King Lear - Tumblr Posts
27.09.21
POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.
I confess, I didn’t get an awful lot done over the weekend. Just finished doing a couple peer reviews. Today I spent finishing my English lessons and readings for the week so I’ll have time to work on the essay due Friday. I did some Spanish and linguistics too for some variation.
“But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”
Perhaps a more apt quotation would lie in saying I do protest too much, methinks. Despite my productivity, this work was actually to put off doing the assignments due tomorrow in French and my other linguistics class. Oops.
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.”
Shakespeare's sonnet
Oliver gets into the first bus he finds and drives straight to James when he figures it all out. James and Oliver live happily ever after together in an old library.
Exeunt omnes.
Fellow Bard enthusiasts!
I have a question: Is it common to portray Edmund and the Duke of Cornwall as having an affair, in productions of "King Lear"?
(This is in addition to Edmund's other canon affairs, of course.)
I just watched a version from the mid-80s and its version of Act III, Scene V left NO ambiguity about it.
I mean...
Cornwall on the left, Edmund in the water, on the right.
(Yes, I had to blur, um, certain 'parts of Cornwall', shall we say? Because it was all out in the open...)
Fellow Bard enthusiasts!
I have a question: Is it common to portray Edmund and the Duke of Cornwall as having an affair, in productions of "King Lear"?
(This is in addition to Edmund's other canon affairs, of course.)
I just watched a version from the mid-80s and its version of Act III, Scene V left NO ambiguity about it.
I mean...
Cornwall on the left, Edmund in the water, on the right.
(Yes, I had to blur, um, certain 'parts of Cornwall', shall we say? Because it was all out in the open...)
A explicitly abusive version of [King Lear] robs us of our ability to feel for Lear. But an explicitly sympathetic Lear robs us of the ability to feel for his daughters. So I think the best version of Lear is exactly the one that Shakespeare wrote: ambiguous. It's the only version in which each character is frustratingly, but fascinatingly, complex. Cordelia loves her tyrannical and mercurial father, but she can't bring herself to say it. It's a paradox- and a question- so rich and sad that Shakespeare required a whole play to explore it.
Jillian Keenan, Sex with Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love
Unintentionally humorous moment in this Yiddish translation of King Lear: for "unburden'd, crawl towards death," the translator has "באַפֿרײַט פֿון לאַסט/מיר װעלן שלעפּ זיך דעם טאָיט אַנקעגן". For "crawl", the translator chose "drag myself", which is fine, except that the word in Yiddish is one you'll already know: "schlep".* "I will schlep myself toward death," said King Lear.
*granted, the word probably doesn't have the same connotation in Yiddish--it just means "to drag" and is appropriate, but to a modern reader? That's incredible.
I feel like I need to tell everyone how brilliantly the Globe incorporated a deaf Gildenstern into the 2018 Hamlet and then force all of you to watch it
ok, so Gildenstern is played by a deaf actor, Nadia Nadarajah. he* signs all his lines, and either Rosencratz interprets for him, or the person he’s talking to says something that makes it obvious what he just said, depending. how each character reacts to Gildenstern is completely in-character and often hilarious
Claudius and Gertrude are intensely awkward around Gildenstern. they obviously don’t know BSL so they just gesture emphatically but aimlessly when they talk.
Hamlet, who of course is friends with R&G, *does* know BSL. he starts off by signing fluently whenever he’s talking to them but, as his distrust of them grows, he signs less and less until he’s only signing the equivalent of “fuck off” whenever he talks
Polonius just shouts really loud whenever he tries to talk to Gildenstern
it’s all brilliant and adds another layer of humor and pathos and you should all watch it
*casting at the Globe right now is gender neutral so I’m just going to use the character’s pronouns
A sheep in the role of Cordelia in “King Lear With Sheep.”Credit” Nick Morris.
Source: ‘King Lear With Sheep.’ Yes, Sheep.
I just think it’s funny that people who unwilling to do research into the people they’re trying to kill also can’t do research into what they think are great scathing treatises.
Hi, I’m trans and I read Shakespeare.
But Shakespeare also wrote some ’comedies’
I liked ‘Twelfth Night’ cause it was pretty fun and actually had a real proper love triangle. And a happy ending. I personally didn’t read it be heard a summary of it:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e3O4yJwuJes
^the link is a summary by overly sarcastic productions which is a channel I love and they summarise lots of stories and folklore and myths and tropes So I highkey recommend em! They the best. I‘m tangenting.
so we probs have two groups. Shakespearian Comedies and ShakespearIan Tragedies.
i can imagine em not carrying bout the royal rebel think as much. They’re probs like ya a comedy or a tragedy? Also will we have theatre kids inception (cause the plays are meant to be performed obv and if someone a theatre kid from the group it could be a good homage I guess)
also ‘A Midsummer Night’s dream’ is wacky but has fairies too. And could have a cottagecore aesthetic
There’s also ‘much ado about nothing’.
EAH just be wildin. They teased it and ran away and were like anyway, nothing to see here
shakespearean stories and their children exisiting in eah is so insane to me bc theyre nowhere NEAR the kind of tone that fairytales are, EVEN IN THEIR ORIGINAL FORMS. like imagine introducing ur story and apple going “i get poisoned by an apple at first:( but then a prince helps me and i get a happily ever after” and the son of hamlet is sitting there like. thats nice
your ex lover is dead
I thought it would be fun to draw all the Shakespeare characters I’ve played through the years so here they are!
From left to right, we have
Duke Senior from As You Like It, in a post apocalyptic setting. Our director was thinking Mad Max.
Horatio, from Hamlet, set in Denmark at the beginning of World War 1. Since we only had two boys in our cast, we genderswapped it.
Claudio, from Much Ado About Nothing, a few years post World War 2 in Italy.
Gloucester, from King Lear. Set in Viking Occupied Britain, around 800 BCE.
Mercutio, from Romeo and Juliet. Set in 1992 Seattle. The Montagues are a grunge rock band.
@cosmicboyinthesky us when our lord’s bastard son is calling for torches, he is being attacked by a stranger in the shadows
Yo someone help me out I’m literally obsessed with a clown rn