The Question: discuss the biggest insight you took away about Lear's character from Ian McKellan's discussion. How did this help you read a specific passage or moment in the play? As someone who has played Lear many times, what does he see that the casual reader may have missed? Be specific, don't just say "he helped me understand why he does what he does." Watch closely and think carefully about what someone who has been Lear has to say about the man and his play.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Ian McKellan on Lear (brief lecture)
I was all ready to add a new lecture on King Lear for your 'enjoyment,' but then I remembered this one which is not only shorter, but gives real insight into Lear's character and motives. So watch the video below, which is about 10 minutes, and then answer the question below as a comment (or e-mail it to me with your questions):
The Question: discuss the biggest insight you took away about Lear's character from Ian McKellan's discussion. How did this help you read a specific passage or moment in the play? As someone who has played Lear many times, what does he see that the casual reader may have missed? Be specific, don't just say "he helped me understand why he does what he does." Watch closely and think carefully about what someone who has been Lear has to say about the man and his play.
The Question: discuss the biggest insight you took away about Lear's character from Ian McKellan's discussion. How did this help you read a specific passage or moment in the play? As someone who has played Lear many times, what does he see that the casual reader may have missed? Be specific, don't just say "he helped me understand why he does what he does." Watch closely and think carefully about what someone who has been Lear has to say about the man and his play.
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ReplyDeleteIan McKellan gave me a better insight on King Lear, specifically as who Lear was as a character. Ian called Lear a "priest-like king" and I defiantly got that from his character while reading. From his relationship that he had with other people in the play, I could also tell that there were times when he was losing himself like McKellan mentioned. Especially when it comes to seeing Cordelia again. Especially when it comes to his daughter, Cordelia. One thing that McKellan made easier for me to understand when it came to Lear's character is that he came out on the other side with love for his family and a different view for relationships. One thing that I really agreed with that McKellan said was when Lear would bully his daughters. Especially in Act I where we see how Lear kicked Cordelia aside because she did not say what he wanted to hear.
Yes, I love that he said Lear is a bully, because we see that throughout the First Act: he is vindictive, brutal, dismissive. Even when he steps down from the throne, he refuses to change his attitude, and his daughters seem like they have PTSD from the experience. No wonder they're so cruel to him once they have power over him...they want revenge, and it turns them into monsters.
DeleteThe biggest insight that Ian McKellan gave me about King Lear's character was regarding his relationship with Cordelia. What he was able to see that a casual reader might have missed is that there was a reason that he was closest to his youngest daughter. It's amazing that he was able to draw the conclusion that Lear had two marriages. The first produced the two eldest daughters with something happening to the mother. The second, which was a marriage to who he considered the love of his life, produced Cordelia with the mother dying in childbirth. This left him to raise Cordelia on his own and, as a result, become closer to her. This helped me to understand why Lear had such a bad reaction to Cordelia's response of "nothing" in the beginning scene. He loved her more than anyone else. So, feeling as if all of your love and effort is not being returned, especially by someone who you raised all on your own and who looks at you with the face of your dead wife, would be a deep blow to any older man whose mental and physical health is declining.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's a fascinating reading, isn't it! It explains why he's so betrayed by her attitude, and why she seems so distant from the other sisters (and why they're so united). He's a bully, but he thinks he's been a great father to her, so he can't imagine why she would be so 'honest' with him. She assumed they had a closer relationship than they really did, while her sisters are like, "uh, he's a dick--did you think he would be different with you?'
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed Ian McKellan's inclusion of a back story for King Lear. Explaining how Cordelia was left motherless and raised by Lear created purpose in Lear's need to be "worshiped" by Cordelia. The idea of Cordelia being the product of a second marriage and being the favorite my also explain the obvious ostracization of Cordelia from her other sisters, their jealousy denied her acceptance. Ironically, she is the least like her father of the three sisters. In addition I liked the insight of how Lear felt that his appointment of king was due to the gods and that in away that it made him god-like, it is only through shedding his religion that he was able to become human. Finally, McKellan's focus on Lear's need for Kent's truth telling indicates Lear's unspoken exhaustion of trying to be god-like. Even while Kent is in disguise Lear gravitates to his truth speaking.
