King Lear in Its Own Time: The Difference that Death Makes
Schneider, Jr., Ben Ross
Early Modern Literary Studies 1.1 (April 1995)
Abstract
The belief that Shakespeare was a universal genius who understood the timeless essence of human nature and was therefore capable of writing not for an age, but for all time, is not doing him any good. Thanks to the ingenuity of our directors, who more and more use Shakespeare’s language and plots as the occasion for huddling up spectacles that deliver their own messages, we will continue to marvel as we leave the theatre that he speaks to us as if he had written yesterday. But he did not write yesterday and, if the truth were to be told, he barely speaks to us at all. We are not on the same page; no, not even in the same book. Many critics today think that this state of affairs is unavoidable, even desirable, and that we are doomed (or free) to keep on reading Shakespeare’s plays forever as if they were indeed written yesterday.
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