Lear (drama)

This article describes Edward Bond's drama Lear . For William Shakespeare's drama King Lear, see King Lear .

Edward Bond (2001)

Lear is a dramatic work by the British writer and playwright Edward Bond , which premiered on September 29, 1971 at the Royal Court Theater in London under the direction of William Gaskill. The work was published in book form by Methuen Verlag in London in 1972 and has since appeared in several new editions. Lear was also included in the second volume of Bond's collected stage works and in various drama anthologies. The German translation by Christian Enzensberger was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1972 under the same title and was also reprinted several times. In the autumn of 1972, the play was first performed on German stages in the Frankfurt production by Peter Palitzsch .

Bond's piece is generally considered to be a modern “anti-lear” because of the author's intended critical examination of the influential Shakespeare model . Despite various impulses from the original or various allusions to material and thematic motifs in Shakespeare's tragedy, the reversal of his King Lear into his counterpart in Bond is not a mere epigone-like imitation or updated adaptation of the original, but represents an independent dramatic redesign. The fundamental Differences to Shakespeare are not only evident in the plot and the conception of the characters, but also in the central theme, the form and speech and the specific mode of action of Bond's drama.

Since its first performance, Bonds Lear has been one of the classics of contemporary European drama and is still an integral part of the repertoire of numerous stages around the world, including in German-speaking countries.

Characterized by quasi-allegorical abstractions and the sensuality of physical violence heightened to the extreme, the work summarizes important tendencies, concepts and influences of modern post-war theater in order to exemplify in exemplary form the timeless principle of origin and effect of violence and counterviolence ( violence ) and to show the associated denaturation of humans. With the illustration of the deformation and self-destruction of the psychological and social existence of man through the aggression and brutality that are institutionally conditioned in social morality, Bond's work also aims at a socially critical analysis of existing social and power structures.

Table of contents

first act

At the beginning of the play, Lear as the royal ruler of his empire, accompanied by his two daughters, inspects the progress of the work on the Great Wall, which he has commissioned to build, in order to permanently secure his country against all attacks from outside and to ensure peace. At the moment, the forced construction of the wall is primarily intended to protect against the threat of Lear's suspected enemies, the Dukes of North and Cornwall.

After a fatal accident at work, Lear fears for the discipline of the workers who work under inhumane conditions and wants to make an example to ensure that work on the wall can continue and accelerate it further. He chooses one of the other men at random, accuses him of sabotage and shoots the completely innocent worker. Bodice and Fontanelle, who consider their father's behavior to rule wrong or absurd, protested and distanced themselves from their father. Shortly before, they had informed him of their plans to ally themselves with the Dukes of North and Cornwall and to marry them.

A civil war breaks out between Lear on the one hand and the dukes and Lear's daughters on the other. However, Bodice and Fontanelle as the new duchesses both quickly become frustrated in their marriage by their husbands, who have proven to be impotent and cannot satisfy their wives' sexual desires. The two sisters are already planning independently of each other to kill their husband and sister in order to then marry General Warrington, the military commander Lears, and with his help to win the war against Lear in order to come to power alone. In a strange-looking series of two side appearances by Bodice and Fontanelle, both independently write similar letters to Warrington, in which they urge him to betray both Lear and his own sister. At the same time, in their letters they equally express their respective sexual disappointment, combined with the intention of killing their own husbands in order to subsequently marry Warrington.

Bodice and Fontanelle's planned marriages with Warrington are doomed to failure. Although they do not manage to get rid of their husbands, the two sisters still achieve military victory in the war against their father. Lears General Warrington survives the war. But since he now knows too much about her, Bodice and Fontanelle have him brutally tortured and mutilated in order to silence him. During the intoxicating torture scene, Fontanelle climbs into a fit of sadistic frenzy, while her sister Bodice watches knitting full of fascination, without showing any sympathy or human sympathy.

The disempowered Lear is forced to flee and is now wandering through the woods and the great outdoors. Finally he finds food and accommodation in the rural house of the gravedigger's son and his wife, the daughter of a priest, who - as will be known later - bears the name Cordelia. The unnamed gravedigger son reports on his peaceful pastoral life and offers Lear to stay with them as a swineherd.

Warrington, now deaf and dumb by cutting his tongue and piercing his ears during his torture, roams around and is also provided with bread and water by the compassionate son of a gravedigger outside the house, while Cordelia is disgusted with the two filthy old men feels threatened. While everyone is sleeping, Warrington tries to break into the house and tries to stab Lear. However, he fails and has to hide in the well of the courtyard.

A carpenter friend appears who is in love with Cordelia. He brings a crib for Cordelia who is expecting a child. Her husband looks at the dirty water in the well that his wife has complained about and discovers the dead Warrington, who broke his neck when he fell into the well.

Lear's previously rather idyllic life in the gravedigger's son comes to an abrupt end when soldiers from Bodice and Fontanelle, who are looking for Lear, enter. The soldiers shoot the gravedigger's young son. They brutally rape his wife Cordelia, whose name appears for the first time in her husband's death scream, kill their unborn child in the body and destroy the farm and cattle. The carpenter, who had previously gone to get tools, comes back and in turn shoots the murdering soldiers.

Second act

Lear returns to his former kingdom. Bodice and Fontalle carry out a political show trial with bribed witnesses and a prefabricated verdict against their father. The judge pronounces Lear, who is increasingly confused, insane and sentenced him to prison. During the trial, Lear first saw “an animal locked in a cage” in a mirror. In the dungeon, the ghost of the murdered gravedigger's son appears and comforts him. At Lear's request, the dead gravedigger's son lets the ghosts of the two sisters Bodice and Fontanelle appear as innocent little girls in a souvenir picture. When looking at them, Lear's first inkling is that he himself is guilty of the repressive upbringing of his two daughters and that by failing their natural needs and constricting them into pre-defined social conventions, he has made them what they are now are.

The two sisters now rule as the sole rulers. However, their reign of terror is already threatened by another uprising and civil war. Cordelia, whose name is henceforth associated with the popular uprising, and the carpenter lead a revolutionary movement that begins a merciless guerrilla war against the government army. The revolutionaries capture fontanels and shoot them in front of their father. In his presence they have Fontanelle's body autopsied. When Lear looks inside the dead body of his daughter, he admires the “inner” beauty of Fontanelle with great devotion.

Lear's own path of knowledge continues at this point with the self-directed question: “Did I make this and destroy it?” (German: “Did I create this and destroy it?”).

His second daughter Bodice is also picked up by the Cordelias guerrilla fighters and then stabbed to death. In contrast to his daughters, Lear gets away with his life. However, he is blinded by a doctor in need of recognition who was formerly his fellow prisoner, on behalf of the new rulers. With this glare Lears a new, particularly hygienic and efficient working medical device is used, with the help of which his eyeballs can be removed from the head undamaged. As a blind man, Lear staggered outside, the ghost of the gravedigger's son continuing to accompany him.

Third act

Susan, Thomas and John now live in the house of the gravedigger's son. They take care of the blinded Lear, who is becoming more and more aware that his insight into his own guilt and the awareness of the mechanism of violence and violence are insufficient. Although his friends resist, he takes victims of the new revolutionary rulers under the leadership of Cordelia and gives them refuge. The number of visitors is growing steadily and Lear preaches in dark pictures and parables in front of ever larger gatherings of people suffering from the new regime. As a result, he becomes a political threat to Cordelia, who wants to consolidate her power with a bloody purge and secure her rule for the future by building the Great Wall. She warns Lear urgently and tries to convince him that through her revolutionary actions "the new society" will become a reality, which Lear can only imagine as a dreamy future vision of a utopian peace state. In this confrontation between Cordelia and Lear, which forms one of the core points of the drama, Bond's own views of the inevitable destructiveness and dynamic of the constantly repeating cycle of violence and counter-violence are expressed in a dramatically pointed form.

The ghost of the gravedigger's son tries in vain to prevent Lear from setting a sign of resistance through his own vigorous action and, after it has increasingly dissolved, dies a second time. The play ends with an act of Lears, which is ultimately only symbolic, when he begins to remove the Great Wall, which he himself had initially commissioned, with a few shovels of earth. In the final scene, he is shot by a young officer of the new regime.

