King Lear

by William Shakespeare

In Noble’s second production of the play for the RSC in 1993:

the dynamic of the play emanates from damaged families; in particular Lear’s and Gloucester’s two parallel families.

What the play does is to take the audience into the interior of themselves.

Tom o’Bedlam (who happens to be a man going through the same crisis, another man who’s been used to comfort and is now, in order to survive, turning himself into a crazed beggar),

Shakespeare had long been fascinated with the philosophical idea that a king can journey through the guts of a beggar.

but in Lear he takes it to the extreme.

think Richard II is almost a sketch f...

The whole extravagant business is a contrivance to feed his vanity,

Hilary Townley played both Cordelia and the Fool

Edgar is left to conclude the play, and

He is by then almost the only character left standing,