[lit-ideas] Re: tunnel vision or... My eyes, My eyes!

  • From: "Steven G. Cameron" <stevecam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 16:30:11 -0400

**There is significant study in that direction.  A few years ago, we 
staged a production where the roles Cordelia and the Fool (originated 
probably by Robert Armin -- known for his fine singing voice as well) 
were both played by the same actress (Shakespeare Theater of NJ).

TC,

/Steve Cameron, NJ

Paul Stone wrote:

> As I was watching a cheesy made-for-tv movie the other night (NTSB: The 
> crash of something er rather something) starring the uber-acting Mr.
> Mandy Pantinkin -- thank god he didn't sing -- I was struck at the end of 
> the flim (sic) when there was a memorial for the men and women who died in 
> the crash, one disgruntled father got up and recited some lines from the 
> last scene of King Lear:
> 
> Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
> Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
> That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!
> I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
> She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
> If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
> Why, then she lives.
> 
> And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
> Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
> And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
> Never, never, never, never, never!
> Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
> Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
> Look there, look there!
> Clearly he was addressing the loss of his daughter, but I'm wondering about 
> the, perhaps ironically so, appropriateness of these quotes for this 
> particular movie. They seem okay at face value, but even more so if we look 
> at the underlying message in them from that particular play. I'm wondering 
> if, in such a cheesy film, the writers could have known the far-reaching 
> implications of choosing THESE lines in particular from ALL literature or 
> whether they just picked them because someone vaguely remember a guy whose 
> daughter died in a "Great Tragedy". It would be quite a coincidence if they 
> just happened to write about this figuratively blind father regretting the 
> death of his own "poor fool" in the plane crash.  I've often thought that 
> there might be a question about who the "fool" in King Lear (other that KL 
> himself ;-)) is.
> 
> Some seem to think that Cordelia IS the fool -- as is apparently evident in 
> an earlier production of the play.
> 
> from http://users.bigpond.net.au/catchus/a000.html
> 
> "In the case of King Lear while it has normally been accepted that 
> "Cordelia" and "Fool" are two different people, there is ample 
> justification for reading them as the same. Other characters in this play 
> have more than one speech prefix in the original texts. There was no list 
> of characters at the beginning of the play in Shakespeare's text. We only 
> have what is said by the characters to make a judgment concerning possible 
> duplication. The most obvious argument that can be made in favour of Fool 
> being Cordelia concerns Lear's last words while he is looking at his dead 
> daughter, Cordelia, "And my poor Fool is hanged...." I am convinced that 
> Lear has realized that Cordelia had served him as his Fool, and that he 
> then dies of a broken heart as Gloucester did in the sub-plot when he 
> learned that Edgar had been Poor Tom."
> 
> This is extremely interesting and I always thought I was the only one with 
> this idea. While I've seen KL twice performed and many times studied it in 
> formal settings, this idea has never been mentioned by me OR by anyone 
> else. The keeper of this website Robert G. Marks, apparently wrote 
> "Cordelia, King Lear And His Fool" in 1995 -- there's a link to it on the 
> website. Does anyone know about any scholarship to do with this aspect of 
> the play? I knew I shoulda stayed in school.
> 
> 
> Who knew what treasures lay buried in a tv movie of the week?
> Always looking for a reason to say "'Zounds!"
> 
> Paul 
> 
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