Dissin' the Theorists

Reading too much theory can be depressing. Recently, I read the Lear chapter in E.A.J. Honigmann’s book Myriad-Minded Shakespeare, and also the relevant portions of Stephen Booth’s King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy. Both great writers with lots of cogent observations...but not a whole lot that a director can make use of.

Honigmann was hung up on describing the “uniqueness” of King Lear—that is, why it did not conform to any of the other Shakespearean tragedies (that, right there, should have been my red flag. I’m not directing any of the other plays. What difference does it make if Lear is different from them or not?). His feeling was that Lear diverged primarily because it wasn’t a play that drove towards anything. Its protagonist doesn’t have a goal, its characters do not envision a future or even a destination. It is rather a play about “discussing the meaning of things”—and that puts it in a category with Oedipus and Endgame: philosophical plays in which characters try, and usually fail, to understand the universe.

I can’t deny that there’s a hefty portion of philosophy in Lear. And it has certainly been compared to Beckett enough times—in fact, entire productions have been done based on that similarity (Peter Brook’s famous production in 1962). But let’s be honest here: who really wants to pay to sit through three hours of people (mostly madmen) “discussing the meaning of things”? The very idea makes me yawn.

Does Lear have a goal? Does the play have a destination? I wrote earlier that the rhythm of the play is like a vortex, drawing in all movement, energy and light. Now I’m starting to see the down-side to that discovery. It means lots of going around in circles, with no progress and no resolution.

Stephen Booth is no help either. I love his ideas and I recommend his book to anyone, but god help me and my audiences if I tried to put his thoughts on stage. He sees Lear as a play about “indefinition,” about the tendency for things to not resolve, to not explain themselves. Furthermore, he thinks that Shakespeare deliberately made Lear too long, put in a bunch of false endings and trick moments of non-resolution, so that the story ends before the play does, and the audience is left wincing and squirming in their seats.

Well. Okay. The play is too long, yes. So are most of Shakespeare’s plays, especially the tragedies (Macbeth is the exception—short, dark, and bloody. Why didn’t I suggest that one instead?). And yes, the play’s ending is ambiguous, and yes, most audiences do an awful lot of squirming at the end, although that may have something to do with the incredibly horrific scene that’s unfolding before their eyes. But come on, Stephen! Why would Shakespeare—genius that he was—deliberately seek to make his audience feel awkward and uncomfortable? I mean, yes, the play is too long, but why call attention to that fact?

I’m sorry, no. I disbelieve. Shakespeare’s patrons in the Globe were busy people. They came and went during the performance, and I have no doubt at all that they would have felt free to voice their discontent (like Polonius in Hamlet) if they felt the play was dragging. So the only thing for Shakespeare and his company to do would be to keep them riveted right up to the last line.

And that brings us back to Honigmann. A play about old crazy dudes debating life is not exactly riveting. But a play about a desperate, frantic King who knows he’s made a terrible mistake and feels as though he’ll die if he doesn’t make amends, except he’s running out of time and options, and his daughters and the elements and maybe his own sanity are conspiring against him...? A play about a character who wants something, has somewhere to go, and does everything a human being can to get there...?

Yeah, I might just stick around to see how that story ends.