King Lear Two: ‘Edgar I nothing am.’ (Act 2, sc3)
1) In groups of four/five discuss your reaction to Lear’s first two Acts. Explore your chosen quotations in terms of their impact. Select ONE example and a spokesperson who will then present the extract to the rest of the seminar.
2) Lear is a play engaged with the problematic representation of identity. Characters explore their sense/lack of self through monologue, dialogue and the ‘aside’. It is worth while to consider how reflective and ‘knowing’ characters might be at various points of the play. Look at the first extract from the attached sheet. (Act, sc1) and consider how Edmund presents himself to the audience. Is this a theatrical means of representation? Is he very much a constructed ‘I’ or is there a self-knowledge that is direct and authentic? Consider how your interpretation of ‘Edmund’ might affect your reading of him in the play.
3) Significantly Edmund is never allowed on stage at the same time as Lear. Consider why this permanent separation of two such dominant characters takes place. Think of the resonance of Edmund’s register and his play on the term ‘legitimate’ in particular. Is the drama enmeshed in a search for the ‘legitimate’ or is this world with its words so fallen that all legitimacy has been lost? Could Edmund hijack the play?
4) Extract B (Act1, Sc4) reveals Lear’s growing awareness of his culpability and ethical fragility. What do you think the fool means when he replies: ‘Lear’s shadow.’? Note down your own ideas about the role and even the identity of the ‘fool’ in the play. Does it change? What does this fluidity and uncertainty bring to the text? What does ‘fooling’ signify?
5) Extract C (Act 2, Sc3) Gives expression to the voice of Edgar. This voice seems very much concerned with ‘abjection.’ Consider the implications of such a concern and whether Edgar’s decision to degrade and humiliate himself physically and even mentally, reveal anything unusual in his psychological make- up? How far is he an adequate foil to his brother Edmund at this point? How have they been parented?
6) The role of the storm in Lear is famously equated with Lear’s mounting sense of despair and self-realisation. Why the vocabulary of Lear and his daughters is savage and destructive and what might this reveal about their intimacy? Is all intimacy ambivalent in Lear? Are these words and characters ‘beyond’ our psychical comfort zone? Why?
7) Evaluate therefore the relationship between bounded and unbounded behaviour and know ledges in the play.
