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Title: King Lear by R. A. Foakes, William Shakespeare, R a. Foakes ISBN: 1-903436-59-1 Publisher: Arden Shakespeare Pub. Date: 09 May, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: King Lear Review
Comment: Power, corruption, betrayal, and death are the themes significant to the play King Lear. Written around the 1600's, this play by William Shakespeare is best known for its tragic ending. In this play, betrayed by those he trusted most, King Lear is driven to the brink of insanity as his remaining power is snatched away. The dense rich language adds more meaning to the play, which is quite interesting due to the different twists in the plot, and the realistic portrayal of the diverse characters. This play, though hard to understand at times, is probably one of Shakespeare's best tragedies. This play is a "must read" book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Here is the full plot of the play (read only if you already know the ending of the book):
The play begins as King Lear, the ruler of England, is giving his daughters his kingdom so that they can rule. However, he wants his daughters to express their love for him, and in return he would give them the land. The eldest daughters, Goneril and Regan declare their love and receive their land. The youngest, Cordelia, says that words cannot express her love, and this angers the king. He says that he will give her no land and dowry and she is married off to the King of France.
The scene shifts to another important character Edmund. Edmund is the illegitimate son of Gloucester, and he is creating a plan to trick his father into believing that his other son Edgar is attempting to steal Gloucester's wealth and then intends on killing him. This angers as he Gloucester and how he to kill his traitor son Edgar.
As the play unravels, readers see that Goneril and Regan begin plotting to steal whatever power the king still may have. As the story continues, the daughters' evil plans are revealed to the king as he realizes the Cordelia was the only daughter loyal to him and he regrets the decision he made earlier. As the play progresses the king becomes mad with the knowledge.
The play now takes place in Gloucester's castles and soon Goneril and Regan both fall in love with Edmond. Gloucester also learns the plans to the eldest daughters and he warns the king. After Regan and Goneril realize that Gloucester has told the father, they name him a traitor and torture him. In the end, Edgar saves his father.
The king leaves and heads for Dover. This is where Cordelia is waiting for her father. However, both the king and Cordelia are captured and imprisoned by the other daughters. Goneril, in the blindness of her love for Edmund, poisons Regan and soon is lead into killing herself. Edgar and Edmund duel. Cordelia was killed in prison and the king soon dies afterwards and then the play ends.
Rating: 4
Summary: Five stars for the play
Comment: The rating of four stars is for the edition (R.A. Foakes's); the play is one of the greatest tragedies ever written, and of course deserves at least five stars.
It is not easy to find a a truly satisfactory edition of this play. An advantage of R.A. Foakes's is that he offers us a "conflated" text, i.e. one that aims to reconstruct something like what Shakespeare originally wrote by taking elements from the best two early printings rather than giving us those separately or by settling for the one rather than the other. I don't think, though, that Foakes's reconstruction is nearly as convincing as that of earlier editors who presented conflated texts. I am often unhappy about his glosses, too, and about his rather "trendy" introduction. Even so, the introduction and the notes do give us most of what we need, so long as we approach this material with independence of mind.
The PLAY is the thing, and whichever text we read it in (even, for example, in a text based just on that in the Folio), it is a great and moving work. Lear is an ageing king (about 80+), whose life has been sheltered and pampered. Although this equips him badly for "real" life, he is not intrinsically the evil tyrant that much current criticism tends to suggest - even his authoritarianism seems a matter of habit rather than anything else. At the beginning of the play he foolishly decides that he will give each of his three daughters a part of his kingdom. His intention had been to give the youngest daughter, Cordelia, with whom he planned to spend his "retirement", the biggest portion. However, rather than simply proceeding with his plan, he asks his daughters to declare the degree of their love for him, and this is where tangible trouble starts.
Goneril and Regan, both flatterers who seek their own interest at all times, butter him up, but Cordelia, who is honest, offends Lear's ego by refusing to follow her sisters' phoney example. He then offers the two eldest daughters 50% each, and disinherits Cordelia. Soon Goneril and Regan, contrary to what had been arranged, refuse to give him hospitality, and plan his death. Cordelia, though badly treated by him, tries to rescue her father, and the two are reconciled in a most moving scene, but she is killed and carried onto the stage in an immensely painful way by Lear, whose sanity had been temporarily destroyed by his daughters' and his own behaviour but who paradoxically gains new insight into life as a result of everything he experiences during the course of his suffering.
His story is paralleled by that of the Earl of Gloucester, who similarly wrongly prefers a bad child to one who is good, yet is treated well by the good child, Edgar, who like Cordelia shows that love consists of forgiveness and generosity rather than anything else. Just as Lear learned wisdom through madness, Gloucester acquires it after he has been blinded by some of the most evil people in the play.
It is in many ways a "bleak" play, not giving us any reason to hope that there is a God who looks after us in this life or one hereafter, and showing plenty of evil in humankind - amongst both women and men - but which also leaves no doubt as to what it means to be good, and provides consolation by showing us how good, and love, can endure even in the face of great provocation and suffering. - Joost Daalder
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