Balance

I have a list of First Principles which I trot out at the beginning of every rehearsal process. They tend to be simple, pithy, one-word concepts like "Respect," and "Trust," which I can later expand and contort to fit whatever lesson I'm trying to convey at the time. Well, that sounds awfully cynical; the fact is, I do believe in "Respect" as a ground-rule for rehearsals (and live theatre itself). But the words themselves don't mean very much--or rather, they mean too much. They need specificity.

I'll get into those specifics on this journal, but not now; when rehearsals start in November, I'll have more tangible examples. For now, I want to talk about a concept that doesn't usually constitute a First Principle--but which might, in the case of Lear, serve as a lodestar for the whole play. I'm talking about Balance.

Here's how it went, inside my brain: I was re-reading Playing Shakespeare by John Barton, the excellent print companion to the excellent BBC TV series. In the chapter called "Language and Character," Barton introduces the concept of "antithesis." He says:

If I were to offer one single bit of advice to the actor new to Shakespeare's text, I suspect that the most useful think I could say would be, 'Look for the antitheses and play them.'

I agree with Barton. And, since I anticipate that many of my actors will be new to Shakespeare, I want to introduce antithesis to them very early on, and return to the concept again and again.

So what the hell are antitheses? They are comparisons, or contrasts, which Shakespeare has his characters employ to make an argument, or develop a metaphor, or generally to keep the language of the play dynamic and interesting. They can be very simple contrasts:

To be or not to be--that is the question;

Or they can be complex and intricate, lacing multiple comparisons together into one phrase:

For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the sooner it wears.

Finding the antitheses helps the actor to understand the meaning of the language, and to communicate that meaning to an audience. I suggest that actors think of themselves as a weigh-scale, with one half of the contrast balancing in either hand:

Here's three of us are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself: Unaccomodated man...

Barton admits that antithesis is a clunky, academic-sounding term, but the only alternative name he suggests is the awkward literalization, "setting the word against the word." I was thinking about antithesis, and how I could convey it more directly to my actors, and the image of the weigh-scale kept coming back again and again. Balance...

Then it occurred to me that balance is an important concept in the thematic world of the play itself. In fact, it's important in most of Shakespeare's tragedies, where the delicate order of nature is upset by some unnatural deed or deeds. The world of Lear begins in a state of harmony, balance...but it quickly becomes unbalanced when Lear abdicates and banishes Cordelia. From that point on, the increasingly violent battles for authority onstage send the world's balance tilting further and further askew. It's like a flat plane balanced on a stick, and the further out from the centre all the characters get, the more precarious the plane becomes.

Okay, maybe that's not the best simile. But I can borrow one from myself by returning to the image of the vortex, or whirlpool. Once that gaping "nothing" has been opened up, there is a gravity, a riptide pull that threatens to suck all the characters--the whole world--into its maw. The further from the vortex you are, the easier it is to maintain your balance. The closer you get, the more unstable everything becomes.

So I think that balance is important, and a good place to start when analyzing not only the text itself, but the world which the text creates. It's also a highly physical way to approach the play--trying to keep one's balance while walking on a thin line is something everyone can relate to, even if you've never been up on a tightrope (or in a whirlpool, for that matter).

By the Numbers

Browsing through “The Shakespeare Book of Lists” (Michael LoMonico, New Page Books), I came across the Word Frequency List for Lear. This is a list of the most common words spoken in the text of King Lear (it doesn’t say which version of the text), excluding common pronouns, articles, prepositions, and other workaday words.

The first two words on the list are extremely telling. Number one is “father,” which appears 66 times. Number two, clocking in at 65, is “King.”

In a numerical nutshell, this is the crux of the play. Is Lear primarily a father, or a King? Which is more important? When he acts like a King, his family suffers; when he acts like a father, his country deteriorates. Their presence at the top of this list makes it seem as though the two words—the two identities—are in a neck-and-neck race throughout the play. If “father” wins over “King,” it’s only by a hair. And underneath those two words, but still in the top ten, are several other words which might describe the many incarnations of Lear (or Lear’s shadows): “man” (62 times), “fool,” “poor,” and “old” (47 times each).

