On 4/11/2014 12:43 PM, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Yeah, I did that, too, but still forget to carry that notebook, Ken. When I do keep an idea repeating in my head it still has changed (usually for the worse, by the time I get to that piece of paper....
The weird part is after I threw down/up those lines, I was doing
something in the apartment and suddenly the whole King Lear thing came
back. Georgie Yeats automatic writing. Nevertheless its not auto
writing, I had to write it down as I thought of it--a family phone
call--and then start to polish it. That's still happening. It's very raw
emotionally. Maybe that IS good--how must Albany feel hearing his wife
slam-dunked by her father in the public space of a castle hall with,
presumably, even the servants around? Shades of Downton Abbey or
Upstairs, Downstairs. Nothing has happened yet for him to go off on her
as he does later in the play. She's still his wife. Lear's curse is a
horrible overreaction from a captious man who is somewhat responsible
for what happens to him. I always picture Goneril sinking to the floor
in tears and anger. "Now I know know how my kid sister Cordelia must've
felt!" Which is to say, Lear is far from blameless: his explosion toward
Goneril almost sets up her treatment of Lear as the play progresses.
Have I suggested I think Lear is the greatest play in English?O:-)
In any case, it's the second poem in a sequence of Lear poems. I suspect
it's going to turn into a series of phone calls between protagonists. We
shall see.
Ken
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