Lear

Bond, Edward

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Total copies: 1

Summary

In Bond's play, Lear is a paranoid autocrat, building a wall to keep out imagined "enemies". His daughters Bodice & Fontanelle rebel against him, causing a bloody war. Lear becomes their prisoner & goes on a journey of self-revelation. He is blinded & haunted by the ghost of a Gravedigger's Boy, whose kindness towards the old King led to his murder. Eventually Lear, after becoming a prophet reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy, makes a gesture toward dismantling the wall he began. This gesture leads to his death, which offers hope as an example of practical activism. The play also features a character called Cordelia, wife of the murdered Gravedigger's Boy who becomes a Stalinist-type dictator herself. Lear features some punishing scenes of violence, including knitting needles being plunged into a character's eardrum, a bloody on-stage autopsy & a machine which sucks out Lear's eyeballs. However, it is often lyrical &features some densely-packed metaphoric language.