ReplyDeleteThis was posted by Kari Elledge
DeleteYes, I agree--we have to keep in mind that Lear would have seen his position as granted by god. That gives him a certain conceit and nastiness that explains his actions in Act 1. It also makes the sisters' defiance of him all the more shocking--they are literally defying god! But this is a play where the gods are exposed as shams...there is nothing ordering the world for harmony and justice. It's just there for us to take apart at our will. As Gloucester says, "we're like flies to the gods; they kill us for their sport." But even here, he doesn't believe in the gods--he means people like Lear, the 'gods' of this world, far too malicious to belong in heaven.
DeleteHelm: Ian McKellan discusses how the play just begins without context. Shakespeare doesn't give a backstory,so the play just opens in the present. I found this insight helpful. I have been waiting for an explanation of what came before. I was trying to make sense of the older daughters' hostility toward their father. But accepting that there is not a back story makes it easier to let that unanswered question go and just read the play as it is.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, Act3.sc.7 when Regan is vicously attacking Gloucester for protecting her father. I could not figure out what could have inspired such hatred for her father. However, it must not be relevant to the story since it has not been explained so far. Unless, Regan and her sister are simply greedy and want the kingdom to themselves.
Yes, what I love about this play is how we're dropped in the middle of a very tempestuous family story. We NEED to know the beginning, but Shakespeare doesn't let us. He forces us to piece it together as we go, through bits of dialogue and the interactions of various characters. However, is IS relevant why Regan would hate her father so much--enough to make her a murderer! What must have happened in her childhood? It's all in the lines, but hidden, inviting us to make our own sub-play.
DeleteSomething that really struck me from this interview is the notion of there being no "backstory" for the actors to use to help interpret their characters better. McKellan says, "The play doesn't seem to be concerned with the past" (00:08:02). He talks about how Lear wears two wedding rings and how he imagines what each wife meant to him. It's so fascinating how he sort of came up with his own back story to help him make sense of Lear and how to better play him. The way he described the first wife giving him Goneril and Regan and his second wife, "perhaps the love of his life", giving him Cordelia helped me better read and understand the line in Act 5, Scene 3, where he seems to dismiss the deaths of his other daughters. The way McKellan describes the love he believes Lear has for Cordelia really helped me to understand the play better.
ReplyDeleteKing Lear begins with the present. We don't know why Lear is the way he is. But by Ian McKellan providing the backstory of Lear being married twice, it explained a lot of actions. The first marriage could have been arranged and unwanted. Thus Regan and Goneril weren't products of love, but of necessity. But the second marriage was love, with Cordelia being the product of that. If the second wife (or true love) died in childbirth or some other tragedy, it would make sense why he loves Cordelia more. She is all he has left. With that being said, I think it helps explain why he expected Cordelia to have words for how much she loves him. He had showered her with affection, given her everything. But it was Regan and Goneril (the one's he didn't love as much) who had words to say, even if they were just blowing smoke up his butt. For me, it helped explain why Lear felt betrayed by Cordelia not professing her love for him.
ReplyDeleteI am not very good at bringing characters in plays to life when I read them, and it is something I am working on. But, I think Ian McKellan's comparison of an 80 Lear with his 100 year old step mother helped me humanize his character and put him in a different perspective. Following that, I really liked that Ian McKellan believes Lear had two wives, and especially his idea that Cordelia came from a different mother than her sisters. Now, I see reflections of a true love gone in Cordelia. Assuming he had two wives and Cordelia’s mother was the one he loved most; Cordelia seems even more angelic. If he is so enamored with her because she is like his wife, then I think her characteristics have a saintly shine. This perspective makes me read both Lear and Cordelia differently. If Cordelia is a spitting image of what Lear saw as a perfect love, then it is interesting to see their relationship develop – especially as King Lear continues to deteriorate, and they reunite. He even calls her a “soul of bliss”! (4.7 52). In their reunion, Cordelia seems to be an angel, and Lear repents. I can follow McKellan’s idea that Cordelia is a reflection of her mother!
