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A review by selfmythologies
King Lear by William Shakespeare
5.0
some personal thoughts on king lear....because I feel the need.
there is SO much going on in this play. only reading it once already overwhelmed me with so many ideas, connections, questions. I also feel like it's one of those pieces of fiction that get more real and relevant the older you get. (Apparently Goethe once said that all old men are King Lear? I feel like I know what he means.)
Also, it's not like I'm an expert, but this play appears to me the most modern of all Shakespeare I've read yet? This whole discourse on the inadequacy of language alone. The 'everything is a construct!! absolutely everything!!' (That is also a part of Hamlet, but I feel like here it's even more radical). The losing and searching for and not finding one's identity.... i feel like my point comes across? SO modern.
It's also really disturbing. And not like dark disturbing, but meaningless disturbing. I read in an essay that for a long time when this play was performed it was done with an alternative happy ending, and like, I get it. Actually, what I mainly felt at the ending wasn't this Aristotelian tragical pity but a sort of profound feeling of bleakness and nihilism, and I can't even point down where it came from, which makes it even more uncomfortable. (I guess all of the aspects I mentioned before, and more.)
Anyway, the characters are pretty much all interesting and full of potential and all of them could be done in a hundred different ways....and I really want to see multiple productions of this to have them to compare!
I won't have to talk about the brilliance of the language, right. But one part especially struck me as.......just.....more fantastic than anything....breathtaking. It's what Lear says in Act 5 after he and Cordelia have been captured. This is where everything's already been going down the drain real fast, but then he says this:
Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out
In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.
Like. Isn't this humanity summed up.... we're birds in a cage, and victims to the impermanence of everything...and yet we sing, and talk about stupid things, and look into 'the mystery of things' and in that moment, we have found meaning. like......i feel like this is humanity seen from far away.....the sort of almost transcendent bittersweetness of life.....its strange and fleeting beauty. brb crying. hey Will, how do you do it. how can you even put this into words so well.
I feel like my favorite tragedy will remain Macbeth - though, like I already said, I feel like the older I get the more Lear will grow on me. (Hey, 30/40/50 year old me who just did a reread, can you add your thoughts to this review? that would be absolutely fascinating ;) )
So....5 stars, although I feel like I haven't gained a sufficient 'closeness to' or understanding of this play yet, but... enough to a) realize why it's so important, and b) be affected by it, if mostly in an unsettling way.
(I feel like I should get started on the histories next! Not yet finished with Shakespeare for a long time :D)
there is SO much going on in this play. only reading it once already overwhelmed me with so many ideas, connections, questions. I also feel like it's one of those pieces of fiction that get more real and relevant the older you get. (Apparently Goethe once said that all old men are King Lear? I feel like I know what he means.)
Also, it's not like I'm an expert, but this play appears to me the most modern of all Shakespeare I've read yet? This whole discourse on the inadequacy of language alone. The 'everything is a construct!! absolutely everything!!' (That is also a part of Hamlet, but I feel like here it's even more radical). The losing and searching for and not finding one's identity.... i feel like my point comes across? SO modern.
It's also really disturbing. And not like dark disturbing, but meaningless disturbing. I read in an essay that for a long time when this play was performed it was done with an alternative happy ending, and like, I get it. Actually, what I mainly felt at the ending wasn't this Aristotelian tragical pity but a sort of profound feeling of bleakness and nihilism, and I can't even point down where it came from, which makes it even more uncomfortable. (I guess all of the aspects I mentioned before, and more.)
Anyway, the characters are pretty much all interesting and full of potential and all of them could be done in a hundred different ways....and I really want to see multiple productions of this to have them to compare!
I won't have to talk about the brilliance of the language, right. But one part especially struck me as.......just.....more fantastic than anything....breathtaking. It's what Lear says in Act 5 after he and Cordelia have been captured. This is where everything's already been going down the drain real fast, but then he says this:
Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out
In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.
Like. Isn't this humanity summed up.... we're birds in a cage, and victims to the impermanence of everything...and yet we sing, and talk about stupid things, and look into 'the mystery of things' and in that moment, we have found meaning. like......i feel like this is humanity seen from far away.....the sort of almost transcendent bittersweetness of life.....its strange and fleeting beauty. brb crying. hey Will, how do you do it. how can you even put this into words so well.
I feel like my favorite tragedy will remain Macbeth - though, like I already said, I feel like the older I get the more Lear will grow on me. (Hey, 30/40/50 year old me who just did a reread, can you add your thoughts to this review? that would be absolutely fascinating ;) )
So....5 stars, although I feel like I haven't gained a sufficient 'closeness to' or understanding of this play yet, but... enough to a) realize why it's so important, and b) be affected by it, if mostly in an unsettling way.
(I feel like I should get started on the histories next! Not yet finished with Shakespeare for a long time :D)