a hall in [Albany’s palace]
- Kent, in disguise
- Lear
- Oswald
- Fool
- Goneril
- Albany
- asst. attendants/lords/knights
Discuss.
3 thoughts on “King Lear, I.4”
Comments are closed.
a theatre collaborative
a hall in [Albany’s palace]
Discuss.
Comments are closed.
And now it begins to go down. Well, actually, it’s set up in the previous scene, with the much unloved Oswald, but now it hits the skids.
The better productions of this that I’ve seen play Lear as unreasonable and Goneril as pretty much within her rights to demand that he tone it down.
Well, he IS unreasonable. But then again, dammit, he’s KING.
No, he’s not. He retained only the name, giving away all his lands and reVENues, all his authority. Old fool, as the Fool acerbically says. Goneril, in the previous scene, says, “Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away”
One of the girls says, “Being old, seem so,” or words to that effect.
I don’t think we should feel sorry for Lear until they lock him out in the storm, and even then mainly because we see Regan’s absolute cruelty in Gloucester’s eye situation. That seems to me to be the confirmation we need that the girls are simply evil, because otherwise Lear is just a dick and deserves to be batted down by them.