Interpretative approach

Design form and topic

Despite the relatively large ensemble of over 70 roles, the plot of the piece is always manageable for the audience due to its strong schematization. The three acts of the work not only correspond to the essential stages in the development and the cognitive process of the title character, but also essentially correspond to the three regimes of the daughters Lears, Bodice and Fontanelle, as well as Cordelias, the daughter of a priest. The play takes place in an unspecified location at an unspecified time. Only the appearance of the Duke of North and his southern counterpart, the Duke of Cornwall, vaguely point to a possible localization of the event. In contrast, the period cannot even be roughly outlined; In addition to archaic elements or references to an obviously feudal ruling structure at the beginning, the work also contains various anachronistic allusions to the modern age, for example to the current medical technology in Lear's dazzling scene at the end of the second act or the highly developed firearms and rifles used by the soldiers. The revolutionary popular uprising under the leadership of Cordelia as the representative of the people and the subsequent establishment of a despotic system of coercion also point to historical parallels in modern history. As it were typical of the model, archaic emergence and processes or structures typical of the present are interwoven in such a way that, as a whole, the complex picture of an ahistorical social system context is created.

The language used by the dramatic characters also alternates between rather ancient modes of expression, rhetorically stylized forms of language and modern colloquial language with word contractions, word mutilations or blatant exaggerations and obscenities. The respective use of language in no way reflects the social position of the characters in the drama; The vulgar or obscene vulgar language is used not only by the plundering and murdering soldiers, but equally by the royal daughters Bodice and Fontanelle, for example when they complain about the annoying sexual intercourse with their husbands or indulge in the idea of ​​satisfaction from their servants and tools. Likewise, in scene I, 7 the victims of the brutal acts of violence are denigrated with an abundance of obscenities. The corruption of everyday language is used by Bond as a sign of destroyed humanity in order to adequately express the psychological and physical depravity that can no longer be surpassed. Corresponding to this is the corruption of technical language. The legal terminology essentially serves to legitimize blatant injustice through the guise of an apparent legal order; medical terminology is used to mask heinous crimes and atrocities through the appearance of scientifically accurate and reliable experiments.

The title of the drama with its allusion to Shakespeare's classic King Lear is striking from the start . However, the expectations of a modernized adaptation of Shakespeare's great tragedy, aroused in this way in the recipient, are not fulfilled. The completely different action, character conception, thematic focus and completely different dramatic effects of the loose-episodic sequence of pictorial-allegorical individual scenes in Bond's work show from the outset that it is by no means the primary concern of the author in his play, Shakespeare's tragedy by means of an updated appropriation to carry over to the present.

The otherness in almost all areas and the high degree of independence of his Lear rather indicate that the playwright Bond is about a fundamental departure from the classic foil of Shakespeare. In his own statements, too, Bond emphasizes at various points his concern for a programmatic as well as critical examination of the still effective classic model, which Bond, however, denies the validity of the present age.

What is particularly noticeable in Bonds Lear is the shocking accumulation of extremely sensual acts of violence and cruelty, which, as it were, illustrates with model-like severity the independent dynamic of a constantly repeating cycle of violence and counter-violence that leads to (self-) alienation, suppression and perversion of natural needs of people in a repressive social order.

The violent acts played out on the stage in a gruesome way down to the last detail, seemingly arbitrary at first sight, are not an end in themselves for Bond, but serve in a timeless abstraction, as it were, for the self-portrayal of a social, political and moral system in which violence is brought about by the state apparatus of power or technocratic System as well as repressive morality and justice, provokes aggressive counter-reactions from the victims concerned and thus a never-ending chain of new violence. Only the insight into the mechanism of these active principles of aggression and violence offers an - albeit small and possibly only utopian - chance for change.

The peculiarity of Bonds Lear is pointedly evident in the scenic sequence of individual images or tableaus , for example in the court, prison and torture scenes, which parody the idea of ​​justice, but also in the pastoral scenes, their apparent idyll both inside and out is also threatened from outside. At the same time, Bond's approach is characteristic of removing the spatial or temporal concreteness of these individual scenes in Lear and instead providing them with archetypal, historical or pseudo-historical, sometimes anachronistic or parodistically alienated elements. The simultaneous realistic painting of these scenes with a retransmission of abstract signs of alienation into concrete action images creates a tension that defines the specifics of the dramatic effect of the play.

The structure of the drama in Lear is not only shaped by the conspicuous accumulation of similar scenes, but also by the principle of the antagonistic sequence of scenes and the scenic bracing of parallel and contrasting scenes to illustrate the ominous interplay of violence and counterviolence. The single-strand, circular structure of the entire drama with the design elements of repetition and variation serves primarily to intensify this main thematic motif.

In the design of the dramatic characters, Bond largely dispenses with an individual-psychological characterization or motivation of both the title character and the other dramatic characters, since in his play, unlike in Shakespeare's film, it is not about the individual tragedy of individual people, but about that The far more universal drama of the destructiveness of human social formations is based on a hopeless mechanism of violence and annihilation.

The introduction to Shakespeare that is echoed in the title serves Bond above all to track down the political substance of Shakespeare's tragedy, which is hidden from his point of view, as a contemporary problem by attempting in his work the unexplained consequences of Shakespeare's tragic blindness and a lack of insight into the actual origin the violence that leads to the deformation and denaturation of the human being, to be shown and expanded in all its fundamental nature. In this regard, Bond's Lear is also a reckoning with the Shakespeare model, which, according to Bond, had to be eradicated.

Model character of the Lear

The work is based on a theoretical-programmatic model concept, which Edward Bond explained in detail in the foreword to Lear and in numerous interviews.

At the center of Bond's theoretical program is the dialectic of social violence ("violence") and individual aggression ("aggression"), which determines the structure of his Lear as a literary articulation model.

Bond explains this dialectic essentially as follows:

“ Society is held together by the aggression it creates, and men are not dangerously aggressive but our sort of society is. It creates aggression in these ways: first, it is basically unjust, and second it makes people live unnatural lives - both things which create a natural, biological aggressive response in the members of society. Society's formal answer to this is socialized morality; but this is ... only another form of violence, and it must itself provoke more aggression. There is no way out for our sort of society, an unjust society must be violent. Any organization which denies the basic need for biological justice must become aggressive, even though it claims to be moral. ”

As a dramatist, Bond's thesis of the mutually increasing violence in an “unnatural” society results in the central task of relating the psychological and social dimensions of violence to one another in a dramatically convincing manner. He tries to find a uniform frame of reference for the various psychological, political and ultimately also historical aspects of the dialectic of “violence” and “aggression”, which is suitable as a model for their dramatic treatment.

The central polarity in this model is formed by the key terms “biological” or “natural” on the one hand and “social morality” on the other. In Bond's view, the pervasive violence that individuals in our society both suffer and participate in is a perversion of the primordial nature of man. According to Bond, almost all animals limit themselves to violence that meets their biological needs almost never directed against their own species and is defused by instinctive protective measures such as the sparing of the inferior rival. From Bond's point of view, the animal only reacts aggressively in the human sense if it is forced to live under unnatural conditions, for example in captivity. For Bond, in terms of behavioral research, this results in more than an analogy for human society. Man is born as an animal and has elementary biological needs, which for him, as a representative of a higher species, include creative and intellectual needs, but not aggressive ones.

Similar to the abused animal, according to Bond's further argumentation, the innocent child sees himself trapped in a society that not only leaves his basic biological needs unfulfilled, but sometimes even lets them be forcibly expelled in the educational process based on the norms and values ​​of "social morality". In political terms, this social morality ensures above all that the existing rule and power of a few privileged people is preserved and secured against the natural development claim of the great majority of the others. According to Bond, this effect goes back to the gray prehistoric times of the hunter-gatherer, when individual members of society might have been forced to take on leadership roles as a result of a biological crisis, but no longer wanted to disclose them after the biological necessity no longer existed. They declared any behavior that could threaten their power to be a crime and ensured that this new social morality was enforced with physical violence if necessary.

The resulting “morality” continued to have an effect in evolution without, of course, remaining conscious of the victims as such. Rather, through the upbringing or, according to Bond, disciplining process of the increasingly repressive society, the prevailing values ​​and norms that secure rule were imposed on the members of society from birth and internalized by them. The individual now identifies himself with the destructive, suicidal norms and denies his own biological needs. However, this by no means achieves his inner peace:

“ So social morality is a form of corrupted innocence, and it is against the basic wishes of those who have been moralized in this way. It is a threat, a weapon used against their most fundamental desire for justice, without which they are unable to be happy. The aggressive response of such people has been smothered by social morality, but this only increases their tension. [...] Their morality is angry, because they are in conflict with themselves. Not merely divided, but fighting their own repressed need for justice with all the fear and hysteria of their original panic. But this isn't something that is done once, in childhood or later; to go on living these people must murder themselves every day. Social morality is a form of suicide. Socially moralized people must act contemptuously and angrily to all liberalism, contentment and sexual freedom, because these are the things they are fighting in themselves. There is no way out for them - it is as if an animal was locked in a cage and then fed with the key. ”

The imagery of the animal in the cage suggested here is taken up in Lear and varied in many ways. For example, the disempowered Lear compares himself in the court and prison scenes at the beginning of the second act, full of shock and in full awareness of his own helplessness, with a locked animal in a cage. In the parable that Lear recites at the beginning of the third act among his last, also doomed followers, he takes up the symbol of the trapped animal again to illustrate the destruction of human nature and the annihilation of all life values ​​through imprisonment and related things Incapacitation.

