Universitatea „Dunărea de Jos”, Galați

Facultatea de Litere

Modern and Contemporary British

Drama

Conf. dr. Ioana Mohor-Ivan

Student: Alina Mihaela Olteanu
 Lear
Edward Bond

I choose Bond’s king lear because of the moral of the play:the idea that actions speak louder than
the words of a person, words that can easily be throw around, but it takes a righteous person to follow
through with actions that back them up. Also because of its powerful, complex, and violent study of how
men and women are crushed by the society they have created.
In Bond's play, Lear is a paranoid autocrat, building a wall to keep out imagined "enemies". His
daughters Bodice and Fontanelle rebel against him, causing a bloody war. Lear becomes their prisoner
and goes on a journey of self-revelation.
He is blinded and haunted by the ghost of a Gravedigger's Boy, whose kindness towards the old King led
to his murder. Eventually Lear, after becoming a prophet, makes a gesture toward dismantling the wall he
began. This gesture leads to his death, which offers hope as an example of practical activism.
Lear is alone in the woods. The Ghost arrives; he is deteriorating rapidly and appears terrified. The Ghost
believes he is dying and weeps because he is afraid. Cordelia and the Carpenter enter. Cordelia speaks of
how the soldiers killed her husband and raped her and of the way in which her new government is
creating a better way of life. The Ghost watches his former wife, wishing he could speak to her. Cordelia
asks Lear to stop working against her. Lear tells Cordelia she must pull the wall down, but she says the
kingdom will be attacked by enemies if she does. When Lear continues saying he will not be quiet,
Cordelia says he will be put on trial, then leaves.
The Ghost is gored to death by pigs that have gone mad. ILear is taken to the wall by Susan. He climbs up
on the structure in order to dig it up. The Farmer’s Son, now a soldier, shoots Lear, injuring him. Lear
continues to shovel. The Farmer’s Son shoots Lear again, killing him. Lear’s body is left alone onstage.
Lear features some punishing scenes of violence, including knitting needles being plunged into a
character's eardrum, a bloody on-stage autopsy and a machine which sucks out Lear's eyeballs.

The relevance of Bond’s Lear is to make a political statement. More can be learned from history and
literature than the lessons of survival. Lear prevents the audience from uncritically accepting its actions
as tragically inevitable, representative of an unalterable human condition.

Bond’s purpose is to make Shakespeare’s play more politically effective, more likely to cause people
to question their society and themselves, rather than simply to have an uplifting aesthetic experience.
Bond’s purpose is not meant merely to entertain but to help to bring about change in society.

Bond argues that by a theatrically effective sleight of hand in King Lear Shakespeare has transmuted
the political problem into a personal conflict, so that, while the individual offenders are punished and
justice of some kind appears to have been done, the system itself survives. For Shakespeare Lear’s
frailties and his failures do not preclude the possibility of his reinstatement as king.
ALBANY. … For us, we will resign, During the life of this Old Majesty, To him our absolute power. (V iii, 297-
299)
Bond could accept neither a return to the bad old ways nor the despondent resignation expressed in
Edgar’s final speech:
The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath
borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. (V iii, 322-325)
Bond’s work is bleak in many respects but, as he explained in the Liverpool Everyman Theatre’s
programme for Lear, it is essential to its political effectiveness that the play offer a way out of the society
dominated by fear and violence. The death of Bond’s Lear looks backwards to the mistakes he must
expiate but also forwards to the possibility of a more rational society that may be shaped by succeeding
generations’ understanding of the event.
‘My Lear makes a gesture in which he accepts responsibility for his life and commits himself to
action. […] My Lear’s gesture mustn’t be seen as final. That would make the play a part of the theatre of
the absurd and that, like perverted science, is a reflection of no-culture. The human condition isn’t
absurd; it’s only our society which is absurd. Lear is very old and has to die anyway. He makes his gesture
only to those who are learning how to live.’
Bibliography
Cengage,-S. D. (2010) Retrieved from Enotes: http://enotes.com/topics/lear#summary-summary

'Lear-Summary' Drama for Students Vol.3. Gale Cengage eNotes.com. (2020, 01 14). Retrieved from
enotes.com: http://www.enotes.com/topics/lear#summary-summary

Spencer, J. S. (2003). Dramatic strategies in the plays of Edward Bond. Cambridge University Press.

Wikipedia contributors. (2019). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from Lear{play}:
http://en.wikipedia.org
 Waiting For Goddot
Samuel Beckett

A couple of weirdos sitting around, doing nothing and waiting for someone who never shows up it s
intriguing. In the words of Didi from Waiting For Godot, "Habit is a great deadener" which is why I always
forget if I locked the door.
The play consists of conversations between Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting for the arrival of
the mysterious Godot, who continually sends word that he will appear but who never does. They
encounter Lucky and Pozzo, they discuss their miseries and their lots in life, they consider hanging
themselves, and yet they wait. Often perceived as being tramps, Vladimir and Estragon are a pair of
human beings who do not know why they were put on earth; they make the tenuous assumption that
there must be some point to their existence, and they look to Godot for enlightenment. Because they
hold out hope for meaning and direction, they acquire a kind of nobility that enables them to rise above
their futile existence.
Throughout Waiting for Godot, you can encounter religious, philosophical, classical, psychoanalytical
and biographical – especially wartime – references. The theatre of the absurd is a phenomenon of the
fifties. Becket’s Waiting for Godot reflects the absurdist position of the Post World War II human who is
lost in the labyrinth of disillusionment. The glorification of life has been slept into history; humanity lost
its way. The play presents a world in which daily actions are without meaning, language fails to effectively
communicate, and the characters at times reflect a sense of artifice, even wondering aloud whether
perhaps they are on a stage.
Waiting for Godot is hailed as a classic example of "Theater of the Absurd," dramatic works that
promote the philosophy of its name. Elements of Absurdity for making this play are so engaging and
lively. Beckett combats the traditional notions of Time. It attacks the two main ingredients of the
traditional views of Time, i.e. Habit and Memory.
Waiting for Godot” is an absurd play for it is devoid of characterization and motivation. Though
characters are present but are not recognizable for whatever they do and whatever they present is
purposeless. So far as its dialogue technique is concerned, it is purely absurd as there is no witty repartee
and pointed dialogue. What a reader or spectator hears is simply the incoherent babbling which does not
have any clear and meaningful ideas.
The ending of the play is not a conclusion in the usual sense. The wait continues; the human
contacts remain unsolved; the problem of existence remains meaningless, futile and purposeless. The
conversation between the two tramps remain a jargon, really a humbug and bunkum speech.
 We find Estragon in the main story and Pozzo in the episode, combating the conventional notions of
Time and Memory. For Pozzo, particularly, one day is just like another, the day we are born
indistinguishable from the day we shall die.
“Nothing happens, nobody comes … nobody goes, it’s awful!”