When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors� tutors,
No heretics burned, but wenches� suitors,
Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion.
When every case in law is right;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues;
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs [. . .]
Then comes the time, who lives to see�t,
That going shall be used with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.
(III.II.80-94)
This passage gives an impression of the Fool�s perspective throughout the play: the world is fundamentally irrational, and its subsequent absurdity is emphasised.
In King Lear, man is completely stripped bare: �the onion is peeled to the very last, to the suffering nothing� . Mankind is shown to operate in a bestial way: Goneril and Regan are branded �pelican daughters�, animals that were thought to feed off their parent�s blood, and references to animals and beasts proliferate the text . The violent distribution of suffering and death is indiscriminate. The gods, indeed any notion of justice or an �absolute� (either good or cruel ) that would give the universe some sort of rational framework are pronounced by their absence. In a world where ultimately both good and bad lie murdered together, where the final stage image is one of near total desolation, it is the Fool�s observation that the world is irrational that rings true. It is this recognition, one that both Lear and Gloucester finally come to, that finally amounts to �sight�. The view that the world is irrational, absurd, and furthermore that the greater absurdity is that men desperately cling to the idea that it isn�t, is a point of view first fully expressed by Jan Kott:
[The fool�s] philosophy demands of him that he tell the truth and abolish myths. The Fool in King Lear does not even have a name, he is just Fool, pure Fool. But he is the first fool to be aware of the fool�s position� a fool who has recognised himself for a fool, who has accepted the fact that he is only a jester in the service of the prince, ceases to be a clown. But the clown�s philosophy is based on the assumption that everyone is a fool; and the greatest fool is he who does not know he is a fool: the prince himself
Brook (who wrote the preface to Shakespeare Our Contemporary) takes Kott�s essay �King Lear or Endgame� and proceeds to create in his 1970 film a bleak, almost post-apocalyptic landscape, reminiscent of the world of decomposition created in Samuel Beckett�s Endgame. It is an environment where the loneliness of man, the perceived fallacy of an illusionary rational or �just� universe, is revealed.
It is through mise-en-sc�ne and the strategic construction of space that Brook initially creates his vision of King Lear . As noted above, the use of the long shot (only possible in film) creates the impression of a brutal, cold and lonely universe, one that is �forever winter, frozen, bleak and inimical to man� . Shots of the snow or sand-covered outdoors with small figures painstakingly making there way from one destination to another (be it Lear and his knights or Gloucester travelling to Dover), become repeated visual motifs between scenes. But these are stuck between the main action of the play�s scenes, starting at the very beginning with Lear�s court. Brook opens the film with a sequence of panning shots over Lear�s hundred knights. They are all locked in a state of �numbed suspense� , awaiting the outcome of the meeting convened by their monarch. All the knights are dressed in animal skins (playing upon the link between human and animal in the text), an understated signifier of the potential for violence within mankind . Gradually the camera enters Lear�s throne-room, but the environment is still stuck in an almost deathly paralysis, every subject waiting for Lear to initiate proceedings. This is his realm of power at the film�s beginning and it is one of stasis. His tyrannical, unquestionable authority is yoked with a feeling of deathly stillness and decay as befits an aging tyrant, signified by his huge black throne which dominates the screen in a still mid-shot, an image returned to throughout the scene. The throne is both a symbol of Lear�s monarchical power and increasing frailty with age, resembling as it does a tomb in which he has cocooned himself. Subtly, the tangible signifier of power which becomes the focus of the scene is not the map but instead the orb of majesty, which Lear confers to Goneril and Regan in turn while they make their fawning declarations, but which Cordelia refuses to hold when asked.
The concept behind the stasis Brook instils is only fully revealed after Cordelia�s rebuttal. Full of wrath at having been unexpectedly spurned, Lear becomes dynamic, bolting out of the chamber and interrupting the atmosphere of silent, deathly stagnation that had previously characterised his authority. Significantly, Lear�s exit is also from the dark chamber to the blinding light of the outdoors. This short sequence that combines a movement from immobility to action with dark to light creates a pattern that re-surfaces within the film. The transfer from dark to light, gradually repeated, signifies the journey from blindness to sight that both Lear and Gloucester undergo ; it will end in the two characters meeting on Dover beach, where the sand�s harsh whiteness underlines the characters� isolation despite their recognition. Brook further emphasises the significance of movement - and metaphorically of journeying - by speeding up the film�s frame rate, most obviously when Lear leaves Regan�s castle via carriage.
Brook continues to use the camera in a way that could be loosely described as �expressionistic� throughout the rest of the film. Two-shots of characters are often incorporated into scenes to underline complicity between characters. Goneril and Regan share two-shots together immediately after the first scene and again at Regan�s house when they jointly refuse their father accommodation. Edmund�s �false complicity� with Edgar and Gloucester is depicted with almost identical two-shots of both with Edmund: only once the wheels of his plan are in motion is he shot with either Goneril or Regan (depending on whose affections he is playing on). Lear by contrast shares the vast number of his two-shots with the Fool, the only character who he can speak frankly to , for example with his admission that �I did her wrong� (I.V. 22) concerning Cordelia. Brook also emphasises how the dialogue between the two gradually brings Lear closer to the Fool�s position; their first crucial exchange is framed like a two-shot, but with the camera panning across itself back and forth between the speakers:
