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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

1 Wells 2 2 Lamb 123 2 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.”3

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

3 Jacobi “Guardian” 4 Bate “National” 3 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.”5 Many6 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

5 Brown 132 6 Davies, Jacobi, Hawthorne 4 condition,”7 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.”8 “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.”9

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

7 Davies 1 8 Olivier 137 9 Leggatt 2 5 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”10—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?”11 *Woody Allen reference (?)

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.”12

If we can attempt to suspend our knowledge of the play and any pre-

10 Bradley and Wells “Introduction” 11 Davies 4 12 Davies 168 – Wells “Introduction” 6 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 7 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 murder; 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.”13

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

13 Mendes “National” 8

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).

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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 murder 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. 10

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 11

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.”14 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.

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