1 00:00:29,309 --> 00:00:32,301 Poor Naked Wretches 2 00:00:46,326 --> 00:00:47,657 Shakespeare's King Lear... 3 00:00:47,994 --> 00:00:50,986 which first appeared in the Quarto edition of 1608... 4 00:00:51,164 --> 00:00:55,157 is a tragedy which has provoked great debate over the centuries. 5 00:00:56,336 --> 00:00:58,896 King Lear has been described by academics... 6 00:00:59,005 --> 00:01:01,269 as a 'Jacobean dramatic tragedy'... 7 00:01:01,608 --> 00:01:04,839 and it does seem to have a universal quality which allows it... 8 00:01:04,945 --> 00:01:08,278 to transcend the barriers of space and time. 9 00:01:08,949 --> 00:01:12,510 It deals with the quintessential nature of man. 10 00:01:12,619 --> 00:01:15,850 Shakespeare manages to open up the huge question... 11 00:01:15,956 --> 00:01:18,288 of what it means to be a human being... 12 00:01:18,458 --> 00:01:21,120 Iooking at how people relate to one another. 13 00:01:21,628 --> 00:01:24,620 The drama revolves around one man, Lear... 14 00:01:25,132 --> 00:01:28,795 and his lack of insight leads to a series of tragedies. 15 00:01:28,969 --> 00:01:32,302 In his declining years Lear, the central tragic hero... 16 00:01:32,639 --> 00:01:36,871 fails to understand his relationships with those closest to him... 17 00:01:36,977 --> 00:01:39,309 and he makes a series of fatal mistakes... 18 00:01:39,479 --> 00:01:42,812 which plunge his entire society into chaos. 19 00:01:42,983 --> 00:01:46,214 In recent decades King Lear has come to supplant Hamlet... 20 00:01:46,319 --> 00:01:50,551 in the popular imagination I think, as the greatest of Shakespeare's plays... 21 00:01:50,657 --> 00:01:53,888 in the sense, I think, that it presents the greatest challenges... 22 00:01:53,994 --> 00:01:56,656 to audiences as well as the performers... 23 00:01:56,997 --> 00:02:00,592 and also in some ways the greatest rewards. 24 00:02:00,934 --> 00:02:04,597 I think King Lear perhaps is the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies... 25 00:02:04,938 --> 00:02:09,272 because it faces so directly... 26 00:02:09,943 --> 00:02:13,174 the fundamental questions about human existence. 27 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:14,941 It never pulls any punches... 28 00:02:15,282 --> 00:02:20,948 it goes, as one might say, for thejugular time after time. 29 00:02:21,288 --> 00:02:24,849 I think this is because it is so clearly a play... 30 00:02:24,958 --> 00:02:29,190 that's profoundly concerned with very serious issues. 31 00:02:29,296 --> 00:02:34,199 It's a very earnest play. It's a play which is concerned with old age... 32 00:02:34,301 --> 00:02:36,861 which comes to everybody if they're lucky... 33 00:02:36,970 --> 00:02:42,203 it's concerned with filial ingratitude, to use the phrase in the play itself... 34 00:02:42,309 --> 00:02:44,869 that's to say with relations between parents and children... 35 00:02:44,978 --> 00:02:48,311 which again is something of universal interest. 36 00:02:48,482 --> 00:02:51,815 And ultimately, it's concerned very profoundly with death. 37 00:02:52,319 --> 00:02:55,652 It asks the fundamental questions in the middle of the play... 38 00:02:55,989 --> 00:03:02,918 when Lear is thinking about the evil that his daughter Regan has done to him. 39 00:03:03,263 --> 00:03:07,256 He says 'Let them anatomise Regan, see what breathes about her heart... 40 00:03:07,934 --> 00:03:11,495 is there no cause in nature... 41 00:03:11,605 --> 00:03:14,938 that makes these hard hearts'. 42 00:03:15,609 --> 00:03:18,510 We'd love to know the answer to that question still today... 43 00:03:18,612 --> 00:03:21,274 and there's the play asking it directly. 44 00:03:21,448 --> 00:03:23,348 When the mind's free... 45 00:03:23,450 --> 00:03:25,441 the body's delicate; 46 00:03:25,785 --> 00:03:29,118 this tempest in my mind doth from my senses... 47 00:03:29,789 --> 00:03:34,453 take all feeling else, save what beats there... 48 00:03:35,128 --> 00:03:38,791 Lear is a moving play because it involves the audience... 49 00:03:39,132 --> 00:03:43,034 in the suffering of Lear himself, especially. 