As a symbolic symbol, the animal metaphor, as Gerd Stratmann explains in his interpretation of Lear , becomes structurally significant on several levels of the dramatic event. First, she refers to the psychological process: under the pressure of upbringing, the individual is locked in the cage of an “assumed, but biologically unacceptable morality.” The original panic of the child who committed the psychological suicide is suppressed, but breaks always off, especially in the form of aggression. This is reflected on the political level in the ongoing suppression of individual needs by the social order, primarily to maintain the power and privileges of the ruling class. In this context, Bond himself expressly refers to the theory of alienation from Marx ( Lear , Author's Preface , LXII f.). Finally, the historical development process in the everyday self-destruction of people is also reproduced in today's society. The image of the imprisoned animal that bumps in vain against the bars of its cage ultimately refers to the memory of a prehistoric “golden age” of peace and non-violence, which was already destroyed in a primitive society and its perversion today's hostile technosphere has reached its climax.

Edward Bond's programmatic model of the dialectic of social violence, although initially not directly related to literature or drama in the theoretical argumentation, contains a symbolism that finds its way into his Lear and summarizes different abstract contexts in a closed symbol. Due to its diverse reflections and correspondences, it becomes, as it were, a very specific dramatic articulation model. In this model, history becomes an ongoing cycle of violence that began a long time ago and which cannot be broken through political reform or revolutionary attempts. Although, in Bond's view of humanity, the way back to a state of noble savagery remains as blocked as the violent revolution of a minority, Bond still regards himself as an optimist. For him, the task of the theater is to help educate people about the origin of violence, to give people a perhaps only tiny chance to break this historical vicious circle of violence and counter-violence through a learning process.

In this respect, Lear represents a mouthpiece for the conception of art, the fundamental theses and the socio-political commitment of the author. Once the real power relationships are seen through, this can initiate insight into the humanity's suppressed emotions and thus open up the possibility of them to realize. In the simple pity and willingness to help that the disempowered Lear shows towards the anonymous gravedigger son as well as in Lear's own insight into the inner biological beauty of the people that is poetically revealed during the autopsy of his executed daughter (“ She sleeps like a lion and a lamb and a child. The things are so beautiful. I'm astonished. I have never seen anything so beautiful ”, p. 59) is the optimistic message of Bond's work.

The wall as a central symbol

In addition to the animal imagery, which, as explained above, plays a key role in the drama, the image of the wall becomes the dominant symbol in the entire tragedy of Bonds. At the beginning of the piece, Lear begins with their forced construction; The work ends with Lear's unsuccessful attempt to prevent the wall from being built further: the former builder is now shown at the end of his cognitive process in complete reversal as its destroyer. The dramatic events revolve around the building of the wall over and over again throughout the entire play. As a universal and at the same time concise metaphor, the wall has always symbolized the human desire for protection and security, for example in the image of the garden of paradise that is widespread in visual art and literature as well as homily or the dream of the ore wall around England; historically it evokes a wealth of associations from fortress walls and prison walls, for example from the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall .

Bond, however, is not interested in building a wall in a realistic way; He carefully avoids targeted allusions so as not to affect the general validity of the metaphor. Instead, he strives for the symbolic clarification of a general principle by objectifying the structures of political power in general and their effects on human consciousness and action. When Lear tries in vain to free himself from the entanglement of political power, he sees himself buried alive as a prisoner in the wall (“ There's a wall everywhere. I'm buried alive in a wall ”, p. 80). At the beginning of the piece, however, he had declared, full of delusion, that the building of the wall would make the people in his realm free (“ My wall will make you free ”, p. 3 f.). The freedom from external aggression promised at the beginning actually only means bondage and oppression; paradoxically, the wall in the entrance scene is erected on swampy terrain; the timber rots in the mud, the workers live in damp huts.

The wall in Bonds Lear is not only symbolic of political power, but also of the special form of relationships between people in the drama. The area of ​​interpersonal relationships is hardened and petrified by the wall, which is initially built by people or societies as a supposed protective wall against threats from external aggression; it separates people from one another and, through the implications of aggressive exclusion and walling in, becomes the pictorial epitome of bondage and destruction. As a central element of the drama, the building of the wall becomes independent and solidifies into an inhumane structure from which all essential actions and reactions of the people in the drama are defined. In this respect, the wall in Lear is not just an external scene of action and a symbolic backdrop, but rather, according to Zapf, it becomes, as it were, its own "subject of the action", which is always manifested in basically the same form through the various external events. Throughout the entire piece, the wall, prison cell, courtroom or cage appear as obvious signs of imprisonment that all people share.

As an action-determining element in the minds of the people, the wall prevents, according to Zapf, both "the possibility of freedom of individual decisions" and "the creation of concrete interactions". These only take place in the utopian-visionary counter-act with Lear's development as an opponent of the building of the wall and his friendship with the spirit of the gravedigger boy. The "reality-related" storyline shaped by the wall largely determines the plot structure of the entire tragedy and asserts itself, as it were, with mechanical inevitability against the utopian counter-plot, although the idyllic "rural commune" Lears in the third act at least briefly suggests a concrete alternative course of action.

The elementary pattern of action of Bond's Lear already comes to light in the first scene of the drama: the scene, guarded by a soldier, is dominated by the utensils of the building of the wall; a worker killed in an accident is carried onto the stage and hidden under a tarpaulin when Lear and his entourage appear. The sympathy and sympathy of the other workers are immediately suppressed in order not to delay further work on the wall. The soldier and the foreman, both of whom ignore the incident, figure here as “executive organs, as anonymous functionaries of the building of the wall”; its first victim also remains anonymous. The human actors are accordingly interchangeable and appear or disappear without leaving any traces, whereby their behavior is at the same time defined by the construction of the wall or the system of action built around it.

Even Lear, who apparently appears as an “individual with the power to act”, has become a prisoner of the system of action he has established, without being aware of this at this point. He orders the execution of an innocent worker in order to be able to continue building the wall quickly. This increases the indifference that characterizes the beginning of the drama to an equally indifferent use of force. Lear's actions are dictated by the peculiar compulsion to use force emanating from the building of the wall; even though he knows that the victim is innocent, he wants to set an example for combating supposedly subversive forces; those - he believes in his blindness - want to sabotage the completion of the building of the wall and thus the realization of the political goals that he associates with his lifelong project. In this way, the wall has, to a certain extent, made itself ideologically independent in Lear's head, stands between him and the workers and makes him blind to the concrete person. Ironically , he is blind to himself at the same time; When the worker was ordered to be shot, he unconsciously places himself in the line of fire and thus points in advance to his later change from perpetrator to victim.

The subsequent rebellion of Lear's daughters against the despotic arbitrariness of their father initially gives the impression of compassion and personal commitment for the worker (“ Father, if you kill this man it will be an injustice ”, p. 4) and suggests an awareness recognize their father's imprisonment in compulsive images of the enemy (“ All these things are in your head ”, p. 5). A short time later, however, their behavior turns out to be pure prelude to the beginning power struggle between Lear and his daughters; the destructive power of the cycle of violence continues unchanged in the subsequent counter-order from Bodice (“ I order you not to shoot this man. Our husbands will shoot anyone who shoots him ”, p. 6). After Lear's eulogy for the wall, the innocent worker is shot; in the reactions of the daughters the same indifference towards the victim is shown as with Lear himself (“ As it happens, no harm is done ”, p. 8). Your plan for your own military attack before the building of the wall is completed has already been decided (“ We must attack before the wall's finished ”, p. 8).

Already the beginning of the drama shows the chain reaction of violence and counterviolence that was triggered by the building of the wall and continued in the various successive systems of power under the regime of Bodice and Fontanelle as well as under the revolutionary rule of Cordelia. None of the highlights of the dramatic events in Lear, such as the torture of Warrington, the destruction of the rural idyll at the end of the first act, Fonantelle's autopsy or the blinding of Lear, are at any point motivated by concrete interpersonal conflicts, but only demonstrate the independent power actions of each Ruling, which is completely detached from the concrete needs or vital interests of the individual. The main plot is predominantly characterized by the never-ending series of montage-like acts of violence; the actors are interchangeable opponents and allies and change without ceasing just like perpetrators and victims. Mutual interpersonal interactions almost invariably turn into one-sided actions, so that the dramatic event becomes a mere string of manifestations of institutional violence and human depravation. For those affected, these are associated with abrupt, often seamless and barely transparent but inevitable changes of fate.

