#to be clear you do not have to like king lear. you can thikn whatever you want about king lear

[butchhamlet]

what are your favourite things about king lear? also do you know any really good productions that i can watch online for free? asking because i didn’t really like king lear when i read it (except for edmund. i love edmund) and knowing why other people like it might let me look at it from a different angle. because i know it’s objectively a good play, and there’s a 50% chance of me having to study it next year so i want to like it

so i started writing a response to this ask and then paused to plot out my points (as if writing a goddamn essay) and then i looked at my points and i had written

fucked-up families

apocalypse vibes

women are hot

which. yeah, that's it, isn't it

anyway, to elaborate on that: i will admit that some of this is just personal preference, because i love stories about complicated nuclear-waste-toxic family dynamics, and lear is, like, one of the original Nuclear Waste Family Dynamic plays. (so is the oreisteia, incidentally.) what gets me specifically is that this is a play about power, yeah, but also about love: everybody in lear wants love, and nobody is getting enough of it. and the dynamics of the two families here get immediately more interesting if this isn't JUST a who-inherits-the-throne thing. edmund wants political sway, yeah, but maybe he also wants to be seen as more than a bastard. goneril kills her sister out of jealousy, yeah, but also, has she ever had a person care about her like edmund? (does he care about her? how much of the love triangle is about love vs lust vs calculation? these are questions that could be answered a thousand ways.)

i also read this play counter to old white guy traditional scholarship because i think lear (the guy) sucks. sorry. i think he sucks. i think he's terrifying and tyrannical and his daughters can do whatever they want (imo, his main problem is trying to apply his political power to his personal relationships, and that's not something caused by his senility. goneril and regan state at the end of 1.1 that, while he's going off the deep end a little more these days, "the best and soundest of his time hath been but rash." this guy has always sucked). speaking of goneril and regan, they're not evil hags--they're women trying to live with an unpredictable father, as well as trying to retain the little power they have in a male-dominated world. (notably, regan's husband is on her team, while goneril's isn't, and lear seems to have a lot of hatred for goneril specifically. which colors how both of them interact with power, edmund, and each other.)

i could actually talk about lear family dynamics forever (do cordelia's sisters love her, resent her, or both? how does edgar feel about edmund? how does edmund feel about edgar, for that matter? does he feel guilty at all for doing what he does? does edgar feel guilty about killing him? is the relationship between lear and gloucester entirely professional, or are they friends? can lear even have friends when he sees everything as some sort of zero-sum power love game? is kent gay for lear? <- yes) but i won't. because i have another point to make!

which is that it's somewhat comforting to me, in an era of [gestures at the news and broad state of the world], to read a play where people are like "holy fuck the world's going to shit and all the rules of society are inverted!" i read lear for the first time during pandemic quarantine, so. it felt fitting. your mileage may vary here (maybe you prefer escapism), but i think one could draw a lot of parallels between lear and [gestures out the window again]. this play is bleak in a way that few other shakespeare plays are bleak. (maybe timon of athens.) it's set in pre-christian britain, and the gods are invoked, but they're not really present. no one who appeals to higher powers ever seems to get any help or even comfort. and the original story of king leir didn't end Like That. shakespeare decided his play was going to end with the emotional equivalent of getting bricked in the face. cordelia's death doesn't mean anything at all! it didn't have to happen! edmund tried to stop it! she doesn't die in the original myth! and yet we're left with this horrifying apocalyptic last scene, where all the struggles for love and power come to almost nothing. maybe, if one is concerned about current events, this would make one feel worse. but i fucking love tragic catharsis and i feel bleak about the modern world so this horrible upsetting play is quite close to my heart <3

finally: i've already touched on Hot Women, but . i am a simple butch. i think goneril and regan are soooooo sexy. i love when women are mean and ruthless. i love when women kill with swords. i think conflating the two of them/treating them like two halves of the same Evil Daughter Character is a cardinal sin of shakespeare studies; you have to be reading with your eyes shut not to note stuff like regan's desire to outdo goneril, goneril's comparative lack of fulfilling relationships (re: lear fucking hates her and her husband sucks), or the differences in their dynamic with edmund (regan is still mourning cornwall at this point--does she love edmund at all, or is she just playing the political long game?). and cordelia, too, is more than just the Angelic Good Daughter; she's on stage much less frequently, but she shows a stubborn virtue that honestly borders on naivete and maybe an inclination toward martyrdom. how does she feel about her father? does she really forgive him? how does she feel about her sisters, for that matter? i'm not saying this play is, like, the most feminist shakespeare play ever written; i just really love the lear sisters.

other misc stuff: the themes are tasty! look at the authoritarianism! (is it right for one man to have this much power? see that line about the king being a wheel rolling down a hill destroying everything in his path as he destroys himself, or whatever). look at the gender dynamics! (goneril's dominance over albany and edmund in turn; the question of her womb; the mutual violence of regan and cornwall; cordelia leading an army.) look at the debate about fate and predestination! (#redditatheist edmund i love you). ++ the fact that it's set in some kind of nebulous unclear time period and the fool sings about merlin who wasn't even alive yet. i just think it's neat <3

as far as productions, i have a friend who swears by the bob jones university prod, though i haven't seen it in full (hi @lizardrosen :D). i also hav NTLive and RSC lears somewhere, i think, but shhhhh don't tell

i'd apologize for this ask being this long, but when my parents asked me to explain the plot of lear to them in 2020 i talked for 25 minutes so i guess we're all getting off lucky here

#max.txt #asks #dm me if you want those. i think i have them. #to be clear you do not have to like king lear. you can thikn whatever you want about king lear #but i like it a lot so here are some of the reasons why <3 #lear