50 00:03:43,136 --> 00:03:46,469 It involves us in his progress through the play. 51 00:03:46,806 --> 00:03:50,367 We recognise perhaps initially that he is a faulty man... 52 00:03:50,477 --> 00:03:53,708 he's not a perfect man at all. We recognise the folly... 53 00:03:53,813 --> 00:03:57,806 of his actions which is very much pointed up by the fool in the play. 54 00:04:00,153 --> 00:04:05,750 Tell me, my daughters, since now we will divest us both of rule... 55 00:04:06,092 --> 00:04:09,084 interest of territory, cares of state... 56 00:04:09,429 --> 00:04:15,095 which of you shall we say doth love us most? 57 00:04:15,435 --> 00:04:18,996 Lear's daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia... 58 00:04:19,105 --> 00:04:21,005 are essential to the plot. 59 00:04:21,107 --> 00:04:23,769 It is their responses in the opening scene of the play... 60 00:04:24,110 --> 00:04:26,101 which set the story in motion. 61 00:04:26,279 --> 00:04:30,272 The sisters must publicly declare their love for their father. 62 00:04:30,617 --> 00:04:34,951 If they respond well he will award them each a third of his kingdom. 63 00:04:35,288 --> 00:04:38,951 Goneril and Regan are only too happy to flatter their father. 64 00:04:39,626 --> 00:04:43,289 However, Cordelia's refusal to compete with her sisters in this way... 65 00:04:43,630 --> 00:04:47,293 is unacceptable to Lear, and he banishes her to France. 66 00:04:50,971 --> 00:04:52,962 Let it be so! 67 00:04:53,306 --> 00:04:55,968 Thy truth then be thy dower! 68 00:04:56,977 --> 00:04:59,309 For by the sacred radiance of the sun... 69 00:04:59,646 --> 00:05:02,911 the mysteries of Hecat and the night... 70 00:05:03,249 --> 00:05:05,240 by all the operation of the orbs... 71 00:05:05,585 --> 00:05:08,145 from whom we do exist and cease to be... 72 00:05:08,254 --> 00:05:11,815 Here I disclaim all my paternal love. 73 00:05:11,925 --> 00:05:14,587 Propinquity and property of blood... 74 00:05:14,928 --> 00:05:17,829 and as a stranger to my heart and me... 75 00:05:17,931 --> 00:05:19,922 hold thee... 76 00:05:20,600 --> 00:05:22,932 from this... 77 00:05:24,604 --> 00:05:26,504 forever. 78 00:05:26,606 --> 00:05:30,940 The women set the play in motion, by their response... 79 00:05:31,277 --> 00:05:34,610 to Lear's extraordinary request for a declaration of love. 80 00:05:34,948 --> 00:05:37,280 Goneril and Regan are... 81 00:05:37,951 --> 00:05:41,614 eloquent and elegant in telling lies. 82 00:05:43,957 --> 00:05:47,950 Cordelia actually finds it impossible to tell the truth... 83 00:05:48,294 --> 00:05:50,626 because the truth is that she does love her father... 84 00:05:50,964 --> 00:05:53,296 and she can't say so in public. 85 00:05:53,633 --> 00:05:57,296 She cannot, as she puts it 'heave her heart into her mouth'... 86 00:05:57,971 --> 00:06:01,463 whereas her sisters have the glib and oily art... 87 00:06:01,574 --> 00:06:03,565 again Cordelia's phrase... 88 00:06:03,910 --> 00:06:09,246 to make persuasive and convincing something which doesn't exist. 89 00:06:09,416 --> 00:06:12,317 Cordelia is the more clearly virtuous character. 90 00:06:12,419 --> 00:06:17,652 Of course, it's possible to fault her as it's possible to fault most people... 91 00:06:17,757 --> 00:06:20,749 perhaps she should have been a bit more tactful in that opening scene... 92 00:06:21,094 --> 00:06:24,325 perhaps it wasn't very kind of her to say simply nothing... 93 00:06:24,431 --> 00:06:28,424 in response to Lear's request for an expression of love... 94 00:06:28,768 --> 00:06:33,762 but ultimately she does stand very much for goodness in the play, I think. 95 00:06:34,274 --> 00:06:38,267 Whether it's possible to say that they reflect aspects of King Lear himself... 96 00:06:39,446 --> 00:06:42,779 is a matter of interpretation, I think. You may say that... 97 00:06:43,116 --> 00:06:46,108 there is harshness in Lear as there clearly is. 98 00:06:46,453 --> 00:06:51,015 He banishes Cordelia and that perhaps aligns him with Goneril and Regan. 99 00:06:51,124 --> 00:06:53,684 There is also great gentleness in Lear... 100 00:06:53,793 --> 00:06:57,024 as we see in the later part of the play, particularly... 