ENGL20031 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Jacobean Era, Cultural Capital
11 May 2018
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Adaptations and Transgressions
King Lear
- Key words: bastardisation, fetishising, romantic sensibilities, performing roles, familial
identities, nihilistic, pastiche of folktale.
- Shakespeare’s texts are evolving in contemporary culture.
- Unwarranted fetishisation of the Shakespeare original that is sacrosanct.
- The Queen is concerned about the dramatisation of public play and thus, the counter-
intuitive move is to create the dominant theatrical company by royal license to create a
model of theatre that is edifying.
- Originality and aboriginality. Original meant the return for Origins for Shakespeare, he
wanted to imitate and recreate past models. Shakespeare’s works aren’t original in our
sense of the word.
- Renaissance is a period of deliberate rebirth, in the model of Greek and Italian classical
authors.
- Hollywood detracts from the cultural capital of Shakespeare.
- King Lear was often not performed because the ending was deemed too apocalyptic for the
audience.
- Division of the Kingdom motif; in the source text, we do not have a dilemma with absent
mother figures. All ambiguity is removed in the source text because his wife, ‘Queen Leir’
has recently passed and he is grieving.
- Jacobean era evokes the ‘masculinising’ of the theatre; model of patriarchal society.
- Pelican imagery references greedy Pelican daughters that literally pecks and sucks the
blood from the maternal/paternal pelican figure.
- Potentially inspired by the fairytale, Cap o’ Rushes. Cordelia is punished for not wishing to
condone her father’s participation in the ‘game’. He is drawing on popular legend.
- The opening is highly contrived and farcical, he compels for his gratification a show of
public affection.
- Gloucester and his sons play out the same dynamic that Lear engages in with his daughters
in an even more masculine register.
- King Leir is a Christian redemptive narrative.
- Why is the storm a theatrical failure in Shakespeare? It lacks any transformative effect,
against all reasonable and generic assumptions Cordelia is murdered - the French lose -
there is a lack of overall reconciliation between the characters.
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Key words: bastardisation, fetishising, romantic sensibilities, performing roles, familial identities, nihilistic, pastiche of folktale. Shakespeare"s texts are evolving in contemporary culture. Unwarranted fetishisation of the shakespeare original that is sacrosanct. The queen is concerned about the dramatisation of public play and thus, the counter- intuitive move is to create the dominant theatrical company by royal license to create a model of theatre that is edifying. Original meant the return for origins for shakespeare, he wanted to imitate and recreate past models. Shakespeare"s works aren"t original in our sense of the word. Renaissance is a period of deliberate rebirth, in the model of greek and italian classical authors. Hollywood detracts from the cultural capital of shakespeare. King lear was often not performed because the ending was deemed too apocalyptic for the audience. Division of the kingdom motif; in the source text, we do not have a dilemma with absent mother figures.
