Books, Arts & Manners: Comedy Tomorrow

MY Shakespeare professor told his classes that he had never seen a satisfactory performance of King Lear and did not expect to. This is not because Lear poses the sorts of nearly insoluble questions of motivation that Othello does (theatrical legend has Shakespeare saying to Burbage, a propos of Othello, “There, you whoreson, I’ve written a part even you’ll not be able to play”), but simply because the casting difficulties are so great. Not, again, at the top: Lear requires great depth and power, but there are actors in every generation who have those qualities (just as, although I have never seen a good Lady Macbeth, I’m confident that someday I shall). No, the problem in King Lear is that, to a greater degree even than Hamlet, it has a huge number of characters who must be well cast if the play is to work. I’ve now seen it work for the second time, both at Stratford, Ontario, and thereby hangs a tale.

The key is the nature of a repertory company—which of course is what Shakespeare himself was writing for. How, on Broadway, could you persuade an actor capable of playing the Duke of Albany—capable, that is, of showing this rather weak and ambitious man’s growing disgust with his wife’s ruthlessness—to take a role in which he gets to say only a handful of lines? But in a repertory company the man who plays this small but important part tonight may well have top billing in something else tomorrow night. Similarly, Cordelia, one of the most famous roles in all literature, has fewer than a hundred lines (theatrical legend, again, has it that on the Jacobean stage, the boy who played the Fool doubled as Cordelia). And yet, if the actress cannot, in those lines and in her bearing, convey pity without sentimentality, and real forgiveness, then the redemption that precedes the final horror will fall flat, no matter how great the actor playing Lear (or, for that matter, those playing Kent and Edgar). Finding the right girl for the part is immeasurably easier if she will be playing it only one night in four, with bigger (even if less great) roles the other nights.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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MY Shakespeare professor told his classes that he had never seen a satisfactory performance of King Lear and did not expect to. This is not because Lear poses the sorts of nearly insoluble questions of motivation that Othello does (theatrical legend has Shakespeare saying to Burbage, a propos of Othello, “There, you whoreson, I’ve written a part even you’ll not be able to play”), but simply because the casting difficulties are so great. Not, again, at the top: Lear requires great depth and power, but there are actors in every generation who have those qualities (just as, although I have never seen a good Lady Macbeth, I’m confident that someday I shall). No, the problem in King Lear is that, to a greater degree even than Hamlet, it has a huge number of characters who must be well cast if the play is to work. I’ve now seen it work for the second time, both at Stratford, Ontario, and thereby hangs a tale.

The key is the nature of a repertory company—which of course is what Shakespeare himself was writing for. How, on Broadway, could you persuade an actor capable of playing the Duke of Albany—capable, that is, of showing this rather weak and ambitious man’s growing disgust with his wife’s ruthlessness—to take a role in which he gets to say only a handful of lines? But in a repertory company the man who plays this small but important part tonight may well have top billing in something else tomorrow night. Similarly, Cordelia, one of the most famous roles in all literature, has fewer than a hundred lines (theatrical legend, again, has it that on the Jacobean stage, the boy who played the Fool doubled as Cordelia). And yet, if the actress cannot, in those lines and in her bearing, convey pity without sentimentality, and real forgiveness, then the redemption that precedes the final horror will fall flat, no matter how great the actor playing Lear (or, for that matter, those playing Kent and Edgar). Finding the right girl for the part is immeasurably easier if she will be playing it only one night in four, with bigger (even if less great) roles the other nights.