Some other interesting repetitions include “love” (51), “see” and “speak” (50 and 48), “heart” (46), “eyes” (37), “nature” (36)...and, of course, “nothing” (34 times).

Rescripting: Nips and Tucks

I did another quick run through my cut script, to clean up the spelling and adjust the punctuation. I try not to over-determine the punctuation, because I want the actors to experiment with different deliveries during the rehearsals. But sometimes the Folio's punctuation is just so bizarre that it actively hampers understanding--particularly if you're already unsure about the meaning of words.

During my revision, I nipped and tucked a few bits--just beats that seemed unnecessary, mostly. For example, when Lear arrives to Gloster's castle, he finds Kent in the stocks, and promptly storms inside to wake everybody up. Kent and the Fool have a bit of back-and-forth, and then Lear re-enters with Gloster, complaining that his daughter (Regan) and her husband (Cornwall) have refused to see him. He rails and screams, and sends Gloster back offstage to fetch them. A few lines later, they enter, and Kent is "set at liberty" (as the stage directions say).

By now, we have already had one scene full of Lear enraged. We've also had a scene in which one of Lear's daughters refuses to see him. Do we really need that extra beat where he sends Gloster back offstage? The answer is no. I have him storm offstage, and re-enter with Gloster, Regan and Cornwall in tow.

A larger emendation comes in Act Five, when Edgar prepares to face off against his villainous brother. In the original, he shows up disguised and gives Albany a letter (the contents of which remain obscure). He tells Albany that, if the Duke decides that Edmund is a traitor, he should sound the trumpet three times, and a "champion" will appear to fight for him. After the battle, this takes place; and on the third trumpet, Edgar enters, in disguise, and accuses Edmund of treachery.

There is something wonderfully fantastical about this sequence, and I expect it would play very well on stage. But at this late stage of the game, it's just too much. The fact is, Albany doesn't need a letter from Edgar in order to despise Edmund; he already hates the Bastard for trying to steal his wife, for his inhuman cruelty towards Gloster, and for his general disrespect for Albany's authority. Similarly, Edgar doesn't need a series of trumpets to herald his arrival. He can simply arrive, a mysterious masked man with a deadly score to settle.

I don't think these extra beats are flaws--far from it. They are clever devices used to ramp up the tension of the play. But the play is loaded with all kinds of tension--sexual tension, political tension, the tensions of insanity and suffering and death--and I really don't think anyone will notice if a few extra twists of the knife are absent. The bottom line, I think, has to be keepin' 'em involved. The longer you ask them to sustain their inner tension, the more likely their attentions will begin to wander--or their bums will start to fall asleep.

That's it for rescripting. My next task will be to craft a rehearsal schedule.

What about the Queens?

When I say the Queens, I mean Regan and Goneril, of course. Lear has no queen--he doesn't even make reference to one--and although neither daughter ever formally receives the title of queen, they certainly act like they run the show. Interestingly, Cordelia, who goes on to become the actual Queen of France, does not behave in ways which demand respect. In other plays, Shakespeare faults royalty for failing to live up to the authority invested in them; but in this play, acting with authority seems to be a bad thing.

I always used to get Goneril and Regan mixed up, and I had to adopt silly mnemonics to remember who was married to which duke (for example, to remember R+C, I'd think of RC Cola). Now that I've been through the play in detail, I find it easier to separate them in my mind. Goneril is the eldest, and the one who grows most quickly and naturally to command. At the end of Act 1, Scene 1, she corners Regan and starts dictating terms to her ("We must do something, and i'th'heat."). We see her issuing orders to her servants onstage (mostly Oswald), whereas Regan usually lets her husband Cornwall do the orders. And, of course, Goneril walks all over her husband, Albany--at least until Albany hears about the terrible things that have been done to Lear and Gloster, at which point he finally grows a spine (too little, too late). So, as the eldest, Goneril is clearly well suited to monarchy. She knows, I suspect, that if she had been born a male, there would be no division of the kingdoms and no pithy love-test; she'd be King, and that would be that.

