Free King Lear by William Shakespeare Page B

10 The great Italian actor Tommaso Salvini, also won praise for his performances at Boston’s Globe Theatre in 1882 and London’s Covent Garden in 1884, despite the fact that he spoke in Italian while the rest of the cast spoke in English, a proceeding that the novelist Henry James described as “grotesque, unpardonable, abominable.” 11 Henry Irving’s elaborately staged production at the Lyceum in 1892 was set in a Britain of Roman ruins with Druidic priests and Viking warriors. Using a heavily cut text that reduced theplay’s violence and sexuality, Irving emphasized Lear’s age and paternalism in a performance that attracted mixed notices, although Ellen Terry’s Cordelia was widely praised.
    At the end of the nineteenth century directors such as William Poel and Harley Granville Barker promoted the simple staging of Shakespeare’s plays, attempting to recreate the conditions of the Elizabethan playhouse, with its fast continuous action in contrast to the spectacular staging of the Victorians, which involved lengthy scene changes. In his
Prefaces to Shakespeare
(1927), Granville Barker argued vigorously against critical prejudice toward the play in performance and insisted on its theatrical viability, a judgment borne out by the many productions since. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have produced a number of distinguished Lears but have also concentrated on more balanced productions that give greater weight and opportunity to lesser roles.
    John Gielgud first played Lear in Harcourt Williams’ production at the Old Vic in 1931 at the age of twenty-six. Despite his obvious talent, critics thought him too young for the part. In 1940 Gielgud had a second opportunity to play the part, again at the Old Vic, in a production set in early modern Europe, based on the ideas of Granville Barker, who oversaw the early rehearsals and personally coached Gielgud. In an essay of 1963 Gielgud claimed that the ten days in which Barker worked with the company “were the fullest in experience that I have ever had in all my years upon the stage.” 12 The production was a success, although the noted critic James Agate concluded that Gielgud’s performance was “a thing of great beauty, imagination, sensitiveness, understanding, executive virtuosity, and control. You would be wrong to say—this is not King Lear! You would be right to say that this is Lear every inch but one.” 13
    In 1936 the director-designer Theodore Komisarjevsky staged a memorable and radical production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. There was a simple but effective set, consisting mainly of a grand staircase, illuminated by a cyclorama that changed color to reflect the mood of the scene. As the London
Times
review put it:

    3. Expressionist design in the 1930s: the opening scene of the Komisarjevsky production.
    On this simple stage of steps and platforms, where every movement is sharp and significant and the light-borne colour keeps pace with the changing character of the scene, Mr. Randle Ayrton has complete freedom to act Lear. 14
    A decade later Laurence Olivier played Lear at the Old Vic as “a whimsical old tyrant who takes this way of dividing his kingdom simply as a jest, until the joke turns serious because Cordelia refuses to play.” 15 His performance was not to all tastes but Alec Guinness as the Fool was widely praised. Sir Donald Wolfit, an old-style actor-manager, toured his own production between 1947 and 1953—Ronald Harwood’s experience as Wolfit’s backstage dresser inspired his play
The Dresser
(1980).
    Gielgud played Lear for a third time in 1950, in a production which he co-directed with Anthony Quayle. Although his performance had developed in a number of ways, it was still largely influenced by his work with Granville Barker. He played the part again in 1955 in a production directed by George Devine and designed byIsamu Noguchi. This time Gielgud aimed for psychological realism in his