Hubert Zapf regards this action model of Lear , which in an objectified form becomes the determining element of the drama in the main plot, as an expression of the accumulated manifestation of violence in a society that remains abstract, regardless of the pervasive link with archaic or pseudo-historical elements, especially in the first act.

Although the decisive actors each put forward a moral-ideological justification for their actions, on closer inspection this turns out to be a purely rhetorical appearance and abstract justification without reference to actual action. At the beginning of the drama, Lear's ideology of freedom and peace makes him blind to the contradictions of the building of the wall and the sacrifices involved. The same applies to the truth claim of the witnesses in the court process against the fallen Lear, whose stereotypically repeated assertion to tell the truth is just as void as the Old Councilor's appeal to his conscience after the betrayal of Lear (p. 34). After the revolution, Cordelia had a juvenile prisoner shot out of strategic considerations; Their comforting declaration: “ When we have the power, these things won't be necessary ” (p. 45) to legitimize the act of violence is also unmasked by their later reign of terror. Immediately before signing the death sentence against her own father, Fontanelle asserts that she will never act against her conscience, which also turns out to be a mocking rhetorical glorification of her real actions.

While this moral-ideological component of the model of social action presented in Lear disavows a meaningful interpretation of the respective actions per se, the military component refers to the institutionally determined execution of the trade. The power-related goals of action of the respective ruling actors in the social system require a characteristic type of executive action with an “absolute mechanism of command and obedience” and an “impersonal automatism of violence” to be implemented at all levels. This goes hand in hand with a machinery of action, the strongest effect of which is the compulsive, violent occurrence without the possibility of effective individual resistance. The actors again change constantly; the performance of their actions has largely mechanical, impersonal features and usually embodies an extreme form of externally controlled behavior. The monotonously repetitive appearance of the soldiers and bureaucratic recipients of orders points to human automatons without their own individual identity.

Beyond the ideologically and militarily determined structure of action, another dimension of Lear's model of action set in motion by the building of the wall can be recognized, which in the course of the drama becomes increasingly important up to the actual decision-making body. This level can be classified as administrative-bureaucratic. As an abstract instance in the narrower sense, the missing concrete reference to reality and the missing concrete interpersonal relationships are particularly evident. In numerous places, papers, lists or forms form the basis of reality determinations, but often without reference to the actual concrete world of experience. Bodice, for example, is subject to the constraints of the map during the further construction of the wall and warfare in the headquarters of its own system of action , to which the actual war events have largely been reduced. Even earlier in the first act it becomes clear that the two sisters got to know their husbands through letters and photographs ( Lear , p. 6); the motif of the map is introduced as soon as the wall is visited ; This points to the action-determining significance of the map in the third act, which guides the behavior of the people here in a clearly misleading way and thus leads to self-destruction.

Examination of Shakespeare's slide

Although Bonds Lear is a completely independent work, the work is still determined by its idiosyncratic relationship to the classic model of King Lear . Oscillating between admiration and clear defiance, Bond saw in this model, one of the most influential tragedies in Western theater, decisive themes, thoughts and structures of his own drama pre-shaped, but still treated incorrectly. Shakespeare's drama also shows in an exemplary form the emergence of an ultimately all-encompassing violence from the apparent order of a private and social world, that of the family and the kingdom. In accordance with Bond's ideas, in Shakespeare's drama the different psychological and political dimensions of violence are closely related to one another in one and the same mechanism. Viewed from the perspective of the end of the tragedy, the dramatic events in Shakespeare also acquire a historical perspective that seems to be entirely pessimistic.

Bond, who counts the encounter with Shakespeare in a Macbeth performance as one of his primal experiences, is thoroughly fascinated by King Lear and, as he writes in the foreword to Bingo , sees him as one of the most radical social critics ever created: “ Shakespeare created Lear, who is the most radical of all social critics "(Bingo, Preface, p. VII).

At the same time, however, Bond sees it as his actual task to think further about Shakespeare's “great tragic vision of the insane suffering in an insane world for the present.” In this respect, his Lear becomes a settlement with Shakespeare and forms his antithesis.

Against this background, Bond takes up impulses from Shakespeare's work in his drama, but redesigns them fundamentally in order to demonstrate the political consequences of Lear's tragic delusion that Shakespeare has not carried out. While Shakespeare's work begins with the division of the empire and the love trial of Lear's daughters, Bond, on the other hand, shows Lear inspecting the construction of the great wall in the opening scene of his work. What both Lears have in common is their delusion, which is, however, differently justified, which leads to the fact that both title characters load guilt on themselves at the beginning and have to atone for it through a painful further life before their death.

If Shakespeare's Lear is entangled in an illusory world in the opening scene, which causes him to misunderstand both the political danger of the division of the empire and the declarations of love by his daughters and thus the nature of love itself, Bond's Lear, on the other hand, misjudges the dangerousness of the building of the Wall and the spiral of violence it triggered .

However, by transforming Shakespeare's image of the division of empire into the image of the wall and withdrawing interest from the individual characters and their behavior, he specifies the message that Shakespeare intended but not carried out: the human order is based on inhuman authority; Guarantees of protection make the supposedly protected victims.

In order to clearly mark the shift in emphasis and the delimitation from what he considers to be the wrong treatment of the violence issue in Shakespeare, Bond cuts Shakespeare's course of action, de-individualizes the characters or individual fates and levels the cosmic and moral dimensions of Shakespeare's tragedy. While Shakespeare's work still partly contains emotionally charged location references such as Dover and “France”, Bond leaves the locations of his dramatic course of action geographically and historically indefinite and thus assigns the events a timeless, universal validity.

In Shakespeare's case, the self-deception of Lear grows out of his individual character traits and is paralleled on the level of family relationships by the Gloucester plot, who, like Lear, misunderstands the true nature of his children and whose delusion is also rooted in his individual character.

Shakespeare thus doubles the subject of delusion in two different characters in separate storylines; Bond takes up this motif in principle and expands it, but by reducing the audience's interest in Lear's personal character in contrast to Shakespeare, completely dropping the Gloucester plot and in particular the process in the opening scene in Shakespeare through the more concise one and replaced the universal metaphor and symbolism of the building of the wall.

Bond restricts himself to two daughters Lears, Bodice and Fontanelle, and cancels the role of Cordelia's daughter, since he sees in her a danger for a wrong understanding of the fundamental problem of violence. His character Cordelia has nothing in common with Shakespeare's youngest Lear daughter in terms of her origins, character or dramatic function. The figure of the schemer Edmund is dispensed with in Bonds Lear ; however, part of its dramatic function is transferred to Warrington. Kent's role as the faithful advisor to Shakespeare's Lear is omitted in Bond's drama; the Old Councilor , who has become a defector and willingly serves the new regime, is at best a caricature of Kent.

In addition, Bond dispenses with the figure of the fool and his critical commentary on events in his work. Instead, he introduces the figure of the gravedigger's son and his spirit, which in a certain way, like the fool in Shakespeare, assumes a kind of contrasting function: while Bond's Lear does not know how to live shortly before his death, the spirit, on the other hand, testifies to its satisfaction with it his former idyllic life. In some places, the ghost also takes on tasks that Shakespeare does to the fool by helping to put the superficial and the obvious into more universal contexts.

Although Bond fundamentally redesigned the ensemble of characters based on Shakespeare's original in order to be able to use it for his own purposes, an echo of individual scenes or parts of scenes from Shakespeare's original remains in various places, for example in the image of the crown, which in Shakespeare's Lear consists of wild flowers (King Lear, IV.6), while the disempowered Lear Bonds is put on a "square frame" in the cruel torture scene (act II, scene 6, p. 63), which ironically lets him become king again.

Likewise, the “Mock Trial Scene” (III, 6), in which Shakespeare's Lear in his madness believes he is sitting in court over his daughters, influenced the design of scene II, 1 in Bond, although this explicitly assigned this scene as political show trial. In addition, this scene from Shakespeare provides Bond with the impetus to perform Fontanelle's autopsy on the open stage in his work in scene 6 in the second act with terrible medical precision. In his delusion, Shakespeare's Lear has the “anatomization” of his daughter Regan in order to determine how evil got into her heart (“ Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart ”, III, 6, 73 f.). Bonds Lear accompanies the hideous process of dissecting the dead body of his daughter Fontanelle with a similar question, echoing Shakespeare's Lear: “ But where is the ... She was cruel and angry and hard ... Where is the beast? “(II, 6, p. 59). If Lear searches for evil in human nature in Shakespeare, Bond takes the quote literally to show that, on the contrary, evil lies in the society that rapes this nature.

