Abstract
In his tragedy King Lear (1605) William Shakespeare explores the human psyche through a story of an old king who gives up his land to his two eldest daughters and finds himself forced to wander in the space of the outcasts. In his modern version of this play entitled: Lear, Edward Bond resumes Shakespeare’s analysis of space and power in the figure of a monomaniac father who raises a wall against his enemies. The division of inner-outer spaces present in Bond is further explored in Elaine Feinstein’s and the Women Theatre Group’s work: Lear’s Daughters, which immerses the audience into the early years of Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. In this contemporary prequel to Shakespeare’s play the three princesses discover the world and the space they occupy in it from their seclusion in the castle.
Highlights
Lear, space and power through timeAs the Polish scholar Jan Kott claims in: Shakespeare our Contemporary: “King Lear is a play about the disintegration of the world. [...] Until it falls it has to exist, it has to exist with its hierarchy of power, with its faiths, rituals, and ceremonies, with its mutually entangled relationships of power” (364-65)
Ana Abril Hernández Independent scholar ana.ab.her@gmail.com. In his tragedy King Lear (1605) William Shakespeare explores the human psyche through a story of an old king who gives up his land to his two eldest daughters and finds himself forced to wander in the space of the outcasts
The division of inner-outer spaces present in Bond is further explored in Elaine Feinstein’s and the Women Theatre Group’s work: Lear’s Daughters, which immerses the audience into the early years of Goneril, Regan and Cordelia
Summary
As the Polish scholar Jan Kott claims in: Shakespeare our Contemporary: “King Lear is a play about the disintegration of the world. [...] Until it falls it has to exist, it has to exist with its hierarchy of power, with its faiths, rituals, and ceremonies, with its mutually entangled relationships of power” (364-65). The critical reception of this play has moved from the study of space to the subjectivity of characters to understand better their motivations and actions, as Andrew Bozio states (100) This king’s fateful fall is imitated in Edward Bond’s (1934-present) theatrical adaptation: Lear (1971), where the author transforms the spaces of power such as the royal castle into a nightmarish fortress. Elaine Feinstein (1930-present) and the Women Theatre Group (WTG) offer a prequel to King Lear entitled Lear’s Daughters (1987) that “asks us to consider narrative alternatives that disrupt the sedimentation of convention gathered around its source” (Fischlin and Fortier 216) by revealing the origin of the two formerly cruel sisters, Goneril and Regan These women are shown in their earliest years alongside the youngest, Cordelia.
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