여자 리어 - 리어왕의 페미니스트적 연출 전략 ?

김문기 ( Moon Ki Kim ) 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2002 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.10 No.1

Feminist scholars have long criticized Shakespeare`s King Lear as a play that aims to reestablish the patriarchal power and its legitimacy, betraying misogynistic prejudices. They have also noticed that the stage can be a very effective medium to foreground the patriarchal ideology of the play. Casting an actress for the role of Lear and thus positing a woman at the center of King Lear can be seen as a feminist`s attempt to subvert its patriarchal ideology on stage, by forcing the audience to reflect on their prejudice on the relationship between gender and power and to raise questions about the traditional interpretations of the play. This paper attempts to explore the possibilities and limits of the phenomenon of female Lear as a feminist strategy on stage, by analyzing two King Lear productions directed by a renowned avant-garde director, Robert Wilson, and a theatre collective, Mabou Mines, which cast Marianne Hoppe and Ruth Maleczech for the role of Lear respectively. Mabou Mines chose to stage King Lear for its 20th anniversary production in order to explore the ways in which power had been exerted within a family and affected by gender, race, and class in American society. For this purpose, director, Lee Breuer, reversed the gender of the entire characters, cast Gloucester and his two daughters as black, and situated the production in the 1950s` Smyma, Georgia. Despite Ruth Maleczech`s powerful performance as Lear and implications in here desire to own patriarchal language and thus challenge patriarchal representation, Mabou`s production fell short of being a full-blown feminist attack on King Lear due to directorial negligence to the details ensuing from the changes made by gender-reversal. Lack of technical subtlety and attempt to question not just gender but all forms of cultural hegemony in the specific sexual, racial, and class experience can also be attributed to the ineffectiveness of a female Lear as a feminist critique. In contrast to Mabou`s Lear production which openly proclaimed a politically resistant reading of Shakespeare`s play, Robert Wilson`s King Lear simply presented the process of Lear`s realization of human nature and death in a characteristically Wilsonian abstract and formalistic directing style. In this formalistic production, eighty-year-old Hoppe as Lear was portrayed as sexually indeterminate old (wo)man, implying that gender was not important in Wilson`s production. Despite the possibility that indifference to gender in Hoppe`s performance can be regarded as a step toward dismantling sexism based on the insistence of difference between sexes, Hoppe`s Lear functioned less as a gender critique than as a formalistic device which foregrounded Wilson`s anti-realistic aesthetics and deconstruction of the notion of unified, stable self. This study on two King Lear productions with female Lears thus argues that a female Lear alone cannot effectively subvert the dramatic narrative of King Lear, which is deeply implicated in patriarchal assumptions and designed to identify emotionally and morally with Lear`s sufferings. This study also concludes that in order to make a feminist statement with female Lears, directors are required to pay more careful attention to the details of the play and its coordination with other directorial choices. Despite tantalizing possibilities, the two productions with female Lears were experimentations which exposed the necessity of developing more diversified directing strategies for the subversion of patriarchal ideology of King Lear.

Staging the Fool and the “Stage of Fools” : King Lear by Shakespeare and Kozintsev

Hwanhee PARK 이화여자대학교 이화인문과학원 2014 탈경계인문학 Vol.7 No.3

Human existence as parallel to actors playing their roles on stage is an important theme expressed in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Grigori Kozintsev’s film adaptation of the same play. Following the tradition of the truth saying fool as depicted by Erasmus in Praise of Folly, the Fool in Shakespeare and Kozintsev plays an important role in highlighting to Lear and the audience that the kingly pomp and authority are mere props in the stage of the world. Kozintsev’s staging of the Fool, while deviating the most from the play, serves to convey the message of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Kozintsev’s Fool is visible throughout the film, entering the scene with the king and remaining in the scene even after the king dies. The Fool grows closer to King Lear in proximity as the King is stripped of his authority. Moreover, the Fool controls the tune of the film’s last scene as he plays music, and enacts the birth into the stage of fools. Such extended presence of the Fool is used by the director to convey the universal message on the nature of human existence explored in Shakespeare.

