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Honestly didn't enjoy this as much as I had expected to. I think my expectations were too high. But, it was still an enjoyable play!
“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeitof our own behavior,--we make guilty of ourdisasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: asif we were villains by necessity; fools byheavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, andtreachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience ofplanetary influence; and all that we are evil in,by a
This is where Shakespeare takes off the gloves. He brings us right to the edge of the abyss, then kicks us over that edge. King Lear is the most devastating by far of the Shakespeare tragedies -- this is a play which leaves the reader shattered as the curtain falls. The play has a kind of primal power, which I find hard to explain. The plot is fairly typically Shakespeare, perhaps a little more complicated than usual, mixing elements taken from legend and from the historical record. At the outse...
If I were to assign a Shakespearean tragedy to one of each of the thresh metal Big Four, I would do so thus:- Anthrax would be Hamlet due to the many changes in personnel and the mixture of genres that they have done over time, sort of like how Hamlet has moments of indecision as to which direction to take.- Megadeth would definitely be Othello with Dave Mustaine forever jealous of the enormous success of Metallica and yet still pursuing his own path. Plus Othello is the most musical of the four...
“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.” There is a hope, of course, for many of us to become wiser as we become older. In most cases, this does work, but sometimes we exchange naivete for senility, with too few years of graceful wisdom in between. King Lear with his daughters. The cast of the 2018 movie.King Lear makes the decision to split his kingdom between his three daughters. A magnanimous decision if viewed one way, but a very foolish decision if one considers the
I've read Lear many times, and, although I didn't learn much about the play this reading, I did learn a little about myself. I have always loved the play, but in the past I found its injustice and evil nigh overpowering, its victims pathetically guiltless, its perspective verging on the nihilistic. Now, though, I see goodness and grace everywhere: in Cordelia's plain-spoken honesty and love for Lear, in Kent and Gloster's loyalty, in Edgar's bizarre attempt to heal his father's soul through stra...
My first time reading Lear, and like all the other plays I've read this year I just assumed I would steam through it, getting the gist and some sense of the pace, and language and humor...you know, just enjoying it. Lear is not friendly this approach. It's long, worded for effect and meter, which means the sentences are complex and difficult follow; and it's really busy. Lots of stuff happens constantly. Each act felt like it had enough plot to be a whole play, and at least one scene felt that w...
King Lear, William ShakespeareKing Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It depicts the gradual descent into madness of the title character, after he disposes of his kingdom giving bequests to two of his three daughters based on their flattery of him, bringing tragic consequences for all. Derived from the legend of Lear of Britain, a mythological Pre-Roman Celtic king.عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «شاه لیر»، «لیر شاه»؛ «نمایشنامه شاه لیر»؛ «الملک لیر»؛ نویسنده: ویلیام شکسپیر؛ انتشاراتیه...
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child"...Good King Lear, feared in his younger days, has two, in pagan Britain, the inhabitants worship the numerous gods, there, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the ancient ruler, in his eighties, can no longer govern well, no stamina, his mind is deteriorating quickly, with no sons but three devoted daughters, he believes, decides to divide the kingdom, equally, between them, but first the widower monarch, needs to hea...
The grand works of Shakespeare are, in part, natural think pieces. Watching Shakespeare or reading him will not take long. The story is entertaining enough to leave it at that, if you should so choose (although I must admit: as the years go by since I have read and watched Romeo and Juliet, I cannot help but look back on it as unbearably boring). This person has designs, this person dies, this person ends up with this person, this title, this land, etc. Comedy, tragedy, romance, history, all of
King Lear, a modern reimagination by yours truly.LEAR: Gather 'round daughters, ya daddy is old af and wants to retire. Whoever kisses my sweet ass the most will get the largest part of my kingdom. GONERIL: Daddy, I love you so so so so so so much.REGAN: Daddy, I love you even moooooooooooore.LEAR: (squeals happily) Ah, there's nothing like family. Cordelia, how about you? CORDELIA: (shifts awkwardly) I have nothing, my lord.LEAR: Nothing? CORDELIA: ...LEAR: BITCH, THE DOOR! (the door being Fran...
King Lear can be read in various ways - as a theological drama, as a philosophical one, as a supreme example of Shakespeare's intuitive egalitarianism or even as a melodrama lifted towards tragedy only by its superb poetry. It is the most titanic of Shakespeare's tragedy.
My first encounter with Shakespeare has totally swept me off my feet. As much as I had heard of the indisputable grandeur of the most famous playwright of all times I never expected to be so immersed in the swirling undercurrents of the incongruities of human nature that are so vividly portrayed in this tragedy. Even though my inexpensive Wordsworth edition wasn’t generous with annotations or academic essays, the universality of Shakespeare’s art, wrought in versed polyptotons, playful aphorisms...
I was lucky enough to be living in Stockholm when Ingmar Bergman staged Lear at the Swedish National Theatre in the late 80s, and I saw it twice. Bergman's take on the play was very interesting and unusual; he interpreted it as fundamentally optimistic.Obviously, you're wondering why, and in the hands of a lesser director it would probably just have been a piece of unnecessary perversity. Bergman's reasoning was, in fact, not bizarre. He saw the key scene of the play as the reconciliation betwee...
Book Review 3 of 5 stars to King Lear, a tragic play by William Shakespeare, published in 1603. I enjoyed the play and then watched a few film versions. My review will cover both the book and the film I saw -- with a bit of sarcasm and humor (just to be different than all the other ones! LOL)Lear is an absolutely ridiculous character who belongs in the looney bin in my opinion. He has lost all control over his life, his family, and his kingdom. He is foolish, blind, and stubborn. When
In times of change, stress or general uneasiness, I find myself repeatedly quoting Shakespeare.There is something soothing in the knowledge that he wrote all those unforgettable lines over 400 years ago and they still make so much sense - sometimes more sense than our most recent literary production. I know that I am in some kind of identity crisis when King Lear comes to my mind again, and I open the highly impractical "Collected Works of Shakespeare" and try to find Lear without completely bre...
This is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. In college honors English at U. Tennessee Knoxville, I stumbled into a dissertation about a comparison of epic and tragic, using as templates Lear and Milton's Paradise Lost. In all of English class papers, there may never have been a more seasoned example of pure bull**** and left field logic. I think I got a B-, just because my instructor may have been worried about whether or not my meds had kicked in. Still, in composing the literary testimony of...
As one who is always looking for books by authors from around the globe and seeking out hidden gems, books that have been defined as classics, especially by western authors, are usually the ones that get short changed. With three days offline and ample time to read, I thought it was high time that I read a Shakespearean play, having not read one since last year. In school, students are generally asked to read one Shakespeare a year, yet by scheduling quirks, I ended up reading The Merchant of Ve...
A Fairy Tale I Give Thee, A ‘True Chronicle History’[Dramatis Personæ:The Bard, as HimselfWorld, as ItselfYou, as Fool, in the Bard’s serviceKings, Daughters, Sons, Knights, Fools, Gentlemen, Soldiers, Attendants, Messengers, Servants.]Act 1.1 Sennet. Enter [The Bard, You]Bard: Hark, A Fairy Tale I Give Thee, Fit for Today’s Times!I have in my time, written many plays - tragedies, comedies, all - but reader beware: this might be my darkest vision yet. I will exalt you; and in death’s throngs....
“When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers, suffers most i’the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind. But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip, When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship. How light and portable my pain seems now, When that which makes me bend makes the King bow.” King Lear has pulled the proverbial rug out from under me, having left me overwhelmingly and viscerally astonished with Shakespeare’s prowe