EMPATHY AND THE STRANGENESSEMPATHY OF FICTION ‘Does fiction train us in empathy? Scott’s clever and wonderfully engaging book provides a powerful response to correct the idea KING LEAR of empathy as a simple key to unlock others and instead shows how empathy is a form of seduction. The task of the reader is both to fall for this seduction and to resist it.’ ‘AFTER’ AUSCHWITZ Fritz Breithaupt, author of The Dark Sides of Empathy and Provost Professor at Indiana University Shakespeare, Appropriation and Theatres of Catastrophe in Post-War British Drama Explores how and why narrative fiction engages empathy This book takes its point of departure in recent psychological findings which suggest that reading fiction cultivates empathy, including Theory of Mind. Scott draws on literary theory and close readings to argue that engagement with fictional stories also teaches us to resist uncritical forms of empathy and reminds us of the limitations of our ability to understand other people. The book treats figures of the stranger in Balzac’s La Fille aux yeux d’or, Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir and Sand’s Indiana as emblematic of the strangeness of narrative fiction, which both draws us in and keeps us at a distance. Maria C. Scott is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris: Maria C. Scott Shifting Perspectives (2005) and Stendhal’s Less-Loved Heroines: Fiction, Freedom, and the Female (2013). Cover image: Interrupted Reading, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1865–1875 © akg-images ISBN 978-1-4744-6303-4 Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk edinburghuniversitypress.com Richard Ashby King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz Shakespeare, Appropriation and Theatres of Catastrophe in Post-War British Drama Richard Ashby Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting- edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Richard Ashby, 2021 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 7798 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 7800 7 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 7801 4 (epub) The right of Richard Ashby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. ‘After’ Auschwitz 26 2. Why King Lear? 65 3. ‘Strange mutations’: The History of King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz 96 4. ‘The man without pity is mad’: Edward Bond’s King Lears and the Dialectic of Engagement 143 5. ‘Rudkin I nothing am’: Edgar, Exile and Self Re-authorship in David Rudkin’s Will’s Way 172 6. ‘WHAT IS THIS GOOD?’: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the ‘Good Life’ in Howard Barker’s Seven Lears 203 7. ‘Thought you were dead’: Dover Cliff, Death and ‘Ephemeral Life’ in Sarah Kane’s Blasted 234 Postscript: Writing and Performing from the Rubble: Forced Entertainment, Five Day Lear and Table Top Shakespeare: The Complete Works 264 8. ‘And I was struck still . .’: Nature, the Sublime and Subjectivity in Dennis Kelly’s The Gods Weep 276 Conclusion: ‘Storm Still’ 303 Bibliography 306 Index 329 Acknowledgements This project began its life as a PhD. First and foremost, I owe huge thanks to my supervisor, Chris Megson, and advisor, Deana Rankin. My debt to them truly does make breath poor and speech unable. Thanks also to the AHRC for generous PhD funding and everyone involved in the TECHNE scheme. I was fortunate enough to have as PhD examiners Karoline Gritzner and Eric Langley, who offered invaluable advice about turning the project into a monograph. I am also grateful to Karoline for sharing parts of her inspirational book on Adorno and modern theatre before it was published. Deep thanks to Howard Barker and David Rudkin for taking the time to answer my questions – hearing what they had to say about Shakespeare, King Lear and the twentieth century was truly fascinating. I am particularly thankful to Howard for his generosity and hospitality. I am also indebted to Tim Etchells for his time and insights and to Maria Aberg for answering questions about The Gods Weep. I am grateful to David Ian Rabey for some very inspiring conversa- tions around the project and for so generously sharing materials from his personal Rudkin and Barker archives. The project has also benefited at various points from thought-provoking conversations with Kiernan Ryan, Ewan Fernie, Graham Saunders, Richard Wilson and John Joughin. I would also like to thank the Drama Department at Royal Holloway for supporting the research for King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz, and the English Department, where I have very