STUDY GUIDE Inside
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Wurtele Thrust Stage / Feb 11 – Apr 2, 2017 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE STUDY GUIDE Inside THE PLAYWRIGHT Comments About the Playwright • 3 A Selected Chronology of the Life and Times of William Shakespeare • 6 THE PLAY Synopsis, Characters and Setting • 9 Comments on Some of the Characters • 10 Responses to King Lear • 12 Sources of the Play • 15 Another Version of the story of King Lear • 17 CULTURAL CONTEXT The Language of the Play • 18 Edgar’s Demons • 19 Selected Glossary of Terms • 20 THE GUTHRIE PRODUCTION Notes from the Creative Team • 24 The Role of a Lifetime • 26 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Understanding • 28 This activity is made possible by The Guthrie Theater’s production the voters of Minnesota through is part of Shakespeare in American a Minnesota State Arts Board Communities, a program of the Operating Support grant, thanks to National Endowment for the Arts Play guides are made possible by a legislative appropriation from the in partnership with Arts Midwest. arts and cultural heritage fund. Guthrie Theater Study Guide Copyright 2016 DRAMATURG Carla Steen GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves RESEARCH Belinda Westmaas Jones, Madeline Kvale, Carla Steen All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Play Guide may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 published herein are written especially for our Guide. Others are reprinted ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 by permission of their publishers. BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.44.STAGE TOLL-FREE guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, artistic director To request permission to reprint or republish portions of this guide: Jo Holcomb: 612.225.6117 | Carla Steen: 612.225.6118 The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is an American center for theater performance, The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National Endowment production, education and professional training. By presenting both classical literature and for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State new work from diverse cultures, the Guthrie illuminates the common humanity connecting Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to Minnesota to the peoples of the world. support this activity from the National Endowment for the Arts. 2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAYWRIGHT The Playwright William Shakespeare William Shakespeare not only English, but also Latin country gentleman. Shakespeare and Greek. In 1582, Shakespeare died there – on what is thought to was born in 1564 married Anne Hathaway, and the be his birthday, April 23, in 1616. and raised in Stratford– couple would have three children. He is buried in the parish church, upon–Avon, in Shakespeare moved to London by where his grave can be seen to 1592 and quickly began to make this day. His known body of work England’s West a name for himself as a prolific includes 37 plays, 100 long poems Country. playwright. He stayed in London and 154 sonnets. for about 20 years, becoming As the son of an up–and–coming more and more successful in town merchant, Shakespeare his work as an actor, writer, and would have attended the village shareholder in his acting company. grammar school where he would His retirement took him back have learned to read and write to Stratford to lead the life of a GUTHRIE THEATER \ 3 THE PLAYWRIGHT Comments about the Playwright And Shakespeare thou, for all our modern music: he wrote Shakespeare’s mind whose honey-flowing vein, the text of modern life. is the type of the Pleasing the world, androgynous, of the thy praises doth obtain, … Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Live ever you, Men, 1841 man-woman mind. at least in fame live ever. … It is fatal for anyone Well may the body die, who writes to think but fame dies never. No other poet has given so many- sided an expression to human of their sex. It is Richard Barnfield, A Remembrance of nature, or rendered so many fatal to be a man or Some English Poets, 1598 passions and moods with such a woman pure and an appropriate variety of style, simple; one must sentiment and accent. If, therefore, He has a magic power over words: we were asked to select one be woman-manly or they come winged at his bidding; monument of human civilization man-womanly. and seem to know their places. that should survive to some They are struck out in a heat, on future age, or be transported to Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929 the spur of the occasion, and have another planet to bear witness to all the truth and vividness which the inhabitants there of what we arise from an actual impression have been upon earth, we should If one takes those thirty-seven of the objects. His epithets and probably choose the works of plays with all the radar lines of single phrases are like sparkles, Shakespeare. the different viewpoints of the thrown off from an imagination, different characters, one comes fired by the whirling rapidity of George Santayana, Interpretations of out with a field of incredible its own motion. His language Poetry and Religion, 1900 density and complexity; and is hieroglyphical. It translates eventually one goes a step further, thoughts into visible images. It and one finds that what happened, abounds in sudden transitions and We do not understand Shakespeare what passed through this man elliptical expressions. from a single reading, and certainly called Shakespeare and came into not from a single play. There is a existence on sheets of paper, is William Hazlitt, Lecture on the English relation between the various plays something quite different from Poets, 1818 of Shakespeare, taken in order; and any other author’s work. It’s not it is work of years to venture even Shakespeare’s view of the world, one individual interpretation of the it’s something which actually He is like some saint whose pattern in Shakespeare’s carpet. resembles reality. A sign of this history is to be rendered into all is that any single word, line, languages, into verse and prose, T. S. Eliot, Dante, Faber & Faber, 1929 character or event has not only a into songs and pictures and cut up large number of interpretations, into proverbs; so that the occasion but an unlimited number. Which which gave the saint’s meaning the is the characteristic of reality. … form of conversation, or of a prayer, An artist may try to capture and or of a code of laws, is immaterial reflect your action, but actually he compared with the universality of interprets it – so that a naturalistic its application. … He wrote the airs painting, a Picasso painting, a 4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER photograph, are all interpretations. if you recall your salad days, Shakespeare has two sides to him: But in itself, the action of one you are quoting Shakespeare; if one is the historical side, where man touching his head is open you act more in sorrow than in he’s one of a group of dramatists to unlimited understanding and anger, if your wish is father to working in Elizabethan London interpretation. In reality, that is. the thought, if your lost property and writing for an audience living What Shakespeare wrote carries has vanished into thin air, you are in that London at that time; the that characteristic. What he wrote quoting Shakespeare; if you have other is the poet who speaks is not interpretations: it is the thing ever refused to budge an inch or to us today with so powerfully itself. suffered from green-eyed jealousy, contemporary a voice. If we study if you have played fast and loose, only the historical, or 1564 – 1616 Brook, Peter. “What is Shakespeare?” (1947), if you have been tongue-tied, a Shakespeare, we take away all his The Shifting Point, New York: Harper & tower of strength, hoodwinked or relevance to our own time and shirk Row, 1987 in a pickle, if you have knitted your trying to look into the greatest brows, made a virtue of necessity, mystery of literature, the mystery insisted on fair play, slept not of how someone can communicate Shakespeare himself, indeed one wink, stood on ceremony, with times and spaces and cultures Shakespeare especially, does danced attendance (on your lord so far removed from his own. not describe from outside; his and master), laughed yourself characters are intimately bound into stitches, had short shrift, cold Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on up with the audience. That is why comfort or too much of a good Shakespeare, New Haven, Conn.: Yale his plays are the greatest example thing, if you have seen better days University Press, 1986 there is of people’s theater; in this or lived in a fool’s paradise – why, theater the public found and still be that as it may, the more fool finds its own problems and re- you, for it is a foregone conclusion Every age creates its experiences them. that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if own Shakespeare. Jean Paul Sartre, Sartre on Theater, 1959 you think it is early days and clear … Like a portrait out bag and baggage, if you think whose eyes seem to it is high time and that that is the Shakespeare can illuminate our long and short of it, if you believe follow you around the knowledge of Western attitudes; that the game is up and that truth room, engaging your an analysis of values can also will come out even if it involves glance from every illuminate some dark corners your own flesh and blood, if you lie angle, [his] plays in Shakespeare’s work.