The Shakespeare Code

 

As Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code well know…..

……The Code will always put its money where its mouth is!!!

We have all been examining Shakespeare’s original, 1608 ending of King Lear……

[See: Shakespeare’s Original Ending to King Lear Parts: One and Two]

……and many of us began to speculate about how this ending might work in performance.

There was only one way to find out…..

……TO PERFORM THE PLAY ITSELF…..

……..WITH THE ORIGINAL ENDING INTACT!!!

To that end, our Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter…..

………in an act which Shakespeare Code Fellow,  Charles Sharman-Cox……

…..branded as…….

….. fearless…

……undertook the role of King Lear…..

……for the Titchfield  Shakespeare Festival…..

…in the Great Agincourt Barn….

As Brothers and Sisters of the Code well know……

…….Titchfield in Hampshire is where Shakespeare really fell in love…..

…..both with the Dark Lady,  Aemelia Lanyer….

(See: How Shakespeare’s Dark Lady Found God)

…and with the wayward, gay, teenaged, cross-dressing Third Earl of Southampton…..

Henry Wriothesley…..

(See: Just how Gay was the Third Earl of Southampton.)

The Titchfield Shakespeare Festival is run by the dynamic Kevin Fraser……

….who also played the Fool in the production.

Stewart first played King Lear in a school production…..

……SOME TIME AGO!!!

Here he is on the right – with John Lyall, F.S.C., playing Gloucester on the left.

Agent Tom ‘X’ and Your Cat biked it down to Titchfield…..

……..MOTORBIKED it down….

…….to catch Stewart’s Lear…..

…and stayed in the village’s beautiful South Street…..

As we waited, expectantly, for the performance in the Great Barn, we read Stewart’s Programme Note…..

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‘Historica Passio’ – the King’s Disease.

There are two different versions of King Lear: one is a ‘pirated’ Quarto-sized version printed in 1608…….

…….and the other is from the ‘authorised’ Folio-sized collection, published in 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare’s death……..

For this production we have drawn on both versions. The Folio version cuts the ‘trial’ of Goneril in the storm scene when the King is going mad and we’ve done the same.

We have, though, restored the original ending to the play – which probably hasn’t been seen since 1608! We don’t want to spoil your experience, but warn you that this ending is even MORE uncompromising than the Folio ending.

It does, however, display the King’s final, Stoic control of his own destiny.

We have also emphasized a theme that was more readily understood by Shakespeare’s audience. The King, as well as ‘suffering’ from old age, is suffering from an illness called ‘The Mother’ – or what Shakespeare calls ‘historica passio’ (though everyone else called it ‘hysterica passio’).

The symptoms of ‘the Mother’ were: acute pain in the stomach, a feeling of suffocation in the chest, choking in the throat, mania and superhuman strength. Michael Drayton….

…….(the poet friend of Shakespeare’s) compared to illness to the Severn bore – a huge wave that bursts into the river from the sea and, as its force is constricted by the narrowing banks, smashes all before it.

This illness was very ‘fashionable’ when Lear was written….

Catholic priests (‘massing’ in England illegally) had interpreted the symptoms as demonic possession and had performed exorcisms on recusants…..

‘Scientific’ Doctors had argued that the ‘the Mother’ was not the work of the Devil – it was simply a disease.

Shakespeare, in the play at least, goes along with this.

It is fashionable to present the King as a fascistic, mittel-European tyrant…….

– but this production sets the play where Shakespeare intended it – in Celtic, pre-Christian Britain.

We’ve also tried to see events from Lear’s point of view (as well as everyone else’s!) He IS in many ways an impossible, unpleasant old man. (Would YOU want him turning up at your home with a hundred knights?)

But he has managed to hold his turbulent kingdom together by the force of his personality and, in doing so, has earnt the undying love of his followers, Kent, Gloucester and the Fool.

Like King Henry VIII at the beginning of his reign………

…….Lear does not have a son to inherit the kingdom

This stress, we believe, has soured his relationship with his daughters, Goneril and Regan, who must have known their father wanted a boy………

……..By the time Cordelia came along, Lear had given up hope. So she got all the love….

Lear is old and he is ill, probably terminally ill as ‘the Mother’ was thought to be fatal.

Unlike Henry VIII’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth……..

……Lear does all he can to avoid Civil War at his death. He divides his Kingdom, with meticulous fairness, between his three daughters and their husbands.

A war can only occur if two daughters make an alliance against the third. However, Lear suddenly decides on a silly –and in our production, drunken – game: he suddenly decides his daughters must all tell him how much they love him.

In reality, the kingdom, as Shakespeare makes clear, has already been divided.

Cordelia, full of love for her father, but as stubborn and as spoilt as he is himself, refuses to play this game.

And the rest is ‘The History of King Lear’.

•

And then we stopped reading the notes as the devastating play began……

•

Stewart is now  back at Code Headquarters in West London……

…. where Your Cat found him sprawled on The Code’s famous sofa…..

….comatose from his Thespian exertions…..

Your Cat pounced on him…..

……and pinned him down….

……… till he finally agreed to be interviewed….

(His modesty is legendary)

To read his extraordinary interview…..

CLICK: HERE!

 

‘Bye, now…