0:00:01 > 0:00:03The king is coming!
0:00:05 > 0:00:10One play has towered over 2016 like no other,
0:00:11 > 0:00:15with productions across the UK starring some of Britain's
0:00:15 > 0:00:17most celebrated stage actors.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23As a part, it's known as the Everest of acting.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27And I think directors maybe regard it as the Everest of...
0:00:27 > 0:00:29Well, I think I was terrified.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34It's like getting onto a horse which wants to throw you,
0:00:34 > 0:00:36at the beginning.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39It wants to buck and rear and throw you out of the saddle.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43Written over 400 years ago,
0:00:43 > 0:00:47Shakespeare's King Lear is striking a powerful chord with today's
0:00:47 > 0:00:50actors, directors, and audiences.
0:00:50 > 0:00:55The play itself seems to be so precisely about now.
0:00:57 > 0:01:02I turn to the newspapers to find out what's happening that day.
0:01:02 > 0:01:05I turn to Shakespeare to explain it.
0:01:06 > 0:01:10And thanks to Shakespeare's genius, we all ultimately find our
0:01:10 > 0:01:14own interpretation of Lear and his story.
0:01:15 > 0:01:17Lear gives you a kind of...
0:01:17 > 0:01:20a look into a very dark mirror.
0:01:20 > 0:01:23At the end, the line said by Edgar is -
0:01:23 > 0:01:26"Speak what you feel and not what you OUGHT to say."
0:01:26 > 0:01:29That runs through the play and it has also been my mantra
0:01:29 > 0:01:32through life.
0:01:32 > 0:01:34It is a wonderful play.
0:01:34 > 0:01:37But I want to stand up and shout, "How dare you!
0:01:37 > 0:01:42"How dare you presume to think that this woman wants to live with
0:01:42 > 0:01:45"you in that damn cage? How dare you?"
0:01:54 > 0:01:57King Lear is a play that seems to belong as much to
0:01:57 > 0:02:02the 21st century as it does the 17th.
0:02:02 > 0:02:04There's a clash of the generations...
0:02:04 > 0:02:06I gave you all!
0:02:06 > 0:02:08And in good time you gave it!
0:02:08 > 0:02:10Made you my guardians.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15..scenes of violence and brutality...
0:02:17 > 0:02:19Out, vile jelly!
0:02:21 > 0:02:25..and the heartbreaking effects of old age.
0:02:25 > 0:02:27Look, a mouse!
0:02:28 > 0:02:30Peace...
0:02:30 > 0:02:32Peace...
0:02:32 > 0:02:35This piece of toasted cheese will do it.
0:02:37 > 0:02:42But this play that speaks so clearly to our modern age is set in
0:02:42 > 0:02:44a world of myth and legend.
0:02:57 > 0:03:01King Lear is the story of an elderly monarch who plans to divide
0:03:01 > 0:03:03his kingdom between three daughters.
0:03:05 > 0:03:08But they must first pass a simple test.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11Tell me, my daughters,
0:03:11 > 0:03:15which of you shall we say doth love us most?
0:03:17 > 0:03:20When the king's youngest daughter Cordelia refuses to pay lip
0:03:20 > 0:03:23service to filial love, she is banished.
0:03:23 > 0:03:26Hence! And avoid my sight.
0:03:26 > 0:03:27My liege!
0:03:27 > 0:03:31But his two elder daughters turn against their father.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad!
0:03:38 > 0:03:41I will not trouble thee, my child.
0:03:43 > 0:03:44Farewell.
0:03:46 > 0:03:48We'll no more meet.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51No more see one another.
0:03:54 > 0:03:58O, you are men of stones!
0:03:58 > 0:04:00Had I your tongues and eyes,
0:04:00 > 0:04:04I'd use them so that heaven's vault should crack.
0:04:06 > 0:04:10At the end of the play, the king and his daughters are dead,
0:04:10 > 0:04:12victims of his terrible misjudgement.
0:04:13 > 0:04:18Directors have to feel the electric current of the age pass
0:04:18 > 0:04:22through them, and that draws them to a particular play,
0:04:22 > 0:04:26because they feel that play speaks to the moment,
0:04:26 > 0:04:28speaks to something that we...
