My Sweet Fool

Re-reading King Lear for the #ShakesMOOC has me very much aware of how long it’s been since I looked at this play. I know I read it senior year of high school, and it might have been included in my senior seminar in college. I know I haven’t looked at it since, because it did not feature in my graduate studies, nor has it been a play I’ve added to my “collection” as of yet.* So: best case scenario, it’s been 23 years since I looked at Lear; worst case, it’s been 27.**

And that’s a lot of time to forget lots of details.

How this has functioned for me mostly is characters, lines, events jogging my memory about a scene or two in advance.

A King for Every Suit

(Yet another post inspired by #ShakesMOOC.) Our first class on Lear focused entirely on the complexities of 1.1, with Professor Ko spending time in his lecture exploring the ambiguities in motivation for both Lear and for Cordelia in this strange game of conditional love and inheritance that’s being played around the division of the map into separate territories.

Is Lear setting this game up as an expression of his tyrannical nature? Does it betray a sense of paternal insecurity? The onset of dementia?

Is Cordelia’s refusal to play along truly because she is so full of emotion and lacking in confident voice that she really “cannot heave [her] heart into [her] mouth” (1.1.93-94)?* Or is there more a tone of active rebellion against the game’s cruelty, a bit of a “fuck you” tone to things?**

When Lear disowns his youngest daughter, to what degree is he driven by hurt feelings and to what degree by anger?

So many choices.