Shakespeare Uncovered

ANNOUNCER

Coming up on "Shakespeare Uncovered"... Forever! a tyrant loses his grip on power. Nothing will come of nothing. Christopher Plummer explores the depths of "King Lear." The idea of what it might mean to lose your mind, to lose control runs right through this play.

IAN McKELLEN

I didn't have to imagine what it would be like to have regrets about the past.

WOMAN

Lear is showing himself to be a bully, abusing these daughters openly in front of everyone.

MAN

That's what "King Lear" is about, confronting the worst that is imaginable.

ANNOUNCER

"The Tragedy of King Lear" with Christopher Plummer on "Shakespeare Uncovered."

PLUMMER

"Nothing will come of nothing." These haunting words are a father's threat to his daughter. The man is a king, William Shakespeare's King Lear, but it is in the course of the play that Lear will himself lose everything and come to know nothing. "King Lear "is a play about a father who makes a terrible mistake. He disowns his beloved daughter. Aah! Lear will lose his kingdom and even his mind. His only hope of survival is to try and answer the one question that he's failed to understand... what is real love? The play "King Lear" is dark and desperate, and yet it's one of the most cherished of Shakespeare's works. The role of Lear is probably one of the toughest parts an actor can play, but when I was offered the part at 72--heh heh-- I certainly wasn't gonna turn it down. It's just about one of the greatest parts ever written for a male actor. He's a selfish old boor, but there--there is something wonderful about his temper that can frighten an audience. "King Lear" is so modern, it's more universal. It's extraordinary. It is the masterpiece of what happens to the powerful who fall. According to legend, King Lear was a real English monarch, who reigned in 800 B.C. Like Shakespeare's character, he loses his kingdom, but the Lear in the old story regains it. Shakespeare took this ancient tale from the "Holinshed Chronicles" and made it much darker.

McKELLEN AS LEAR

Our kingdom, and 'tis our fast intent... PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

He created a role that has challenged actors ever since. The meaning of Shakespeare's play hangs on the very character of Lear. Who is the man behind the crown? He's a fighter and I suspect he's been that all his life. There is neither good nor bad, but he's just human. King Lear's a very angry man, and he-- as his powers decline, he doesn't get less angry.

PLUMMER

The earliest interpretation of "Lear" on film is silent.

Chuckling

PLUMMER

I rather like this Lear. His gestures are absolutely wonderful for silent screen acting. I mean, I wish to God I'd used those when I'd played it-- cut down a slight bit.

Speaking Russian

PLUMMER

This is my favorite Lear that I've ever seen. It's played by the Russian actor Yuri Yarvet. He's always on the edge of madness... Ha ha ha! and he's always a little distracted--King Lear. Better has not been born than not to have pleased. Laurence Olivier played him more as a vulnerable old man, possibly because he had himself become quite fragile. His voice was going in life a little bit and very high-pitched. Some of it is--is terrific because of course Lear is also kind of failing. Whoever plays Lear has to decide what's going on in his mind when as a king and father he decides to divide up his kingdom between his 3 daughters.

ORSON WELLES AS LEAR

Give me the map there. Now we have divided in 3, our kingdom. It is our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths.

PLUMMER

At The Globe Theatre in London, actors are running this crucial first scene. The portion each daughter will get depends on how eloquently they say they love him. Tell me, my daughters, which of you shall we say doth love us most? Lear is hoping to give the best portion to his youngest and favorite daughter Cordelia, but he's miscalculated the family dynamics. It starts off as a bit of a game that then goes wrong.

LEAR

Goneril, our eldest born, speak first. Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter. Dearer than eyesight, space, or liberty.

PLUMMER

Cordelia is repelled by her sister's ridiculous flattery. What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent. What says our second daughter, our dearest Regan? I am made of that same mettle as my sister and price me at her worth. In my true heart, I find she names my very deed of love. Only, she comes too short. Cordelia knows she cannot and will not compete with her sisters' wild promises.

WOMAN

She's really shocked. I don't think it's something that he's done before. She doesn't have time to plan it, so it's very much in that moment, and it's all from her emotions. What can you say to win a third more opulent than your sisters? Nothing, my lord! Nothing? Nothing! Nothing will come of nothing.

