Word: lear
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stage history of Romeo and Juliet is unusually curious. For a time the ending was changed to keep Romeo and Juliet happily alive (for a century and a half King Lear was performed with a similar happy ending). Then for 165 years Juliet was made to revive before Romeo's death, to permit the two a teary dialogue of farewell...
...imaginary primitive, but he has been legitimately interpreted as the Colonial Victim violated by Western Man. Kate, of The Taming of the Shrew, may succumb to Petruchio, but not before declaring herself the most eloquent women's liberationist. There is no father who can look upon Lear and Cordelia without pangs, and as for Hamlet, he is so real that he has been psychoanalyzed (and found Oedipal) by Freud's disciple, Ernest Jones...
...Antenucci '73, the current assistant secretary, is slated to replace head secretary Jane Tewksbury '74 next term, with Joel Berman '76 and Stephanie Lear '76 as assistants. These appointments are subject to final approval by the House masters...
Each age fashions its text of Shakespeare in its own image. The sentimental, humanitarian men of the eighteenth century rewrote King Lear's agonizing, comfortless conclusion; the early Victorians cut out the bawdy and the morally subversive. The turn-of-the-century aesthetes were more sophisticated--they convinced themselves that words, speeches, scenes, and even whole plays were so bad that they could not have been written by Shakespeare. This was more dangerous than any of Samuel Johnson's incredibly insensitive moral judgments, because it made textual criticism the servant of literary taste instead of a neutral point of departure...
...comedies are fair-minded but not very exciting. Herschel Baker's pieces are eloquent though they concentrate on literary influence rather than discussion of character. The essays by Frank Kermode bear all the marks of a penetrating intelligence hamstrung by external restrictions. This sense of containment is clearest in Lear, where Kermode seems to feel required to beg the whole question of literary interpretation and retreat to the view that since Shakespeare's audience was Christian, we can safely assume the play does not mean what it says. Kermode was not so cautious when he edited his brilliant Signet edition...