- Frank Kermode
The true test is not whether the filmmaker has respected his model, but whether he has respected his own vision.
- George Bluestone
Peter Brook�s 1970 film adaptation of King Lear opens with the title character (played by Paul Scofield) bellowing the command �Know�. Isolated by protracted silences on either side, the utterance is both negation (�no�) and command (�know�); by extension it encompasses the themes of nothingness (man is nothing) and knowledge (man must realise he is nothing). The film is a brave attempt to transfer Shakespeare from stage to cinema and is heavily influenced by Jan Kott�s concept of the absurd. Remarkably, Brook�s King Lear succeeds in telling the story of the play whilst simultaneously deconstructing the cinematic aesthetic. Brook�s intention, like that of his precursors in theatre (Brecht and Beckett) and cinema (Godard), is to prevent the audience from letting the work wash over them. Instead, he aims to provoke an audience into thought, encouraging them to make there own conclusions whilst acknowledging the director�s own reading of the text. For Brook, the essence of performance is to shatter the idea that cinema is a pale imitation of real life, simply �dead illusion�. This essay will start by focusing on the task Brook faced of transferring Shakespeare�s King Lear to the screen, continue to a close examination of the cinematic techniques used by its director and conclude by examining how both theatrical and cinematic influences led him to create a truly meta-cinematic film.
I. The Issue of Transfer
William Shakespeare�s King Lear exists in two versions, The History of King Lear Quarto edition (1608) and The Tragedy of King Lear Folio edition (1623). Long-standing debate has circulated as to which is the more �definitive� text, with the Folio perceived as being Shakespeare�s first full draft prior to rehearsal and the Quarto being a later performance text . In recent years, the practice of conflating the two texts in an attempt to create a definitive version has been discarded in favour of treating the two as separate entities: the editors of the Oxford edition lead the way by publishing the texts separately so that modern readers can draw their own conclusions about the works. Today, many scholars have rejected the attempt to create a �pure� text�, instead analysing what the differences mean in the context of contemporary performance. As John Saunders observed,
The differences between texts make it impossible to support any approach to interpret which posits a single �valid� meaning. However, the existence of two very different texts does lend support to those who argue that there can be no �true� version of King Lear which invalidates all others, and that the place for interpreting Shakespeare is not the study or the library but the stage� or perhaps, in our time, the screen .
King Lear is therefore to some degree an �unstable� text, the variations between editions having a definite influence on the play�s overall dramatic effect. Stanley Wells has suggested that the Folio is �the more positive version� of Shakespeare�s great tragedy: absent lines include the Fool implicitly calling Lear a fool himself (I.IV.136-51), Lear�s mock trial of his daughters, whilst crucially it adds two lines to Lear�s final speech (V.III.311-12 ) that could end the play on a more hopeful note . However, such conclusions are at best debateable, and fail to resolve the search for an authoritative final draft. This situation confirms that from the beginning a director has to make a choice about which text(s) to use as a template from the Folio, Quarto or conflated versions, and therefore inevitably begins the process of interpretation before cameras have even started to roll.
Rather than attempt a definitive reading, Brook took up the challenge of directing a film version of the play by embracing the role of cinematic �auteur�. Rather than choose one specific edition, he used pieces of both Quarto and Folio as the basis for his screenplay . He was determined to craft his own artistic interpretation and work of art that would be reached through an attempt to embrace the �truth� of the text, whilst acknowledging that such a creative journey is necessarily subjective. Saunders clarifies Brook�s approach:
[Brook] argues that to be �true� to Shakespeare in performance it is necessary for director and cast to go through imaginative processes similar to those which Shakespeare went through in writing his plays. But he also argues that in the theatre, �truth� is �always on the move�, dependent on the context in which a performance is created and the individuals involved .
Ultimately, a director can only endeavour to do justice to the text by embarking on a creative project, one that necessarily involves their own impression of the play. Brook acknowledged the unique power of Shakespeare�s language in a theatrical context: in the delocalised setting of the empty stage, it was the place of the poetry to create the world of the play and its ideas for an audience. As Brook�s producer Michael Birkett noted,
The problem of transferring Shakespeare from the delocalised environment of the stage boards to the specifically localised environment of the film set is that you lose the free association of image and thought that is the essence of Shakespeare .
Yet as both director and producer noted, a transfer from aural to visual modes of performance is necessary in any adaptation from stage to screen. Brook acknowledged that the challenge in making Shakespeare on film was maintaining the multiplicity of meaning within the text; to suggest and suggest alone. With the consolidation of a traditional narrative cinema founded on photographic naturalism, it is almost impossible to maintain the same level of �free-association� possible on theatre�s empty stage. Brook identified that the strength of Shakespeare�s King Lear was that �you are continually re-interpreting it� the whole question of what Shakespeare intended doesn�t arise, because what he has written not only carries more meanings than he consciously intended, but those meanings are altering in a mysterious way as the text moves through the century� .
