Customer Reviews

King Lear (Shakespeare Made Easy)

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King Lear is a fantastic book...if you can ever understand it. I tried several times to get a handle on the plot, which is not as easy a task as it sounds. I even tried watching it on PBS, but I only succeeded in catching a few words and an occasional sentence. However, that changed after I purchased this book, which has the original Shakespeare on one page and the same text in modern English on the following page. Half the book is the original text and half is in modern language, with the pages side by side so that you can use the modern language page to understand the Shakespeare text. You can either read the whole book in modern English first to figure out what is going on, or you can just use the modern English part when you need it (which I found was often with the text of King Lear). I find this so much better than a book that just translates an occasional word here and there. Even if you understand the meaning of every word, sometimes it is still hard to understand what Shakespeare meant, but you won't have that problem with this book. Using this book to read King Lear was for me the key to making this wonderful play finally understandable and highly enjoyable.

I'm sorry to say that of Shakespeare's four main tragedies (Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth) I think I like this one least. Othello has such suspense, and plays with the idea of fate controlling our every moves. MacBeth is the dark play that deals with our fears and our primal ids. Hamlet is the supreme story that sums up all of life's ups and downs. And Lear, well...Lear is about relationships. It's best scenes involve communication between two souls, or lack thereof (though Gloucester's blinding scene is quite dramatic). Sadly, Lear is just too long for my liking, and I longed to hear more from the daughters--Regan and Goneril are so nasty you love to hate them, and Cordelia is so gentle that you love to love her. I must say that this is a wonderful play, filled with action and double-crossing, sure to satisfy.

Although King Lear is set in pagan England, 700 years before Christ, the plot is an allegory of the suffering of Catholics under the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Here the old fathers (the Catholic Church) are persecuted by the young (the Church of England) and the realm's most faithful daughter (Cordelia) is sent into exile. A central point in the play is the fool's prophesy when "bawds and whores do churches build." The brutality of Elizabeth's reign is very well portrayed in "Cranmer's Godly Order" by Michael Davies and will provide great insight into the environment that Shakespeare was living. Shakespeare's parents and best friend suffered under this persecution and King Lear was written to encourage recusant Catholics to be patient and persevere in the face of hardship. "The weight of this sad time we must obey." The failed invasion of the French army parallels the failed invasion of the Spanish Armada in its attempt to avenge the murder of Queen Mary. Perhaps for these reasons, King Lear's importance was downplayed for several hundred years in Anglican England and only today it is recognized as Shakespeare's greatest play.