Lear's Daughters

I enjoyed the production of Lear’s Daughters. I didn’t think it was trying to be controversial simply for the sake of being controversial. I thought it was trying to respond to a play that has a lot of influence over all of Western literature, yet which has some questionable depictions/ characterizations of women. I didn’t really find anything shocking about the play. This might be because I recently finished a project about rape in the Congo, where women are getting gang raped and getting AK 47s shot into their vaginas and have to walk around with feces and urine pouring down their legs and are then shunned by their husbands and other villagers, but in comparison a character having an abortion in a play just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. How do you respond to a play that has some misogynist tendencies when you live in a world where women are so undervalued that this kind of treatment is acceptable? It could be argued that “Shakespeare” has nothing to do with anything I’ve just said, but I think that “Shakespeare” is more than just a great writer. “Shakespeare” is an institution that can be used for homogenization, for legitimating the views of whoever (and by whoever I mean people who have traditionally been in power) it is that has decided that he is unquestionably the best. (After the play some people were saying that King Lear is not only the greatest literary production of the West, but of all humanity; does this not bother anybody else?) After all, “Shakespeare,” however great he is, is nonetheless from the point of view of an English male living in the 16th century, and therefore, no matter how “ahead of his time” he was, runs the risk of being both patriarchal and imperialist. I think Lear’s daughters, with all its screaming women and barely there Kings, is a good thing for “Shakespeare” in general because it keeps it from “weigh[ing] like a nightmare on the brains of the living” – it keeps it from being oppressive and from being irrelevant. I mean, if you are not an English major or interested in storytelling in any way, why would you read Shakespeare? And how is someone in South Africa supposed to view Henry V? Would they feel patriotic after listening to his heroic speeches? I think Lear’s Daughters and other plays of the same vein (like Paula Vogel’s Desdemona) make Shakespeare matter: they breathe life into material that can sometimes seem (to me, anyway) dated and wholly unconnected to my life. I also think that academics have a tendency to turn “Shakespeare” into some kind of metanarrative on par with Christianity, and I like that the play challenges that authority.

"Lear's Daughters"

I really didn’t know what to expect going in to watch “Lear’s Daughters”. I have read “King Lear” before and assumed that the play would take that story and offer a further in-depth look at his daughters. This however was not the case. It wasn’t until after the play that I realized Lear’s Daughters was almost a prequel to “King Lear”. My initial assumption caused me to be a little confused throughout the play but towards the end everything began to make sense. I found it very interesting that the King himself never speaks in the play but just his presence alone holds with such a heavy weight. Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia are locked in their rooms and in a way forced to remain childlike for their father. It’s through their memories and exposure of Nanny’s fantasies that they reveal the true side to King Lear- a man consumed by his sexual desires and need to have a son. Each daughter, due to her birth order, reacts in a different way; that was the most interesting part. The production was well done and each performer did an outstanding job. The androgynous fool reminded me of The Joker in Batman. He was just so dark and cynical almost, very opposite of Shakespeare’s portrayal of fools. The end with the Nanny leaving, left such a strong impression since I didn’t know what to make of her confession of Cordelia. That story would have made for another interesting play if Nanny was telling the truth since she is known for telling the daughters and the fool fairy tales.