3.4, 4.3, 4.5: Birds i'th'cage

Cordelia's back! After an absence of weeks, tonight we worked the three scenes in which Cordelia (and France) return to England, reunite with Lear, and then, um, die.

We quickly worked and blocked 3.4, in which Cordelia meets Kent. Gargrave, the loyal Knight, has yet another lovely speech describing Lear's ongoing lunacy. But we also hear the insisent approach of war (Shakespeare is quite insistent), and these "drums and alarums" continue into the next scene, when Cordelia rouses Lear from sleep and brings him back to sanity.

We worked this scene once before, and had some blocking to fall back upon; but things changed, as they often do. Everyone in the scene (Dale, Anna-Maria, John, Keiran) did a great job, but I still felt unsatisfied. Maybe it was the sudden realization that there was simply no practical way for us to bring Lear on in a bed, or even on a chair. Nope, the king gets blankets and (as Keiran suggested) maybe a gunney sack for a pillow--sleeping like a soldier, which is a propos, with a war so close at hand.

So, I hope to revisit that scene and continue to shift things around. Ultimately, the blocking isn't critical--it will be Lear and Cordelia who sell the scene--but I want to make what could easily be an awkward set-up as comfortable and natural as possible for them both.

For the last hour, Dale, Anna-Maria, Liz and I sat on the floor of the rehearsal hall and looked at the short and painfully beautiful dialogue which occurs between father and daughter at the start of 4.5. This is the last time we see Cordelia alive. I had originally shortened Lear's speech considerably, and I owe Dave Brundage a debt for convincing me to lengthen it again, because it really works:

Cordelia.
We are not the first
Who with best meaning have incurr’d the worst:
Shall we not see these Sisters?

Lear.
No, no, no, no: come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like Birds i’th’cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded Butterflies: and hear poor Rogues
Talk of Court news, and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: And we'll wear out
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by th'Moon. Wipe thine eyes,
The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep.

Hearing them read through this more than made up for my frustrations with the last scene. I particularly like the idea that Cordelia, who is a realist, suspects that death is just around the corner, but she allows herself to buy into Lear's fantasy because it makes the old man happy, and because--in the moments that he's saying it, and she's receiving it, and we, the audience, are hearing it--it's true.