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A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

theguardian.com

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Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#31

Post by renjimen »

winstonewert wrote: post #24
barnacled wrote: post #20

I am seeing a trend recently of comparing the plague to covid 19 and it is rather frustrating. The case fatality rate of the black death was 30-60% pretty much across the board for the bubonic variant. Covid 19 is 0.4% and really that is heavily skewed by those over the age of 70 and especially 80. Covid 19, while enormously disruptive due to its infectiousness and tendency to put a big chunk of people in hospital, d…

How much of the black death date rate was due to lack of medical knowledge? Would we really have the same terrible outcome if a similar disease hit today?

Well, all of it was due to the lack of medical knowledge. The bubonic plague hardly kills anyone anymore. The point the parent is making is that we shouldn't compare the societal effects of COVID19 today with that of the bubonic plague when it was at its worst.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#32

Post by jfengel »

ghaff wrote: post #29
jfengel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first three plays you mention are rarely performed, and for good reason: they're kind of a mess. Not everything fits neatly into Comedy/Tragedy/History, but his most widely regarded plays were all tragedies where everybody ends up dead. It's a trope he wrote well. So I concur with you. I haven't read the original King Leir, but I have read Nahum Tate's happy-ending rewrite of Shakespeare, and the ending just read…

Yes. Of those 4, only The Tempest is top-drawer Shakespeare although, to be honest, The Winter's Tale is the only one of the other three I've actually read/seen performed. The Tempest--which is one of my favorites--was one of his very last plays and certainly his last great one; it's hard not to see the ending, e.g. the breaking of the staff, as symbolic in a way that his other play conclusions were not. >his most wi…

My theater troupe (www.rudemechanicals.com) has never done Cymbelline -- the only play we haven't done. We had it on our schedule to be performed next month, but obviously that didn't happen.

I directed Pericles myself, and it was actually a hoot, albeit with a cheat. The plot is such a mess that I literally put the two writers, Shakespeare and Wilkins, on stage, and pretended that the play's bizarre plot twists were the result of the two fighting over control.

Our Winter's Tale was less of a farce. We set it in the 1960s, with the Bohemians as "bohemians". It was lovely -- still not anybody's favorite Shakespeare play, but a worthy project.

We're doing Zoom shows to keep ourselves occupied until we can get back on stage. And when we do I'll finally get to do a version of Midsummer I've been prepping for years, lit mostly with black lights. It'll be beautiful. (I've directed it twice before, and my troupe has done it several other times as well. Audiences do love that play.)

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#33

Post by hutzlibu »

winstonewert wrote: post #24
barnacled wrote: post #20

I am seeing a trend recently of comparing the plague to covid 19 and it is rather frustrating. The case fatality rate of the black death was 30-60% pretty much across the board for the bubonic variant. Covid 19 is 0.4% and really that is heavily skewed by those over the age of 70 and especially 80. Covid 19, while enormously disruptive due to its infectiousness and tendency to put a big chunk of people in hospital, d…

How much of the black death date rate was due to lack of medical knowledge? Would we really have the same terrible outcome if a similar disease hit today?

Well, today we have antibiotics, so no, we do not have to fear the original black death anymore.

But what we also have today, to mitigate the bonus of medicine and hygiene, is fast global travel and very, very crowded cities, compared to the medieval times.

So a highly infectious and deadly disease, we can not treat with antibiotics, would still fuck us up pretty bad.

So I agree, covid was a good trial run for a real epidemic.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#34

Post by ghaff »

jfengel wrote: post #21
mav3rick wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you suggest a plain English adaption of his works ?

I don't think a plain English adaptation is very helpful. His work isn't about the story, but the language. The work is poetry, both literally and figuratively, and a plain English adaptation is like somebody telling you about their favorite song. Better, I think, is to see a good film adaptation. Shakespeare was never intended to be read, but to be performed. There's a lot in the text that isn't apparent until you'v…

Agreed. It's perfectly fine if you don't get all the mythological and historical allusions when you're watching a Shakespearian play. Just let the language wash over you. By all means, if it's your thing study it afterwords but I'd definitely start with a good performance rather than painfully work your way through an annotation that explains every reference in the text.

There are also tons of Macbeth productions, although the best is probably Polanski's which some will have an issue with.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#35

Post by ZacharyPitts »

kshacker wrote: post #28
barnacled wrote: post #20

I am seeing a trend recently of comparing the plague to covid 19 and it is rather frustrating. The case fatality rate of the black death was 30-60% pretty much across the board for the bubonic variant. Covid 19 is 0.4% and really that is heavily skewed by those over the age of 70 and especially 80. Covid 19, while enormously disruptive due to its infectiousness and tendency to put a big chunk of people in hospital, d…

Wow you got me thinking. 30-60% case fatality rate. Imagine living in those days after the disease was widespread and well known but not understood and one morning just feeing a little sick and you knew wow is this the end. Wonder if there is a 'good' novel on those days?