VINALL

Lear is showing himself to be a bully and a game player and a manipulator and, uh, abusing these daughters openly in front of everyone, and that's what she's saying no to. You have begot me, bred me, loved me. Why have my sisters husbands if they say they love you all? You are meant to understand that she's standing up for some kind of basic principle, including the principle of her--her own life. Uh, "Why do my sisters have husbands if they love their father all?" Let it be so! Thy truth then be thy dower.

PLUMMER

He's divvying up his-- heh--his land and his properties and--and, uh, Cordelia wants nothing from him and, uh, refuses to give anything of her. Uh, he is so absolutely desperately hurt by this that he let's fly, "Let it be so! "Thy truth then be thy dower. "For by the sacred radiance of the sun, "here I disclaim all my paternal care "and as a stranger to my heart, and me, hold thee from this, forever." Forever! These are cruel words to say and hard words to bear. He's just completely shocked, and she's shocked that he's done this because they love each other. He was playing the game with Cordelia because of course he adored her more than anyone else from the very start. It's only when she turns on him and tells him the bloody truth, that he, uh, he--he is hurt beyond measure and then lets fly his anger. King Lear may have been set in 800 B.C., but Shakespeare knew his audience would connect the play to their own lives, and this makes it highly controversial. The play was first performed in 1605 just two years after a major event in British history, the death of Elizabeth I and the accession of a king from Scotland.

MAN

When James comes to the throne in 1603, his great idea is about a union, a union of Scotland and England, and that's about Britain, it's about creating this new place called Britain, and "King Lear" is a play which is set in Britain. The whole idea is about security. James is creating this new kingdom, which is bigger, but it needs security, and the first thing that Lear does as soon as he comes onstage, he says, "Give me the map there," and he says, "No, that we are dividing the kingdom in 3." The audience is completely horrified by this.

PLUMMER

Shakespeare is painting a portrait of a divided country, vulnerable to invasion, and the new king will see this play.

BROTTON

James I is watching this happen. He's in the audience there at court, watching this play out. This is actually an explosive thing for Shakespeare to be doing. It's a very dangerous game to be playing. You should be talking about unity and celebrating Britain, and he's ripping it apart.

Men shouting

BROTTON

Where's my knave? My fool?

PLUMMER

The consequences of King Lear's decision now become painfully clear. His favorite and youngest daughter Cordelia has fled the country, and he goes to live with his eldest Goneril. His retinue is substantial, and Goneril exploits this to totally undermine her father. Here you keep a hundred knights and squires. Epicurism and lust makes it more like a tavern or a brothel than a graced palace. Lear is finding out that his elder daughters do not love him. So who can he turn to? Once Cordelia's no longer there for Lear, his most significant relationship is with his fool, and that's how we get a glimpse of a different side of Lear. Mark it, nuncle! The fool, or jester, was a traditional role in medieval royal courts. His purpose was to entertain but also to speak truth to power.

MAN

It's a very special, unique relationship, isn't it? Yeah. They have an understanding, which is absolutely only shared by the two of them, and he-- he doesn't have that relationship with anyone else. He's incredibly blunt and forward and yet is able to say it through these riddles. It's seems to me that Lear would not accept anything else but that kind of honesty and directness, and I think he's the only character who has that license. Doth thou call me fool, boy? All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. I will forget my nature. So kind a father! PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

In my stage production of "King Lear," we cast the fool the same age as me to show how close they could become. Nor I neither. But I can tell why a snail has a house. Why? To put's head in. Not to give it away to his daughters and leave his horns without a case.

PLUMMER

Obviously Lear saw him in some Vaudeville nightclub somewhere and thought "Oh, he's wonderful. I think I'll have him as me fool." So he brought him on board, and the two of them have that wonderful relationship.

Indistinct chatter

PLUMMER

My production was directed by Jonathan Miller, who is so fascinated by the play that he's just started his sixth production. Here again, king and fool have bonded through a history of past misadventures. I want it to indicate that you've had it with him. Yes! And that actually you've been trailed along against your will into a place "where I have never been out here. "The last time I went here, "we had a tour once from the pub, and we actually never got out of the... bus." MILLER,

VOICE-OVER

You realize that here is a monarch and here is a fool, who actually is wiser and more mature than this silly old man who has never grown up.

