As A. C. Bradley has famously noted over a hundred years ago, King Lear
is "too huge for the stage." (247) It is a tragedy that defies
traditional notions of a well-made play. Not unlike Beckett’s dramatic
art, King Lear plunges audiences into disarray in the very first act and
mercilessly explores the ensuing sense of disorientation. Equally,
though, according to Bradley, it is Shakespeare’s “greatest work”
because “the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to a
rarer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination.” (248) That appeal
to poetic imagination urges us to transcend notions of a well-made play,
and it liberates us to experience King Lear as art, as a poetic
achievement that defies the constraints of the stage.
Recent productions have explored the gender relations, with Queen Lear
and her sons mirroring the dysfunctional family of an elderly father and
his three daughters. We will consider the family relations at the heart
of the play, and we will discuss whether the play raises questions
about generational conflicts more broadly.
A.C. Bradley. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Macmillan, 1905.
- Dozent/in: Felix Sprang