Abstract
Werner Brönnimann’s contribution focuses on staging and setting in King Lear, addressing the absence of place and the reduction of movement into vectorial directions. Taking a comparative approach, Brönnimann shows that a sense of locations and of emotive attitudes to them can in fact be found in Shakespeare’s precursors, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, Layamon’s Brut, John Higgins’s The Mirror for Magistrates, and the anonymous (or possibly Kyd’s) King Leir. Emptying locations of their residual cultural connotations, he argues, Shakespeare opens them up to the radical idiosyncrasies of the characters’ perceptions, as in the scene of Gloucester’s attempted suicide. Rather than providing an elaborate setting, Shakespeare’s stage circumscribes psychic spaces that take their shape and colour from the characters’ mental dispositions.
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Notes
- 1.
All King Lear citations are taken from W. Shakespeare (2008) The Norton Shakespeare, S. Greenblatt et al. (eds.), 2nd ed. (New York: Norton).
- 2.
Conley cites Joachim Du Bellay’s line (1558), ‘Je rempliz d’un beau nom ce grand espace vide’, as an epigraph (Conley 2003, 189).
- 3.
Terence Hawkes suggests that ‘Cornwall’ is ‘the old name for Wales and the west of England’ (Hawkes 1992, 125).
- 4.
John Gillies offers a comprehensive analysis of the division scene and the cultural and theatrical significance of its map (Gillies 2001, 109–37).
- 5.
The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir and his three daughters in Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. VII (London: Routledge, 1973), 337–402.
- 6.
In the anonymous Robin Good-Fellow, there is a section titled ‘How Robin Good-fellow led a company of fellows out of their way.’ Robin Good-Fellow misleads the group on the heath until the morning by making them follow him in the shape of a ‘walking fire’ (Anonymous 1628, n.p.). The Fool also sees Gloucester with a torch in the storm: ‘Look, here comes a walking fire’ (KL III.4.101–2).
- 7.
Oral communication, Stratford-upon-Avon, August 2012.
- 8.
See The English Renaissance Stage for a discussion of the scene’s verticality, its use of perspective, and the emptiness of space (Turner 2006, 166–9).
- 9.
For a discussion of this crucial moment’s differing representations on the page, in film and television versions see Engler (1998, 58–67).
- 10.
See Swiss German ‘Es wird einem zwirblig und trümmlig’, Schweizerdeutsches Wörterbuch (Idiotikon),1036.
- 11.
Michael Hattaway has warned me against jumping to normative conclusions about actual stage movements and gestures on the basis of such gestic impulses (oral communication, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2012).
- 12.
‘Why I do trifle thus with his despair/ Is done to cure it’ (KL IV.5.33–4).
Works Cited
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Brönnimann, W. (2016). Thickets and Beaches: Evoking Place in the Stories of King Lear . In: Habermann, I., Witen, M. (eds) Shakespeare and Space. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51835-4_4
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