Word: lear
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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BOSTON MUSEUM. - Edwin Booth as "King Lear...
BOSTON THEATRE. - Salvini in "King Lear...
This wonderful spectacle is nowhere seen to more advantage than in King Lear. For here we have a central figure too great and awe-inspiring to be lost in the confusion of the scene. Lear's voice, whether in rage, madness or contrition, is so powerful that all the whisperings and wranglings around him seem but its tumultuous echoes. The accompaniment of incidental action does not drown the voice of his supreme passion; and thus is avoided that fault which appears in some of Shakspere's historical plays, where the medley of sentiments and incidents is such that...
These peculiarities of King Lear have been thought to make it unfit for the stage. Lamb, in the midst of scathing remarks about one who had mutilated the plot and aspired to improve on Shakspere, asserts that Lear cannot be acted. Such a judgment may be regarded as a bolder impeachment of Shakspere than the mere alteration of a plot, since it condemns, not a part, but the whole, for the purpose for which it was written. For I take it that closet tragedies are not produced until authors get to be more in love with themselves than with nature...
...great a paradox may well induce us to think better on this subject. Indeed, it seems to me that no play can gain more by being seen than such a play as King Lear. Who has ever realized, without the aid of the senses, all the horror and pathos of such a scene as that in which Lear speaks with Edgar and the fool? The majestic madness of the King, the bitter jests and incoherent ditties of the fool, the hideous gibberish of Edgar, each in its peculiar tone telling a story of great and unmerited woe,- what a marvelous...