ReplyDeleteI think that the first thing that mirrored my thoughts was when Sir McKellen said "I think it's clear by the end of the story, Lear has lost his faith." I saw the same thing as I read the story and watched a version of the story on Youtube. I can see how, in the beginning of the book, Lear is all "Oh, Apollo!" when he's arguing with Kent in Act 1 Scene 1. Apollo, by the way, was the patron god of medicine & healing. So when Lear is calling on the god of medicine and healing and Kent interrupts him, he finishes it with "Kill thy physician!" So he's literally saying "I hope the Healing God kills your physician and you get sick and die!" (I still think he's more of a petulant child than a king at this point, but that's beside the point.) When he and Cordelia get caught and thrown into prison, he says "The gods themselves throw incense." If you read the little blurb on the side, (or you really, really like history and practiced the art of Google-fu,) throwing incense is part of a ritual of sacrifice. So, in essence, Lear is saying "we're the sacrifices of this war, sweetheart, and we don't have the gods to turn to because they're happy with us dying." If that's not a way that shows that Lear has lost his faith in the Powers that Be, I don't know what would be.
ReplyDeleteThe second point that brought things into a different light was when Sr. McKellen pointed out that Lear had been married twice. Several of the passages don't explicitly say he has been, but if you look at the differences between Cordelia and her sisters, you can kind of see it. Where her sisters are older, Cordelia is portrayed as younger (by the fact that she is the youngest daughter, but also by the way she answers the question proving her love to Lear.) Her sisters are catty and back-stabby and Cordelia is portrayed as sweet, innocent and honest. The other two are married, and she is not. (Not because she doesn't have options, of course, but because she is torn between the two.) Her father, the king, has the right to tell her "Marry this guy," but he doesn't. Why? Because he knows that a marriage that is arranged may lead to one that is essentially loveless. I know that it is said that a parent can love their children without ever loving the person they created the children with, so while he loved Gonaril and Regan, the child of his heart was Cordelia. By the time he's turned away from both Goneril and Regan's houses, he's seeing more of Goneril and Regan's mother in the two of them. Honestly though, I think it was more of his own personality traits showing up in the two of them, rather than his first wife's, but. . .we're thinking with Lear's mind) and by the end of the play, the scales were balanced more towards hating them for who they were (his first wife's children) rather than loving them for who they were (his own progeny). It makes sense and when I watched it on the video (with my book in my lap so that i was on the same scene), I could see it more and more. That's why he's more affected by Cordelia's death than he was of the others. He said "Aye, so I would think," when he's told of the other two's demise and, if you know Shakespeare-speak, translates to "Yeah, I would think so, those two being dead." Lear knew that those two would die before he did, either by their own backstabbing rivalry, or because of something else. He didn't, however, expect to die before Cordelia did. He wanted her, no. . .he expected her to succeed him. He wanted her to be the Queen. She was his beloved, so he thought she couldn't die (again) before he did.
Cody Baggerly (sorry for the late post, I thought this posted Thursday)
ReplyDeleteNot to steal from Kristen's great point but I agree with her that one of McKellan's most interesting insights was his point about Lear's connection with Cordellia. The idea that she was the product of a later, better, marriage is fascinating. This idea helps in establishing why Lear and Cordellia have a much stronger bond with one another than the sisters do with their father while also offering an explanation towards the dynamic of the sisters as well. Where Goneril and Regan often appear as a pair in their antics, Cordellia remains an outsider. This particular reading, with Cordellia as a the product of a separated marriage and mother, helps explain the different dynamics and bonds between the cast.
It was difficult for me to conjure up a sense of a real and complicated character for Lear when I read the play at home. I find so far that Shakespeare is harder to read without a classroom discussion than, say, our Brit Lit readings. :( This video was helpful though, especially McKellen's thoughts on Lear's changing relationship with the gods and how he has "lost his faith" by the end. That helps me see it from a larger perspective; it becomes almost like an ant-play conducted on a tiny stage. They start out full of a sense of their own importance but, by the end, understand their utter lack of significance.
ReplyDelete(Kelci)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the insight of King Lear as being a priestly king. In reference to the discussions about Christianity being removed from the play, I found it interesting that McKellen was still to so fully correlate King Lear's actions with the presence and absence of faith, and this really brought a new understanding to my mind as to King Lear's view of himself. The fact that King Lear initially saw himself as part of a perhaps grander scheme and then by the end of the play was faithless and really no longer considered himself as favored by the gods.