Ms Hart on King Lear
‘familial bonds are unbreakable, surely a timely reminder to us at the moment when we are isolated from the very people who have raised, loved and supported us.’
As many of the staff and pupils know, King Lear is my all-time favourite Shakespeare play. I have been studying it since I was at Sixth Form and my teacher, Mr Pike, inspired me with his exploration of the dysfunctional family dynamics that unfurl in the play, as well as by performing the ‘heath’ scene by standing on a table and yelling it at the top of his voice.
King Lear is most certainly a play about politics, monarchy, war and land, but I think what makes this play so enduring is the presentation of the complex family dynamics in not just one family unit but two. The Lear and Gloucester households appear to be successful and content: Lear is looking to marry off his final daughter, Cordelia, to either France or Burgundy, and Gloucester seems to be managing with ease the fact that he has one illegitimate son who has ‘been out nine years, and away he shall again’. These two situations seem so remote to the modern reader but it is what happens after this initial presentation of the two families which makes the play endure.
For me, it is the relationship between Lear and Cordelia that endures the most. Lear misunderstands Cordelia’s initial expression of familial love. She states that ‘I love your majesty according to my bond, no more nor less’, which appears cold and remote in comparison to her sisters’ declarations of undying love for their father. Lear's reaction is one of a man who has been told that his favourite daughter does not love him: he is apoplectic with rage but beneath it all he is a wounded father. He then proceeds to banish her, leaving himself vulnerable to the wicked sisters and their plan to remove Lear. The distance that occurs during the play between these two characters endures - how many of us have had family disagreements which have caused significant rifts? I suspect more than we’d like to admit.
The reunion of these two characters and their forgiveness of each other is so moving. I think I cry with pity for them both each time I watch this scene. Cordelia’s forgiveness of Lear when she says ‘no cause, no cause’, in reaction to Lear’s belief that she has every right to never forgive him, is a reminder that familial bonds are unbreakable, surely a timely reminder to us at the moment when we are isolated from the very people who have raised, loved and supported us. Lear repeats that he is ‘a very foolish, fond old man’, admitting that he has made a mistake and seeks forgiveness from his youngest daughter. This comment reverberates loudly with me - although Lear is old, he is not wise. For me at least, as each year passes, I become increasingly unsure about the world around me, and Lear’s comment is a reminder that age does not necessarily result in ultimate wisdom - we always have something to learn no matter our age. His comment is that he is, above all things, fond.
The message of this play is definitely more about the need for honesty and love in families than political instability, and this is why I love it so much.
Mr Burkinshaw on Shakespeare and Covid-19
One of the joys of his work is that for practically any situation you can find a Shakespearean analogy. He was certainly familiar with the Plague (which was responsible for theatres being closed on many occasions in the 1590s and early 1600s) and some of his greatest works were probably composed under what we would now call 'Lockdown': Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra among them.
Self-isolated with only close family for company, you can imagine yourself as Prospero or Miranda on their island (with Caliban and Ariel socially distant in a different way). Watching a Donald Trump Coronavirus Press Briefing, you don't know whether you're watching King Lear descending into madness or Richard III putting on a despicably cunning performance designed to distract and manipulate. Frustrations at the restrictions of lockdown are articulated by Friar Lawrence's messenger ("the town health officials suspected that we were both in a house that had been hit with the plague. They quarantined the house, sealed up the doors, and refused to let us out."); as a result he can't deliver the letter in time and Romeo and Juliet die. And, of course, it is difficult to wash your hands several times a day without thinking of Lady Macbeth.
In the first great work of Shakespeare scholarship (1765), Samuel Johnson wrote that he "holds up to his readers a faithful mirror . . . His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places . . (they) are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find.
Self-isolated with only close family for company, you can imagine yourself as Prospero or Miranda on their island (with Caliban and Ariel socially distant in a different way). Watching a Donald Trump Coronavirus Press Briefing, you don't know whether you're watching King Lear descending into madness or Richard III putting on a despicably cunning performance designed to distract and manipulate. Frustrations at the restrictions of lockdown are articulated by Friar Lawrence's messenger ("the town health officials suspected that we were both in a house that had been hit with the plague. They quarantined the house, sealed up the doors, and refused to let us out."); as a result he can't deliver the letter in time and Romeo and Juliet die. And, of course, it is difficult to wash your hands several times a day without thinking of Lady Macbeth.
In the first great work of Shakespeare scholarship (1765), Samuel Johnson wrote that he "holds up to his readers a faithful mirror . . . His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places . . (they) are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find.
Dr Webb on Othello
In part because his work moves beyond the written page, through to the stage where actors embody the roles, directors explore new interpretations of purpose and we are inspired by these renditions to examine our own humanity. I love the passion and physicality to be found in performance of his work. I will never forget seeing Adrian Lester's Othello being driven over the edge by Rory Kinnear's Iago. Absolutely chilling and completely plausible against the backdrop of a contemporary war zone in the Middle East.
Mrs Kirby on the humanity of Shakespeare’s characters
Whenever I teach Shakespeare, I always enjoy the difference of opinions provoked by the different characters in his plays: is Othello an honourable man, too easily duped, or a domestic tyrant? Does Katherina become savvy enough to manipulate Petruchio, or is she simply a victim broken by patriarchal abuse? Is Bottom a hapless fool or simply a master adapter to circumstance?
When critical focus moved from early twentieth century approaches (consider A.C Bradley’s romantic, universalised approach to interpreting Othello), literary critics, from Cultural Materialists to Feminists, encouraged us to see characters as extensions of the ideological circumstances in which they were written, rather than universal human prototypes. Although, of course, this is vital when exploring his work (Shakespeare, like all writers, cannot be studied in a vacuum), the characters he created are so rich, so nuanced, it feels impossible not to talk about them as human. They feel human. Despite the socio-historical conditions in which they were produced, and the ones in which they are constantly reinterpreted, whenever I discuss Shakespearean characters with my classes, colleagues or friends, I am pretty confident that we are talking about humanity.
Ms Burden on Shakespeare and the English language
My favourite play to teach is Othello, although (at the risk of sounding patronising) I feel that I appreciate it much more as an adult than I did as a teenager. When I first read it, I was quite dismissive of Desdemona but now I have a keener appreciation for her vulnerability and her absolute dependence on Othello, who turns on her once Iago exploits his own vulnerabilities and insecurities. There are humans like Iago - hopefully you have not met many of them - and it’s as well to remember Iago when you have dealings with them. Like Ms Hart, as a person rather than a teacher it is my A Level texts I cleave most closely to: Twelfth Night and Hamlet. One is a comedy and one a tragedy, yet they both explore what it means to be young, what it means to be misguided, infatuated, mistaken, wronged, confused, sad as time slips through your fingers and to work out who your good friends really are.
The fact that Shakespeare is so quotable, even today (and that many of his phrases and coinings have passed into our normal speech) suggests that his works endure because his language reflects the workings of the human mind. As a famous (long) quotation states: If you cannot understand my argument, and declare ``It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare." (Bernard Levin)
The fact that Shakespeare is so quotable, even today (and that many of his phrases and coinings have passed into our normal speech) suggests that his works endure because his language reflects the workings of the human mind. As a famous (long) quotation states: If you cannot understand my argument, and declare ``It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare." (Bernard Levin)
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