A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
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Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#2My favorite Shakespeare play. A king who wanted to relinquish responsibility while holding on to the benefits of his position. Blinded to the duplicity of his two opportunistic daughters who tell him what he wants to hear, persecuting the daughter who truly loves him and tells him the truth. Similarly blinded, Gloucester is only able to "see" the truth once his figurative blindness is made literal & his eyes gouged out.
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#3Huge aside but... if you like Tolstoy and Shakespeare reading Tolstoy's take down of Shakespeare is super interesting: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tolstoy_on_Shakespeare
He specifically goes to town on King Lear and gets into some interesting discussions on how he thinks the earlier Lear Shakespeare referenced is structurally better.
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"
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#4Huge aside but... if you like Tolstoy and Shakespeare reading Tolstoy's take down of Shakespeare is super interesting: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tolstoy_on_Shakespeare He specifically goes to town on King Lear and gets into some interesting discussions on how he thinks the earlier Lear Shakespeare referenced is structurally better. Also reveals Tolstoy's own perspective on writing as a moral endeavor which he fe…
Also interesting is George Orwell's critique of Tolstoy's critique! https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#5Huge aside but... if you like Tolstoy and Shakespeare reading Tolstoy's take down of Shakespeare is super interesting: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tolstoy_on_Shakespeare He specifically goes to town on King Lear and gets into some interesting discussions on how he thinks the earlier Lear Shakespeare referenced is structurally better. Also reveals Tolstoy's own perspective on writing as a moral endeavor which he fe…
I haven't read a ton of Tolstoy but that looks super interesting, thanks
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#6I saw Stacy Keach as Lear in DC.
Glouster is sitting there, blinded, gripped by despair, and Lear, mad as a hatter, is patting him on the back, saying:
"Get thee glass eyes,
And like a scurvy politician seem
To see the things thou dost not.[1]"
Totally made the play.
[1] https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/lear/page_244/
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#7Huge aside but... if you like Tolstoy and Shakespeare reading Tolstoy's take down of Shakespeare is super interesting: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tolstoy_on_Shakespeare He specifically goes to town on King Lear and gets into some interesting discussions on how he thinks the earlier Lear Shakespeare referenced is structurally better. Also reveals Tolstoy's own perspective on writing as a moral endeavor which he fe…
> 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.
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#8Note: 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 really - just read the plays! But it doesn’t prevent these kinds of rather clickbaity claims to have uncovered something.
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#9My favorite Shakespeare play. A king who wanted to relinquish responsibility while holding on to the benefits of his position. Blinded to the duplicity of his two opportunistic daughters who tell him what he wants to hear, persecuting the daughter who truly loves him and tells him the truth. Similarly blinded, Gloucester is only able to "see" the truth once his figurative blindness is made literal & his eyes gouged o…
> A king who wanted to relinquish responsibility while holding on to the benefits of his position. Blinded to the duplicity of his two opportunistic daughters who tell him what he wants to hear, persecuting the daughter who truly loves him and tells him the truth.
...written during a plague. How prescient.
Re: A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change it
#10Huge aside but... if you like Tolstoy and Shakespeare reading Tolstoy's take down of Shakespeare is super interesting: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tolstoy_on_Shakespeare He specifically goes to town on King Lear and gets into some interesting discussions on how he thinks the earlier Lear Shakespeare referenced is structurally better. Also reveals Tolstoy's own perspective on writing as a moral endeavor which he fe…
To add to the Tolstoy connections being accounted here: in Knut Hamsun’s novel Mysteries there’s a page long diatribe by the protagonist ripping Tolstoy a new one for his incessant moralizing. It’s quite fun.