Well, you'd be nervous if you took on the pre-eminent Shakespearean actor of the age, to say nothing of his current director, the equally eminent, Sam Mendes. Even so, I do, I will! Here is an extract from a very knowledgeable piece in The Telegraph by SRB who is at this moment playing the king in King Lear:
Difficulties arise when theater practitioners change things that Shakespeare did not clearly authorise. In the production of King Lear that I am currently involved with, there is a glaring, perhaps even controversial, example of this. The Fool, one of Lear’s few friends, disappears halfway through the play and this is considered by commentators as either gratifyingly mysterious or simply unsatisfactory. We decided that the King, now mad and predictably violent for much of the time, should club the Fool to death.
Sorry, Simon and Sam, darlings, but there is absolutely no indication of such a ferocious act of butchery by the old king and even when he is mad he is, by and large, gently, even amiably, mad. As SRB himself points out, although the Fool disappears without explanation halfway through the play, towards the end Lear tells us that his "poor fool is hanged", although it is not clear whether he is telling the truth or, in his mental confusion, mixing up the Fool with Cordelia who was hanged and whose dead body he is cradling. On the other hand, that throw-away line might simply be yet another example of Will who, as SRB emphasises in his essay, was remarkably careless in tying up all the loose ends in his plot-lines and suddenly realised that someone ought to tell the audience what had happened to a hitherto important character. Alas, we shall never know.
Of course, this is all more than somewhat esoteric, the stuff that keeps Shakespearean luvvies happy during rehearsals, but such a gross interpretation is wrong! Actors and directors are there to serve the writer. Of course, in Shakespeare's case his intentions can be exceedingly difficult to discern, not least because part of his genius was in his ability to 'speak' fluently in the voice of the character who is speaking, which makes it almost impossible to be certain what his intentions were. It is this malleability of meaning that makes working on his plays such a fascinating exercise. Thus, a director or actor might strive mightily 'to serve the writer' but in Will's case it is infuriatingly difficult. The texts themselves usually come in a variety of different guises. The Quartos and the Folios are usually considered to be the most dependable but, needless to say, they differ one from another and so, immediately, choices have to be made. It is only fair to add that whichever choice is made will certainly upset someone!
But in this particular case we are not dealing with a choice between competing texts but a deliberate invention by the actor/director. At this point, with all the slipperiness of a politician changing sides, let me defend invention! In fact, SRB, himself, was the author of one which I actually saw and thought was absolutely brilliant because in one tiny piece of actor's 'business' he illuminated a stage relationship in a way I had never considered before. He mentions it in this particular essay:
Whatever arguments we can produce for such a decision – and I, of course, think they are watertight, despite the fact that much later in the story Lear mentions that the Fool has been hanged – there is no doubt that some find such a departure from the text distressing. Years ago, in a production of The Tempest (also directed, as it happens, by Sam Mendes), I played a rather haughty Ariel who, at the moment of being given his freedom by Prospero, spat in his master’s face. This seemed to me to be an absolutely understandable protest given Ariel’s long years of servitude, but many spectators, for understandable reasons, disliked it intensely.
I have never forgotten that moment! It was shocking but illuminating. If you read the text of The Tempest you do perceive an undercurrent of tension between the old magician and the fairy he has ensnared to use for his own purposes. When you ponder on it, what could be worse for a sprite, free as air, to be held captive by a mere human? What was gutless, though, was the decision by someone - Mendes? SRB? - to remove the spit when the show transferred to London. I went to see it again and was bitterly disappointed.
So, you might ask - if you're not asleep already - why do I praise that bit of invention so highly and yet disapprove of another in which King Lear beats his Fool to death? My reason is simple, there is nothing that I know of in the text that will support such an invention. When it comes to violence, Lear is, to use a common expression, 'all mouth and no trousers'! He threatens, he rages, he stamps his foot, but when it comes to it he might banish you, or, if you are a servant he might give you a clout, but that's it! Here he is at his extreme of rage and ferocity:
I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall—I will do such things— What they are yet I know not, but they shall be The terrors of the earth. But he doesn't actually do anything! SBR does not vouchsafe a reason for his extraordinary invention. Obviously, I am prepared to read it and consdier it fairly if he ever does but in the meantime, bitterly, because I am a truly ardent fan of his, I will be avoiding his King Lear.