101 00:06:57,130 --> 00:07:01,396 in the reunion scene with Cordelia and that aligns him with Cordelia. 102 00:07:01,735 --> 00:07:06,399 But the gentleness in Lear comes in the second part of the play... 103 00:07:06,740 --> 00:07:10,301 and may be felt not to be any herent part... 104 00:07:10,410 --> 00:07:12,401 in the Lear we meet in the earlier scenes... 105 00:07:12,746 --> 00:07:15,408 but perhaps the result of the experiences... 106 00:07:15,749 --> 00:07:18,309 that Lear undergoes during the course of the play. 107 00:07:18,418 --> 00:07:22,411 In other words, that Lear himself may be regarded as a learning character... 108 00:07:22,756 --> 00:07:25,088 as a man who develops in the course of the play... 109 00:07:25,258 --> 00:07:29,592 and that part of the experience that the audience undergoes... 110 00:07:29,763 --> 00:07:32,323 in seeing the play, or reading it... 111 00:07:32,432 --> 00:07:37,768 is in watching Lear turn from one sort of man into another sort of man. 112 00:07:38,104 --> 00:07:41,665 The play focuses on Lear, and thejourney he makes. 113 00:07:41,775 --> 00:07:45,336 Thisjourney of understanding takes place out on the heath... 114 00:07:45,445 --> 00:07:47,436 in the middle of a chaotic storm... 115 00:07:47,781 --> 00:07:50,113 which reflects the state of Lear's mind. 116 00:07:50,450 --> 00:07:52,680 He descends into madness... 117 00:07:52,786 --> 00:07:56,449 but ironically, becomes aware of the frailty of man. 118 00:07:56,790 --> 00:08:00,021 King Lear is very much a play about an elderly man... 119 00:08:00,126 --> 00:08:04,392 who has misjudged and miscalculated throughout his life. 120 00:08:04,564 --> 00:08:07,556 Filial ingratitude! 121 00:08:07,901 --> 00:08:10,461 I will punish home. 122 00:08:10,570 --> 00:08:13,801 No, I weep no more! 123 00:08:13,907 --> 00:08:20,904 In such a night to shut me out! O Regan, Goneril! 124 00:08:21,247 --> 00:08:22,805 There are key speeches on the heath... 125 00:08:22,916 --> 00:08:25,908 which show Lear as a learner... 126 00:08:26,252 --> 00:08:28,812 somebody who has begun to be able to see... 127 00:08:28,922 --> 00:08:31,823 through his own sufferings how much other people suffer... 128 00:08:31,925 --> 00:08:34,917 and the recipients of his compassion, of his sympathy... 129 00:08:35,261 --> 00:08:37,161 are the fool and Edgar. 130 00:08:37,263 --> 00:08:40,494 'Poor naked wretches, wherefore ye be', he says... 131 00:08:40,600 --> 00:08:43,592 'that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm'. 132 00:08:43,770 --> 00:08:46,102 He wishes that he were able to, as he says... 133 00:08:46,272 --> 00:08:50,265 'shake the superflux to the poor'. He wishes he were able... 134 00:08:51,945 --> 00:08:55,506 to take excess from those who have too much... 135 00:08:55,615 --> 00:08:57,947 and give it to those who have too little... 136 00:08:58,284 --> 00:09:03,551 and this is a point at which we sense Lear is learning a social lesson... 137 00:09:04,557 --> 00:09:07,549 and that he has done so partly as result of suffering. 138 00:09:07,894 --> 00:09:11,557 I think in the later part of the play... 139 00:09:11,898 --> 00:09:15,891 Lear is shown as somebody who is much more capable of... 140 00:09:16,069 --> 00:09:19,732 compassionate behaviour to people outside himself... 141 00:09:19,906 --> 00:09:22,568 than he was in the earlier scenes of the play. 142 00:09:25,912 --> 00:09:27,812 Wheresoe'er you are... 143 00:09:27,914 --> 00:09:30,906 that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm... 144 00:09:31,251 --> 00:09:36,245 How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides... 145 00:09:36,923 --> 00:09:39,915 Your looped and windowed raggedness... 146 00:09:40,260 --> 00:09:45,596 defend you from seasons such as these? 147 00:09:46,766 --> 00:09:52,102 O, I have ta'en too little care of this! 148 00:09:53,106 --> 00:09:55,768 Take physic, pomp... 149 00:09:56,109 --> 00:10:01,445 Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel. 150 00:10:04,450 --> 00:10:07,783 He suffers so much, in the storm for example... 151 00:10:08,121 --> 00:10:11,454 he suffers so much both internally and externally. 