『리어왕』(King Lear)의 기독교적 해석

홍기영 ( Ky Hong ) 대한영어영문학회 2004 영어영문학연구 Vol.30 No.3

The paper attempts to interpret The King Lear in view of the Christian salvation pattern. The whole plot of The King Lear can be analysed as salvation through torture and repentance after the sin(fall). King Lear banishes Cordelia by misunderstanding her plain love commitment as deficient cordial piety while he overpraises the overflown flattery of love declared by Goneril and Regan. Contrary to his anticipation, King Lear rushes into madness because of the ingratitude and cruel attitude acted by Goneril and Regan after they got the alloted territory. King Lear rushes into a wilderness at night with his Fool, caught in a merciless storm and rain. But this extreme situation, however, makes him discover his identity through the nakedness of his physical and mental state. The very bad news of Lear's bitterness and agony brings Cordelia back to battle against Britain with a French force. Before the battle Lear recognizes Cordelia's cordial piety and asks forgiveness while Cordelia redresses Lear as the father of the prodigal son in the Bible. In this sense Cordelia symbolizes Jesus Christ by working as a regenerating agent to Lear. At last King Lear, Kent and Gloucester comes to self-discovery and salvation of their souls through torture and repentance after the faults such as misjudgement, wrath, voluntary exile or misunderstanding. < Hannam University >

더 나은 배관설비를 위하여: 베케트 후기 작품에 나타난 King Lear에 대한 문학적 암시 이

이주엽 한국현대영미드라마학회 2022 현대영미드라마 Vol.35 No.1

This paper tries to understand the nature of Beckett’s literary allusion by way of analyzing the literary allusions to King Lear appearing in his later English texts. King Lear and Beckett’s works bear similarities in terms of the theme of the failure of divine reward, the experiment in human misery and sufferings and the element of the grotesque pantomime. As a frame of reference for our study, there are three major case studies on Beckett’s literary allusions respectively undertaken by Gontarski, Knowlson and Caselli, which respectively shed light on the echoes in the mythical patterns, the generality of quotation and its sensory embodiment and the self-reflective and ironical intertextuality. As this paper analyzes Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho and Endgame as the three representative cases of Beckett’s literary allusion to King Lear, Ill Seen Ill Said’s quotation of “vile jelly” is, firstly, found to create profound thematic echoes between the fruitless efforts of its camera-eye and those of Gloucester in King Lear. In terms of the general quotation and its sensory embodiment, the text echoes the senility dramatized in King Lear by materializing the frailty of the one frail remaining eye and the abject body of the old woman. The case of ironical intertextuality in the work is performed in the way in which, the better one understands King Lear, the better one can understands the work in allusion to it itself, as a subtle device in the text bringing about the inversion between origin and product. Worstward Ho sets Edgar’s line “the worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst’” as a very important preoccupation as well as the most important thematic thread in the work. Endgame illustrates similarities to, and influences from, King Lear in its ethos and pathos. Peter Brook’s iconic 1962 production King Lear so effectively witnessed to and exploited those similarities as to alter the general interpretation as well as the critical opinion of the Shakespearean original. As Beckett himself explained, these literary allusions are like “bits of pipe” that he carefully and meticulously chose for a better working literary construction.

이윤택의 『우리 시대의 리어왕』

권오숙(Osook Kwon) 한국동서비교문학학회 2015 동서 비교문학저널 Vol.0 No.32

This study examines Korean director, Yun-taek Lee’s adaptation style of King Lear of Our Age (1995). Lee wrote and directed King Lear of Our Age on basis of Gaston Salvatore’s Stalin (1987), which is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Salvatore and Lee borrowed the wilderness scene of King Lear in which Lear’s fool mocks and tries to awaken his lord’s foolishness. In Salvatore’s adaptation, a Jewish actor whose name is Sager and whose main role on stage is King Lear discusses King Lear with Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union. Stalin is being bothered by the fear of being dethroned like Lear. Salvatore deals with a tragic history, Stalin’s cruel massacre of Jewish people in this play. Lee replaces Salvatore’s story into a scene of our own history by transferring the dictator of the Soviet Union into Korean military dictator, Doo-hwan Chun in King Lear of Our Age. Chun who is living in a Buddhist temple after stepping down from the presidency feels betrayed to his successor, Tae-woo No and is captivated by wrath like Lear. An actor summoned by the dictator like Sager criticizes his massacre in Gwangju. Lee borrowed the basic structure that an actor confronts with a dictator from Salvatore’s Stalin, but turns the story into a familiar one to the Korean audience by using of a scene of our history. In some scenes the actor plays like Malttugi, a typical character of Korean traditional Mask Dance who is a servant and satires his foolish lord. Lee’s constant challenge and experiment in Koreanized adaptation of western plays results in improvement of Korean theatre through the harmony of tradition and modernity.