Several linguistic or scenic images that Bond uses to illustrate the situation of humans in a repressive social order, such as the enclosed water that turns into blood and desert (p. 26) or the symbolic image of an animal in a cage or of the captured bird are specified in Shakespeare at certain points, but are expanded and related to each other by Bond. At no point does Bond simply copy Shakespeare's foil, but rather gives it a new dramatic effect through its redesign or modification in changed thematic or symbolic reference systems. This also applies to the mirror scene (II, 6), which in its layout and implementation is reminiscent of the abdication scene in Shakespeare's Richard II (IV, 1.268).

Bond not only uses metaphors to clarify his statement, but also tries to clarify psychological and political processes by tracing them back to their inevitable motives and strategic patterns. At the beginning, Bond's Lear demonstrates the blind authority of the state far more emphatically than Shakespeare's Lear, which alone expresses the self-deception and delusion of an angry old man. With regard to Lear's daughters, in contrast to Shakespeare, Bond is neither about malicious hypocrisy and subsequent ingratitude, nor about truthfulness and love, nor about the contradictions in character, but only about the juxtaposition of two forms of the counter-movement resulting from the oppression, the aristocratic revolt to one and the popular uprising on the other.

While Shakespeare's Cordelia affirmatively affirms the idea of ​​a higher, just cosmic order in the world by coming to the rescue of her father and trying to restore the old meaningful order and justice, Bond pulls off both the religious overtones and the character interest in the figure and shows one counterrevolutionary Cordelia, who ultimately only brings back the repressive and violent structures of the former Lear state including the wall. From Bond's point of view, Shakespeare's Cordelia is a dangerous Cordelia, as she wants to restore a utopian, but only supposedly just order and thus sends the wrong signals to the audience. In contrast, his Cordelia does not embody a revolutionary message of salvation; In her regime, the old structures of violence in the horrors of war, in arbitrary political justice and the despotic system of rule, manifest themselves only once again - in Bond's work, the inevitably threatened pseudo-idyll in the forest appears only once again as an alternative world.

The reduction of the cosmic dimensions of Shakespeare's Lear, which presuppose a divine world order, finally also affects the title character himself and her painful path of knowledge in Bond's work. If the turmoil of nature in and around Lear in Shakespeare still points to the disturbed order of a universe, the suffering of Bond's Lear lies in the humiliation and agony through the exaggerated, individually unmotivated forms of the order of violence that he himself had previously embodied authoritatively . The portrayal of this violence appears harsher and more cruel in Bond than in Shakespeare, since it is not softened by references to ideas of a higher order that restores justice or to martyrdom and grace.

In Bond's work there are indeed various borrowings or recourse to the ideas, action and image patterns of Shakespeare's model, but their meaning is reversed and turned against Shakespeare. If in Shakespeare the denaturation of the human is still traced back to the apostasy from the social and moral order, Bond blames the deformation of the human on this order itself. If Shakespeare's Lear in his madness gains insight into the chaotic state of the world caused by the violation of the divine order, then Bond's Lear in his disregard finally sees through the dubiousness of the moral principles of order as such.

Historical image

While the historical conflict of the early 17th century between the fragile old feudal order and the incipient modern or early bourgeois individualism is reflected in Shakespeare's original, Bond extends the historical perspective of his play into the 20th century and expands it to a universal historical model that also includes the revolutionary uprisings and popular movements of the early present.

At the beginning of Lear , a feudal-structured social and rulership system is presented, whose autocratic ruler Lear appears as a despotic patriarch. His policy is still determined by primitive, as it were magical ideas about the laws of blood and vengeance. The suffering and death of the workers on the wall are necessary blood sacrifices for him as king in order to protect the empire from evil forces from outside. At the same time, however, Bond tries to avoid an unambiguous definition of a specific historical epoch by means of a large number of anachronisms. These anachronistic elements are not mere sprinkles, but structurally significant, since for Bond the mythology of rule, which originated in an early phase of human history, still has an effect up to the present day and is still used to justify violence and the exercise of power. According to Bond's intention, the construction of the wall also includes monumental structures of modern dictatorships and points to the mythical-sankrosanct aura that continue to characterize patriotism and national wars up to the present day.

Lear's disempowerment is followed by the rule of his two daughters Bodice and Fontanelle, who initially set themselves apart from the irrational despotic rule of their father and pose as representatives of an enlightened, pragmatic and rational policy. The idea of ​​a blood revenge is absurd for them and the conflict with the dukes - for Lear still based on an enmity from the distant past - they see as easily solvable. Your subsequent warfare is far more rational and strategically efficient than that of the deposed Lear, who always carries out his warfare based on the memory of past heroic victories with the same deployment plans.

If the political power now appears in the guise of common sense and the enlightened exercise of power , it is still just as inhumane as in the previous archaic form. It is not without reason that immediately after the war council scene (I, 3) Bond follows the extremely brutal torture of Warrington by the sisters, whose cruelty and brutality have become independent of all pragmatic purposes and can no longer even appeal to a political myth.

Fontanelle's sadism, drastically exhibited in the torture scene, clearly illustrates the destructive energy resulting from despair and helplessness (“ Father! Father! ”), Which has built up in her own suppressed and alienated psyche. The pragmatism that the sisters seem to pursue quickly turns out to be mere self-deception or pure self-deception. Furthermore, as a subtle form of social morality, it violently ignores the needs of individuals, including the sisters themselves. In concrete terms, Bond shows this using the example of the sisters' marriage of convenience in a scene in which the transition from sexual frustration to aggression can be comprehensively understood (p. 10 f.) According to Gerd Stratmann, Bond here realizes in an exemplary manner his theoretical demand, " psycho- to apply analytical terms to politics ”.

The bloody “Realpolitik” of Bodice and Fontanelle is being replaced by the revolutionary movement Cordelia, which itself is in the truest sense of the word a brutally raped victim of the “reasonable” social order established by the sisters. The revolutionary movement led by it justifies the equally violent overthrow with an albeit vague utopia of a modern social order that is supposed to enable a new life for people in a peaceful and solidary community and thus the dream of a society without oppression and repression (Lear, III, 3 , Pp. 83f.).

With reference to this utopian dream of a society free of violence and domination, however, it carries out its cruel purges in a form reminiscent of Stalinism , enacts laws with retroactive effect and continues the construction of the wall. This renewed establishment of a despotic arbitrariness and tyranny takes place again inevitably in the circular mechanism of violence and counterviolence, whereby Bond leaves no doubt about the inevitability of this universal historical cycle in the revolutionary new popular uprising: the quasi “Stalinist” development is one unavoidable consequence of the violence of the revolution as such, as clearly emerges from the outset from the revolutionary battle slogan “ To fight like us you must hate ” (p. 44). The atrocities in the revolutionary upheaval subsequently shown by Bond are therefore no mere coincidence, but are structurally integrated into the dramatic plot. The hatred to which Cordelia's regime owes its emergence, as Gerd Stratmann explains in his analysis of Lear , necessarily generates renewed oppression and aggression by new ruthless opponents, against whom the regime, which has only just come to power, in turn with a further dogmatization of its social morality, and that means trying to defend yourself by force: the cycle continues without end.

According to Stratmann, Bond's presentation of the various political changes and changes in power should primarily serve to illustrate their pseudo-character more clearly. With all social change and all political changes, "only the garment or the pretext behind which the same violence is hidden - be it Lear's mythology of rule, the allegedly pragmatic reason of the sisters or Cordelia's revolutionary utopia" changes. "

The image of history expressed in Lear remains fundamentally static; this static character is also reflected in the structural structure of the drama. The circular occurrence of the main plot in the cycle of violence with its numerous repetitions and variations is only interrupted by the inserted "folk scenes", which do not drive the plot forward but present the nameless victims of the dramatic course of action: among others the workers on the wall (I. , 1), the guards (I, 3), the convoy of political prisoners (I, 5–6) or the peasant family (II, 7). According to Stratmann in Bonds Lear, such scenes illustrate, as it were, randomly, the suffering and impotence of the individual, which remains the same despite all the historical and political changes shown in the drama. From the victims' point of view, nothing happened; their situation has not changed. They are still at the mercy of the anonymous institutional violence of society, regardless of its specific historical form. Social violence has always only found a new justification or a new label.