0:04:31 > 0:04:33..sense but can't articulate.
0:04:37 > 0:04:41King Lear's decision to divide his kingdom taps into a
0:04:41 > 0:04:46preoccupation with national identity that echoes down the centuries.
0:04:47 > 0:04:53We began rehearsals back in June, just after Brexit.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57And, of course, the sense that the play was capturing
0:04:57 > 0:05:00the effects of dividing a union
0:05:00 > 0:05:04were evident there in the text of the play and every line sort
0:05:04 > 0:05:06of would zing out.
0:05:06 > 0:05:12We're dealing in politics on a national and international level,
0:05:12 > 0:05:15because he is the king.
0:05:15 > 0:05:18It is his country.
0:05:18 > 0:05:22They are his daughters. They are princesses.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25And he gives them the country in portions.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29Now, that is dividing a nation.
0:05:33 > 0:05:35Of all these bounds,
0:05:35 > 0:05:37even from this line
0:05:37 > 0:05:39to this.
0:05:39 > 0:05:41With shadowy forests,
0:05:41 > 0:05:43and with champains rich'd,
0:05:43 > 0:05:47with plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
0:05:47 > 0:05:49we make thee lady.
0:05:49 > 0:05:53When I directed it in the early '90s,
0:05:53 > 0:05:56the production was abstract to a fault,
0:05:56 > 0:05:58but if I did it again,
0:05:58 > 0:06:03I'd want to know a lot more about the real world that Lear lives in.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07I do think it's probably the responsibility now of
0:06:07 > 0:06:13a staged production to make proper decisions about the country
0:06:13 > 0:06:18that Lear has plainly brought to something close to ruin.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31We chose some of the imagery looking at Elizabeth I's arrival into
0:06:31 > 0:06:33London. There are processional
0:06:33 > 0:06:36paintings of Elizabeth in a sort of palanquin.
0:06:36 > 0:06:39It's almost pope-like in its arrival,
0:06:39 > 0:06:42to just enhance that sense of his very, very high status.
0:06:44 > 0:06:49Of course, it gives him much further to fall from.
0:06:49 > 0:06:52You know, I mean literally in our production
0:06:52 > 0:06:54he's carried on high.
0:06:57 > 0:07:01For a modern audience, the global events of the past century
0:07:01 > 0:07:05provide a haunting backdrop to Lear's dark vision of the world.
0:07:06 > 0:07:10I think in the 20th century and now in the 21st,
0:07:10 > 0:07:15we no longer expected things to all work out.
0:07:15 > 0:07:21You know, after two world wars, the dropping of an atomic bomb,
0:07:21 > 0:07:23a holocaust,
0:07:23 > 0:07:28there was no sanity in the world and I think that the play...
0:07:28 > 0:07:30that therefore the play somehow
0:07:30 > 0:07:33resonated in a completely different way.
0:07:33 > 0:07:37No production exists independently of the time that it's presented in.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40I suspect that,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44certainly in the British theatre,
0:07:44 > 0:07:49the big and most influential change in the way we look at the play was
0:07:49 > 0:07:51Peter Brook's in the early '60s.
0:07:52 > 0:07:58Director Peter Brook reclaimed Lear for the modern stage in 1962.
0:07:58 > 0:08:01His version, starring Paul Schofield,
0:08:01 > 0:08:04was austere and ruthlessly pessimistic.
0:08:06 > 0:08:11Brook directed an equally bleak film of the production in 1971,
0:08:11 > 0:08:14shot in the Arctic Circle.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18No...
0:08:18 > 0:08:20No, no life.
0:08:24 > 0:08:28Why should a dog or horse or rat have life
0:08:28 > 0:08:30and thou no breath at all?
0:08:34 > 0:08:36Oh, thou'ld come no more.
0:08:39 > 0:08:40Never, never.
0:08:42 > 0:08:43Never...
0:08:43 > 0:08:45Never, never.