152 00:10:11,624 --> 00:10:14,286 Externally because of the storm but internally because of... 153 00:10:14,460 --> 00:10:17,452 what he himself calls 'the tempest in my mind'... 154 00:10:17,797 --> 00:10:20,459 and the tempest in his mind causes greater suffering... 155 00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:26,033 than the external tempest. The audience can easily identify with that. 156 00:10:26,139 --> 00:10:29,040 Throughout the play Lear is shadowed by characters... 157 00:10:29,142 --> 00:10:31,804 who feel a very strong loyalty towards him. 158 00:10:32,478 --> 00:10:36,471 They counterbalance characters such as Goneril, Regan and Edmund... 159 00:10:36,816 --> 00:10:39,717 who are all busy trying to further their own ends. 160 00:10:39,819 --> 00:10:43,152 Kent and the fool repeatedly warn Lear of the mistakes... 161 00:10:43,489 --> 00:10:45,047 he is making with his daughters. 162 00:10:45,158 --> 00:10:47,820 Kent even pays the same price as Cordelia... 163 00:10:47,994 --> 00:10:50,326 for his forthright opinions and is banished. 164 00:10:51,331 --> 00:10:53,993 He returns disguised, to help Lear. 165 00:10:54,167 --> 00:10:57,068 Royal Lear, who I have ever honoured as my King. 166 00:10:57,170 --> 00:10:59,400 Loved as my father, as my master followed... 167 00:10:59,505 --> 00:11:02,099 as my great patron fallen of my prayers. 168 00:11:02,942 --> 00:11:07,936 The bow is bent and drawn. Make from the shaft. 169 00:11:08,114 --> 00:11:11,447 Let it fall rather, though the fall convey the region of my heart. 170 00:11:12,452 --> 00:11:15,444 Be Kent unmannerly, when Lear is mad! 171 00:11:16,456 --> 00:11:19,357 I think both Kent and the fool... 172 00:11:19,459 --> 00:11:22,451 are loyal to Lear because they love Lear. 173 00:11:22,795 --> 00:11:27,129 It's very basic, but I think there is a political dimension... 174 00:11:27,800 --> 00:11:32,134 to Kent's loyalty which is entirely absent from the fool's. 175 00:11:32,472 --> 00:11:35,464 It's Kent who in the first scene protests... 176 00:11:35,808 --> 00:11:39,141 at the political folly of dividing up the kingdom. 177 00:11:40,313 --> 00:11:43,544 It's Kent who comes back to serve Lear... 178 00:11:43,649 --> 00:11:46,982 because, as he puts it, 'Lear has in his face... 179 00:11:47,320 --> 00:11:53,316 that which I would feign call master, authority, authority'. 180 00:11:54,327 --> 00:11:57,990 It's Kent, it's sketchily shown in the play... 181 00:11:58,331 --> 00:12:00,322 but enough for us to understand what's going on... 182 00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:02,932 who obviously has some sort of spy system... 183 00:12:03,269 --> 00:12:08,832 or system of messengers getting information to and back from Cordelia... 184 00:12:08,941 --> 00:12:12,274 when she has invaded the kingdom with the French Army. 185 00:12:12,612 --> 00:12:16,605 So I think Kent, although his loyalty is fundamentally... 186 00:12:17,116 --> 00:12:20,108 one of personal affection, has that political dimension... 187 00:12:20,286 --> 00:12:22,948 which is completely absent from the fool. 188 00:12:23,456 --> 00:12:27,017 Modern audiences may find it difficult to relate to the fool... 189 00:12:27,126 --> 00:12:30,459 because he had a particular social function in Shakespeare's time... 190 00:12:30,797 --> 00:12:34,358 that doesn't exist today. The fool was a professional entertainer... 191 00:12:34,467 --> 00:12:39,803 kept in royal courts, there in order to entertain the King or the Queen... 192 00:12:40,139 --> 00:12:44,701 but also, because the fool often became very intimate with his master... 193 00:12:44,811 --> 00:12:50,044 he was able to say things which the more official counsellors of the King... 194 00:12:50,149 --> 00:12:52,709 the statesmen around him, were not able to say. 195 00:12:52,819 --> 00:12:59,486 He could speak home truths in a way that was very valuable for the ruler... 196 00:12:59,826 --> 00:13:01,657 and that's what's happening in this play, I think... 197 00:13:01,761 --> 00:13:06,323 the fool is able to say things to Lear that people like Kent, for example... 