PLUMMER

I think this sketch of me as this "silly old man" has managed to encapsulate what it is to be Lear. There's everything in the eyes, there's rage, there's arrogance, and fear. The fear is real because every time you try and do King Lear, it's not--you're not exactly at comfort stations, and, uh, I just think it's wonderful because it's also unfinished, and so is that character-- unchallenged, unfinished by any actor who's attempted to play him.

FOOL

Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell? No! Nor I neither. PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

All these contradictions are there in Lear's relationship with his fool.

FOOL

To put's head in. If thou wast my fool, nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time. How's that? Thou shouldst not have been old 'til thou hadst been wise. Let me not be mad. Not mad, sweet heaven. Keep me in temper!

PLUMMER

Lear knows he's lost his beloved daughter Cordelia. He is now losing his status as king. He is tormented, and he fears he will lose his mind.

ADSHEAD

It is a hugely significant moment when Lear says, "O, let me not be mad," um, and I've always taken it that this is the first moment at which he's gaining an inkling that actually things are not going to be quite as straightforward. In fact, his identity is a--a great deal more fragile than he realized. Who am I? Is it my clothes and my status and my roles and my relationships that make me who I am, or is there some other really fundamental essence of who I am that persists, even if I take off my royal robes? If I'm just me, am I still King Lear?

PLUMMER

His empire is crumbling, his relationship with Cordelia is in ruins. In this play, Lear will suffer physically, but above all, it is his mind that will be tortured. The idea of what it might mean to lose your mind, to lose control runs right through this play. It's something that frightens us all.

MAN AS LEAR

Return to her and 50 men dismissed? Bah! Persuade me...

PLUMMER

After being shunned by his eldest daughter Goneril, Lear turns to her sister Regan. It's every parent's nightmare, their children's rejection. I can stay with Regan, I and my hundred knights. Not altogether so, Sir. The sisters are arguing away their father's right to have any retinue at all. 50 followers? Is it not well? What should you need of more? Yea, or so many?

GREENBLATT

The scene is incredibly painful because it, among other things, rubs Lear's nose in a kind of quantification of love. "You love me enough to give me a hundred knights." "No. You." "Well, 50 knights?" "No." "25 knights--at least you're giving me 25 knights." What? Must I come to you with 5 and 20, Regan? Said you so? And speak it again, my lord, no more with me.

PLUMMER

Compromise is something that Lear wouldn't-- wouldn't even think of. He's--he's too--too-- the megalomania of him is--is too--is too strong. I mean he, his pride is-- is just extraordinary. Just if one ser--um-- soldier was taken away, he would go berserk. What you need 5 and 20, 10 or 5? What need one? O, reason not the need. Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous. "O, reason not the need, "our basest beggars are "in the poorest things superfluous. "Allow not nature more than nature needs. Man's life is cheap as beasts." In some way, already he's beginning to kind of get the feeling that something's not all right with his world, his own personal world. Lear is starting to realize that when he gave up his crown, he gave up who he was. It's a vital moment for any actor taking on the role. It's an absolutely valid point he's making. "I have to be defined by something. "I can't be defined just by what you provide for me. I need my self-definition, and I'm losing it." That's what finally flips him into real madness. The scene asks a profound question-- what do we need to be human? Soon to be destitute, Lear will be forced to find out.

GREENBLATT

The interesting twist in "Lear" is that there's no going back, and that's crucial.

PLUMMER

Having broken from his daughters, Lear now has nothing. Homeless and furious, he has no choice but to face the elements. We next meet Lear on a heath in wilderness at the mercy of a tremendous storm. The turmoil is both inside Lear and all around him. This dramatic storm scene is one of the most famous moments in Shakespeare. Film adaptations from around the world have always made the most of it.

Speaking Russian

PLUMMER

Oh, boy, what a shoot that must have been. Christ, I'm glad I wasn't in that. Today's special effects mean almost anything is possible on film, but what about Shakespeare's stage? Take it away, Bill.

