The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0215 Friday, 24 March 2006
[1] From: Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 23 Mar 2006 14:26:23 -0700
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
[2] From: Bob Marks <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 23 Mar 2006 16:19:45 -0800 (PST)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
[3] From: Matt Henerson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 24 Mar 2006 00:06:01 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 23 Mar 2006 14:26:23 -0700
Subject: 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
John-Paul Spiro makes some good points. But I would respond that having
a character like Portia-or Kent, Edgar, Henry V, Vincentio, Rosalind,
Viola, etc., etc.-in disguise (even cross dressing) is quite different
from having an actor play two different characters: that is, two
characters the play intends us to take as separate and distinct persons.
The difference comes partly from the fact that, in the case of disguise,
the audience knows the character is in disguise and hears dialogue
alluding to the disguise and highlighting the ironies, while the play
texts are in no way equally explicit about doubling. As far as I know,
the texts we have from Shakespeare's time never explicitly require
doubling or indicate which parts should be doubled, nor do they use the
presumed doubling of particular parts as the source of clearly
demonstrable effects. The doubling practiced in Shakespeare's time
would (as I think) have had pragmatic reasons and limitations that would
at the very least have put symbolic and ironic reverberations on the
back burner.
But my thinking would be swayed if someone could provide concrete
evidence of doubling in Shakespeare's time deliberately designed for
symbolic or thematic effect.
I still think such symbolic and ironic doubling is a modern practice
that we should be on our guard against reading back into Shakespeare's time.
My complaint about directors confusing or abusing audiences comes from
the fact that heavy-handed directorial message-telegraphing has done
more damage than perhaps anything else to the productions I've seen over
the past 20 or 30 years.
But I admit that sometimes directors' attempts at symbolism, if done
subtly and intelligently enough, have worked for me.
Bruce Young
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bob Marks <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 23 Mar 2006 16:19:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
In discussing the doubling of Fool and Cordelia here we are skirting
around the possibility that Cordelia never left England but stayed
behind and served her father disguised as his Fool - the original Fool
having been Oswald who left Lear's service and joined up with Goneril
(in Leir).
I know that this idea must seem to be off the planet to many of you, but
I assure you that there are many good reasons for it. I have an
extensive website dedicated entirely to the idea. Some of you may not
have seen. It begins at: http://users.bigpond.net.au/catchus/student.html
Not a joke!
Bob Marks
Cordelia:
...since what I well intend, I'll do't before I speak...that you make
known It is no vicious blot....
Fool:
...Why, this fellow has banish'd two on's daughters, and did the third a
blessing against his will...
Lear:
And my poor Fool is hang'd! ... Do you see this? Look on her, look, her
lips, Look there, look there!
http://users.bigpond.net.au/catchus/chapters.html
http://users.bigpond.net.au/catchus/a000.html
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Matt Henerson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 24 Mar 2006 00:06:01 -0500
Subject: 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0203 Doubling of Cordelia and the Fool: Again
Mr. Ackroyd can offer no evidence in support of this doubling in
Shakespeare's company, and I, in my turn, can offer no real evidence for
my repudiation of the idea. Of the three--soon to be four--LEARs I've
appeared in, the roles were only doubled in one, and that didn't work
very well. The actor, a very young, petite and athletic woman--she
played Ariel in the same season--was a strong Cordelia, but she didn't
have the gravitas to oppose a much older, much larger Lear. Other than
that production, I've never seen the doubling tried, although I thought
Emma Thompson a wonderful Fool in an otherwise forgettable production
for the Renaissance Theatre Company in the early 90's, and she recorded
Cordelia for the same company a few years later, so she could certainly
have carried it off.
The problem for the contemporary director is that he or she is most
often forced to look for a Cordelia who can also play Fool, rather than
a Fool who can also play Cordelia, and Cordelia is a much more
physically specific piece of casting. She must be a woman, and while
the Fool can be either sex, the role is written male. She must be the
youngest of three sisters, all three of whom are potentially sexually
active. This is not to say that people don't have sex into their
eighties, but Goneril and Regan tend to be cast in their thirties and
forties. The Fool has no sexual stakes in the play, and he may be
played--in fact he seems to me to work best when he is played--as an
older man.
While Mr. Ackroyd, and others who argue in favor of this double,
emphasize the links between the characters, I find the differences
between them equally compelling. Certainly both try to force Lear to
acknowledge the folly of his behavior, but the way in which they each go
about it emphasizes the gulf of age and experience which separates them.
Cordelia has the absolute faith and rigorous moral convictions of the
very young. All she needs to do is tell her father the truth, and he'll
see the error of his ways. In defending her position, she advances a
50-50 division of a woman's love between a parent and a husband as the
natural order of things. There is no gray area here, none of the little
concessions to psychology or personal politics which adult children have
been making to aged parents since just after the flood. "But goes thy
heart with this?" Of course it does. She doesn't even seem to pick up
on the fury just barely concealed by "So young and so untender?" She
begins a new line with three perfect iambs: "So young, my lord, and
true." as if that will end the discussion. And the storm breaks upon
her unawares.
The Fool knows his man better; he's probably known him longer. His
attacks are much more sophisticated and indirect. He knows exactly how
far he can go before he's whipped, and he recognizes the danger to Lear
in provoking him to an ungovernable fury. In fact, he's forced to watch
in complete silence in II iv, as Goneril and Regan do deliberately
exactly what Cordelia did unconsciously in I i. "All thy other titles
thou hast given away, that thou wast born with." makes much more sense
in a middle aged or elderly mouth. Its owner has seen all sorts of
titles--permanent, transient, actual and metaphorical--come and go, and
no twenty-something would seriously advise anybody to "Leave thy drink
and thy whore/And keep in a door/And thou halt have more/Than two tens
to a score." The conservatism, not to say the puritanism, in the
injunction to lay aside the good stuff and save a little something for
your retirement makes the line an injunction from one old man to
another. The youngest daughter says "Dad, you're an idiot." The old
friend and/or retainer can plausibly say "Come on, Old Man, act your age."
All of which is not to say that there are not some young actresses out
there who can't pull both characters off, but one of the many things
that makes Emma Thompson so marvellous is that there aren't that many of
her. It's a bromide in the profession that anybody capable of playing
Juliet is too old to be cast in the role, but we've all seen marvellous
Juliets. The role is, after all, written as and for a young woman/man
by the greatest of practical playwrights. I am convinced--and again I
can offer no evidence--that the Fool was written for Robert Armin, a
profound and intelligent middle aged comedian, a fact which would make
it necessarily difficult for a young woman to play him. I've seen it
tried several times, with and without doubling Cordelia, and I've never
seen it work.
Matt Henerson
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.