198 00:13:06,432 --> 00:13:09,765 wouldn't be able to say, but he says it obliquely... 199 00:13:09,936 --> 00:13:12,928 he says it not through direct statement often... 200 00:13:13,272 --> 00:13:15,604 but through little stories, little parables... 201 00:13:16,109 --> 00:13:18,771 'that sir that serves for gain', and so on. 202 00:13:18,945 --> 00:13:20,845 He has these little snatches of song... 203 00:13:20,947 --> 00:13:25,281 and if Lear can listen to them he'd able to learn about his own situation. 204 00:13:25,952 --> 00:13:27,943 So I think the fool is an important character... 205 00:13:28,121 --> 00:13:30,783 in helping Lear to understand himself. 206 00:13:31,124 --> 00:13:34,116 What's was thou so full of music cilia. 207 00:13:34,460 --> 00:13:38,453 I have used it nuckleever since thou made'st thy daughters, thy mothers. 208 00:13:39,465 --> 00:13:41,023 For when thou gave'st them the rod... 209 00:13:41,134 --> 00:13:43,466 and putt'est down thy own britshes... 210 00:13:45,471 --> 00:13:50,465 "Then they for sudden joy did weep... 211 00:13:50,810 --> 00:13:55,474 and I for sorrow sung... 212 00:13:56,149 --> 00:14:01,416 that such a king should play bo-peep... 213 00:14:01,754 --> 00:14:06,748 and go the fools among." 214 00:14:07,260 --> 00:14:11,253 King Lear has a sub-plot, which virtually mirrors the main plot. 215 00:14:11,597 --> 00:14:15,158 Gloucester, one of Lear's old, faithful servants... 216 00:14:15,268 --> 00:14:18,931 has two grown-up sons, Edgar and Edmund. 217 00:14:19,272 --> 00:14:23,936 Gloucester also fails to understand the true nature of his children. 218 00:14:24,277 --> 00:14:26,837 The similarity in the mistakes they both make... 219 00:14:26,946 --> 00:14:29,608 strengthens the main themes of the play. 220 00:14:29,949 --> 00:14:32,179 They have both been blind to reality... 221 00:14:32,285 --> 00:14:35,846 and pay a high price for their lifelong mistakes. 222 00:14:35,955 --> 00:14:38,287 What paper were you reading? 223 00:14:38,958 --> 00:14:40,516 Nothing, my lord. 224 00:14:40,626 --> 00:14:42,184 No? 225 00:14:42,295 --> 00:14:45,958 What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? Let see! 226 00:14:46,632 --> 00:14:49,624 Come; if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles. 227 00:14:50,303 --> 00:14:52,863 I beseech you, sir, pardon me. 228 00:14:52,972 --> 00:14:56,305 It is a letter from my brother that I have not all o'er-read; 229 00:14:56,642 --> 00:15:00,578 and for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'erlooking. 230 00:15:03,082 --> 00:15:04,310 Give me the letter, sir. 231 00:15:04,417 --> 00:15:06,317 I think Shakespeare has constructed the play... 232 00:15:06,419 --> 00:15:10,321 on a sort of parallel fathers theme, King Lear and three daughters... 233 00:15:10,423 --> 00:15:16,089 Gloucester and two sons, both of them expecting... 234 00:15:16,429 --> 00:15:22,095 absolutely as of right unqualified duty from their children... 235 00:15:22,435 --> 00:15:27,429 and both of them getting a very sharp surprise and rude awakening. 236 00:15:27,773 --> 00:15:32,437 It's very typical of the self conscious design, of this play... 237 00:15:32,778 --> 00:15:36,680 that one of them, Lear, suffers primarily in the mind... 238 00:15:36,782 --> 00:15:39,114 partly of course he suffers in the body certainly... 239 00:15:39,452 --> 00:15:43,354 but he goes mad putting it simply and the climax of Lear's suffering... 240 00:15:43,456 --> 00:15:48,359 is mental suffering, the madness which overtakes him on the heath... 241 00:15:48,461 --> 00:15:52,124 which results in that deeply moving scene between Lear and Gloucester. 242 00:15:52,465 --> 00:15:55,127 Gloucester also goes through what we might call... 243 00:15:55,468 --> 00:16:00,633 a purgatorial experience, but the climax of Gloucester's suffering is physical. 244 00:16:00,740 --> 00:16:04,403 It is the blinding, that horrible scene of the blinding... 245 00:16:04,744 --> 00:16:06,735 which many of us prefer not to watch... 246 00:16:07,079 --> 00:16:12,415 but which is part of the fundamental unsentimentally of the play I think... 247 00:16:12,752 --> 00:16:15,653 that Shakespeare forces us to experience... 