Lear

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2008

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Lear. Around the turn of 1606, a group of London theatre-goers braved the plague to take in a new play by the well-known impresario, Mr William Shakespeare. Packed into the Globe Theatre, they were treated to a tale of violence, hatred and betrayal so upsetting that it thereafter languished among Shakespeare’s less popular plays.The story of Lear – of a man who divides up his property and loses the love of a daughter - is an ancient and ultimately happy one. But in the hands of William Shakespeare it became a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless universe. So shocking that after the playwright’s death it was shunned and rewritten with a happy ending. Only in the 19th and 20th centuries did Shakespeare’s bleak, experimental and disorientating drama attain the status it has now. But why did Shakespeare take a story from the deep history of Britain and make it so shockingly his own and when, from the Civil War to the Second World War, did this powerful and confusing tragedy emerge as Shakespeare’s greatest? With Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Tutorial Fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford; Catherine Belsey, Research Professor in English at the University of Wales, Swansea

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:44.0	UK forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:47.4	Hello around the turn of 1606 a group of London theatre go has braved the
0:52.3	plague to take in a new play by the well-known
0:54.4	impresario Mr William Shakespeare.
0:56.7	Packed into the Globe Theatre they were treated to a tale of violence, hatred and betrayal
1:00.6	so upsetting that it languished among Shakespeare's less popular plays
1:04.2	until rewritten about six years later with a happy ending. The play was King Lear, a drama
1:09.5	on the folly of age, the cruelty of families and the futility of ambition in the wilderness of ancient Britain, a place where, as the Duke of Albany declares in the play,
1:18.0	humanity must perforce prey on itself like monsters of the deep.
1:22.0	But why did Shakespeare take a story from the deep history of Britain
1:25.5	and make it so shockingly his own when from the Civil War to the Second World War and when
1:30.3	did this powerful and confusing tragedy emerge to be thought of as Shakespeare's greatest.
1:34.8	With me to discuss King Lear at Jonathan Bates, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick.
1:40.2	Catherine Duncan Jones, fellow in English at Summermill College, Oxford,
	...

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