Images II
Images, vignettes, stage pictures, moments in time...
Lear comes in from hunting in Act 1, Scene 3. His knights bustle around him. He moves around the stage, calling for his supper and his Fool (and his fiddlers three). He takes off his hat, and holds it out--a knight collects it. Same with his cloak. There's always somebody there to catch whatever he's about to drop. But towards the end of the scene, his knights have all been sent on errands; his support is gone. He instinctively drops an item behind him (maybe a wine goblet)--and is startled when it crashes to the ground. No one there to catch it any more.
Kent in the stocks. Instead of a split board, they are shackles which hoist him up into the air. As a n extra touch of cruelty, Cornwall shoves a barrel under his dangling feet. He spends the night engaged in a painful balancing act--the visual embodiment of shaky ground.
Gloster and Edgar on the "cliffs." Oswald comes charging in, following Regan's orders to execute Gloster. Maybe he's queasy about the job; he might be feeling a bit overwhelmed these days. Edgar defends Gloster with fearsome determination--but he doesn't have a weapon. Only Oswald is armed. The result is an almost comic cat-and-mouse, with an aggressive "madman", an armed coward, and a blind man caught in the middle. Gloster may even become a prop, an obstacle for the two combatants to dance around, over & under.
(Perhaps that's making light of Gloster's misery. But I suspect Shakespeare had that in mind--or at least accepted it as a possibility--when he had the blind old man topple off a non-existent cliff (THUMP!). In any case, there's got to be some lightness in the second half of this play.)
Then there's the battle. Edgar brings Gloster on ("Here, father, take the shadow of this tree...") and leaves him alone while the battle rages. Soldiers rush on, brush past him, and meet their deaths. A whirlwind of carnage, with Gloster in its still centre, hearing everything but seeing nothing. Or perhaps the whole battle should be done with only sounds--war from the perspective of a blind man.
Lear comes in from hunting in Act 1, Scene 3. His knights bustle around him. He moves around the stage, calling for his supper and his Fool (and his fiddlers three). He takes off his hat, and holds it out--a knight collects it. Same with his cloak. There's always somebody there to catch whatever he's about to drop. But towards the end of the scene, his knights have all been sent on errands; his support is gone. He instinctively drops an item behind him (maybe a wine goblet)--and is startled when it crashes to the ground. No one there to catch it any more.
Kent in the stocks. Instead of a split board, they are shackles which hoist him up into the air. As a n extra touch of cruelty, Cornwall shoves a barrel under his dangling feet. He spends the night engaged in a painful balancing act--the visual embodiment of shaky ground.
Gloster and Edgar on the "cliffs." Oswald comes charging in, following Regan's orders to execute Gloster. Maybe he's queasy about the job; he might be feeling a bit overwhelmed these days. Edgar defends Gloster with fearsome determination--but he doesn't have a weapon. Only Oswald is armed. The result is an almost comic cat-and-mouse, with an aggressive "madman", an armed coward, and a blind man caught in the middle. Gloster may even become a prop, an obstacle for the two combatants to dance around, over & under.
(Perhaps that's making light of Gloster's misery. But I suspect Shakespeare had that in mind--or at least accepted it as a possibility--when he had the blind old man topple off a non-existent cliff (THUMP!). In any case, there's got to be some lightness in the second half of this play.)
Then there's the battle. Edgar brings Gloster on ("Here, father, take the shadow of this tree...") and leaves him alone while the battle rages. Soldiers rush on, brush past him, and meet their deaths. A whirlwind of carnage, with Gloster in its still centre, hearing everything but seeing nothing. Or perhaps the whole battle should be done with only sounds--war from the perspective of a blind man.
posted by Scott Sharplin at 2:41 p.m.
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