Quotes from work

Lear

Lear is a 1971 three-act play by the British dramatist Edward Bond. It is a rewrite of William Shakespeare's King Lear. The play was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971, featuring Harry Andrews in the title role. It was revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 with Bob Peck, and revived again at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, in 2005 with Ian McDiarmid.Bond, a socialist, was attempting to reverse modern trends which focused on the Shakespeare play as an artistic experience, at the expense of more practical elements of social critique. By creating a politically effective piece from a similar story, he was more likely to cause people to question their society and themselves, rather than simply to have an uplifting aesthetic experience. According to one critic, his plays "are not meant merely to entertain but to help to bring about change in society." In Bond's play, Lear is a paranoid autocrat, building a wall to keep out imagined "enemies". His daughters Bodice and Fontanelle rebel against him, causing a bloody war. Lear becomes their prisoner and goes on a journey of self-revelation. He is blinded and haunted by the ghost of a Gravedigger's Boy, whose kindness towards the old King led to his murder. Eventually Lear, after becoming a prophet, makes a gesture toward dismantling the wall he began. This gesture leads to his death, which offers hope as an example of practical activism.