Wednesday, April 16, 2014

King Lear


I enjoyed Sam Mendes' grizzly production of King Lear at the National Theatre starring Simon Russell Beale. Shakespeare's insults are wonderful:

Kent: Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald: What dost thou know me for?
Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

3 Comments:

Anonymous kinglear said...

I still say the best Lear was Nigel Hawthorne.....I was just totting up - I think apart from school productions and amateur productions I've seen it 22 times...

12:40 pm  
Blogger Whispering Walls said...

KL! Have you seen this production?

2:15 pm  
Anonymous kinglear said...

Indeed - and weirdly I'm going again on 28th May!!

9:31 pm  

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