tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post1071216535411075915..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: "The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich," early versionCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-3309797098008480212009-04-07T12:22:00.000-04:002009-04-07T12:22:00.000-04:00Johnston notes in his lecture that some scholars s...Johnston notes in his lecture that some scholars surmise that the same actor played the Fool and Cordelia, and hence the disappearance of the Fool in the middle of Act III, since that is about the same time Cordelia shows back up. But I like the idea, too, of the Fool as Lear's "inner Cordelia."<BR/><BR/>Good luck, Lowell! [I want to hear what happens next.]Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-88397368784707121612009-04-07T11:23:00.000-04:002009-04-07T11:23:00.000-04:00Thanks for that, Eileen. I actually left my class ...Thanks for that, Eileen. I actually left my class stranded at the storm scene on Monday. We mapped Lear's disintegration with the systematic emptying out of every meaning system of the play, alongsiide its love of apocalypse -- it's a lot like Beowulf that way. The storm we saw as the exteriorizing of everything Lear held within ... and so his coming apart as well. The Fool is, I think, his interior Cordelia (and maybe played by the same actor in a doubled role?)<BR/><BR/>Lowell Duckert (whom you know well) will give the second part of the lecture: good luck trying to rescue Lear from the straits at which I left him. I believe that he is going to show a piece of a Russian Lear to start the class -- maybe the Kozintsev one, I'm not sure.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6543528320940050422009-04-07T11:06:00.000-04:002009-04-07T11:06:00.000-04:00Thanks, Jeffrey, for sharing this earlier draft of...Thanks, Jeffrey, for sharing this earlier draft of a later article I know very well. First, thanks for telling us how you come up with pin numbers for ATM cards and such, and keep your wallet close by when I'm around, okay? Second, I have taught "King Lear" pretty much every year for about 8 years now, and it is one of my favorite plays to teach [I noticed recently, on one of my older syllabi, that I gave the students a handout which asked them to think about "Lear" through 3 texts: Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents," Terry Eagleton's "After Theory," and your essay, "Monster Culture: 7 Theses" [as these were undergraduates, I excerpted these texts for them and we talked about them in class]. A major resource for me in teaching Shakespeare [and also classical drama] over the years has been Ian Johnston's notes and lectures that he makes freely available on the web at his site "Johnstonia":<BR/><BR/>http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/<BR/><BR/>His ENG366: Studies in Shakespeare lectures are here:<BR/><BR/>http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/eng366/lectures/lectures.htm<BR/><BR/>I immediately thought of his "Lear" lecture in relation to what you wrote about in this short piece vis-a-vis "Lear," the storm, and trauma, because Johnston ends his lecture with the question of, "what happened to the Fool?" [He basically disappears in the middle of Act III, saying he is going to bed, and never reappears; when Lear says, in the final act, "And my poor Fool is hanged," critics don't really know whether he means Cordelia or the Fool.] Johnston brings in a 1971 Russian film adaptation of the play that I had never heard of, directed by Grigori Kozintsev. And I'll just paste here some of Johnston's commentary on the film, which I think ties in to your commentary here on trauma as both occasioning huge black holes as well as community re-building:<BR/><BR/>[beginning of excerpt from Ian Johnston's course lecture on "King Lear"]<BR/><BR/>Kozintsev has, throughout the film, associated the Fool with music, specifically with playing a small wooden flute. In the closing moments of the film, we hear the Fool playing his music above the desolation, and as he plays, we see the crowds of people (including, significantly, women) slowly and tentatively start to pick up things and move towards the beginning of some reconstruction.<BR/><BR/>Incidentally, the music in this film (composed by Shostakovitch) is truly memorable, one of the most eloquent reminders in the history of Shakespeare film production of the importance of music in shaping and sustaining a particular interpretative mood.<BR/><BR/>This final image of the common people initiating a process of rebuilding has important implications for the political sense we take from this play (something I will not be discussing in any detail). For it suggests that the old order of patriarchal feudalism has now gone. Most of its leading members are dead or about to die, and the few remaining (Edgar and Albany) are so isolated that there is no rich social hierarchy for them to repair. The aggressive self-serving individuals are also dead. Hence, the future of the community is going to be in the hands of the people, the ones who earlier in the film looked to the imposing figures of the court for security and guidance. Such a vision would, of course, accord well with any Marxist view that this play envisions the destruction of both the feudal aristocracy (which lacks any intelligent sense of virtue) and the new individualism (which turns everyone loose against everyone else). Any hope for the future thus rests with the common people working, as they are here, together, in harmony.<BR/><BR/>At the presentation of his film, Kozintsev spoke eloquently about how his vision of Lear had been shaped by the experience of the siege of Leningrad, the site of particularly painful and sustained suffering in World War II. And, as I recall, he referred to how a sense of the recuperative powers of humanity, as presented in King Lear, had sustained him during that horrific time. In the light of that, his subsequent comments on the music in the closing moments of his film were particularly significant. And I can think of no better last word for this lecture than the reflections of this wise artist on Shakespeare's most famous fool:<BR/><BR/> Symbols change. The Fool's cap and bells have long since gone out of fashion. Perhaps the Fool's foolery isn't quite what it used to be either? I imagined a paradoxical situation. The Fool is laughed at, not because he is foolish, but because he speaks the truth. He is the one who shams idiocy--no longer a court comedian but an urchin taken from among the most humble. The least significant tells the most mighty that he's a fool because he doesn't know the nature of his own daughters. Everyone laughs--but it is the truth. <BR/><BR/> For these people nothing is funnier than the truth. They roar with laughter at the truth, kick it like a dog, hold it on a leash and make a laughing stock of it--like art under a tyrannical régime. I am reminded of stories about how, in a Nazi concentration camp, an orchestra of prisoners was got together. They were forced to play outside in the compound. They were beaten so that they would play better. This was the origin of the Fool-musician--a boy taken from an orchestra composed of men condemned to death. <BR/><BR/> This was the origin of the particular tone of the film, its voice. In King Lear, the voice of human suffering is accorded more significance than the roar of thunder. Working on the score with Dmitri Shostakovitch, I dismissed the idea of dignified fanfares and the roll of drums. We were carried away by ideas of a completely different kind of instrumentation--the sound of a wooden pipe, which the Fool has made for himself. I'd asked for the film titles to be written on coarse, torn sacking. This linkage of ideas acted as kind of key. Rags, and the soft sound of the pipe--the still voice of suffering. Then, during the battle scenes, a requiem breaks out, then falls silent. And once again the pipe can be heard. Life--a none too easy one--goes on. Its voice in King Lear is a very quiet one, but its sad, human quality sounds distinctly in Shakespeare's work. (from "'Hamlet' and 'King Lear': Stage and Film," in Shakespeare 1971: Proceedings of the World Shakespeare Congress Vancouver, August 1971 [Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1972]: 190-199).<BR/><BR/>[end of excerpt from Ian Johnston's course lecture on "King Lear"]Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.com