Rumbling, zip

PLUMMER

At The Globe's version of Shakespeare's indoor theater, they are demonstrating how they make the storm. The challenge is to make a huge amount of noise but still leave space for the king in the middle. You've got some real challenges, and you've got to work with the actor who's playing the king. You've got to give him something to play with, to fight against.

Crash

PLUMMER

You can push it quite far. So as Bill's doing now, we're getting--this is a very good illustration. I'm gonna keep talking to you while this drum gets louder... and louder... and louder. Uh, and the difference is that the audience, they're expecting the line "Blow winds and crack your cheeks". So at the point that the king reaches the front of the stage, the storm is getting to its highest we know that line is gonna come.

Whoosh

PLUMMER

If you--if you make so much noise that we can't hear him saying the famous words "Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" then you've done a bad job. So you've got to vary the level.

SILVERMAN

We can't have full volume for the full 10 minutes that he's out there struggling, so we map the ebb and the flow of the scene. So at some points, there'll be shocks, there'll be little eruptions and things for the, uh, actors to respond to, and at other times, we need to find a moment where it's just a bit gentler.

Sounds lower

Gong

SILVERMAN

And then that might happen.

PLUMMER

The challenges of staging this scene have made it a magnet for directors and actors ever since. Well the one big choice, which was actually out of my hands, was to not have any rain, which I'm very, very relieved about actually. However, Simon the actor felt something was missing.

BEALE

We have a bucket of water poured on our heads before we go on. It's actually useful for me. It's a psychological thing that it can't necessarily be seen particularly well from the audience, but it--it makes me feel as if I'm in the storm.

Thunder

BEALE

I mean, the very first roll of thunder is the moment when he goes, "Ah, yes. Blow winds! "That's what I wanted," you know, "that's the sound I wanted to hear," and a lot of it's about that. It's about saying, "Yes, go on. Yes, you're doing it--you're doing it beautifully, storm." He both responds to it and creates it. Heh heh heh.

PLUMMER

When Ian McKellen took on the role, he drew on the anxieties of old age for his storm scene. Blow winds and crack your cheeks! McKELLEN,

VOICE-OVER

It helped me that I was within calling distance of the right age and that I didn't have to imagine what it would be like to be all aches and pains and--and for the mind to be forgetful or to have regrets about the past. O, nuncle. It wasn't a foreign country really. Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder. PLUMMER, Lear is indeed being tortured as much his own thoughts and regrets as he is by the storm, and that, for me, means that one could play the scene in a very different way. There should be no storm at all really, ideally, and he-- he makes the storm and imagines it. It would be wonderful to see a production like that with no background storm, just him persuading the audience that there is a storm, in him because he--the old adage that Lear is the storm. Out on the heath, stripped down physically and psychologically, Lear has to adjust. He starts to see his fool in a way that he never has before.

Thunder

VOICE-OVER

My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? Suddenly, he's out there in the, in the storm, unprotected, as indeed very many people are. He begins to realize how ordinary people might have to live.

McKELLEN

What he's discovering is--is that empathy between what he's feeling, the misery he's feeling, and people who are constantly feeling that misery themselves, and he hasn't thought about that before and is--is bright enough to--to--to realize that he hasn't thought about it before and to chastise himself for it.

PLUMMER

At last, the once selfish king has shown he is capable of tenderness.

GREENBLATT

This is a sign of a change in Lear's consciousness, but actually perhaps it's a different sign, that we are all King Lear, that it takes an enormous amount of work and also a great deal of suffering before we can see that there's anyone else out there. I have one part in my heart that's sorry yet for thee. He that hath and a little tiny wit With a hey ho The wind and the rain must make content With his fortunes fit For the rain it raineth every day

PLUMMER

Lear does seem to be changing. He's already showed compassion for his fool, and now something astonishing happens. he refuses shelter and instead prays for forgiveness. He realizes he not only wronged his beloved daughter but that he's been a cruel and uncaring monarch. "Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, "that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. "How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your looped"... How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en too little care of this. "O, I have ta'en too little care of this." Suddenly, he's starting to get guilty.

MAN

The play is an extraordinary examination of power, and yet it's the powerless who somehow seem most human. Lear himself only becomes truly human when he puts off all that guise of royal power, all the pretensions of office, and sympathizes with the beggar, the naked wretches, the houseless poor.