248 00:16:15,755 --> 00:16:20,419 the results of evil in the blinding of Gloucester. 249 00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:25,094 He that will think to live till he be old. Give me some help! 250 00:16:29,101 --> 00:16:32,434 I think both of them go through... 251 00:16:33,105 --> 00:16:38,099 a kind of learning curve which is sort of paradoxical at it's essence. 252 00:16:39,445 --> 00:16:44,007 Gloucester loses his sight and then... 253 00:16:44,116 --> 00:16:48,018 and thejoke is the play'sjoke, it's not a very savoury joke... 254 00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:52,113 having lost his sight he begins to see things clearly. 255 00:16:52,792 --> 00:16:57,786 'Then Edgar was abused'. And Lear, equally paradoxically... 256 00:16:58,130 --> 00:17:01,065 Ioses his reason, goes mad... 257 00:17:01,400 --> 00:17:03,732 and then begins to understand. 258 00:17:04,403 --> 00:17:09,397 They are both following those parallel courses I think in that sense. 259 00:17:09,575 --> 00:17:13,568 Gloucester might be regarded as being morally responsible... 260 00:17:13,746 --> 00:17:15,304 for his suffering in the sense that... 261 00:17:15,414 --> 00:17:18,315 as is clearly brought out in the opening passage of the play... 262 00:17:18,417 --> 00:17:20,977 his illegitimate son, the bastard Edmund... 263 00:17:21,087 --> 00:17:23,078 and a lot is made of bastardy in the play... 264 00:17:23,756 --> 00:17:28,750 was begotten after the legitimate son Edgar. 265 00:17:29,261 --> 00:17:32,253 In other words he was begotten after Gloucester was already married... 266 00:17:32,598 --> 00:17:35,931 and this point is rammed home at the later point in the play... 267 00:17:36,268 --> 00:17:40,170 when it's said, 'the dark and vicious place where... 268 00:17:40,272 --> 00:17:43,264 thee he got cost him his eyes'. 269 00:17:43,609 --> 00:17:46,271 That's the actual drawing of a moral point in the play. 270 00:17:46,612 --> 00:17:49,274 Now the play is not simplistically moralistic... 271 00:17:49,615 --> 00:17:52,846 but nevertheless it does have a very firm moral basis... 272 00:17:52,952 --> 00:17:54,943 and that is part of it, I think. 273 00:17:55,121 --> 00:18:00,286 Edmund is illegitimate, leaving Edgar as Gloucester's sole, legal heir. 274 00:18:00,393 --> 00:18:02,623 Edmund isjealous and resentful. 275 00:18:02,728 --> 00:18:05,959 He hatches an evil plot to lead Gloucester to believe that... 276 00:18:06,065 --> 00:18:10,399 Edgar means to murder him in order to gain his inheritance more quickly. 277 00:18:11,070 --> 00:18:13,732 The brothers' characters are very different. 278 00:18:17,576 --> 00:18:19,908 Thou, Nature, art my goddess; 279 00:18:20,913 --> 00:18:24,906 to thy law my services are bound. 280 00:18:25,584 --> 00:18:29,918 Edmund is the character in the play who gets to talk to the audience... 281 00:18:30,256 --> 00:18:33,248 and we always enjoy characters who talk to us. 282 00:18:33,592 --> 00:18:37,494 Hamlet and Macbeth are built on that very principal, as plays... 283 00:18:37,596 --> 00:18:40,588 and when he does talk to the audience in those earlier soliloquies... 284 00:18:40,933 --> 00:18:44,164 'Thou nature art my goddess, I should have been what I am... 285 00:18:44,270 --> 00:18:48,832 had the maidenly star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising'... 286 00:18:48,941 --> 00:18:52,502 he really is making us laugh, making us understand... 287 00:18:52,611 --> 00:18:56,604 the kind of determination that this outsider, this outcast... 288 00:18:56,949 --> 00:19:01,215 of society, has to make a space for himself. 289 00:19:01,720 --> 00:19:04,382 Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom... 290 00:19:04,723 --> 00:19:07,385 and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me... 291 00:19:07,726 --> 00:19:12,060 for that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines lag of a brother? 292 00:19:13,065 --> 00:19:15,397 Why bastard? 293 00:19:16,068 --> 00:19:18,400 Wherefore base? 294 00:19:19,071 --> 00:19:21,403 When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous... 295 00:19:21,740 --> 00:19:24,732 and my shape as true, as honest madam's issue? 