The Vortex

My past experience with Shakespeare’s tragedies has taught me that each play has a sort of movement or momentum to it—one which can sometimes become apparent just by reading the play. Hamlet, for example, is like navigating a labyrinth—not only for its readers (who frequently complain they don’t understand what’s going on) but also for its characters (Hamlet calls the world a prison with many “confines, wards and dungeons”). Macbeth is like quicksand—when you’re reading it, you slog forward, until suddenly you realize there’s no going back. Othello is a rockslide or an avalanche, started by something tiny, escalating until it buries everything.

At first, when reading Lear, I felt frustrated because I couldn’t see the pattern of its movement. It was clearly absorbing me, but it didn’t seem to have a focal point from which I could orient myself. Sometimes it was quick and rough and dizzying, and sometimes it felt slow and impenetrable. I couldn’t make it out. Suddenly, it dawned on me that it was this uncertainty that gives the play its power. It draws you in to something, but you can’t tell what’s drawing you, or where you will end up, until you’re inside, and it’s too late.

Its movement, then, is like a whirlpool—or better yet, a black hole—with absolute darkness at its core. “Nothing will come of nothing,” says Lear, and that’s exactly what happens. Cordelia speaks the word “nothing,” and the word opens up a rift, like a singularity, that draws in all light and hope. A gaping wound. An empty eye socket. A vortex.