King Lear

Ancient, pre-Christian England

Lear is set in super ancient Britain. King Lear (or "Leir," in some versions of history) is a half-legendary, half-historical king who did in fact have problems with his daughters. Now, you might be looking for us to qualify such a statement as "super ancient," in which case we draw your attention to Act III, Scene ii, when the Fool delivers "Merlin’s prophecy." After he details all the crazy events that precede England’s turmoil, he adds, "this prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time." Our attention is automatically drawn to this because, well, if the Fool is living before Merlin’s time, how does he know about Merlin? Quite the clever observation. Some historians say that Lear (the historical figure, not Shakespeare’s play) actually pre-dates Merlin. Perhaps Shakespeare didn’t agree, as he’s clearly mocking the notion. Or perhaps he just felt like having some fun with obscure, date-related facts.

That takes care of the when, but leaves us with the where. Yes, Britain, of course, but what specific settings does Shakespeare use here? You’ll notice a lot of action in castles, mostly because this is old Britain. All these palace scenes suggest a certain sense of order and elegance, a sense which we soon discover to be false. Things may look courtly and refined, but in fact Lear’s retirement leaves a power vacuum, the Earl of Gloucester is unseated by his own son, Regan takes over Gloucester’s castle, there’s potential civil war, oh, and France is invading. The one scene where we do see the reality of this chaos actually reflected is the big, climactic thunder and lighting scene, which happens to take place on a heath, which is essentially wide open land. With Lear screaming into the sky, we really feel the angry confusion we knew was in there all along. We just needed a little rain and thunder to hurl off the courtly veneer.