296 00:19:25,744 --> 00:19:29,407 Why brand they us with base... 297 00:19:30,416 --> 00:19:34,409 with base, bastardly base. 298 00:19:34,587 --> 00:19:36,578 As the play progresses though... 299 00:19:37,256 --> 00:19:41,249 the emptiness of that... 300 00:19:42,595 --> 00:19:48,261 purely selfish mode of living, grows more and more clear. 301 00:19:49,268 --> 00:19:52,601 There is nothing at all... 302 00:19:52,938 --> 00:19:57,932 beyond the self for the Edmunds, Gonerils and Regans of this play. 303 00:19:58,611 --> 00:20:02,604 It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents. 304 00:20:03,949 --> 00:20:06,281 Has he never before sounded you in this business? 305 00:20:06,619 --> 00:20:08,280 Never, my lord. 306 00:20:09,622 --> 00:20:12,955 But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit that... 307 00:20:13,626 --> 00:20:16,959 sons at perfect age and fathers declined... 308 00:20:17,296 --> 00:20:21,960 that father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. 309 00:20:23,969 --> 00:20:29,202 Shakespeare rarely is completely black and white in his portrayal of people... 310 00:20:29,308 --> 00:20:32,539 and Edmund has his moment at the end of the play... 311 00:20:32,645 --> 00:20:37,309 when he repents in time to send a messenger... 312 00:20:37,983 --> 00:20:40,315 to try to save Cordelia. 313 00:20:40,653 --> 00:20:44,214 It fails, but Edmund does have his moment of penitence. 314 00:20:44,323 --> 00:20:46,985 Edgar of course is in obvious contrast to Edmund. 315 00:20:47,326 --> 00:20:49,988 Edgar is the good son whereas Edmund is the bad one. 316 00:20:50,329 --> 00:20:54,891 Edmund tricks his father, Gloucester, into believing that Edgar is... 317 00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:58,993 disloyal to him, that thrusts Edgar into disguise. 318 00:20:59,171 --> 00:21:03,335 He disguises himself as a beggar, a bedlam beggar as they were known. 319 00:21:03,442 --> 00:21:07,105 He takes on the persona, he takes on the identity of Tom o'Bedlam... 320 00:21:07,613 --> 00:21:10,605 the sort of man who would go around... 321 00:21:11,450 --> 00:21:14,783 begging, hoping to receive alms. 322 00:21:14,954 --> 00:21:18,947 There is a tendency to some extent to over simplify. 323 00:21:19,625 --> 00:21:21,855 There is something, this is perhaps unfair... 324 00:21:21,961 --> 00:21:24,953 but there is something almost culpably naive... 325 00:21:25,297 --> 00:21:29,290 about Edgar not seeing what's going on at the beginning of the play. 326 00:21:29,635 --> 00:21:33,969 He almost deserves what's happened to him for being so stupid. 327 00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:38,974 Perhaps that's to put myself slightly in the Goneril/Edmund/Regan camp... 328 00:21:39,311 --> 00:21:42,644 to say that stupidity... 329 00:21:43,148 --> 00:21:46,379 deserves what it gets, but there's a touch of that, I think. 330 00:21:46,485 --> 00:21:48,146 In cunning I must draw my sword upon you. 331 00:21:48,487 --> 00:21:50,478 Draw! Seem to defend yourself! 332 00:21:54,493 --> 00:21:56,484 Now quit you well! 333 00:22:00,165 --> 00:22:03,430 Yield! Come before my father! Light, ho, here! 334 00:22:04,436 --> 00:22:06,336 Fly, brother! 335 00:22:06,438 --> 00:22:09,339 Finally, there is an element of reconciliation. 336 00:22:09,441 --> 00:22:11,773 There is goodness as well as evil in the play... 337 00:22:12,111 --> 00:22:17,105 and the central good figure in the play is Lear's youngest daughter, Cordelia. 338 00:22:17,282 --> 00:22:20,945 And the most moving scene in the play to my mind... 339 00:22:21,120 --> 00:22:24,351 is the scene of reunion, of reconciliation... 340 00:22:24,456 --> 00:22:27,789 between Lear and his daughter when Lear, who has been mad... 341 00:22:28,127 --> 00:22:33,463 attains a tenuous sanity, he comes back to sanity... 342 00:22:33,966 --> 00:22:39,302 though his grip on reality seems rather slight at this point in the play... 343 00:22:39,471 --> 00:22:41,803 but there he is, reunited with Cordelia... 