The Masks of King Lear

Framsida
University of Delaware Press, 1992 - 431 sidor
"LEAR: Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? / Who is it that can tell me who I am?" "Centuries of critics and actors have tried to tell, but Lear's identity, and the meaning of his action in the play, are still touched with enigma." "This book seeks Shakespeare's intentions in King Lear in new ways. It explores major interpretations of distinguished actors and directors as well as of critics from England, the United States, France, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland. Is the play unsuited for the stage, as Charles Lamb - and others - have declared? How, in fact, has it been staged, and how visualized by critics? Is Lear designed to be a frail and aging old man? A powerful image of authority? Mad, or senile, to begin with? A kindly old father? Everyman? All of these? None? Does the play end with redemption? Unmitigated despair? Is it Christian? Pagan? Mr. Rosenberg confronts these and other questions from the base of his study and personal experience of the play." "To deepen the theatrical side of that experience, he began, as he did in his The Masks of Othello, with an involvement in the staged play: he directed and acted in Othello, and he followed a production of King Lear through two months of rehearsal and performance. One by-product of this intense participation was a discovery of some special qualities in the language of the play." "To achieve a better understanding of these qualities, Mr. Rosenberg put Lear's vocabulary through a computer, and established a concordance of every word both for the play as a whole and for each character. Interesting structural elements in Shakespeare's language become apparent." "Recognizing the difficulty, for a critic, of responding afresh to Shakespeare's craftsmanship in characterization and in arousing expectation, Mr. Rosenberg also arranged to expose the play to spectators who had never seen or read it. The response of this naive audience, after attending performances, was curious and illuminating. The author believes that any critical approach must be used that will increase our understanding of Shakespeare's work."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Preface I
1
Act I Scene i II
15
The Scene
33
Cordelia
55
Lear and Kent
70
Act I Scene ii
84
Act I Scene v
137
Act II Scene iii
151
Act III Scene v
229
Act IV Scene i
245
Act IV Scene iv
259
Act IV Scene vii
283
Act V Scene iii
298
The Lear Myth
329
Appendix
349
Bibliography
389

Act III Scene i
183
Act III Scene iii
199
Madness
207
Index
425
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Populära avsnitt

Sida 90 - This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars...
Sida 189 - Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks ! rage ! blow ! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks ! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head ! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world ! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man ! Fool.
Sida 89 - These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects : love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide : in cities, mutinies ; in countries, discord ; in palaces, treason ; and the bond crack'd 'twixt son and father.
Sida 176 - No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall — I will do such things — What they are yet I know not ; but they shall be The terrors of the earth.
Sida 202 - Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these...
Sida 90 - My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar — Enter EDGAR and pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o
Sida 200 - But I will punish home: No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, — O! that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.
Sida 281 - tis fittest. Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty? Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out o' the grave. — Thou art a soul in bliss ; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.
Sida 195 - LEAR My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? The art of our necessities is strange, And can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee.

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