BROTTON

This horrible scene of wretchedness is where he starts to realize the mistakes he's made, and it's a very, very personally powerful moment, but politically for the audience, it's really shocking because you've seen Lear come from being the great king, you know, in his throne room, reduced to a hovel. The Jacobeans have never seen this. The world is, as it were, turned upside down.

PLUMMER

Lear's repentance might make us feel that the play will now allow his situation to improve. But no! Shakespeare has completely suspended the conventional dramatic rules. "Lear" has an important parallel plot.

MAN

Urge Your Grace not to do so. The Earl of Gloucester, Lear's ally, has two sons Edgar and Edmund. Is this not your son, my lord? His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.

PLUMMER

Being born a bastard, Edmund will not inherit his father's estate, but his contempt extends way beyond his situation. Shakespeare has created a villain who mocks the entire Jacobean world view.

BATE

Edmund is a--a very modern character in a lot of ways. Shakespeare's writing at a moment where customary belief is still very traditional. There is a belief in the gods and in the order of things in the stars. Astrology was something that people believed very, very seriously, that God had written your fate in the stars. Edmund mocks all that. He doesn't believe any of this nonsense about astrology and divine will. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars.

PLUMMER

Concerned for nobody and nothing but himself, Edmund turns his father Gloucester against his legitimate brother Edgar. Having done that, Edmund then betrays his father, as well. Now Shakespeare lines up something truly shocking. Lear is actually offstage for a good part of the play. He is not involved in what has become one of the most notorious scenes in theatrical history. Lear's two eldest daughters Goneril and Regan are now in charge of the kingdom. Gloucester, Lear's faithful ally, is appalled at how they have treated their father, and he has planned to restore Lear. But Edmund, the opportunist, has now joined forces with Lear's elder daughters and informed on his own father. Where hast thou sent the king? To Dover. Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charged at peril? Wherefore to Dover? PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

Onstage, Gloucester will be blinded. Wherefore to Dover? See it shall thou never. Fellows, hold the chair. Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot. Aah! Aah! Aah! Aah! No!

BEALE

It's horrible, absolutely horrible. It never fails to be horrible. And what's so amazing about Shakespeare-- he does this again and again-- he--he makes you think-- don't know how he does it, but he makes you think about torture in general, doesn't he? He has this ability to make that scene about everything that's ever been done to human bodies for the sake of causing pain, uh, and it's--it's-- it's magnificent. Out, vile jelly! Aah! Aah!

Screaming

BATE

There's something about an eyeball, the sensitivity, the squidginess of an eyeball-- "Out, vile jelly!" We--we--it makes us squeamish, and Shakespeare knows that, and he--he's--he thinks, "Right. I'm gonna push the audience to their limits. I'm going to make them confront the worst." And that's what "King Lear" is about, confronting the worst that is imaginable. Go thrust him out at gates and let him smell his way to Dover.

Moans

PLUMMER

For Lear, as well as Gloucester, the blinding scene is a turning point. Gloucester will stagger out onto the heath, towards his king. When Lear and Gloucester meet on the heath, you see two old friends who have changed utterly. Lear, once a king, is in rags, and Gloucester, a duke, is a bedraggled blind man. When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. At first, Lear fails to recognize his friend. It's a poignant scene, yet shot through with black humor. Lear is now completely uninhibited. Sweeten my imagination. There's money for thee. O, let me kiss that hand. Let me wipe it first. It smells of mortality. Dost thou know me? I remember thine eyes well enough.

Both laughing

PLUMMER

Finally, he recognizes it's Gloucester. I know thee well enough, thine name is Gloucester. Ohh. The mind's whirring. He cut himself off for so long, I think, during his maturity-- King Lear-- that, uh, everythi--life's coming in at him at a rush. Thou must be patient.

McKELLEN

He's got an interest in things. He's interested in flowers, he's interested in strangers, so interested that he realizes that the stranger is an old friend.

PLUMMER

I tried to do it-- God knows I hope it worked-- just from the moment of recognizing "I know those eyes, yes." It's--it's just-- it's so tender, but it should be very conversational, which makes it more-- more sort of frightening and more poignant. Lear's mental frailty seems to have expanded his world, not diminished it.