much enjoyed teaching Shakespeare to the next generation of scholars. Particular thanks go to Harry Newman for his interest in the project and his support. Thanks also to Christie Carson for her thoughts on adaptation and appropriation and to Robert Eaglestone for reading recommendations and his advice on publishing. I have met some wonderful researchers over the course of the project. Acknowledgements vii Sincere thanks to Jennifer Edwards, whose research and friendship has been an inspiration, and to Poppy Corbett, Chien-Cheng Chen, Jessica Chiba, Ursula Clayton and Timo Uotinen. It has been a pleasure to work with Ersev Ersoy, whose guidance has been instrumental, and with everyone at Edinburgh University Press. I am also grateful to the staff at the British Library – particularly the indefatigable Helen Melody – for helping me to navigate the David Rudkin Archive, and to the staff at the Exeter Digital Archives. Thanks also to Donald Cooper at Photostage, Amberley Jamieson at DACS, and Michelle Morton at the RSC, for kindly helping to find (and granting rights to reproduce) the images I have used. I want to thank my parents, Anne and David, for always being so supportive of me. I also want to thank my brother Paul and sister Holly, for being prepared to listen. Thanks too to Jean and Graham for all their encouragement. My grandparents John, Emily and Eileen all sadly passed away while I was working on this project. They were all inspirational, larger-than- life figures and I can only hope I have inherited their selfless devotion to their loved ones and their incredible fortitude. They may come no more – but they will never be forgotten. This book is, in part, dedicated to their memory. We cannot forget the lessons of a generation that saw so much. I also want to thank my partner, Sarah, to whom King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz is also dedicated. This book would not have been possible without her love and support. And finally, to Rowan. Introduction: King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz Near the end of the 2010 Dennis Kelly play The Gods Weep, it suddenly and strangely begins to ‘snow’. Under the fall, the protagonists, Colm and Barbara, come to a disturbing realisation: Suddenly it starts to snow. They look up. Barbara: What? They hold their hands out. Colm: Snow? It’s not cold. She rubs some in her hand. Barbara: Ash. Colm: Ash? Falling out of the sky? Someone must be burning something. It’s not from near here. What do you think they’re burning? They stand for a moment. They suddenly run into the shelter, away from the ash. They brush it off them, desperate to get it away from their bodies. They stare at each other. They watch the ash fall.1 It is a shocking moment. Colm and Barbara seek cover from the snow because it is really ash – and the ash is coming from burnt human bodies. The image recalls the industrial incineration of corpses in the Holocaust, the degradation of millions of people into mere ash. The Gods Weep is a play that responds to the catastrophe of Auschwitz and the ongoing legacy of the camps. It is also an appropriation of King Lear, its ‘snow’ derived from the stormy, ‘strange’ and ‘out of season’ weather of Shakespeare.2 Kelly sets the action of Shakespeare in a vast transnational corporation, which 1 Dennis Kelly, The Gods Weep (London: Oberon Books, 2010), p. 155. All refer- ences to The Gods Weep are from the Oberon edition and take the form of act, scene and page numbers. 2 William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. R. A. Foakes (London: Methuen, 1997), p. 173 and p. 224. I refer to the Arden edition of King Lear unless otherwise indicated. For more on the texts and textual history of King Lear, see below. All other references to Shakespeare are from William Shakespeare, The Oxford 2 King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz the CEO, Colm, divides among his subordinates. Over the action of the play, the company collapses and, from its ruins, a full-scale war emerges. For most of the final act, Colm (the Lear figure) and Barbara (the Cordelia figure) are left stranded in a bleak, anti-pastoral world, while the rival factions continue the conflict. It soon becomes apparent that unimaginable atrocities are taking place, as witnessed by a sky inundated with human remains. Kelly appropriates King Lear for the purposes of a post-Auschwitz drama. Kelly was largely condemned for his representation of atrocity and his supposed misuse of Shakespeare.3 But his is far from the only play to use King Lear to respond to the catastrophes of modern times.