King Lear

I assume that if you are reading this you are ridiculously indie. I can see you now, sitting in a coffee shop with your frappe latte machiatto double shot espresso wearing an unusual hat and a waistcoat or cardigan. Browsing the Internet on your Mac smiling smugly to yourself as you open Linux . In fact you are probably this guy,

So when I say Shakespeare you probably roll your eyes and say:

"pffft, he is so commercial"

But I'm not going to talk about some mainstream Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet. The sort of play you hate because you've been dragged along to some shitty high school performance where attention depraved teenagers butcher the poetry of Shakespeare by equating dramatic tension with yelling really really loud.

No, I'm going to talk to you about Macbeth's little brother King Lear my absolute favourite play.

Below is an image by Scott Paul Gordon of the climax of the play.




King Lear is the story of an old and senile king who has decided to divide his kingdom between his daughters based on how much they love him. His daughters all suck up to him except one who tells him how it is and that he is a crazy old man.

King Lear doesn't like this and banishes her and some more stuff happens but more intresting than the main story is the subplot with the greatest Shakespeare character in existence: Edmund The Bastard.

Edmund is the villain and uses his sneaky, sneaky ways to seize power and manipulate everyone around him. I won't ruin the ending for you, but I seriously recommend getting your hands on this play. Unfortunately reading a play from a book is batshit boring and anyone who says different has issues.

And I couldn't find any film adaptions except those dodgy BBC ones, however there was one very cool adaptation I found called Ran. It is a Japanese adaptation. It is rather slow with the director deeming it appropriate for every now and then to spend a minute or two admiring scenary. But other than that it is a brillant adaptation.

They did change the character of Edmund from the bastard son to a knife wielding slut bent on revenge which I feel is equally as awesome.

However if you get the chance to see this play performed by a group of thespians that aren't weird and irritating teenagers who barely understand their characters let alone how to potray them, I strongly recommend you go see it.

and to any teenage actors out there I apoligise, I wasn't talking about you I was talking about all those other kids.