#lear's fool

[greencheekconure27]

Trying to read "The Fool " by Christopher Moore.

It's supposed to be King Lear narrated from the perspective of the Fool, which sounded interesting, but so far I'm not impressed. It's just...tiresome. I usually love snarky tricksters but this POV suffers from the "Haha wicked and ironic comment bro.Now say something unique and beautiful" syndrome. Please give your character personality traits besides cynicism. He's not even funny. At least make the guy funny. Shakespeare's Fool was funny.Literally none of the characters have much to make me care about them so far.

On top of that the narration is a mish-mash of anachronisms that I guess are supposed to be postmodern but are just annoying to read. And there's an implication of a post-apocalyptic society ("Mericans" burned the world? Really? How very original .🙄) but also the author explicitly sets it in thirteenth century Britain in the prologue and the Fool doesn't really have enough mystique about him to have visions of the future 🤷‍♀️.

I'm sorry but if it's satire it needs to be wittier and more poignant because so far it reads like the script one of those cheap parody movies where the author didn't engage with the original material beyond pop cultural osmosis and just added sex jokes to make up for it.

Maybe it'll pick up.I'm waiting.

[jurian-is-cinnamon-roll]

[shakespearenews]

Patrick Stewart: ‘I’d go straight home and drink until I passed out’

As he beams aboard another Star Trek adventure, the 81-year-old actor talks about playing Picard as an intergalactic Prospero, hitting the bottle during an exhausting Macbeth – and reaching page 310 of his memoir

As a classical stage actor – his focus before the Star Trek and the X-Men franchises gave his career a more lucrative second act – Stewart had twice played Prospero in The Tempest. Did the writers deliberately intend a parallel between the old, haunted astronaut of Star Trek: Picard and Shakespeare’s exiled Duke of Milan, brooding on a desert island? “Yes!” says Stewart. “That sense of the future lacking the significance it used to have. And a genuine fear that he doesn’t know how to handle things now.”

...

Although both have played Prospero and Macbeth, Stewart’s move to the US in the 1980s means that two great Shakespearean roles graced by McKellen – Hamlet and King Lear – have eluded him. Stewart, though, points out that, as McKellen last year played Hamlet again at the age of 82, the Prince of Denmark may yet come his way. “When I heard Ian was doing that Hamlet with non-conventional casting,” says Stewart, “I asked him if I could play Ophelia because it felt absolutely natural. But the timings didn’t work out.”

Stewart has been talking to a director about the possibility of a King Lear on stage, for which he is the traditional generation and gender, although this show might also include some unusual casting. When I suggest that McKellen could play Lear’s Fool, Stewart says: “My feeling is that Ian would want to play Cordelia. I’d love to have him as my daughter. I’m just worried that stamina would be an issue. I’m not sure I could do eight shows a week as Lear; it would have to be six maximum, which may not suit producers. So it may be too late. But I feel I’d have missed out on an experience if I never play Lear.”

[theimpossiblescheme]

It’s three in the morning, and I’m having Shakespeare thoughts again...

I was reading a (rather negative) review for a production of King Lear, and one of the bones they had to pick was with how the Fool was portrayed.  Which... you know what, fair enough, it’s a hard role to do justice to since you have to know how to juggle comedy and pathos in a very dour play.  But the reviewer’s specific grievance was that this Fool seemed too intelligent when he apparently should be “a creature of nature. Pure instinct. Spontaneous, unpredictable and uncontrollable.”  To which I say... what play was this guy reading?

The Fool is maybe the wisest character in the whole play.  He’s the only one who can tell Lear to his face how foolish his actions are, and he’s arguably the best judge of character in the whole cast as well.  Not only that, but he and Kent are the play’s most empathetic characters--they’re genuinely sorry to see Cordelia banished (before we even meet the Fool, one of the knights mentions how he has “much pined away” without her), and they love Lear and never leave his side even as they criticize his foolishness.  So to insist that he be played as nothing but pure animal instinct is a really weird take, given his role as Lear’s conscience for a good chunk of the play.  Especially when it’s pointed out in the play itself that he is “not all together fool.”

[ivanshatov]

decided to finally do a lineup of my king lear designs!! besides lear ofc because he sucks but <3 here they are!

[his-quietus-make]

Lear is mentioned in Shakespeare's favourite history book, Holinshed's 'Chronicles', and Shakespeare may have acted in 'The True Chronicle History of King Lear and his Three Daughters' - which has a happy ending - more than ten years before he wrote King Lear. Ten years nerving himself up to kill Cordelia? That's what I can premeditation.

‘Lear’s Fool’ by John Normington in ‘Performing Shakespeare’s Tragedies Today: An Actor’s Perspective’ (ed. Michael Dobson)

[ivanshatov]

king lear act i scene iv

[ivanshatov]

post-play post