King Lear: 1993, RSC at Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
This is an image of the brief trial scene (III.vi.35-56) in which Lear, sheltering from the storm in a hovel with three other outcasts, imagines his daughters are before a judicial bench on trial for their cruelty to him. This seeming hallucination is the nearest Lear comes to real madness and it is very significant that these 21 lines are dropped from the First Folio's revised text:
Lear. I'll see their trial first.--Bring in their evidence.
[To Edgar.] Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place;--
[To the Fool.] And thou, his yokefellow of equity,
Bench by his side:--[To Kent.] you are o' the commission,
Sit you too.
Edgar. Let us deal justly.
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
Thy sheep be in the corn;
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
Thy sheep shall take no harm.
Purr! the cat is gray.
Lear. Arraign her first; 'tis Goneril. I here take my oath before
this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor king her father.
Fool. Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?
Lear. She cannot deny it.
Fool. Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.
Lear. And here's another, whose warp'd looks proclaim
What store her heart is made on.--Stop her there!
Arms, arms! sword! fire!--Corruption in the place!--
False justicer, why hast thou let her 'scape?
Adrian Noble, director; Anthony Ward as designer; Simon Russell Beale as Edgar; Robert Stephens as Lear; Ian Hughes as the Fool;David Calder as Earl of Kent. "Designer Anthony Ward provides a stunning, increasingly potent image of disintegrating humanity with a monumental globe suspended within suggested mountain ranges, sometimes wreathed in etheric blues and vaporous clouds, at others a blood red aura emanating from its rim when this most violent of plays is at its height. Heart-stoppingly, just before the interval, it cracks open to release a stream of sand steadily trickling to the ground." Carole Woddis, What's On 26.5.93. Donald Cooper : photographer: courtesy of ahds.rhul.ac.uk; Designing Shakespeare Collection.