Regan, by contrast, is a more subtle character. When Lear leaves Goneril's castle in Act 2, hoping to take refuge with his other daughter, Regan greets him warmly at first ("I am glad to see your highness," to which he replies, "Regan, I think you are."), and it's only gradually that she reveals her true colours (which happen to be the same as Goneril's colours, or at least a matching shade). From that exchange, I get the sense that, whereas Goneril was a demanding and bossy child (Veruca Salt from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" springs to mind), Regan got what she wanted from Daddy by coddling and acting cute.

Regan is also the more sexual, and the more violent, of the two. Although it is Goneril who first suggests that Gloster's eyes be put out, she doesn't stick around to do the deed (more delegating; what a great CEO she would make). But Regan is in the room, and I think she really gets off on the sadistic acts. "One side will mock another--th'other too" she urges to her husband, after the first eye has been plucked. And when the First Servant intervenes, Regan doesn't hesitate: she grabs a sword and runs the poor schmuck through.

After Cornwall dies (from the First Servant's act of resistance), Regan seems to lose her way, and she becomes obsessed with marrying Edmund. She needs a partner in crime. Goneril, however, is a solo flier; she only seems interested in Edmund because Regan is; or perhaps because she thinks she can control him more effectively than Albany? (If that's the case, she's wrong--dead wrong, as things turn out)

In Act 5, Goneril poisons Regan, which is a very royal method of dispatching one's enemies. I suspect that, if Regan had beat her sister to the punch, she would have chosen a more visceral means of murder. And in a way, she gets to do exactly that, because Goneril's guilt (or possibly her grief at Edmund's fatal wounding?) drives her to suicide, and she chooses to use a knife for that.

She must have used every last drop of the poison on Regan, or else she would have had a friendly drop to use upon herself. Thorough to the last, she was.

What About Edgar?

I guess I haven’t talked about Edgar yet. It wasn’t until I did my rescripting and realized how the play seems to hinge upon him that I really started to think about his role. He suffers badly, but he survives. Not as badly as Lear, who goes mad, or Gloster, who goes blind—but he loses everything he has, like Lear, and he feels Gloster’s pain more acutely than anyone in the play beside the old man himself.

In fact, I think that’s Edgar’s special gift to the play: he has empathy with others. Most of his soliloquies and asides are on the subject of the suffering of others. If he gets the last speech in the play (which I quoted in my last entry), then he is also the last to feel it, to articulate it. He learns important things about suffering through sharing the suffering of others. And not just Lear and Gloster, either: I think a good Edgar makes time to feel the suffering of Kent and the Fool, of Oswald (whom he kills)—and even of Edmund, his arch-nemesis, his alter ego, the Vader to his Anakin.

Edgar isn’t the only character to empathise. The Fool does it quite a bit; Kent does it, on the rare occasion when his gruff exterior slips; and even Lear manages to feel a bit for his youngest daughter, by the end. But Edgar is the most consistently compassionate, and he’s one of the few who survive. In a play as dark and cheerless as Lear, his compassion is incredibly necessary; it makes him the audience’s most important confidante.

How nice, that Will decided to make this crucial character spend half the play skipping around, mostly naked, barking nonsense. You gotta love his sense of humour, sometimes.

Rescripting: The End

Following a burst of creative energy, I have finished rescripting—or at least, I’ve finished a draft. More work may yet follow.

It seems my second act is much shorter than my first. Mind you, that estimate may be misleading, since the second half of the play contains more violence, both onstage and off, and that tends to add to the running time. I have an idea for the “offstage war” which is alluded to in Act 5, Scene 2 (“Alarum and retreat within”): a silent sequence of soldiers crossing on and off the stage, missing each other in the fog of war. This would be a neat reflection of the storm, which I also imagine will feature characters just missing one another as they enter and exit.