리어의 '숨은 뜻'과 제국의 '지도' 그리기 : 텍스트의 열린 의미와 피터 브룩의 영상적 대안

박정만 한국외국어대학교 영미연구소 2013 영미연구 Vol.29 No.-

Shakespeare's King Lear covers a wide scope of themes presenting profound human realities, which makes it difficult to make a clear interpretation of the play and the playwright's intention. Moreover, considering that Shakespeare's texts are fundamentally a script for stage production rather than a literature for reading, the interpretation or appreciation of King Lear undeniably depends on the so-called extra-verbal dimension of the text. Ultimately the authentic approach to the maxim of the Shakespearean text demands for the reciprocal action between what is said in the text and what is seen on stage. In this respect, the concept of what Philip McGuire says 'open silence' is suggestive in both demanding and justifying the necessity of multi-dimensional as approaching tool for Shakespearean study. According to McGuire, Shakespearean text calls attention to the importance of theatrical dimension what is not voiced or silenced by the words in the play text, and therefore requires multi-dimensional reading between verbal and extra-verbal aspects. The opening scene of King Lear suggests a good example of such possibility of open meaning in that the meaning of Lear's declaration of his 'darker purpose' is open depending on the context actually visualized or constructed on stage, especially around the map Lear orders to be brought, and depending on the status of the map itself, symbolic projection of Lear: how it is carried in, where it is located, what shape it has. The interpretation of Lear's dark purpose and the map is also crucial to tell the physical and mental status of Lear and his kingdom, and also predict the meaning of the ending of the play, in terms of political order set up after the old king's death. In case of the 1971 film edition King Lear Peter Brook directed, the map is described as having already been on stage in the opening scene, and the wilderness and primitiveness of its appearance shows that choas and disorder is epidemic in Lear's world, delivering the feeling of loss of community. Also the picture portrayed in the opening scene promise no hope of rehabilitation or reestablishment or political order in the future of Lear's world, which touches on the historical reality of the British Empire what has been losing her power and prosperity since the second World War up to the 1970s.

