Word: fooled
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...carve up the map of England for his daughters. As a kind of self-made king, he falls into the first of his blindnesses, the idea that he can give away his possessions and his crown and yet retain power in his person alone. Cobb reveals how the fool in Lear is intrinsically a child. This 80-year-old is an eight-year-old in disguise, throwing temper tantrums against daughters whom he has naively empowered to switch roles with him. Regan and Goneril are, in effect, a stern, unyielding common mother fiercely chastising an obstreperous child. Cobb is equally...
...suggesting the hapless actor of whom Kenneth Tynan wrote that listening to his Lear "was like lip reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." But during the storm on the heath, Cobb's Lear gains in compassionate wisdom what he loses in pride and sanity. As he shelters the shivering Fool, listens to the gibberings of mad Tom and later gazes into the bloody, eyeless face of Gloucester, Lear sheds his vanity and learns of his oneness with "unaccommodated man . . . such a poor bare forked animal...
...distinguished by a supporting cast that truly supports. A rarity in the past, the players' acting rapport is a tribute to the skill of Director Gerald Freedman. Philip Bosco's Kent is a beautifully modulated performance with a Gielgud-like delivery of the Shakespearean line. Rene Auberjonois as the Fool is a supple mime of wisdom and Stephen Elliott's Gloucester is a man of probity incarnate, woefully abused. Barbette Tweed's Cordelia is appropriately sweet and good; Patricia Elliott as Regan and Marilyn Lightstone as Goneril are properly serpentine. Only Stacy Keach disappoints, by failing into smirky stage-villain...
Scholars have reacted to Wilson's charges with something less than cool objectivity. "Edmund Wilson, who is to be admired and cherished for the things he can do, has made a fool of himself this time. He is very, very wrong," says Dr. Matthew Bruccoli, head of the English Department at Ohio State University, which is producing the M.L.A.'s Hawthorne edition. Twain Scholar Hen ry Nash Smith of the University of California at Berkeley complains that "Wilson paws and snorts like a bull moose. He seems to be saying that we should correct serious distortions, but doesn...
...wealth rather than merit, and army life is ruled by absurd traditions and savage discipline. This is the army of which Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard), the man who was to lead the charge of the Light Brigade, is the symbol: the film's Cardigan is a cantakerous old fool who purchased his command, and squandered it with the evil courage of a suicide-victim...