The very last lines of the play are a point of contention, because they are ascribed to different characters in different versions. In the Quarto, Albany speaks these lines, whereas in the Folio, it’s Edgar:

The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say:
The oldest have borne most, we that are young,
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

I decided to go with the Folio, because, in my version, Edgar also has the last speech before the intermission. I don’t know if anyone will remember, or bother to make that connection, but I like the symmetry of it.

Rescripting: The Intermission

I’m about half-way through rescripting, and I’ve figured out where to put my intermission (or interval, for readers of the British persuasion). Staging practices in Shakespeare’s time didn’t involve intermissions, and I confess that I do enjoy a swift, uninterrupted production of a Shakespeare play; but I recognize that opinion puts me in the minority. And let’s face it, there’s just no way that a production of Lear is going to be “swift.” You mightaswell tell the London Symphony Orchestra to pick up the pace on Beethoven’s Ninth. It takes as long as it takes.

A lot of productions put the intermission after Act 3, Scene 7, which is the scene where Gloster gets his eyes put out. Peter Brook’s famous production (1962, I think) even had the actor playing Gloster stumble into the audience as the house lights came up. Personally, I think that horrendous act of violence can be put to better use after the intermission. If it’s put right before the break, all it’s going to do is cut down on concession sales.

No, I like Act 3, Scene 6, the “trial” scene. Lear is still totally bonkers at the end of this scene, but at least he settles down a bit—in fact, he even manages to fall asleep (which some of the audience may also be doing, after an hour and a half). But what I particularly like about this scene is Edgar’s soliloquy at the end (it’s in the Quarto, not the Folio):

When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Who alone suffers, suffers most i’th’ mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind,
But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip,
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship:
How light and portable my pain seems now,
When that which makes me bend, makes the King bow.
He childed as I fathered. Tom, away,
Mark the high noises and thy self bewray,
When false opinion whose wrong thoughts defile thee,
In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.
What will hap more tonight, safe scape the King.

Basically Edgar is saying “misery loves company.” It’s kind of over-simplistic for a play as broad as Lear. But you know what? The audience has already seen, and shared, a great deal of misery. They know the play is only half over, and they probably know it’s going to get worse from here. Sending them out to the lobby with a grain of compassionate wisdom seems like a good idea, and much kinder than having their heads echo with the sound of crushed eyeball.

Incidentally, here is my rescripted version of the same speech. I’ve changed it quite a bit (ie. more than I usually would) because I also want the audience to understand the simple message quickly (it’s been 90 minutes, and their brains are tired):

How light and portable my pain seems now,
When that which makes me bend makes the king bow.
When we see our own betters bearing woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Who suffers solo, suffers most in the mind,
Leaving free acts and happy shows behind.
But when our grief has mates and fellowship,
Then does the mind much suffering o’erskip.
Whate’er befalls tonight, safe ‘scape the king!

Fighty Tension

Another artist has joined the Lear crew: Andrew Gummer, who is an outstanding local actor, but who is helping out with this show in the capacity of fight director. Andy was involved in another production of King Lear about five years ago (I believe he played Edmund, although it might have been Edgar), so he knows the play well. He’s also directed fights for several previous Walterdale shows. Our violence is in good hands.

I enjoyed talking with Andy about Lear from a stage combat perspective. There aren’t a lot of major fights in the play, but the ones that occur serve very particular functions, I think. Early in the play, there’s some casual violence (mostly Kent harassing poor Oswald), but I don’t think it’s meant to be taken seriously; it’s the sort of slapstick violence that Lear seems to like and to which Goneril takes great offence. Then we get the storm, and the madness, and the tension gets ratched right up to full—but there still isn’t much explicit violence to serve as a release valve.

Until Gloster’s eyes. I realized, when I was talking about it today, that this scene contains two murders (the Servant killing Cornwall, and Regan returning the favour), but the deaths are framed by the act of the blinding: that is, one eye is removed before the murders and the other eye afterwards (Cornwall takes his time in dying, of course).

