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{"id":18551,"date":"2016-12-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=284"},"modified":"2016-12-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T00:00:00","slug":"slapstick-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/12\/slapstick-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Slapstick Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A<\/span>lexander Leggatt (King Lear<\/em><\/a>) captures the oddity of King Lear by calling attention to the blunt physicality of the play: \u201cThe tortured body is a recurring image. . . . According to J.I.M. Stewart, \u2018The blinding of Gloucester represents a sort of crystallizing of this element of physical outrage which the imagery holds so massively in suspension throughout the play.\u2019 What was only talked about is now seen. But even a reader can feel the physical horror of the scene in the language: \u2018Bind fast his corky arms\u2019; \u2018Out, vile jelly\u2019 . . . In language and action this is an intensely physical play\u201d (12\u201313).<\/p>\n

Yet, it\u2019s physicality is not the honorable, dignified physicality of tragedy, not the \u201cspectacular violence of war.\u201d Instead \u201cwe seem to be watching the playground violence of children: striking, tripping, kicking. Instead of the epic clash of armies, which Shakespeare\u2019s theatre could suggest by exciting hand-to-hand combat, we are watching the low, undignified essence of violence, the hard, angry striking of body against body. There is a concentration, too, on the lower body: the tripping of Oswald, the stocking of Kent and Cornwall\u2019s \u2018Upon these eyes of thing I\u2019ll set my foot\u2019 . . . In Macbeth<\/em> the language of violence is moral and poetic; in King Lear<\/em> it is physical\u201d (13).<\/p>\n

Physical, and comic. The beatings on stage resemble nothing so much as Comedy of Errors<\/em>, the plays of Plautus, or the comedies of Aristophanes. What Lear<\/em> gives us is not a story told first as tragedy, then as farce. It is farcical tragedy, tragedy deflated by slapstick violence, all the more horrifying for being slapstick.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"