보통법 무대 위의 리어 왕

하재홍,박미경 서울시립대학교 서울시립대학교 법학연구소 2020 서울법학 Vol.27 No.4

In The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare foregrounds the common law, in particular, regarding a patriarch’s support of families and their obedience, inheritance and oaths, contract and considerations, the poor and vagrants. Act 1, Scene 1 of the play opens with Lear’s controversial proposal of distributing his territory to three daughters through a love test and ends with the king’s rejection of Cordelia as a consequence of the youngest daughter’s unkind response to the father’s question. In the very beginning, Act 1, Scene 1 projects all the sufferings that Lear will go through afterwards. On the one hand, critics of King Lear have failed to note the common law as a dominant aspect of the tragedy. Cordelia’s reply to Lear’s question has been interpreted as a kind of persistent truth-telling or subjectivist attitude, while his reaction to her defiant answer has been understood as a symptom of senility. This perspective is indicative of a failure to distinguish the meaning of Cordelia’s answer from her ensuing attitude in the scene. This paper proposes the common law as a crucial lens through which it is possible to read Cordelia’s answer as her insight into Lear’s hidden intention to depend upon her after his abdication. Furthermore, Cordelia makes it clear that she will marry and receive a third of the territory only insofar as she shares the responsibility of taking care of Lear with Goneril and Regan, and yet she will support her father in return for her duty alone. According to the common law regarding family support in Renaissance England, Cordelia’s answer turns out to be most just and right as Gloucester points out. Lear distributes his territory to his two elder daughters as a gift without expecting anything like support. In this precise sense, Lear hands over his territory to Goneril and Regan, and yet he is not supposed to demand anything in return from both of them. Moreover, Lear can stay with his two elder daughters only insofar as he follows their directions. Denied a shelter by both Goneril and Regan, Lear wanders in the wilderness; nonetheless, the common law does not require grown-up children to take care of their aged parent. Exposed to the elements in the wasteland, Lear finds himself suffering from plebian destitution and the merciless punishment to which poor vagrants are subject but he disregarded as a monarch, thus resonating with the Poor Law and its dark sides. Such characters as Lear, Gloucester, Edgar, and Cordelia all are determined to endure inexorable suffering. Last but not least, the common law urges one to bear affliction that she or he has preferred to undergo instead of pitying the sufferer. Therefore, King Lear testifies to the fact that actors and audience are familiar with the common law, which explains their life stories and reflects their position either as parents or as children. 리어 왕 에는 셰익스피어의 시대 가장의 부양과 가족의 복종, 상속과 서약, 계약과 약인, 빈자와 유랑인 등에 관한 보통법의 법리가 잘 나타나 있다. 리어 왕 의 1막1장은 리어 왕이 세 딸에 사랑경연을 통해 토지를 분할해 주겠다는 제안으로 시작해 가장 큰 몫을 앞둔 코딜리아가 쌀쌀맞은 답변을 하고, 격분한 리어 왕이 코딜리아를 내쫓는 것으로 전개된다. 이 1막1장은 극의 출발점이자 배경으로서 리어 왕이 겪게 되는 모든 고난들은 여기서 필연적으로 파생되는 것이다. 그런데 지금까지 리어 왕 의 해석에 있어 보통법이 극의 전체 흐름을 장악하고 있는 면이 간과되어 왔다. 이 글에서는 코딜리아가 리어 왕이 자신에 부양을 기대한다는 의도가 아직 드러나지 않은 상태에서 그의 의도를 정확히 간파했고, 리어 왕에게 자신은 결혼할 것이며, 고너릴 및 리건과 리어 왕의 부양에 대한 책임을 함께 나누는 조건으로만 토지를 받겠다, 또 그 경우에도 보통법에 따른 최소한의 의무로서만 리어 왕을 부양하겠다고 답변한 것으로 해석한다. 셰익스피어 시대의 부양에 관한 보통법의 태도에 비추어보면, 코딜리아의 답변은 글로스터 공의 말처럼 가장 정의롭고 또 옳은 것이다. 리어 왕은 고너릴과 리건에게 받을 대가를 고려하지 않고 토지를 나누어주었으므로 두 딸들에게 그것은 선물이다. 리어 왕은 두 딸에게 부양에 대한 권리나 기대를 가질 수 없으며, 두 딸의 지시를 잘 따르는 조건으로만 보호를 받을 수 있다. 리어 왕은 이를 거부하고 황야로 나갔으나, 보통법은 자녀에게 노년의 부모에 대한 직접적인 부양책임을 지우지 않는다. 리어 왕이 유랑걸식을 면하지 못하는 처지가 되고서야 발견한 것은 셰익스피어 시대의 걸인과 이들을 처벌하는 구빈법이었다. 끝으로 리어 왕과 글로스터 공, 에드가와 코딜리아는 모두 고난에 처하고서도 이를 회피하지 않고 견뎌내겠다고 한다. 보통법은 자신의 선택한 바로서 고난을 겪는 사람을 일절 동정하지 않으며 그 고난을 견뎌내도록 이끌어준다. 이처럼 극의 전개를 통해 보통법은 등장인물들의 선택과 행동의 이유를 설명하며, 관객들에게는 자녀로서 또 연로한 부모로서 살아가야 하는 자신의 모습을 돌아보게 한다.

