Framing Lear’s fool in Indian films: ‘Doth any here know me?’

2021 ◽  
pp. 018476782199998
Author(s):  
Poonam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Familiar Figure

This article examines three Indian films based on King Lear through their reconfigured framing of the Fool: Gunasundari Katha (Tale of the Virtuous Woman, 1949, Telugu), Rui Ka Bojh (Weight of Cotton, 1997, Hindi), and Natsamrat (Actor King, 2016, Marathi). Though the nature and role of the Fool in the play is much debated, this essay argues that he is central and his treatment reflects the divergent views the films take on Shakespeare’s tragedy. The fact that the Fool is also a familiar figure in Indian drama, from the classical Sanskrit, medieval folk and modern plays, conditions the transpositions of the intercultural adaptations.

Nobody, Somebody, and King Lear

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Womack
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Renaissance Drama ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Positive Events ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
English Renaissance Drama ◽  
The University

The approximately contemporary Jacobean plays, King Lear and Nobody and Somebody, share an ancient British setting, a preoccupation with instability in the state, and an unsettling interest in negation. Peter Womack here suggests that by reading them together we can retrieve some of the theatrical strangeness which the more famous of the two has lost through familiarity and naturalization. The dramatic mode of existence of the character called ‘Nobody’ is paradoxical, denaturing – an early modern visual and verbal Verfremdungseffekt, at once philosophical and clownish. His negativity, which is articulated in dialogue with the companion figure of ‘Somebody’, is matched in King Lear, above all in the role of Edgar, but also by a more diffused state of being (withdrawal, effacement, folly) which the play generates in reaction to its positive events. Ultimately the negation in both plays is social in character: ‘Nobody’ is the dramatic face of the poor and oppressed. Peter Womack teaches literature at the University of East Anglia. His most recent book is English Renaissance Drama (2006), in the Blackwell Guides to Literature series.

scholarly journals “Take (Meta)physic, pomp”: King Lear and (Dis)oriented Ontology

ROMARD ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
M. Burdick Smith
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Early Modern Drama ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology ◽  
Insight Into

This essay uses Object-Oriented Ontology, a posthumanist theoretical model, to explore how King Lear’s use of and relation to objects can provide insight into his characterization. This essay provides a model for scrutinizing the role of objects—whether animate or inanimate—in performances of early modern drama; furthermore, it argues that King Lear’s use of objects reveals a consistent refusal to understand others, which upsets a redemptive arc in the play. To that end, the article proposes an ethical model—demonstrated by Kent—that responds to the play’s otherwise desolate worldview.

Performing Natural Folly: the Jests of Lean Leanard and the Touchstones of Robert Armin and David Tennant

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cockett
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Folio ◽  
The University ◽  
Mcmaster University

Robert Armin, one of the ‘principal actors’ of Shakespeare’s plays named in the First Folio, probably joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1599 to take the place of Will Kempe as the company’s clown; and it was for him that Shakespeare wrote the parts of Touchstone, Feste, and the Fool in King Lear. Received wisdom, in part extrapolated from the nature of Armin’s roles, sees him as a more serious, even morose character than his predecessor, and he took his clowning seriously enough to write a book on ‘natural’ fools, Foole Upon Foole (1600), in addition to some minor verse, and a play, The History of the Two Maids of More-clacke, whence the only known illustration of him in performance derives. Although virtually disregarded by critics as little more than a jest book, Foole Upon Foole was also, argues Peter Cockett, a serious attempt to survey the variety of qualities and conditions of natural folly. It not only reveals much about Armin’s likely approach to his roles, but questions the conventional distinctions between the natural and the artificial fool. With close reference to Armin’s description of one of his subjects, Lean Leanard, Peter Cockett compares what this tells us about Armin’s possible approach to the role of Touchstone with the problems faced by the actor, David Tennant, in the RSC As You Like It of 1996. The author is a professional actor who emigrated to Canada in 1994. He now teaches acting and directing at McMaster University, Ontario, and is working with the University of Toronto’s medieval and renaissance players on a two-year project on the work and repertoire of the Queen’s Men.

The Role of Edmund in King Lear

1968 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Waldo F. McNeir
Keyword(s):  
King Lear

The Perception of Place in King Lear

2020 ◽  
pp. 98-122
Author(s):  
Andrew Bozio
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ecological Thinking

This chapter traces the relationship between perception and place in King Lear. Through a reading of Gloucester’s claim to “see” the world “feelingly,” it first argues that Shakespeare’s play both theorizes and enacts a phenomenology of place in the approach to Dover cliff. There, Edgar’s efforts to deceive his father as to the nature of his surroundings work not only reveal the role of perception within the phenomenology of place; they also disrupt that phenomenology, as Edgar’s suggestion that his father’s senses betray him leaves Gloucester with no way of orientating himself within the world. Similarly, Lear’s encounter with the storm shows that the inability to feel one’s surroundings can effect a kind of displacement, leading to a profound disorientation in madness. As such, the chapter furthers the book’s inquiry into the nature of ecological thinking by shifting the emphasis to moments in which such thinking fails, as characters struggle to orient themselves within increasingly imperceptible locations.

