The Jewish King Lear: Thoughts on BAM

I saw BAM's staging of "King Lear" this weekend and thought this blog would be about the titular role.  Lear is the play's cynosure, but Shakespeare spreads his talents liberally--no character goes without his quotient of richly rendered language or keen moral insight.  Even the immortal lines of the play's chief villain, Edmund, have just as much truth as anything mouthed by Lear:

But even if the evil Edmund reminds us that his tragic victims can themselves be fools, excusing their mistakes result merely from the whims of gods, Gloucester--one of the many targets of Edmunds treachery, and those treacherous lines--at least gives them equally pleasing expression.  In Gloucestor's famous riposte, he says: "As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, / They kill us for their sport." (Act IV, Scene I).

Surely there are reams of rabbinical commentary on the timeless question both these quotes address: how much can we really control? Even if we have free will, are we not just hapless pawns in some absurd and cosmic game?

But rather than even attempt an answer at that one, I instead want to point out just one other Jewish anecdote that struck me while watching "Lear."  It's the uncanny Biblical allusion we get from Gloucester and his deceit by his own sons--the evil Edmund, and his naive brother, Edgar.  In "Lear," the relationship between Gloucester is meant to mirror the deception Lear gets at the hands of his daughters.  Early in the play, Gloucester's son Edmund tricks him into thinking his other son, Edgar, is trying to kill Gloucester and inherent his sizable estate. 

The same thing is going on simultaneously with Lear and his daughters: Goneril and Regan feign adoration for their father even though all they really want is his empire.  When Cordelia refuses to offer that kind of sycophantry--"Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty / According to my bond; nor more nor less."--Lear banishes her from his palace.  Flattery gets the better of him, at least then.

But the subplot between Gloucester, Edmund and Edgar has another parallel too: Jacob and Esau, and their aging father Isacc.  I have no idea whether that Hebraic tale was circulating in the Bard's mind when he devised this storyline, and neither do I care to suggest it.  Merely being reminded of the Biblical parallel made me search for paths of convergence.

Genesis of the Grail Kings

The genesis of Genesis, a study of the documentary sources of the first book of Moses in accordance with the results of critical science : illustrating the presence of Bibles within the Bible

The Genesis of the earth and of man *, or, The history of creation, and the antiquity and races of mankind considered on Biblical and other grounds

Reading the Jewish woman on the Elizabethan stage

The athenaeum, journal of literature, science and the fine arts