Even the respective legitimizations of the use of force hardly differ in principle: Like Cordelia, Lear also believed he had to be cruel before his dismissal in order to enable a future generation to be “ kind and merciful ”, and Bodice also hoped for her bloody one War against Lear, thereby making future wars and the exclusion and imprisonment by the wall superfluous for all time. The error or self-deception is the same in all three cases: Violence cannot be used as a means or controlled. It becomes independent again and again and ultimately also controls those who believe they control it.

Lear's path of knowledge

With regard to the historical and political landscape in Lear , which is entirely allegorically drawn , the path of knowledge of the title character can equally be viewed as a kind of secular pilgrimage , which runs through precisely defined situations of Lear, who is increasingly gaining insight and knowledge and ends with an action that may nevertheless promise salvation.

Lear's path to knowledge begins with the building of the Mau and with it the direct participation in the “original sin” of society, an allusion to Adam and Eve , so to speak . After his fall, he is consciously confronted for the first time with a not yet alienated, innocent nature in the form of the gravedigger's son. According to Bond's own statements, the figure's completely spontaneous love of neighbor and her naive zest for life point to a “golden age” of non-violence, which Lear himself contributed to the destruction of. For a short while, Lear hopes in the idyllic rural world of the gravedigger's son to forget and regain the lost peace of his childhood:

I slept like a child in this silence all day. It's so long since I slept like that, I'd forgotten. ... And now I shall get well again. It's so simple and easy here. ... I could have a new life here. I could forget all the things that frighten me - the years I have wasted, my enemies, my anger, my mistakes. (I, 7, p. 25).

Lear's false hope that everything could now be so simple cannot be fulfilled in his current situation. Lear, who previously set the unstoppable mechanism of violence in motion himself, has to watch helplessly as his idyllic, island-like refuge is brutally destroyed. The confrontation with the inevitable consequences of his former deeds does not allow forgetting.

When the gravedigger's son is killed, his ghost accompanies Lear on his way. As a ghost, he keeps the memory of the lost but still real humanity and humanity. With this memory the disempowered and captured Lear can comfort himself in the dungeon scenes and soothe his pain. But his further development requires more from him than the mere passive endurance of his suffering, namely further knowledge and at the end of the drama finally his own efforts to face the reality for which he is partly to blame through his own action.

In this regard, Bond turns completely uncompromising against Shakespeare, whose King Lear for him a "work of blind resignation" ( "work of blind resignation" ) represents. In an interview in the Theater Quarterly from the year Lear was created , the author says:

" I wanted to explain that Lear was responsible, but that it was important that he could not get out of his problem simply by suffering the consequences and struggle with them. "

Lear's self-knowledge begins in the show trial scene (II, 1); According to the author's intentions, in analogy to Shakespeare, paradoxically, in a metaphorical sense, his eyes are only finally opened when his eyes are physically dazzled: "I must stop her [Cordelia] before I die." (p. 67).

For Bond, this scene is the moment of decisive insight: Lear not only recognizes his own mistakes here, but understands that he has to be actively involved himself. The ghost of the gravedigger's son, according to Bond's own remarks, fights against this, knowing that Lear's active engagement will eventually lead to his own dissolution.

From this point onwards, Bond's drama is no longer primarily about passive suffering or wise insight, but about moral action, as Stratmann emphasizes in his interpretation. It begins here, as Bond's own statements and the text itself can be seen, at the same time Lear's conflict with the ghost of the gravedigger's son. The longing for the lost "Golden Age" remains nostalgic, because it can no longer be retrieved and for this reason stands in the way of Lear's commitment. This is clearly expressed in animal imagery. The ghost asks about the animal that it never wants to have seen (p. 38) when Lear first sees his own imprisoned self in the mirror in the courtroom scene. As long as Lear himself did not have the insight into the outwardly hidden, own inner biological innocence, he was not able to recognize the possibility of his own perversion through entanglement in social morality. Therefore, against the appeal of an already suppressed and alienated world, he could only put the more and more fading dreamy vision of its paradisiac origin, which the ghost of the gravedigger's son articulates with the following words: “ I thought you'd forget all this: crowds, wars, arguments ... We could have been happy living here. I used to be happy. "(P. 82).

In this context, in the course of the third act, the spirit increasingly becomes the inner voice of Lear's seduction, which "wants to lure him into a dreamy world oblivion and to dissuade him from all social action."

However, Lear succeeds in defying this temptation. He is still subject to errors and has to give up his remaining illusions, for example the one that he could build a private alternative world of compassion and peace in the community of friends in the small rural commune. However, the violence cannot be stopped. Cordelia's soldiers track down the refugees whom Lear has given refuge and lead them away for execution. In this pivotal moment Lear realizes his own mistake: He has done nothing more than a new wall of "nice people" ( " nice people ") to build around.

At this point, his hope of being able to counteract the outside violence with only teaching words and warnings turns out to be illusory. While Lear speaks to the crowd and preaches compassion in dark parables or parables like that of the caged and crucified bird, he is initially placed in close proximity to the figure of Christ and the Christian perspective of salvation through further allusions . But in view of the "reality of the henchmen and soldiers, the mere word remains powerless, the New Testament model proves to be deceptive consolation". So Lear finally says: "If I saw Christ on the cross I would spit at him." (P. 76).

From now on Lear only remains the alternative of an act which, without itself becoming violent, is directed against the concrete social and state violence of the rulers. Now, after he has freed himself from the inner prison of his own alienation (" I left my prison ... ", p. 80), he has to build the Great Wall, which he himself had started and which now imprisons the whole of society has to tear down. In his situation he can of course only achieve this in a symbolic act, to a certain extent on behalf of all of humanity.

This demonstrative symbolic act Lears at the end of the drama leads to his physical death by shooting; But even the ghost of the gravedigger's son has to die after its creeping dissolution, since after Bond man has to come to terms with the final loss of his original innocence and his golden age, and so perhaps the - albeit small - chance of attaining a new innocence and that To receive the beginning of a new era of nonviolence and peace. From Bond's point of view, holding on to the romanticizing dream of returning to an original paradisiacal state would be extremely dangerous politically.

History of works

Dealing with the issue of violence occupies a central position in Edward Bond's entire dramatic oeuvre. He tried to do this in his earlier pieces The Pope's Wedding (1962), Saved (1965), Early Morning (1968), Narrow Road to the Deep North (1969) and in his one-act plays Black Mass (1970) and Passion (1971) To fathom suffering from the cruel, treacherous and absolutely inhuman as the basic substance of human nature and human society. Likewise, the drama The Sea (1973) following Lear , which Bond ascribes to the genre of comedy (comedy), despite the abundance of burlesque-farce-like elements, closes with a gloomy and hopeless meaning of human life. In The Sea , Bond makes particular use of the abstract patterns of his rather pessimistic worldview, which were later more pronounced in Lear . At a key point in the piece it says: “If you look at life closely it is unbearable. What people suffer, what they do to each other, how they hate themselves, anything good is cut down and trodden on ... " . Similar words could also be used to paraphrase central statements that his Lear seeks to convey to the audience.

Throughout Bond's dramatic work, the main concern of the author is to expose this perversion of human nature by violence, whether it comes from the state power apparatus, from repressive justice and administration, or from the capitalist or technocratic system. Mediated through the aggressive counter-reactions of the victims and those affected, Bond tries again and again, despite his apparently pessimistic view, to arouse pity and humanity in the audience in order to point out possibilities of change with optimism.

Already in the early pieces The Pope's Wedding and Saved , which are still realistically settled in the working-class and youthful milieu , Bond, as in Lear , pointed the dramatic events pointedly to single scenic images; Already in Early Morning and Narrow Road to Deep North he tries to detach these single scenic images from their realistic concreteness by alienating them with anachronistic or archetypal elements - a process that he further developed in The Sea and perfected in Lear .

Bond's pronounced tendency to depict violent scenes in diverse variations in his pieces and to paint them in detail on the stage suggests at first glance that Bond's work is close to the theater of cruelty in the Artaudian sense , not least because of the shock-like effects created in the audience repeatedly led to such a classification in the criticism. Bond himself has repeatedly distanced himself from such a classification and, in contrast, called his work a rational theater , i.e. a theater of reason, since from his point of view it is not the task of the theater to psychologically shock the viewer, as Artaud demanded, but rather to confront the audience with a critical analysis of the state of modern society. However, in Bond's work there remains a certain tension between the poles of a drastic shock effect on the stage on the one hand and the intention to offer a rational analysis of society on the other.

