King Lear

In Buzz Goodbody’s 1974 production, to be a sane man in a cruel world was to be part of that cruelty. Lear’s madness became the transitional stage from cruelty to humanity:

Tony Church did not play Lear as a virtuoso acting part, but as a down-to-earth king, a patriarch who got his pleasure from hunting. He is out in the cold because of who he is—not a mighty monarch fallen from grace, but an old man on the point of death, facing himself and his life.… When he is “sane,” he represents the cruel world, arbitrary and aggressive, and only when he is “mad” does he embody human values.³⁶

In the stunning visual sequence that started Adrian Noble’s 1982 production, lunacy not only led to virtue but was linked to it through the characters of the Fool and Cordelia:

On Lear’s throne the Grock-like Fool and Cordelia sit facing each other, with their necks at opposite ends of a taut halter (resembling a noose), as if lunacy and virtue were inseparable.… What follows is a delirious descent into a world of barbarism in which farce and tragedy are umbilically linked.³⁷

Antony Sher played the Fool as “Lear’s alter-ego, the visible mark of his insanity. His Master’s Voice as he perches on his lap like a ventriloquist’s doll, the conscience of the King.”³⁸ In the words of the reviewer in the Jewish Chronicle, “There is a strong sense in which, just as the great comic double acts are like watching a schizophrenic trying to pull himself together, Antony Sher’s red-nosed clown and Michael Gambon’s violent old man are two warring parts of one psyche.”³⁹ The poet and critic James Fenton, writing in the London Sunday Times, pushed the point further:

Michael Gambon’s Lear was a man all too willing to cast off his role as king, and his relationship to the Fool pointed to this uneasiness.

Lear’s foolishness and his love for his Fool are the points of departure for the interpretation. In all his madness, his anger and his suffering, we do not forget this. Indeed, I wonder if Lear has ever fooled around so enthusiastically.

Imagine a production in which the King, though condemned to kingship, would clearly love to have been a comedian, while the Fool, although unable to stop jesting, is transfixed by the horror of his true perception of the tragedy. This is the version which Adrian Noble has directed.… This is not the Fool of criticism, not an A-level “assess-the significance-of-the-Fool” fool. This is your genuine professional fool. Inside whom is a man in a panic, the Cassandra of the play, whose raving prophesies terrify the prophet himself.⁴⁰

Sher described how in rehearsals they came up with a solution to the disappearance of the Fool after the arrival of Tom o’Bedlam.⁴¹ During the mock trial scene the Fool picked up a pillow to represent Regan. On the words “anatomize her,” Lear stabbed the pillow in a frenzy of rage. In his insane and violent outburst he fatally stabbed the Fool accidentally. With all the attention on Lear leaving the hovel, the others did not realize what had happened. The Fool slumped down dead into a barrel in which he stood.

The emphasis put on the Fool in this production (the program cover featured a fool’s face with a red nose that appeared to be an amalgam of Lear and the Fool), along with Sher’s magnificent performance, led many critics to feel that the play became unbalanced, losing impetus in the final acts after the Fool was killed.

At the end of the hovel scene Edgar has replaced the Fool as Lear’s spiritual mentor. Lear takes Edgar off in one direction as the Fool exits in another. According to director Adrian Noble,

That happens accidentally. He doesn’t plan that.… For some reason he decides to take on the sins of others … in exactly the same way as a pilgrim, monk or nun … dedicate their lives in a particular way that enables other people to have a richer spiritual life. It is a gift of humanity to God. This is exactly the same thing with Edgar.⁴²

Lear’s journey into his own fooldom takes him from the enclosed mental space of the court out into the world and the secrets of humanity, to emotions denied and hidden from him by dint of his position in society. This awakening by the Fool and Poor Tom leads to a political and spiritual epiphany that is life-changing and possibly world-changing. Many directors have seen the following lines—often quoted in their program notes—as the core of the play:

     Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

     That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

     How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

     Your lopped and windowed raggedness, defend you

     From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

     Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp,

     Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

     That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

     And show the heavens more just.