The Avenging Daughter in King Lear

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Marguerite A. Tassi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Geoffrey Of Monmouth ◽  
Negative Stereotypes

This chapter addresses the scarcity of avenging daughters in early modern texts, arguing that Shakespeare’s Cordelia in King Lear provides an exception to this paradigm. In scripting such an unexpected part for a female character, Shakespeare subverts the traditionally male gendered role of the avenger son and reconfigures earlier versions of the legend (such as those found in accounts by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Holinshed, and John Higgins and the anonymous King Leir). The chapter demonstrates the play’s structural affinities with the revenge genre, arguing that King Lear offers ethically contrasting forms of requital that are also gendered: while Goneril and Regan correspond to negative stereotypes about vengeful women, Shakespeare’s Cordelia (particularly in the 1623 folio), resembles the ‘male-like’ Cordelia depicted in the historical chronicles. Finally, the chapter asks what commentary on injustice, filial duty, and revenge Shakespeare’s harrowing, unsentimental dramatization of the Lear legend offered its early seventeenth-century audiences.

Beyond Finger Painting

2011 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Catherine Schifter
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Small Children ◽  
School Year ◽  
Familiar Figure ◽  
The Future ◽  
Kindergarten Classroom ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time

Imagine, as best you can, your Kindergarten classroom from way back when, or that of your children’s Kindergarten classroom, or perhaps one in which you teach or have taught. These are spacious rooms with tiny tables and chairs made especially for the small children who inhabit them during the school year. These small children are the future and their education in the early years is so important for establishing a set of skills and knowledge base to support their education for years to come. While all teachers are special, Kindergarten teachers take on the role of weaning children away from the home into the milieu of schooling. They often are a surrogate parent for these children who are away from home in a strange place without Mom or Grandmother or any other relative or familiar figure for the first time in their lives.

scholarly journals His Belly, Her Seed: Gender and Medicine in Early Modern Demonic Possession

2019 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Boyd Brogan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
Medical Perspective

This article reassesses the role of gender in early modern demonic possession from a medical perspective. It takes as its starting point the demoniac Richard Mainy, who in 1585 claimed to be suffering from hysteria. Best known for its influence on Shakespeare's King Lear, Mainy's gender-crossing diagnosis should be read in the context of the close historical relationship between hysteria and epilepsy. While medical historians have viewed hysteria as the key possession-related illness, epilepsy was equally important. Both were seen as convulsive illnesses caused by an excess of reproductive fluids. Emphasizing the similarities rather than the differences between male and female sexuality, this shared etiology underpinned medical approaches to demonic possession.

scholarly journals Rewriting King Lear in a Diasporic Context, Rewriting the Nation: Second Generation and Life Goes On

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa María García Periago
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Diasporic Community ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
Hindi Cinema ◽  
The Uk

Abstract: this article explores two film adaptations of King Lear located in London in a diasporic community: Second Generation (Jon Sen 2003) and Life Goes On (SangeetaDatta 2009). This paper examines the ways in which King Lear has to be modified to suit Non-Resident Indians. Following a diasporic framework, this articlesheds light on the striking parallelisms and connections between both movies via the presence of a mother figure, two nostalgic Lears, the appearance of Muslim charactersand the transformation of an extremely tragic dénouement by a happy ending. The role of the mother is especially significant since it hints at the Indian nation and the long-held association between the mother figure and India in mainstream Hindi cinema. The main hypothesis of this paper is that Second Generation and Life Goes On use Shakespeare’s King Lear, which deals with the division of the kingdom, as a prism through which to approach partition. Both films relocate the action to the UK, more specifically London, since it has one of the largest Indian diasporic communities. Alluding to the colonial legacy of partition and Shakespeare and being made by diasporic filmmakers, they become postcolonial – or rather transnational works. Curiously enough, not only is King Lear rewritten and reinvented, but also Shakespeare, partition, and, ultimately, the nation,although the films offer different – and contradictory – perspectives and alternatives.  Resumen: este artículo analiza dos adaptaciones cinematográficas del Rey Lear que tienen lugar en Londres en una comunidad diaspórica: SecondGeneration(Jon Sen 2003) y LifeGoesOn(SangeetaDatta 2009). El artículo examina las diferentes formas en las que El Rey Lear se tiene que modificar para adaptarse a la diáspora india. Gracias a un marco teórico de la diáspora, el artículo se centra en los paralelismos entre las dos películas a través de la presencia de la madre, dos “reyes” caracterizados por la nostalgia, la aparición de musulmanes y la transformación de un final trágico en uno feliz. El papel de la madre es especialmente relevante, ya que hace alusión a la India y a la asociación entre la figura materna y la India en el cine de Bollywood. La hipótesis principal es queSecondGenerationy LifeGoesOnutilizan El Rey Lear, que trata sobre la división del reino,como un prisma a través del cual aproximarse a la partición en la India. Ambas localizan la acción en Reino Unido, más concretamente en Londres, ya que tiene una de las comunidades diaspóricasindias más extensas. Las películas, al aludir al legado colonial de la partición y de Shakespeare y al ser realizadas por directores diaspóricos, se convierten en trabajos postcoloniales e incluso transnacionales. Lo curioso es que no sólo se reescribe y reinventa Shakespeare a través del Rey Lear, sino también la partición en la India y, en última instancia, la nación, a pesar de que las películas ofrecen perspectivas y alternativas diferentes – e incluso contradictorias. 

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