tainted by the contagion of violence. 53
In his final battle with Edmund, Russell Beale as Edgar tried “to rip out the dying Edmund’s eyes in reprisal.” 54 Similarly, Bill Alexander’s 2004 production included “chilling touches that alert you afresh to the barbarism of its world. For example, in the climactic duel between Edmund and Edgar, it’s only chance that stops the virtuous brother from exacting primitive ’eye for an eye’ justice” 55 —“In order to force Edmund to drop his arms, [Edgar] grabbed him by either side of his face and pushed his thumbs into his eyes. This reference to the blinding of Gloucester was eerily resonant.” 56
Our opinion of Edgar will determine how we consider the end of the play. His spiritual journey, which echoes Lear’s, provides him with a unique understanding of humanity and the preciousness of life. But he is also a very human avenger who has to set the world right and provide hope for the future. To overbalance his character with deliberate malicious and violent action furthers a nihilistic vision of the play by removing the certainty of redemption for a lost and barbaric world. Adrian Noble in 1982 stressed this element of unredeemed cruelty. The
Guardian
critic Michael Billington explains:
Edgar slays Oswald by breaking his back with a staff, and the fraternal duel between Edgar and Edmund is a bare-chested, bloody, unchivalric combat that ends with Edmund’s head being dumped in water. Even at the last the characters look out into the future in a spirit of skeptical uncertainty. 57
In Peter Brook’s vision of the play chaos was part of the natural order. His production emphasized the inhumanity and disinterestedness of the forces that annihilate Lear. There was no moral structurebeneath the surface of civilization: “Everywhere one looks, one sees only the facades and emblems of a world and, ironically, as characters acquire sight, it enables them to see only into a void.” 58
Brook removed key moments of redemption and humanity: the servants did not tend Gloucester after he has been blinded but callously bumped into him as they cleared away the stage. Edmund’s attempt to redeem himself and stop the order that will see the death of Cordelia was cut. As Lear died, his final words “Look there” were spoken as he stared ahead into nothingness. We were not left with the usual tableau of survivors grieving over Lear and Cordelia. The cast left, carrying out their dead bodies, leaving Edgar and the dead Edmund on stage alone. Edgar moved center-stage, and then went to his brother. As he dragged his brother’s corpse up toward the back of the stage a distant rumble of thunder sounded in the background, leaving the audience with the impression that worse was to follow. “[W]e that are young / Shall never see so much nor live so long” took on a genuinely apocalyptic meaning. This was an image of the horror of “the promised end” of the world.
Where Brook’s production succeeded was in making the audience grieve for humanity, or more specifically for the absence of humanity. It seemed a fitting statement for its time, and it is one that still touches us today. Lear’s speech in the hovel is central to Brook’s vision—it is not by chance that he used this quote in the program for the production’s world tour: “Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.” Corin Redgrave, who played King Lear in 2004, also took this line:
The play investigates how, in a dying or decaying world, we can live better and be better toward one another. It can’t produce any conclusions to that because the world as Shakespeare saw it at that time was dying, just as our world as we see it is dying. Shakespeare was writing in a world which he sees going to hell on wheels and writing a text book in case the world should ever recover. So it is the most bleak of plays, but it is a very salutary play, a very necessary play … you could not possibly lose
King Lear
without
In his final battle with Edmund, Russell Beale as Edgar tried “to rip out the dying Edmund’s eyes in reprisal.” 54 Similarly, Bill Alexander’s 2004 production included “chilling touches that alert you afresh to the barbarism of its world. For example, in the climactic duel between Edmund and Edgar, it’s only chance that stops the virtuous brother from exacting primitive ’eye for an eye’ justice” 55 —“In order to force Edmund to drop his arms, [Edgar] grabbed him by either side of his face and pushed his thumbs into his eyes. This reference to the blinding of Gloucester was eerily resonant.” 56
Our opinion of Edgar will determine how we consider the end of the play. His spiritual journey, which echoes Lear’s, provides him with a unique understanding of humanity and the preciousness of life. But he is also a very human avenger who has to set the world right and provide hope for the future. To overbalance his character with deliberate malicious and violent action furthers a nihilistic vision of the play by removing the certainty of redemption for a lost and barbaric world. Adrian Noble in 1982 stressed this element of unredeemed cruelty. The
Guardian
critic Michael Billington explains:
Edgar slays Oswald by breaking his back with a staff, and the fraternal duel between Edgar and Edmund is a bare-chested, bloody, unchivalric combat that ends with Edmund’s head being dumped in water. Even at the last the characters look out into the future in a spirit of skeptical uncertainty. 57
In Peter Brook’s vision of the play chaos was part of the natural order. His production emphasized the inhumanity and disinterestedness of the forces that annihilate Lear. There was no moral structurebeneath the surface of civilization: “Everywhere one looks, one sees only the facades and emblems of a world and, ironically, as characters acquire sight, it enables them to see only into a void.” 58
Brook removed key moments of redemption and humanity: the servants did not tend Gloucester after he has been blinded but callously bumped into him as they cleared away the stage. Edmund’s attempt to redeem himself and stop the order that will see the death of Cordelia was cut. As Lear died, his final words “Look there” were spoken as he stared ahead into nothingness. We were not left with the usual tableau of survivors grieving over Lear and Cordelia. The cast left, carrying out their dead bodies, leaving Edgar and the dead Edmund on stage alone. Edgar moved center-stage, and then went to his brother. As he dragged his brother’s corpse up toward the back of the stage a distant rumble of thunder sounded in the background, leaving the audience with the impression that worse was to follow. “[W]e that are young / Shall never see so much nor live so long” took on a genuinely apocalyptic meaning. This was an image of the horror of “the promised end” of the world.
Where Brook’s production succeeded was in making the audience grieve for humanity, or more specifically for the absence of humanity. It seemed a fitting statement for its time, and it is one that still touches us today. Lear’s speech in the hovel is central to Brook’s vision—it is not by chance that he used this quote in the program for the production’s world tour: “Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.” Corin Redgrave, who played King Lear in 2004, also took this line:
The play investigates how, in a dying or decaying world, we can live better and be better toward one another. It can’t produce any conclusions to that because the world as Shakespeare saw it at that time was dying, just as our world as we see it is dying. Shakespeare was writing in a world which he sees going to hell on wheels and writing a text book in case the world should ever recover. So it is the most bleak of plays, but it is a very salutary play, a very necessary play … you could not possibly lose
King Lear
without
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