Opinion: Dr. Miranda Fay Thomas explores the history behind - and relevance of - William Shakespeare's masterpiece King Lear, currently playing at Dublin's Gate Theatre.
Shakespeare's King Lear has had many lives since it was first performed in 1606; despite the demise of so many of its characters, the story itself refuses to die. Not only has the titular role been taken on by various veteran stage actors – such as Ian McKellen, James Earl Jones, Simon Russell Beale, and Glenda Jackson – the story has been adapted into various films, such as the iconic versions by Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa, and an avant-garde treatment by Jean-Luc Godard. Deliberate interpolations of the play’s central motifs even occur throughout The Godfather Part III. Not only that, but writers have turned from stage to page, adapting Shakespeare’s drama into novels that relocate the story to places such as Iowa (Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres), modern-day India (Preti Taneja’s We That Are Young), and Ireland during the Celtic Tiger (Anne Enright’s The Green Road).
from King Lear for The Godfather III (1990)
However, such revisions and retellings are nothing new. At various points, audiences have been unable to bear the extent of Shakespeare’s tragedy. For instance, Nahum Tate’s The History of King Lear was first produced in 1681. Until 1838 – for over 150 years - it was the dominant version of the Lear story that was staged in theatres: not only was it around 800 lines shorter, but he gave us a happy ending where Lear gets his kingdom back, and Cordelia and Edgar end up getting hitched. This new version proved popular with audiences, even winning favour with Samuel Johnson, who was so shocked by the events of Lear’s original finale that he did not re-read it for a number of years. Of course, Nahum Tate’s version of Lear is a product of the 1680s, twenty years after the Restoration of the British Monarchy; just as Charles II had been restored to the English throne in 1660 Lear is restored to his throne at the end of Tate’s drama.
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Listen: Helen Meany reviews King Lear at The Gate for RTÉ Arena
Yet Shakespeare himself was engaging in the adaptation process. In fact, prior to his King Lear in 1606, an anonymous play entitled The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella was performed during the 1590s, and printed in 1605. This Leir – like the version Tate would go on to produce – also had a happy ending. So Shakespeare is, in fact, the outlier here in terms of his determination to turn towards tragedy. One can only imagine Shakespeare’s audience heading to his new King Lear, expecting the harmonious ending that previous dramatic versions of the story had provided: rather than order being restored, bodies litter the stage, all hope snuffed out. When Kent asks 'is this the promised end?’ during the final scene, he’s probably saying what Shakespeare’s shocked original audience were thinking.
Genre is a framing device rather than a neutral setting for telling a story. A contemporary of Shakespeare’s, the playwright Thomas Heywood, wrote that ‘comedies begin in trouble and end in peace; tragedies begin in calms and end in tempest’ (Apologie for Actors, 1612). And tragedy, rather than merely being a vehicle for nihilism, has its practical uses: as the Shakespearean scholar Peter Holbrook tells us, ‘Renaissance writers deployed tragedy to highlight and attack tyranny, injustice and inequality’. Not only that, but because tragedy shows us the fleeting qualities of life, it can help us value it more highly: Friedrich Nietzsche thought that tragedy actually inspired optimism in an audience, because by watching it you become hungry for your own existence.
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Listen: Conleth Hill talks to Miriam O'Callaghan
This January, the Doomsday Clock ticked one second closer to midnight. In the current political and ecological climate, it is hard to see a way out: what is there to do but to expect, and brace, for tragedy? But the Doomsday Clock is not a herald of inevitability; while it has moved forward 18 times, it has also moved backwards eight. The idea that we are passive bystanders, a rapt audience ready to watch tragedy on a truly global scale, ignores the agency we still have to amend the direction of travel.
Shakespeare’s approach to drama is often to make his audience wail about tragedy in the subjunctive: if only the message about Juliet’s plan to use sleeping potion had reached Romeo; if only Emilia had broken down the door to Desdemona’s bedroom. But the many adaptations of the King Lear story remind us that even a seemingly apocalyptic world is not beyond redemption. Until the very last moment, we still have a chance to change the ending. We may live in unnerving and shocking times, but if the many retellings of King Lear are anything to go by, we must remember that tragedy is never a foregone conclusion – but only if we are willing to step in and re-write the story. Genre is neither inevitable, nor destiny: it is a frame we choose to impose.
King Lear is at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, until April 27th - find out more here.
About The Author: Dr Miranda Fay Thomas is Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance in the Department of Drama, School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin. They are the author of Shakespeare’s Body Language (2019) and editor of The Tempest: Arden Performance Editions (2021).
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
