Rescripting: The Rebel Alliance

I’m still rescripting, and so far I’ve encountered the most difficulty with a small but crucial thread of information in the second and third acts: the invasion of Britain.

In the original text, act two contains nary a mention of the French army which will appear in act four, led by Cordelia. The first disclosure is in Act 3, Scene 1, after Lear has run off into the dark and stormy night. It’s a weird, short scene between Kent and an unnamed Gentleman. It starts and ends with understandable concern about the king (and, in the Quarto, a lovely description of Lear raging against the elements, to whet our imaginations for the “Blow winds, and crack your cheeks” speech), but Kent changes the subject to give us some expository dialogue about spies in England and armies from France.

It’s strange that Kent would know this. It’s even stranger that he would take time out in the middle of a desperate rescue operation to divulge it to some stranger (a stranger to us, at least). And, to make matters worse, the Folio and Quarto give us different accounts of this speech. In the Quarto, Kent goes into some detail:

From France there comes a power
Into this scatter’d kingdom; who already,
Wise in our negligence, have secret feet
In some of our best ports...

In the Folio version (supposedly the revised text), this is cut, and all we get is this bit of mealy-mouthed foreshadowing:

What hath been seen,
Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes,
Or the hard rein which both of them have borne
Against the old kind king, or something deeper,
Whereof perchance these are but furnishings...

That’s too ambiguous for an audience to associate with the invasion which will suddenly appear to play a major role in the play’s climax. What is missing is a strong sense of conspiracy – something which Kent himself can be swept up in, just as Gloster is shortly, and at the cost of his eyesight.

Therefore, I’ve decided to embark upon an ambitious rescripting project, and spread the information contained in the one Kent/Gentleman scene across several scenes in acts two and three. Right now, I’m imagining something like this:

1) A servant at Gloster’s castle recognizes Kent (“Sir, I know you”), and deduces that he’s loyal to the king.
2) When Kent is in the stocks, that servant sneaks back in to give us some more tantalizing info (“Make your speed to Dover” ... “If you shall see Cordelia, as fear not but you shall...”). Perhaps he also tries to free Kent from the stocks, but is interrupted by the arrival of Lear and his train.
3) Now Kent knows that something serious is happening at Dover, but he doesn’t know exactly what it is. He therefore sends a Knight (not a Gentleman, but one of Lear’s remaining faithful knights) to Dover, to find out what’s going on.
4) After the majority of the storm scenes have come and gone, we may see that servant again. This time, he’s giving letters to Gloster (and a bit more information to the audience: “From France there comes a power into this scatter’d kingdom...”). This exchange will get stitched into Act 3, Scene 3, where Edmund decides to betray his own father. I’m picturing a bit of eavesdropping, here; perhaps Edmund has ducked behind the arras to have a quickie with one of the wicked sisters, and pops out for an aside at the end: “This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke instantly know...”

That all sounds like a lot of work just to deal with a fairly typical Shakespearean plot hole. But I think it makes the world a lot richer, more complex, to see how secret information is exchanged and built upon. I suppose it’s possible that the subversive servant is the same one who tries to stop Gloster’s blinding, and gets killed for his trouble. Then you even have a miniature tragedy in the centre of the play: the Rise and Fall of the Rebel Alliance.