GREENBLATT

What is losing your mind in this play? The losing his mind is Lear on the way to recovering his mind, Lear on the way to seeing things that he was not able to see before. Shakespeare insists that, at least in this play, Lear's madness is his route toward perceptions of things that he's not been allowed, he's not allowed himself to see before but that must be spoken, that must be said now.

PLUMMER

Lear's kingdom has been sliding into civil war, but he has been on his own private journey, and this has changed him. Does he now deserve forgiveness for the dreadful judgments that caused all this suffering? It is now that we hear from his loyal daughter Cordelia, who returns to liberate the kingdom from her two sisters and their unholy alliance with the bastard Edmund.

VINALL

Cordelia comes back as the Queen of France, a woman who's now married. She's been through something devastating, and that's ma-- that's matured her, and I think the realization of her love for her father, um, has matured her because often you don't know how you love a parent 'til they're gone.

PLUMMER

By now, Lear is frail and confused. Will he even recognize his beloved daughter? Sir? Hmm? Do you know me? You are a spirit, I know. When did you die? Still, still far wide!

MAN

He's scarce awake. Where am I?

PLUMMER

Intensely moved, Cordelia asks her father to bless her. No, sir, you must not kneel. I pray you do not mock me. I am a very foolish fond old man, fourscore and upward. The skill I have remembers not these garments.

Birds chirping

PLUMMER

Do not laugh at me. For, as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child Cordelia. And so I am! I am! PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

Lear is no longer the arrogant man he was at the opening of the play.

McKELLEN

He begins to be-- be--being a man who says something and expects it to be obeyed. "You're my favorite daughter, therefore you will love me more than my other daughters." Well, you can't--you can't impose that on somebody. But by the time they're reconciled, he has won the right to her love and--and sweetly, um.... thinks that he doesn't deserve it, and I think that's what touches her so much, that he's asking to be forgiven, and--and what he clearly needs is her love. I know you do not love me, for your sisters have, as I remember, done me wrong. You have some cause, they have none. No cause. No cause. Uh, he--he doesn't care what happens to him at all, as long as--everything is for her now. He's--everything is no longer selfish. It's everything is for Cordelia, for her. Um, his world doesn't matter to him anymore. "Pray, you do not mock me. "I am a very foolish fond old man "and to deal plainly, "I fear that I'm not in my right mind. "Do not laugh at me, for, as I am a man, "I think this lady "to be my child... Cordelia." Emotionally, the play could end there for us the audience. Father and daughter have been reconciled. In the historical story, it does. Lear regains his kingdom, but Shakespeare's play flies in the face of history. In a battle between Cordelia's forces and those of her elder sisters, Lear and Cordelia are captured and sent to prison. Shakespeare's conclusion will be devastating... but does it have to be that way? I want to take you on a diversion. Believe it or not, for nearly 150 years, Shakespeare's "Lear" vanished from the stage, and in its place audiences saw a version with a happy ending. In a script by Nahum Tate, Cordelia and Lear are rescued by Edgar, and they all live happily ever after. Theater historian Tanya Pollard has made a study of what seems to me to be an outlandish idea. From 1681, when Nahum Tate wrote this version, until 1838, this was the only version of "King Lear" that any audiences knew. In America, in fact, the original version had never been staged, so this was "King Lear" for all intents and purposes. Oh, it's extraordinary, isn't it, when you come to think of it? It's awful. It's fascinating! But what's also fascinating is that 15 years before Macready restored the tragic ending, um, Edmund Kean tried to restore it, and he played the tragic ending, and it played for only 3 performances before it shut in 1823. And what I find fascinating is the question of what inspired audiences to be ready, to be willing to watch a tragic ending in 1838 when they hadn't been for so long? Yeah, well I think it was a--well, if Macready, with great guts said, "Let's go back to the original "and teach these sons of guns about life on the stage and off," uh, then I think he was obviously very, very effective as King Lear and made them believe it and made them suffer. And perhaps they were tired of all that. Who knows if they were tired of all this coy happiness going around? Yes, I see. Yes. PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

However, it seems as if this lighter take has never completely gone away. The Tate version is still staged periodically as a curiosity, and there was a version of it done not long ago, and the actors were struck by how much the audience really enjoyed the play. As a matter of fact, I would like to see a production just for fun. I think it would be fascinating. For fun, yes. Yeah. Yeah, would be great.

