KING LEAR’S ARITHMETIC

When I logged-in to WordPress I was told that there are about 3 million bloggers and today about 90,000 0f them have ‘blogged’. In other words- on average – WordPress subscribers add something to their blog about once a month. Simple arithmetic. But interesting.

I’ve been told by someone who actually makes a living in this field that to be effective, bloggers should write something no matter how short, once a day or at least three times a week. So, most of those 2.9 Million are wasting their time, it seems… anyway I’m going to try to keep up a steady rate of production now that I’ve started.

I was going to write my first blog about the Jake Gyllenhall- Reese Witherspoon film dealing with appalling tragedies behind the USA’s policy of Extraordinary Rendition, but the sound-quality was so poor in the tiny Arts Cinema that I was reduced to trying to read the subtitles in Spanish in order to follow the story. And i can’t read Spanish that fast so after ten minutes I gave up and strolled back to my flat.

Over the years I have walked out of many theatres and cinemas on the basis that there’s is no point in throwing my valuable time after the money i have already wasted on something that’s not worth seeing.

The last time I went to see King lear at the Barbican Theatre, London, for instance, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production was so witless and indifferent to the text that I had to leave at the end of Act 1, Scene 3.

The truth is that if you get the opening five minutes of of Lear wrong, then the full meaning of the play is lost. A little explanation of that bold statement is called for, I suppose, so here goes.

If you know the play a bit, you will recall that Lear has three daughters, and he decides to divide his kingdom between them. He says that the one who loves him most will get the biggest portion and invites each of them to persuade him that they love him more than their sisters. The two elder daughters launch into passionate but slightly muddled statements of how much their love their father. He then turns to his youngest daughter, Cordelia and asks what she has to say. The assembled courtiers wait to hear her and she simply replies “Nothing”. “Come, daughter”, he says “‘Nothing’ will get you nothing. Speak again.” Cordelia still refuses to enter the competition and so, in a raging fury, he disinherits her on the spot, and says that he will give her share to her sisters.

Before that intensely dramatic scene, there is an introductory but enormously significant scene that neither directors nor actors nor critics seem to bother to understand.

Shakespeare starts the play with two of Lear’s ministers discussing what is about to happen.

They discuss in minute detail. how the King has ordered this Kingdom to be divided between the TWO husbands of his elder daughters. The job of dividing the kingdom TWO ways, is now finished and just awaits the formal hand over ceremony.

After a brief soliloquy by the villain, Edmund, on come the courtiers, the daughters, their husbands and the King.

All wait expectantly and then Lear’s first words are, (from memory)

“NOW I WILL REVEAL MY DARKER (ie hidden) PURPOSE. I will divide my Kingdom into THREE PARTS and the daughter who loves me most will get the biggest share. Speak now daughters.”

At that point everyone but Lear should be in a state of total shock, horrified at the King’s reversal of the plans that everyone had been working on up to this point.

In the production I saw, there was not a shred of surprise on stage. It was as if everybody was expecting this challenge, that the daughters had known all along what was going to happen and had their speeches more or less prepared.

But as Shakespeare wrote it, the unfortunate daughters have a matter of seconds to absorb an absolute thunderbolt of betrayal from their father and find some words to respond to his damnable demand.

Their speeches should therefore be only semi-coherent – as they are written. And Cordelia of course, is in the worst position of all. That very day she should be leaving Lear’s court to marry the King of France and live with him. She had no expectations of any share in the Kingdom because – as the first scene tells us – the King’s officers had been busily dividing it up between her sisters husbands as the King had decreed.

Much of the meaning of the play is lost without having that thunderbolt of Act 1 Scene Three.  Why does Lear reverse his previous decision and wait till now to reveal his DARKER PURPOSE? Why does he get so insanely angry? If the scene is played as if pre-rehearsed it makes little if any sense. It also explains his elder daughters’ implacable humiliation of him later in the play.

When I go to the theatre, I want to see the actors doing what Shakespeare wrote for them. They can interpret emotion and motives in any way they like, but to ignore Shakespeare’s simple arithmetic seems to me to be at best perverse and at worst simple incompetence.

In that opening scene, I want to see TWO separate piles of documents, each pile containing dozens of deeds of the Royal properties, perhaps being checked against comparative lists by a couple of clerks.

The two Ministers can use the documents and lists as props to amplify their dialogue and let the audience know what they everybody else but Lear, thinks is going to happen.

So when Lear sweeps on stage, his daughters and their husbands and everybody else will be complacently expecting to know how the TWO-way division of the Kingdom has worked out – and the lists and the piles are there for inspection and explanation.

It seems to me that Lear’s first action is to tear up the precious lists, throw all the documents into the air or turn over the tables they are on – and issue his challenge to his daughters surrounded by the wreckage of their hopes and their husbands fortunes. And the mortification of being publicly humiliated.
So, when there’s a poxy little map on stage from the beginning showing Britain divided into three, I know that this production will not be worthy of the great challenge and opportunity that Shakespeare presents to the company and to the audience.

The only time I saw a production that came anywhere near reflecting the author’s crystal clear intentions was in Spanish at the burned-out shell of the National Theatre of Peru in Lima!! But that’s another story. No sets, actors drawn from TV soaps, minimal props, basic costumes, no roof, the stage where the stalls once were, Lear’s entrance down a ramp of of woven steel and the audience sitting on patio chairs. But absolutely honest and rivetting from start to finish..

And, above all, the cast and the director/star could tell the difference between the numbers TWO and THREE, and with that piece of simple arithmetic a great play – perhaps the greatest – is either made or lost.

That’s the the joy that can come from getting even the simplest of numbers right.