Interpretations of King Lear | Interpretations of King Lear

Good morning Mrs...... And audience, directors of modern performances of "King Lear" are given the opportunity to foreground certain aspects of the plot, themes, characters and character interaction: highlighting particular values and thereby influencing the meaning and reception of "King Lear" as a text within society. This speech shall demonstrate how the both political drama and Peter brooks have created valuable interpretations of king Lear. While listening to this speech question yourself how have these interpretations enriched our understanding of King Lear and brought new, more relevant in context, meaning to the text.

Peter brooks Film production in 1971 is existentialist in outlook and frequently surrealist in mode and presents a nature that is savagely hostile to human life and its values. The basis of existentialist interpretation is the individuals experience in a hostile or indifferent universe. Brook satisfied these values by focusing on Lear's personal journey and the consequences of his actions on his world.

Brook choose to shoot the film in the northern most part of Denmark, Jutland, and filled the film with enough precise detail to be imaginatively convincing but not to much to be time-period or locale based. The non-specific setting gave the production a universal view of life that forces us to concentrate on the characters dilemmas and essence of plot rather than contextual relevance. Brook used a snow desert in order to establish a natural setting whose primitive harshness both reflected and caused man's savagery to themselves. He also wanted the setting to convey the distorted, fractured nature of Lear's perception. This feature is particularly evident in the storm scene

The barren setting also incorporated the importance of nothingness in existential theory. Nothingness appears in existentialism, as the placeholder of possibility. It is only once Lear experiences nothingness in the storm scene that he is able to question his existence in a meaningless decomposing universe and learn forgiveness.

In the storm scene the storm itself and Lear's madness are emphasized by increasingly surrealistic images, such as the ground cracking open, walls bursting and flames among branches. These images symbolize the disintegration of Lear's world and dramatizes the scene to emphasize the storm that rages in Lear's mind that causes him to question his values

The majority of the Fool's and Edgar's dialogue was exempted for the storm scene giving the effect of Lear giving an angry twisted soliloquy into the night. This is also coupled with Brook's camera technique of cutting different close-up angles and displaying them in quick succession giving the effect that Lear is ferociously arguing with himself. The use of black and white for the movie was not because of technological restrictions but because Brook believed that the production could only carry King Lear's moral and emotional settings if shot in black and white.

The victims of Brook's Lear do not just encompass humans but also animals. There are many shots of dead animals during the storm, and it is to a shot of these that Lear's "poor naked wretches" apology is addressed, not to human beggars, the implication seems to be less that humanity has reverted to a bestial level than that man is always an animal and nothing more than that, victimized by nature like all other things.

The second interpretation I shall be talking about is political drama which contrasts with brooks existentialist interpretation. A political interpretation can be valued simply because we find personal tragedy such as brooks easier to comprehend and respond to, while the other dimension stands more in need of our thinking and feeling through.

"King Lear" is a political play because it examines the scheming of personal drives and passions determining political activity. The play shows the tragedy, which comes from the division of power and how when Lear shuns the responsibility for the kingdom he also loses all political control. Lear also examines the essence of political leadership and shows the incredible complexity of the subterfuge of which human beings are capable.

In the plays opening lines Kent and Glouster speculate on what is the forthcoming process of changing the balance of power. The first scene is as much about political authority as it is about family dynamics. Lear is not only a father but also a king, and when he gives away his authority away, he delivers not only himself and his family but also all of Britain into chaos and cruelty.

David Hares production in 1987 was essentially a political interpretation as it underlined the disintegrating nation, an ancient Britain falling into the butcheries of civil war. When the curtains opened on Hare's production the audience was faced with an ancient British court, with the actors strategically positioned and entirely still. What this symbolically represented was the power games played in the first scene. Hare's actors delivered their lines with unpassionate indirectness, to mask the emotions and motives behind their actions. The actors only brought to the surface those feelings that were necessary to enforce their own self-interest. Regan, for example, was presented as an un-spontaneous, silent watcher who from within a shocking aggression was released with increasing fervour as her political control advanced.

Stephen Hazel commented that the clothes used in Hares production were "used as signs of social identity and much less as essential self in each character." Clothes are central to how the play powerfully conveys the political characteristics of tragedy. Lear conveys his political status through his clothing in the first scene his attire is regal and ostentatious however as his political status declines his clothes become more and more ragged.

Finally the focus point for Audience's of Hare's production was a giant wooden map, which was physically broken up by Lear into three. In summation "King Lear's" first scene when looked at from a political interpretation is the beginning of a story about a generational power play that leads to civil war. By Lear's divesting his power as king, Lear destroys the authority of the political system he represents.

The vastly differing values of these interpretations show that there are innumerable ways of viewing King Lear and that each interpretation brings something new to the text according to the social values of the time and places emphasis on different aspects of the production.