PLUMMER

At The Globe, they're going to show just what Nahum Tate's version might have looked like. To reflect the formal Restoration style of acting, they are going to don their very restrictive costumes. I'm gonna keep my thermals on. Excellent. Thank you. Leg. So, um, let's look at a slightly different ending to the play by Nahum Tate. The happy ending version, there's no--there's no dead bodies at the end. Um, well, there's less dead bodies, uh, shall we say. Um, what do, what do you make of it in Cordelia?

WOMAN

Yeah, I think it's, um, it's definitely entertaining, um, if not a bit silly.

MAN

Yes, of course he gets the girl, but that's what should happen in--in a good old romp, which this feels a bit more like, you know, like "Zorro" or-- Yeah, it is, it's that. Or "The Three Musketeers." "The Three Musketeers," yes. Yeah.

PLUMMER

It starts, as in Shakespeare's original, with Cordelia and Lear in prison. A sudden gloom o'erwhelms me and the image of death o'erspreads the place. Ah! Who are these? It's a guard, arrived to take them away for execution. Thou deceiving sleep! Come, sirs, make ready your cords. You, sir, I'll seize. If there be anything that you hold dear, I beg you to dispatch me first. Ugh! Off! Hell hound! By the gods, I charge thee. 'Tis my Cordelia. Lear struggles. Pious daughter! Can he manage? No pity? Err! But wait! It's Cordelia's beloved. Ye vultures hold your impious hands or take a speedier death than thou shalt give. My Edgar, oh! Edgar has saved the day. Ha ha ha! That was not what Shakespeare wrote. In Shakespeare's play, Edgar will defeat Edmund, but he cannot help Cordelia, nor Lear. They are captured and, under Edmund's order, Cordelia is hanged. Lear dies with his daughter's body in his arms. Every actor playing Lear has to prepare himself for this moment. This is it. She's dead as earth. Thou'lt come no more. Never! Never! Never! Never! Never!

MILLER

He is absolutely bewildered by the fact that she's dead, whatever that is, that he has to come face to face with the absolute irreversibility of mortality. Look, there! Look! There!

PLUMMER

It's a heart-breaking moment, but this ending gives us something that Tate's version completely misses. Look up, my lord. Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! Shakespeare makes us confront the worst and then, at this moment, he offers us something like hope. With nothing more to learn in life, Lear almost welcomes death. He's ready to die, and he dies. The extraordinary thing about that scene, is it despair at the end? No, it's not. It's ecstasy. It's--it's--it's a sublime death that Lear is experiencing, and it really--it really is the happiest of all-- of all deaths. It's extraordinary that he's rel--that he is released at last, um, by, by death. So there--there's nothing wrong about dying, and--and he shares with her, and he realizes of course that he now knows what love is really. Cordelia has to sacrifice herself in some way. She has to go. She has to die to make him see.

McKELLEN

We know him so well by that time that I think we want him to be released, want him to go. What else can he do with his life? What's the pur--what possible purpose would there be? He doesn't need to discover anything more. He--he has discovered it. So there's sort of peace in the end.

VINALL

It's so tragic. It's so bleak, but at least they've had a moment together, and that's--nothing can break that ever, and that moment is more important than anything.

PLUMMER

But I think he's not just found Cordelia. I think he's found everything in life he missed and the beauty of it that he longed for. The tragedy of the play is that it's too late.

BATE

This is a play where the characters are forever invoking the gods for their support, and the gods don't answer. The gods aren't just. This is not a play that ends with the divine justice of the evil dying and the good surviving. It's as if there's an awful kind of cosmic emptiness, the end of the world, and yet even in all that suffering, there is love in the play, something human, something to hold onto. PLUMMER,

VOICE-OVER

And that humanity, for me, is the beauty of the play. Despite all the conflict and all the horror, we see the spirit of Lear and the possibility of love survive.

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