344 00:22:41,974 --> 00:22:45,637 there is Cordelia forgiving him, there is him forgiving her. 345 00:22:45,811 --> 00:22:49,804 It's a scene of incredible emotional power. 346 00:22:50,816 --> 00:22:55,810 Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man... 347 00:22:56,822 --> 00:23:01,759 I think this lady is my child... 348 00:23:03,429 --> 00:23:05,761 Cordelia. 349 00:23:07,766 --> 00:23:11,759 And so I am, I am. 350 00:23:13,772 --> 00:23:16,434 Be your tears wet? 351 00:23:19,111 --> 00:23:21,102 Yes! 352 00:23:21,780 --> 00:23:26,683 It's a frequently harrowing play and it remains so till the end... 353 00:23:26,785 --> 00:23:31,347 After the blinding of Gloucester there is... 354 00:23:31,457 --> 00:23:33,687 the terrible news of the death of Cordelia... 355 00:23:33,792 --> 00:23:37,694 which is another shocking blow for the audience... 356 00:23:37,796 --> 00:23:40,026 and of course Lear himself dies. 357 00:23:40,132 --> 00:23:42,464 Nevertheless I think there is something of a counterpart... 358 00:23:42,801 --> 00:23:45,031 there is some consolation in the play. 359 00:23:45,137 --> 00:23:48,800 There is the consolation in the reunion of Lear with Cordelia... 360 00:23:49,141 --> 00:23:53,373 but also it depends a lot I think what you make of the very end of the play... 361 00:23:53,479 --> 00:23:56,812 of Lear's end as he looks at Cordelia... 362 00:23:57,149 --> 00:24:02,746 and Cordelia is dead. It's horrible that she's dead... 363 00:24:03,088 --> 00:24:05,989 it's very sad that's she's dead. On the other hand she is there... 364 00:24:06,091 --> 00:24:10,323 Cordelia has existed, and it seems to me that at the end of the play... 365 00:24:10,429 --> 00:24:15,423 we may be conscious of the good that Cordelia could embody... 366 00:24:16,101 --> 00:24:18,001 as something of a consolation... 367 00:24:18,103 --> 00:24:22,665 and also of the out pouring of love that Lear gives to Cordelia... 368 00:24:22,775 --> 00:24:25,437 which he hadn't been able to give in the earlier part of the play. 369 00:24:25,778 --> 00:24:29,771 At the beginning of the play he is not capable himself of expressing love... 370 00:24:30,115 --> 00:24:34,779 he banishes Cordelia. At the end of the play he looks into that face... 371 00:24:35,120 --> 00:24:37,782 which earlier he had banished from his sight... 372 00:24:38,123 --> 00:24:42,025 and he looks on it, it seems to me, with an outgoing of pure love. 373 00:24:42,127 --> 00:24:45,119 'Look there, look there', he says, 'look her lips'... 374 00:24:45,297 --> 00:24:49,290 - and he dies. - It looks at one point... 375 00:24:49,635 --> 00:24:52,968 as though things are going to resolve themselves... 376 00:24:53,305 --> 00:24:56,536 we are going to sort out an ending... 377 00:24:56,642 --> 00:24:59,202 which is in some sense reassuring... 378 00:24:59,311 --> 00:25:05,580 and then this terrible direction of Lear with Cordelia in his arms... 379 00:25:05,918 --> 00:25:08,250 the old man with the corpse of his daughter... 380 00:25:08,587 --> 00:25:12,819 and any hope of arriving at some sort of resolution... 381 00:25:12,925 --> 00:25:16,258 is destroyed, I think, completely. 382 00:25:16,595 --> 00:25:19,826 'Why should a horse, a dog, a rat have life and thou no breath at all'... 383 00:25:19,932 --> 00:25:21,832 a question that I was thinking about earlier... 384 00:25:21,934 --> 00:25:24,596 is unanswerable actually, it is unanswerable. 385 00:25:25,103 --> 00:25:27,765 Why should a dog... 386 00:25:28,106 --> 00:25:30,768 a horse, a rat... 387 00:25:31,443 --> 00:25:35,777 have life, and thou no breath at all? 388 00:25:36,782 --> 00:25:39,114 Thou'lt come no more; 389 00:25:40,953 --> 00:25:43,285 Never, never, never, never. 390 00:25:44,957 --> 00:25:48,290 Never. 391 00:26:11,583 --> 00:26:14,245 Pray you undo this button. 392 00:26:16,588 --> 00:26:18,579 Thank you, sir. 393 00:26:19,258 --> 00:26:22,591 Do you see this? 394 00:26:23,262 --> 00:26:25,253 Look on her! 395 00:26:25,931 --> 00:26:29,264 Look, her lips! 396 00:26:30,602 --> 00:26:32,593 Look... 397 00:26:33,272 --> 00:26:35,502 there! 398 00:26:35,607 --> 00:26:37,598 Look... 399 00:26:38,610 --> 00:26:40,601 there!