일본 영화 <란>과 『리어왕』에 나타난 비극성 고찰

강준수 한국일본근대학회 2024 일본근대학연구 Vol.- No.83

본 연구의 목적은 윌리엄 셰익스피어의 희곡 리어왕 을 원작으로 하는 일본 영화 <란>을 통해서 고귀한 인물이 지닌 비극성이 재현되는 방식이 지닌 유사성과 차이점을 논의해보고자 하는 것이다. 구로사와 아키라 감독은 일본 영화 <란>을 프랑스와 합작하여 1985년 개봉하였다. 구로사와 감독은 리어왕 을 토대로 한 영화 <란>의 각색이 원작의 재현보다는 새롭게 창조된 모습을 보여준다. 구로사와 감독의 이러한 시도는 영화 <란>에서 보여지는 시대변화, 스토리의 일부 변형, 그리고 영화라고 하는 장르적 차이로 표현할 수 있는 영상기법이라고 할 수 있다. 리어왕이 경험하는 비극의 핵심 요인은 그가 지닌 성격적 결함에서 기인한다. 리어왕은 오랜 시간 동안의 권력을 통해서 상대방에 대한 이해보다는 오만, 주관성, 그리고 쉽게 현혹되는 어리석음을 갖추고 있다. 또한 리어왕의 비극은 두 명의 딸들이 지닌 물질적 탐욕과 함께 전개된다. 그러나 리어왕이 지닌 비극적 요인 중 딸들과의 갈등과 배신은 보편적인 성격의 것이란 점에서 관객들의 몰입력을 약화시킨다. 그리고 리어왕의 비극성은 개인의 결함과 혈육의 배신에 한정된다는 점에서 비극적 타당성 효과가 약하다고 할 수 있다. 반면 영화 <란>의 비극적 주인공인 히데토라도 역시 개인적 오만, 권위, 어리석음을 지니고 있다. 그런데 이것 외에도 히데토라는 권력을 획득하기 위해서 주변 영지의 침략과 정복된 사람들의 살해를 통한 잔인한 면모로 인해서 분노, 적개심, 그리고 복수심의 대상이 된다. 이것은 리어왕보다 상대적으로 히데토라가 상대적으로 비극적 결말의 우위성을 확보하고 있음을 의미한다. 구로사와 감독은 주인공이 맞이하는 비극성의 원인을 다양하고 복잡하게 연계시킨다. 그리고 이러한 구로사와 감독의 시도는 비극적 타당성에 대한 관객들의 몰입을 확장시키고 있다. 다시 말해서, 구로사와 감독의 연출은 관객에게 비극성에 대한 이해와 설득력을 충분히 확보해낼 수 있는 근거가 된다. The purpose of this study is to discuss the similarities and differences in the way the tragedy of a noble character is represented through the Japanese movie <Ran>, which is based on William Shakespeare’s play King Lear. Director Akira Kurosawa collaborated with France on the Japanese movie <Ran>, which was released in 1985. Director Kurosawa’s adaptation of the film <Ran> based on King Lear shows a new creation rather than a reproduction of the original. Director Kurosawa’s attempt can be said to be a visual technique that can express the changes in the times, some transformations of the story, and differences in the genre of movies shown in the movie <Ran>. The key factor in the tragedy that King Lear experiences stems from his character flaws. King Lear, through his long time in power, is characterized by arrogance, subjectivity, and foolishness rather than understanding of others. Additionally, the tragedy of King Lear unfolds along with the material greed of his two daughters. However, among the tragic elements of King Lear, the conflict and betrayal with his daughters are universal in nature, which weakens the audience’s immersion. And the tragic validity effect of King Lear can be said to be weak in that it is limited to individual flaws and betrayal of flesh and blood. On the other hand, Hidetora, the tragic protagonist of the movie <Ran>, also has personal arrogance, authority, and foolishness. However, in addition to this, Hidetora becomes the target of anger, hostility, and revenge due to his cruelty through invading surrounding territories and murdering conquered people in order to gain power. This means that Hidetora has a relatively superior tragic ending over King Lear. Director Kurosawa links the causes of the tragedy that the main character faces in a variety of complex ways. And director Kurosawa’s attempt is expanding the audience’s immersion in the tragic validity. In other words, director Kurosawa’s direction serves as a basis for ensuring sufficient understanding and persuasion of the tragedy for the audience.

어머니, 딸들, 그리고 ‘허스토리’

김문기(Moonki Kim) 한국셰익스피어학회 2005 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.41 No.4