Absolutely, The Decameron by Boccaccio, written in 1353 just a few years after the plague struck Italy in 1348: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron

Rather than a novel, it is a collection of 100 short stories of people during the plague. Enjoyable to this day.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#36

Post by hutzlibu »

spaced-out wrote: post #25
briefcomment wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need more writing where people are the best they can be. Imagine the good Shakespeare could have done by making his characters the best role models. People imitate, and Shakespeare has incredible reach. As I get older, I have little patience for flawed characters, and love it when I see someone act good all the time in fiction. Edit: Tintin, for example, is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. He i…

Part of why Shakespeare became so popular is that his plays portrayed more realistic characters.

Well yeah. If it would be only about all nice and loving saints, who would want to see that?

Because that is not real. Real people have flaws. Or not, depending on perspective and subjective morals.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#37

Post by edmundsauto »

mav3rick wrote: post #16
libraryofbabel wrote: post #8

Note: the assertion that the experience of plague caused Shakespeare to change the ending of King Lear is really just speculation by one scholar. The evidence is circumstantial in the extreme. We know rather little about Shakespeare’s biography or inner life, and after two centuries of people combing over every scrap of archival evidence they can find we are not likely to discover much more. Which is fine by me reall…

Can you suggest a plain English adaption of his works ?

I recommend the Kenneth Branagh films. They sometimes verge on campy, but he and the cast seem to have fun with the material.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#38

Post by ghaff »

jfengel wrote: post #32
ghaff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Of those 4, only The Tempest is top-drawer Shakespeare although, to be honest, The Winter's Tale is the only one of the other three I've actually read/seen performed. The Tempest--which is one of my favorites--was one of his very last plays and certainly his last great one; it's hard not to see the ending, e.g. the breaking of the staff, as symbolic in a way that his other play conclusions were not. >his most wi…

My theater troupe (www.rudemechanicals.com) has never done Cymbelline -- the only play we haven't done. We had it on our schedule to be performed next month, but obviously that didn't happen. I directed Pericles myself, and it was actually a hoot, albeit with a cheat. The plot is such a mess that I literally put the two writers, Shakespeare and Wilkins, on stage, and pretended that the play's bizarre plot twists were…

Midsummer is great. And, yes, it offers a lot of opportunities for interpretation that I've appreciated over the years. I'm sure your version will be a lot of fun. Good luck!

> directed Pericles myself, and it was actually a hoot, albeit with a cheat. The plot is such a mess that I literally put the two writers, Shakespeare and Wilkins, on stage, and pretended that the play's bizarre plot twists were the result of the two fighting over control.

Love this!

>We set it in the 1960s

One of the things I've come to appreciate as I've seen more Shakespeare and, perhaps, gotten older is that I better appreciate alternative settings and interpretation rather than wanting the "authentic" version. One favorite of mine a few years ago was that Bedlam out of Brooklyn did two completely different versions of Twelfth Night.

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#39

Post by edmundsauto »

briefcomment wrote: post #17
InvisibleCities wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also reveals Tolstoy's own perspective on writing as a moral endeavor which he feels Shakespeare failed at, as if Shakespeare had a morality it was "people should be good, but not too good" I couldn't agree more, which is why I like Shakespeare so much better than Tolstoy.

We need more writing where people are the best they can be. Imagine the good Shakespeare could have done by making his characters the best role models. People imitate, and Shakespeare has incredible reach. As I get older, I have little patience for flawed characters, and love it when I see someone act good all the time in fiction. Edit: Tintin, for example, is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. He i…

Another perspective: when I was younger, I liked Hardy Boys and Tom Swift because of their earnest niceness. As I get older, I realize that the world is a complex place and people (characters) are nuanced. Reduction to black/white (good/bad) squeezes the nuance and thus the humanity.

For similar reasons, I don't enjoy reading about the good works of (Western) holy people. (Buddhism and Hindu stories, the small exposure I have, seem to contain nuanced characters.)

Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it

#40

Post by edmundsauto »

jfengel wrote: post #22
briefcomment wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need more writing where people are the best they can be. Imagine the good Shakespeare could have done by making his characters the best role models. People imitate, and Shakespeare has incredible reach. As I get older, I have little patience for flawed characters, and love it when I see someone act good all the time in fiction. Edit: Tintin, for example, is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. He i…

I get that, and it's a challenge for me as a Shakespeare actor and director. I often work with these "flawed" characters, and early in the process there's this question of "do I really want to tell the story about this person?" I've got only limited patience for people being stupid and/or mean. Can't we tell stories about good and smart people? Those stories exist, but they're depressingly rare. I have ways of turnin…

> I've got only limited patience for people being stupid and/or mean. Can't we tell stories about good and smart people? Those stories exist, but they're depressingly rare.

I don't think there are good or bad people. Every person contains both within them.

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