt or in danger or dying it was terribly painful. Whereas a while after I became rather numb to it. I don't know if that was self-defense or just that that specific fear was gone.
I don't remember this too well either but I think in one previous reading I was maybe very annoyed with Lear, had trouble liking him the way people can, that that hurt my involvement. To me now that seems inexplicable.
I read it in Bloom's noteless edition, which I think helped, though a handful of things, usually vocabulary in the mad speeches, were opaque. Though I'm not sure which version that even was - presumably the right one. But aloud, damn, do it aloud.
The gamble this play takes (for a reader - and maybe for less talented directors?) is with numbness, when and how numbness will hit you. Aloud, getting into each character with your voice, I think it hits and lifts just where intended.
Things noticed, this time: the play is completely exhausting and then heartbreaking - the one happens for the sake of the other, to some extent so that you think the ending will be a happy one since the happy-seeming things start to come about around when the play should be ending, i.e. when you're out of audience juice. The other shoe drops seemingly arbitrarily so that it surprises you. Surprises you like death. Shakespeare anticipatorily out-Tennyson's Tennyson with bewilderment at how death is in that last scene - he passes staring at her lips to see if they'll move, somehow breathe. (Why do I feel I never noticed that? I obviously noticed it every time I read it, but I have no memory, it's like I never had.)
He rubs your face in it the way it does.
I'll correct that, the thing about expecting a happy ending - I wouldn't say you ever feel things won't end tragically, but you maybe feel they'll end a bit less tragically or more composedly tragically. Sure, Lear will die, but maybe after learning something! This is flip, but I just mean the play leaves tragedy to be something worse. And, hints aside, you're not convinced it will until it does.
The knave/fool division, that that's all one can be. Time and again someone steps forth surprisingly as good or as bad, as better or worse than you'd think. Shakespeare even gives the balance to good, which feels true, but he makes it not matter. The bad plus the world plus death makes the good just fools, though better than the bad. Who are all fools too - it never works out for them. Which also to me feels true.
Everyone left alive is familyless.
I'd been thinking of the play all year. Mostly because when my father was alive but old when I saw or contemplated old men hurt or in danger or dying it was terribly painful. Whereas a while after I became rather numb to it. I don't know if that was self-defense or just that that specific fear was gone.
I don't remember this too well either but I think in one previous reading I was maybe very annoyed with Lear, had trouble liking him the way people can, that that hurt my involvement. To me now that seems inexplicable.
I read it in Bloom's noteless edition, which I think helped, though a handful of things, usually vocabulary in the mad speeches, were opaque. Though I'm not sure which version that even was - presumably the right one. But aloud, damn, do it aloud.
The gamble this play takes (for a reader - and maybe for less talented directors?) is with numbness, when and how numbness will hit you. Aloud, getting into each character with your voice, I think it hits and lifts just where intended.