As explained in the interpretation approach above, the manifold manifestations of the state-institutional exercise of power presented in Lear are essentially mediated by an abundance of exchangeable anonymous actors. This level of drama implies a certain affinity with the theater of the absurd . Bond's intention, however, is by no means aimed at portraying the absurdity of a meaningless world structure which, in its immutability, simply has to be painfully endured; Rather, it is about exploring the origin of the violence and thus the chance of political and social change. For this reason, Bond emphatically rejected the "absurd" King Lear , as the Polish literary and theater scholar Jan Kott believed he recognized in Shakespeare's tragedy.

More recently, Bond's dramatic work, and especially his Lear, has been compared more often with Brecht's conception of drama in the epic theater . Both the socio-political commitment of Bond, the unmistakably political content of his statements and topics, but also the montage-like episodic structure of his pieces, their alienation effects and the sometimes existing explicit introduction of an epic narrator figure (e.g. in The Passion or Narrow Road into the Deep North ) indeed reveal commonalities that have a certain justification and were promoted by Bond himself; However, Bond's works ultimately develop a completely different effect. Accordingly, Bond distanced himself from the Brechtian alienation effect in his programmatic statements and instead emphasized the so-called aggro effect that emanates from his pieces. Its function is not to distance the audience rationally, as with Brecht, but rather to make them affected by being entangled in what is happening on the stage.

The engagement and examination of the Shakespeare phenomenon, which began in Lear , was continued by Bond in a more direct and radical form in Bingo in 1972 . While Bond's main aim in Lear is to critically question the role model of Shakespeare's great tragedy as a literary work and to dismantle the veneration of the classics, in Bingo , on the other hand, he critically examines the contradictions of the historical personality of Shakespeare as an author on the one hand and businessman on the other. The last months of the life of the great Elizabethan, who retired to Stratford as a wealthy citizen, are dramatized here. In Bingo, Bond shows Shakespeare as a lonely person, desperate for life, in powerless passivity. His family relationships with his wife and daughter are broken; in the looming conflict between large landowners and impoverished tenants, he refrains from taking a stand so as not to jeopardize his own financial interests. His dramatic creativity has died out because he has nothing left to write about, so that he finally commits suicide, tormented by the question of whether his work has made a difference at all.

Reception history and criticism

In the London premiere of the play in September 1971 at the Royal Court Theater , directed by William Gaskill, on whose staging Bond himself actively participated, the title character Lear first appeared in a tsar's cloak , later as a figure referring to Tolstoy ; Cordelia was presented in a manner reminiscent of Lenin's wife, in line with Bond's intention . The text of the work suggests such parallels in certain respects; the theater audience, however, mostly reacted with anger, shocked by the abundance of atrocities openly and extremely drastically presented on the stage.

In autumn 1972 Lear was presented to the German audience in a production by Peter Palitzsch in Frankfurt; further performances in Bonn and Munich followed, which for the most part reinforced the impression that the author was primarily interested in the most extreme effects. The accumulation of atrocity scenes was perceived as repulsive; at least most of the audience and critics were overwhelmed by the work. This led to the fact that Lear initially had a reputation as a "horror piece" with the audience.

In addition to the blatant theatrical effects, the excessive length and the accumulation of similar scenes were criticized, which, in the opinion of the reviewers of the time, overwhelmed the audience.

After further unsatisfactory performances in Ulm and Vienna in 1972, it was only the production by Hans Lietzau at the Schiller Theater in Berlin in June 1973 that was convincing. The game was played in a kind of sandpit; the actors wore stocking masks. In contrast to the previous productions, in this performance no attempt was made to create a realistic backdrop for the allegorical events.

In the Viennese production of 1973, directed by Bond himself, what the critics considered to be an “extremely gentle performance” was presented.

Despite the originally devastating reviews, the piece was sometimes enthusiastically celebrated by the critics in German-speaking countries from the 1980s at the latest as the “most German” piece of bonds, sometimes with a slight discomfort. In the meantime, Bond's drama has become one of the classic standard works of modern Anglo-Saxon or even European theater and is still regularly on the repertoire of the stages in German-speaking countries.

In the literary analysis, Bonds Lear in the tradition of the history of Shakespeare's impact is, from today's point of view, predominantly understood as one of the most significant and at the same time most independent contributions to Shakespeare's work, which equally takes up different influences and tendencies from the last decades and successfully merges them into a unity . The historical-political depth of his statements is particularly emphasized, which in certain areas go beyond Shakespeare and make Lear a modern archetype .

Due to its high affinity to the central theses of the current interpretation of Shakespeare, Bonds Lear also shaped today's reception of Shakespeare, despite its dramatic independence.

In recent literary criticism, Lear is praised as a work that has secured its author a place among the most important English playwrights of the post-war period. Lear is foresighted in an almost uncanny way and has so far not lost its validity and relevance.

expenditure

English single editions

• Edward Bond: Lear . Methuen 1972. Reprinted Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2016.
• Edward Bond: Lear . New Edition, A&C Black, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-413-51950-4 .
• Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern. Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 .

English collective edition

• Edward Bond: Plays: Lear, The Sea [u. a.], Vol. 2, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, London 1998, ISBN 978-0-4133-9270-1 .

German single edition

• Edward Bond: Lear . Translated by Christian Enzensberger. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1972, ISBN 978-3-518-01322-9 .

German collective edition

• Edward Bond: Collected Pieces. Volume 1: Saved - Mourning Too Soon - Lear - Die See Taschenbuch . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 978-3-5181-1340-0 .

