sologdin’s Reviews > The Complete Works > Status Update

The Tragedy of King Lear

This is the folio version, which is more theatrical and economical. than the earlier 'history.' It has things that the quarto version lacks, and cuts a bit that the earlier presents. The scene progression is substantially identical, so it's not a large difference of plot--more that the local rhetorical changes shade significances differently. It's cool enough to warrant the time.

Coriolanus

Almost single-minded, this one distinguishes itself by excluding almost all secondary matter, underplots, and suchlike, focusing instead on the principle class conflict in Rome. Though it is working itself out in the political process, the protagonist can't adapt to the theatricality of civic governance and must revert to soldierly virtues. Politics as extension of war by other means, maybe?

Pericles

It's difficult to overstate the effect of this play after the brutal run of Othello, Lear, Timon, Macbeth, A&C, and AWEW, all of which forefront desolating disloyalty. The family reunion here has a sweet but non-naive innocence that makes a surly old marxist weepy. The romance roots are patent, as the text is melodic,' driving forward incessantly, with no time for harmonizing parallel subplots.

All's Well That Ends Well

It's readily apparent why this one makes people nervous--coerced marriage (as in R&J, MND), a cruel handling of a fool (as with Malvolio), a bed trick (MFM), a theater of infidelity (Othello, MAN), all zipped up nifty as the title alleges (which comes from a refrain within the play). One cool part is that Helen steps into a learned techne much like Portia and with similar success.

Antony & Cleopatra

Astute and disciplined Antony is presented as a reckless voluptuary in his later years--the complex historical process of the disintegration of the second triumvirate is stripped down to an interpersonal dispute based on his akrasia. Great meta-theater moment toward the end when Cleopatra rejects the impending spectacle of herself on stage payed by a 'squeaking boy.'

Macbeth

In the broadest strokes, we might describe the story here as the witches act ultra vires, against the will of Hecate, to engineer the destruction of the Scottish aristocracy and importation of English forms of governance. The play highlights the familiar problem of interpreting the interior of a person from their exterior--Macbeth is too paranoid, whereas Duncan is like Lear, too trusting.

Timon of Athens

Famous veteran is over generous and, like Lear, fails to recognize flattery--the same study as in Hamlet and regarding the attempt to read exterior signs on a person for their interior belief. His descent into hostis humani generis is contrasted with actual bandits and a Diogenean cynic philosopher. Here NB the wilderness does not cure the problems of the polis.

History of King Lear

This collection made the decision that the Q and F versions of Lear are not reconcilable and thus amount to two plays rather than variants of one. So here is the Q version; F follows later in the volume. I note that the comic multi-adultery of Falstaff in MWW is here played straight--the tragic result is emblematic of conflating oikos and polis, which is this text's focus.

Othello

Always marvelous. This time through, I'm seeing Iago as a prototype politics of ressentiment right populist figure. He resents an educated foreigner promoted over him by another foreigner who happens to be dark-complected and married to a local woman. It's the normal nihilistic recipe of Trump-voter concerns, with fears of other religions, miscegenation, purported elitism in expertise, and so on.

Measure for Measure

Perhaps my favorite play of his, this one takes on anti-theatrical puritan writings and eviscerates them. We see it in the spectacle created out of sacrament in the duke's disguise but also in the stage-managed creation of Angelo's lust by means of a theater of chastity during an official court appeal. The defense of theater s a general institution couldn't be stronger.