Some
blood drawn on me would beget opinion
[Wounds his arm]
Of
my more fierce endeavor:
Edmund
King Lear Act
II, scene i Line 34
This is an interesting line. It’s got a stage direction
right in the middle of it. Now Will is a little bit famous for his lack of
stage direction. If you read his plays you’ll notice this. It makes it a little
hard on the reader, it does. Because as you read the play, and you get all the
dialogue, it’s sometimes hard to understand what’s going on. That’s why it’s so
much better to see the play. When you see the play you might not understand
every word, but when you see what’s going on things are a lot clearer. Anyway, I
think this lack of stage direction in his plays has been a kind of good thing because
it allows for that much more freedom in interpretation when staging these
plays. Don’t you agree?
So this is the scene where the rotten kid Edmund is
convincing everyone that the good son Edgar is the bad one. He’s alone as he
speaks right now, and he’s going to be telling everyone in a moment how Edgar
pulled a sword on him and wounded him. So he’s going to cut himself to show
everyone his wound [wounds his arm]. I hope he’s had his tetanus shot.
There’s a lot of talk and show of wounds in Will’s plays. Remember
all that talk in Coriolanus of how he’s supposed to show his wounds to the
voters? I don’t think the theater goers get to see any actual wounds in that
instance though. Except at the end when Coriolanus gets stabbed to death.
Yes, lots of violence and lots of swordplay with Will. Though not so much in King
Lear. Except here where our buddy Edmund is playing with his sword on himself. Rotten kid.
Here's a sword that we have in our house. It's not as impressive as it looks, and it's certainly not very sharp. As far as I know no one has ever been wounded with this sword. At least I'm pretty sure that no one's been wounded with it since it came into this house. Before then? Well I just don't know.
No comments:
Post a Comment