I’m not sure what this symmetry means, but I do know the blinding is a strange form of stage violence—intimate and unimaginable, it makes you cringe and scream inside, but it lacks the release of a nice, clean stabbing or choking. The overall effect is: one eye goes (our tension is internalized), then blood is shed (our tension is released), and then a second eye goes (and the tension goes back inside). It’s like inhaling, exhaling... and then inhaling again. And Shakespeare leaves us holding our breaths.

The duel between Edmund and Edgar in Act Five has a similar, suspended feel to it. At this point, the play is so tightly wound that nearly anything could set it off. There has been a battle, but it takes place entirely offstage. Now the two brothers face off at last, and we get the sense (although not for any logical reason) that the play’s ending hinges upon this conflict. But they talk and talk and talk, and the tension goes up. And then they finally fight (Andy and I agree that a long, flashy duel with light swords is in order)—we get release. Edgar stabs Edmund! And does that mean that Lear and Cordelia will be spared? Is there a happy ending in sight?

Of course there isn’t; and the tension and agony now mounts while Edgar unmasks, and Edmund is arrested and exposed, and Goneril rushes off to kill herself, and the two dead queens are hauled onstage. Edmund continues to bleed to death while all this happens, and then finally, 100 lines after he gets stabbed, Edmund says:

I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,
Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send—
Be brief in it—to the castle, for my writ
Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia;
Nay, send in time.

Too little too late, though (and one can’t help wondering if Edmund the Bastard knows this); Lear enters with Cordelia’s body, howls for 50 lines, and then gives up the ghost.

To make a long story short: the climactic duel, which would ordinarily serve as a release, or catharsis, for the audience’s tension, doesn’t provide any release at all. The audience exhales, but inhales right afterwards, and stays thus, turning slowly blue, right up to the point when Lear finally dies. Both acts of violence are like a last deep breath before diving much, much deeper than before.

Hmm...between that image, and the previous, overarching image of the whirlpool...I wonder if an underwater Lear might be in order...?

The Storm

I just finished rescripting the famous storm scene—the one which begins with Lear screaming at the tempest, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks,” etcetera. It didn’t need a whole lot of fixing—it’s one of those scenes whose brilliance transcends the play around it, and becomes its own little drama. But despite the ease of adaptation, the storm still troubles me.

In the last two hundred years, the storm has become one of the biggest challenges in producing King Lear. Lighting and sound effects can create tremendous clamours, but if they grow too loud and fierce, they drown out Lear and the other characters. It’s also difficult to figure out exactly what sort of storm we’re dealing with: Shakespeare trots out every single image one could possibly associate with rough weather, and trying to realize them all on stage would short-circuit the audience’s sense (and possibly the theatre’s lighting board).

Here’s one example. This is Kent, speaking after Lear has finished the majority of his storm-rant:

Things that love night
Love not such nights as these: The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of Fire, such bursts of horrid Thunder,
Such groans of roaring Wind, and Rain, I never
Remember to have heard. Man’s Nature cannot carry
Th' affliction, nor the fear.

Directors and producers are enticed with the challenge of creating an audio-visual ordeal which lives up to these sorts of hyperbole. But I think less has got to be more in a situation like this. In his own theatre, Shakespeare had very limited resources for storm effects: maybe some drums, or a metal spiral that clatters when you roll a cannonball inside it. No wind machines. No rain sticks. No lighting effects, since the Globe was open to the elements.

And that, of course, is why he poured all the fury and intensity of the storm into his poetry. It is a storm of the imagination; in fact, it seems deliberately crafted to provoke and extend the imagination, as if daring the audience to picture The Perfect Storm. Can an audience imagine something bigger, stronger, more terrifying than the sound and light effects of modern theatres? Of course they can.

I’m reminded of a similar case of imaginative hyperbole, in Macbeth. After killing Duncan, Macbeth goes to wash the blood from his hands. He exclaims:

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Any make-up director who takes these lines literally and attempts to stain the poor actor’s hands with an oceanful of blood is clearly misinterpreting the purpose of the scene, and of the lines. The same is true for the storm; it can have a visual and aural presence, sure; but trying to stage the vast cosmic cataclysm which the characters see in their minds will only end in headaches.