Feminist writers and companies have long adapted Shakespeare's texts in the ways that challenge the authority of Shakespeare's texts and expose patriarchal assumptions in his plays. In 1987 Women's Theatre Group undertook the revision of a major Shakespearean tragedy, King Lear, from the perspective of a feminist collective collaboration. This paper explores feminist strategies in adapting Shakespeare's tragedy as incorporated in WTG's Lear's Daughters, which is regarded as "a landmark in feminist reinventing of Shakespeare." Feminist scholars have criticized King Lear as one of the most explicitly misogynist and patriarchal texts which depicts the world of chaos and anarchy resulting from the breakdown of patriarchal order. In order to escape from the patriarchal narrative structure of Shakespeare's play, WTG's Lear's Daughter takes a form of prequel to King Lear that places experiences of Lear's daughters and their mothers at the center of the play. In this collaboratively created prequel, 'herstory' suppressed in Shakespeare's text takes center stage by the androgynous Fool's guidance and the Nanny's reconstruction of the daughters' childhood memories, which provides a context for the daughters' 'ingratitude' actions toward their father in King Lear. Lear's daughters are given detailed characterizations and their relationship with other female characters and their experiences are foregrounded. Lear's daughters also creates two mothers, which reminds the spectators of absence of the mother in Shakespeare's text, while eliminating Lear from the stage. In this Learless world, the Nanny, hired as a substitute mother to the daughters and having given up her own child in order to raise Lear's daughters, takes center stage by leading the daughters to making a stand against Lear. Lear's Daughters ends with three daughters holding Lear's crown tossed in the air, symbolizing possible collaboration among the daughters. WTG's collaborative writing strategy is a significant challenge to the modem concept of 'authorship' based on the individual writer's originality, and thus indirectly to the authority of Shakespeare whose unparalleled originality helped create the modem concept of authorship. It also foregrounds the fact that theatrical work requires collaboration among various artists and that emphasizing only Shakespeare and his text is a result from hierarchical system of patriarchal literary and theatre worlds. It also challenges the ways in which Shakespearean plays have been staged in the mainstream theatrical productions by exploring alternative theatre space and such performing methods as improvisations and workshops. Lear's Daughters proves that it is possible to create a feminist adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy in the alternative theatre space for the spectators who are not required to be overwhelmed by the authority of "Shakespeare" and who want to avoid the cumulative power of mainstream productions.

영상화를 통한 셰익스피어 극의 변용과 각색 : 피터 브룩의 〈리어왕〉

이혜경(Hye-Kyoung Lee) 한국셰익스피어학회 2004 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.40 No.1

Peter Brook's King Lear is a drastic innovation whose style resists the traditional artful use of cinema. Insofar as this film is not just a representative adaptation of King Lear but a movie about making movie, it exploits meta-cinematic rhetoric. It is strongly interpretive film in drawing serious critical response from both Shakespearean and film scholars. Not only had Brook directed the 1962 RSC stage version of King Lear, but prior to that he had acted as co-director for North American television performance with Orson Welles in the title role. Brook's stage production and the film were profoundly influenced by the Jan Kott, whose essay, "King Lear or Endgame," explicitly connects the play with the austere bleakness of Samuel Beckett's Theatre of the Absurd. Brook's film is textually altered from its source to find visual signifiers for what Shakespeare's words signified. Brook reduces human space to very narrow confines to re-envison Shakespeare's play spatially. The cinematic discursive suppressions seem to mirror the editorial omissions, while foregrounding Shakespeare's theme of suppression. Filmed in North Jutland, Denmark, its black-and-white starkness shows a winter world of ironic despair in grainy texture and deliberate out-of-focus frames shot. The harsh environment is static, a physical universe that is forever winter, pitilessly bleak, frozen, inimical to man. The natural setting of malignant nature and the wintry civilization might be considered a symbolic milieu, harshness of which both reflected and caused man's savagery to man in a space closed off to benevolence. And it also emblemizes Lear's spiritual agony and conveys the distorted nature of his perception as is suggested by Shakespeare's language. To redirect Shakespeare's epic scale of King Lear into its own filmic idiom, Brook borrows Brecht's Verferndungseffekt, and he breaks further with popular forms by using Godardian cinematic alienation as well. He consistently employs distancing and disorienting techniques throughout the film: complex reverse angle, out-of-focus shots, overhead shots, over-the shoulder shots, zoom-fades, jump-cutting, montage, eyes-only close-ups, accelerated motion, rapid editing, silent-screen titles, printed subtitles, and hand-held cameras as well as immobile ones. Disjointed quality of the film and restless, elliptic, arbitrary camerawork are designed to suggest the rupture and discontinuity in Lear's own grasp of reality and to make audiences uncomfortable. In Beckett-like play-within-a-play on a bleak beach the mad old king and the blinded Gloucester raise insoluble questions about cause-and-effect, good and evil, but Brook's film doesn't answer the questions. At the end, the ravaged king literally falls further and further from a bright white frame and out of the world as if he looks upward to accept the void itself. And then only a blank screen remains with white nothingness. There is no reassuring message of ultimate harmony as well as no place for discordia concors in this film. Brook's King Lear is a bleak existential tale of meaningless struggle for survival against the empty, hopeless universe and the menace of human indifference or ferocity. Most touches of optimism in the text are cut and the conclusion of the film sums up its absurdist perspective perfectly, a dark and relentlessly ironic vision of the human condition. Brook's version is not merely an alteration of the original but an interpretation of it.