Abstract
The national consciousness that had begun in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I—due to the enmity that England had with France, the Reformation, and the flourishing of national literature—strengthened with the reign of James I, when the possibility of a unified Britain appeared. The displacement of characters in Shakespeare’s King Lear, whose first performance took place at the court of King James I, and the relevance of Dover, the place where the French invaders disembark, relate to the question of the definition of boundaries and the formation of a national identity in Jacobean England. In Peter Brook’s 1970 filmic adaptation of the play, the construction of this identity is metaphorized in the way the film reproduces the barbaric world of Lear in the mise-en-scène— practically bare sets, no music, rough cloth costumes, and wintry landscapes—and relates it to modern-day England in the art-house style of the film and its emulation of a sophisticated form of drama. Thus, the violent deeds of Lear’s reign, enhanced in the film, could, due to the characteristic style of art-films of the seventies, address the plights of a nation which can no longer rely on its status as the ruler of the world.
Highlights
The national consciousness that had begun in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I—due to the enmity that England had with France, the Reformation, and the flourishing of national literature—strengthened with the reign of James I, when the possibility of a unified Britain appeared
When reading the playtext or seeing a performance of King Lear three elements immediately call one’s attention: the fact that there is a constant dislocation from place to place—people always seem to be going somewhere; the fact that locations are not clearly specified; and the fact that the only place that is recurrently referred to is Dover
Mathilda Hills points out that “the importance of motion as journey is suggested in part by a total of forty-two occurrences of four related nouns: ‘way’, ‘course’, ‘journey’, and ‘pilgrimage.’ (...) King Lear never appears in the same location twice” (2)
Summary
When reading the playtext or seeing a performance of King Lear three elements immediately call one’s attention: the fact that there is a constant dislocation from place to place—people always seem to be going somewhere; the fact that locations are not clearly specified; and the fact that the only place that is recurrently referred to is Dover. The Enlightened Elizabethan subject, full of confidence in his autonomy and feeling he is the center of the world, has to enlarge his notion of nation This is the point where it is possible to make a connection between the internal space of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the space where characters seem to be lost, wandering from place to place to arrive at Dover, and the external space of Jacobean England, joined to Scotland by a common ruler. It is possible to make a relationship between this fact and King Lear, for in the quarto version of the play it is Goneril’s husband, Albany, who takes office at the end, an action that parallels James I’s taking office as the king of England It is this Scottish king of the House of Stuart, a house that had ruled Scotland since 1371, who reunites Britain. It was only after James I that the possibility of a unified Britain appeared
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