literature

• Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On Edward Bonds' Shakespeare reception . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 65-78. (online at jstor [40] )
• Gregory Dark: Production Casebook: Edward Bond's Lear at the Royal Court . In: Theater Quarterly , II, 5 (1972), pp. 20-31.
• Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear . In: Annamma George: Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard . Dissertation from St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012, pp. 39–96, published online as a PDF file at [41] .
• Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 22-32.
• Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, pp. 71-78. (online on jstor )
• Günther Klotz: Heritage quotation and timeless violence. To Edward Bonds Lear . In: Weimarer Contributions , 19 (10), 1973, pp. 54–65.
• Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , pp. 222-238.
• Richard Scharine: The Plays of Edward Bond . Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg 1976, pp. 181-222.
• Leslie Smith: Edward Bond's Lear . In: Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), pp. 65-85. (online at jstor [42] )
• Gerd Stratmann : Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , pp. 274-298.
• Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 353-374.
• Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, pp. 179–194. ( Available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag ). Also published as a shortened version in: Archiv , 222, 187th year, 2nd half of 1985, pp. 306-320.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, pp. 277f. and 297. See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, p. 22 f. and 394. See also Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On the Shakespeare reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 65 ff. (Online at jstor [1] ) and Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , new edition Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 179 ff. See also Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , p. 222 f. See also Bond's own statements in The Author's Preface , LVII ff. In: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern. Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 .
2. ↑ On the structure, cf. in more detail the commentary by Patricia Hern in: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. XXIV ff., Online [2] . Retrieved May 11, 2020.
3. ↑ See Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, p. 222 f. and 231 f. and Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , p. 274. See also Hubert Zapf on the linguistic design : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract Society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 193 f. (Available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag [3] ). See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 22 ff. And 29 f. See also Bond's own statements in The Author's Preface , S. LXVI, and Patricia Hern's comment on the use of language in Bond's Lear in: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern. Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. XLIII ff., Online [4] . Retrieved May 11, 2020.
4. ↑ See in more detail the comment by Patricia Hern in: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. XXVI ff., Online [5] . Retrieved May 11, 2020. See Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , p. 22 f. and Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 353 f. See also Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, p. 71 f. (online at jstor [www.jstor.org/stable/41055419]) and Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On Edward Bonds' Shakespeare reception . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 65 ff. (Online at jstor [6] ), p. 106 f. and Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 179 ff. (Available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag [7] ).
5. ↑ See Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , pp. 227 and 229 ff. See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 23 ff. Cf. also Bond's own statements in The Author's Preface , LXVI. In: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern. Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 : “ Apart from the ten or so main characters of the play there are about seventy other speaking parts. In a sense these are one role showing the character of a society. "(Online [8] . Retrieved May 11, 2020.)
6. ↑ See Edward Bond: " Lear was standing in my path and I had to get him out of the way ." In: Drama and the Dialectics of Violence: Edward Bond Interviewed by the Editors , Theater Quarterly , Vol. II, 1972, No. 5, pp. 4–12, here p. 8. See also the commentary by Patricia Hern in: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. XXVI ff., Online [9] . Accessed on May 11, 2020. See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 22-25, and Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 353-360. See also Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, pp. 71-77 (online at jstor [www.jstor.org/stable/41055419]) and Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On Edward Bonds' Shakespeare reception . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 66-70 (online at jstor [10] ), and Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, pp. 179–181 (available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag [11] ).
7. ↑ See the foreword and commentary by Patricia Hern in: Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. LVII-LXVI and pp. XXIV-LII, online [12] . Retrieved May 11, 2020. See also Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , pp. 278–282 and the documentary appendix pp. 294–296.
8. ↑ Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. LXII f., Online [13] . Retrieved May 11, 2020.
9. ↑ See Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. LVII-LXII, online [14] . Retrieved May 11, 2020. See also Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , pp. 279 ff. Cf. also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , p. 22 f. and Dieter A. Berger: “The Corrupt Seer”: On the Shakespeare reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 69 f. (online at jstor [15] )
10. ↑ Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , S. LXI, online [16] . Retrieved May 11, 2020. See also Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , p. 280.
11. ↑ See key points in particular Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , pp. 35, 37, 41 and 74 f., Online [17] . Accessed on May 11, 2020. As Oppel explains in his interpretation of these passages, the term “cage” is one of the key words in the entire Bond tragedy. See Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , p. 233 f.
12. ↑ See Lear , Author's Preface , LXIII f. See above all the comments by Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , p. 280 ff.
13. ↑ See Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , S. 280 ff See the symbolism of the caged animal in the cage. Lear also Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , p. 233 ff. And Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action . In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, p. 79 (online at jstor [18] ). See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , p. 31.
14. ↑ See Edward Bond: Lear. With commentary and notes . Edited by Patricia Hern, Methuen Student Edition, London 1983, ISBN 0-413-51950-3 , p. 80 and p. 2 ff. Cf. on the interpretation of the wall symbolism as far as Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract Society als political System problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 182, Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , p. 25, and Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , pp. 223 and 228.
15. ↑ See Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 182. According to Zapf's interpretation, the army headquarters, the courtroom or the prison cells can be used as spatial variations on the wall motif to be viewed as. Horst Oppel expresses himself in a similar way : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, p. 223.
16. ↑ See Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 182 f. Cf. also the similar interpretation by Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 24 ff. Habicht also refers in this context to the tragic delusion, which was already laid out here in the drama and based on Shakespeare's film, but has a different orientation.
17. ↑ See Hubert Zapf's interpretative approach referred to so far : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract Society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 183 f. Cf. also the interpretation by Horst Oppel, which goes in the same direction in this context of interpretation, despite a different approach to interpretation : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , p. 228 ff. See also the partly similar interpretation of this connection by Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 24-29.
18. ↑ See the interpretation by Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 184 f.
19. ↑ See the interpretation by Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, pp. 185 ff. In this context, Zapf also addresses the anonymous administrative guidelines that lead to the old prison guard's perplexity the questions of the innocent inmates (act iii, scene 6, p. 55) as well as the execution of prisoners who were degraded to numbers on the basis of obviously arbitrary official lists (p. 56).
20. ↑ Cf. Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 359 ff. And Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , p. 23 f. See also Dieter A. Berger: “The Corrupt Seer”: On Edward Bonds' Shakespeare reception . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 66 ff. (Online at jstor [19] ) and Horst Oppel: Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , p. 223 ff. Cf. also Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear . In: Annamma George: Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard . Dissertation from St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012, p. 46 ff., Published online as a PDF file under [20] .
21. ↑ In a letter to Malcolm Hay and Philip Roberts, Bond wrote in 1977: “ Cordelia represents Stalin, it's as simple as that. “Quoted from: Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear , p. 86, published online as a PDF file at [21] . See also Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, p. 72. (online at jstor [22] )
22. ↑ See as far as Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 359-364 and Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , pp. 23-31. See also Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On Edward Bonds' Shakespeare reception . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 66 ff. (Online at jstor [23] ) and Horst Oppel: Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , pp. 223-327. See also the comprehensive analysis of Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear , pp. 46–96, published online as a PDF file under [24] and Leslie Smith: Edward Bond's Lear . In: Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), p. 66 ff. (Online at jstor [25] ) and Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, pp. 71-78. (online at jstor [26] )
23. ↑ See the description of the relationship referred to here in Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 365-367.
24. ↑ See Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 367. See also Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear , p. 86 ff., Published online as a PDF file at [27]
25. ↑ See Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 367 f.
26. ↑ See Bonds' interview in: Theater Quarterly, 2 (January-March 1972), p. 9. See Gerd Stratmann on the context of interpretation presented here: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 369 f. See also Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, p. 75 ff. (Online at jstor [28] )
27. ↑ See Edward Bond: “ ... this was the crucial scene in which Lear realizes his mistake. Lear feels he has got to involve himself; but the ghost fights against this, knowing that Lear's involvement will eventually lead to his [the Ghost's] death. “In: Theater Quarterly, January 2 - March 1972, p. 9. See Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 369 f.
28. ↑ See Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 370 f. See Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, p. 75 ff. (Online at jstor [29] )
29. ↑ See Gerd Stratmann on the presented interpretative approach: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 370 f.
30. ↑ See so far the interpretation of Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 370 f., Which is reproduced here. See also Hilde Klein: Edward Bond: "Lear was standing in my path ..." - Lear's Progressive Journey from Blindness to Moral Insight and Action. In: Atlantis , vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1989, p. 76 ff. (Online at jstor ) and Leslie Smith: Edward Bond's Lear . In: Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), p. 82 ff. (Online at jstor [30] )
31. ↑ See Edward Bond: The Sea . Methuen, London 1973, p. 44. See also Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01233-8 , pp. 222-238. See also Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear (1971) . In: Klaus-Dieter Fehse et al. (Ed.): The contemporary English drama . Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.1975, ISBN 3-8072-2096-8 , pp. 274 f.
32. ↑ See Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-513-02226-3 , p. 22 f. See also Leslie Smith: Edward Bond's Lear . In: Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), p. 65 ff. (Online at jstor )
33. ↑ See Hubert Zapf : Edward Bond, Lear: Abstract Society as a political system problem . In: Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 179 f. ( available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag ). See also Edward Bond: The Rational Theater. In: Plays: Two. Methuen, London 1978, pp. IX-XVIII, as well as cf. Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On the Shakespearer reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 72 and Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear . In: Annamma George: Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard . Dissertation from St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012, p. 42 ff., Published online as a PDF file under [31] .
34. ↑ Cf. Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 179 f. ( available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag ) and Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1980, p. 358.
35. ↑ Cf. Bonds Preface to Lear , LXII ff. See in particular the statements by Hubert Zapf: The drama in the abstract society: On the theory and structure of modern English drama . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988 (habilitation thesis), ISBN 3-484-66002-3 , reprinted by Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 180, (available online as a PDF file for a fee from de Gruyter Verlag [32] ). See also Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear . In: Annamma George: Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard . Dissertation St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012, p. 51 f., Published online as a PDF file under [33] .
36. ↑ Cf. Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On the Shakespeare reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 72ff. (online at jstor [34] ) Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear . In: Annamma George: Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard . Dissertation St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012, p. 46, published online as a PDF file under [35] . See also Leslie Smith: Edward Bond's Lear . In: Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), p. 67 f. (online on jstor )
37. ↑ See Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, p. 222 f.
38. ↑ Cf. Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 353 and 372. See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, p. 22.
39. ↑ See Horst Oppel : Edward Bond: Lear . In: Horst Oppel (Ed.): The English Drama of the Present. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1976, p. 222 f.
40. ↑ Cf. Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 353 and 372. See also Werner Habicht: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Rainer Lengeler (Ed.): English Literature of the Present 1971–1975 . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, p. 22.
41. ↑ Cf. Gerd Stratmann: Edward Bond, Lear. In: Horst Priessnitz (ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , p. 353. See also Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On the Shakespeare reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 65 ff. (Online at jstor [36] ). See also Leslie Smith: Edward Bond's Lear . In: Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), p. 84, (online at jstor [37] ) and Annamma George: Demythologizing Lear: A Deconstructive Reading of Shakespeare in Edward Bond's Lear . In: Annamma George: Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard . Dissertation from St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012, pp. 58–65, published online as a PDF file under [38] .
42. ↑ Cf. Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On the Shakespeare reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, p. 71. (online at jstor [39] ).
43. ↑ See the review by Lyn Gardner: Lear . In: The Guardian , March 17, 2005. Retrieved May 14, 2020.

Web links

• Lear - original English text with foreword and text commentary by Patricia Hern - PDF file
• Edward Bond: Lear - English language overview on encyclopedia.com
• Study Guide Edward Bond - Lear - English language table of contents and interpretation