0:08:46 > 0:08:49It's a really bleak vision of the world,
0:08:49 > 0:08:51a really bleak vision of the family,
0:08:51 > 0:08:58and a really bleak vision of the kind of nihilistic,
0:08:58 > 0:09:05senseless, destructive way men and women have with each other.
0:09:05 > 0:09:10Diana Rigg played Cordelia in Brook's original stage play.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13The setting was very spare, and as a result,
0:09:13 > 0:09:17the performances stood out, and Paul's certainly.
0:09:17 > 0:09:21He was the standard bearer for a very, very long time,
0:09:21 > 0:09:22his performance.
0:09:23 > 0:09:27Brook showed that Lear could have been especially written for
0:09:27 > 0:09:29the horrors of the modern age.
0:09:31 > 0:09:36Gloucester having his eyes put out, I remember the audience...
0:09:36 > 0:09:38Quite often, there'd be a casualty among the...
0:09:38 > 0:09:42Somebody would faint when that happened.
0:09:42 > 0:09:45SCREAMING
0:09:45 > 0:09:48Out, vile jelly.
0:09:48 > 0:09:52Brook's avowed intention with it was to remove any kind of
0:09:52 > 0:09:54sentimentality.
0:09:54 > 0:09:57It was almost as if the audience was not allowed to feel anything
0:09:57 > 0:09:59at all about the characters.
0:09:59 > 0:10:01He used to joke, Brook,
0:10:01 > 0:10:05that you don't buy a ticket for the theatre on the back that says,
0:10:05 > 0:10:08"This ticket entitles you to have a good emotional time and
0:10:08 > 0:10:11"a good cry," because he wasn't interested in that.
0:10:11 > 0:10:13We that are young
0:10:13 > 0:10:17shall never see so much
0:10:17 > 0:10:19nor live so long.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24Brook's vision was harsh and unsentimental.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27But today's productions foreground the play's raw emotion and
0:10:27 > 0:10:31fractured family relationships.
0:10:31 > 0:10:33O, my dear father,
0:10:33 > 0:10:37restoration hang thy medicine on my lips and let this kiss repair those
0:10:37 > 0:10:40violent harms that my two sisters have in thy reverence made.
0:10:40 > 0:10:45I think the recovery scene, where she brings him back to life,
0:10:45 > 0:10:47I think he hears her voice and...
0:10:47 > 0:10:48He wakes!
0:10:48 > 0:10:51..gives him the will to live.
0:10:51 > 0:10:52Oh, it's so beautiful.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58I think this lady to be my child, Cordelia.
0:10:58 > 0:11:00And so I am!
0:11:01 > 0:11:03I am!
0:11:05 > 0:11:06Be your tears wet?
0:11:08 > 0:11:10Yes.
0:11:10 > 0:11:12Faith.
0:11:12 > 0:11:15Pray, weep not.
0:11:15 > 0:11:21It is about love and, you know, I loved my father a very great
0:11:21 > 0:11:28deal, and I think that's a common theme too - daughters and fathers.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31And it's so, so touching.
0:11:31 > 0:11:36I mean, I defy anybody not to have a little weep at that scene.
0:11:38 > 0:11:41When you boil it right down,
0:11:41 > 0:11:43it's a father.
0:11:43 > 0:11:45It's his daughter.
0:11:45 > 0:11:47It's his friend.
0:11:47 > 0:11:49These are
0:11:49 > 0:11:52the things that are at play here.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55His daughters break his heart.
0:11:55 > 0:11:56Every father...
0:11:58 > 0:12:02..knows that children at some stage will do that.
0:12:02 > 0:12:08What the play I think is putting its finger on is the inescapably tragic
0:12:08 > 0:12:13and self-destructive nature of the bond between parent and child.
0:12:13 > 0:12:17There is no answer that will be good enough for Lear.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21He thinks of his daughters, he thinks of his children, as
0:12:21 > 0:12:27being almost as much under his control as his own flesh.
0:12:27 > 0:12:32He does not accept that they have wills or identities of their own.
0:12:32 > 0:12:35Come, let's away to prison.
0:12:35 > 0:12:41We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
0:12:41 > 0:12:44When thou does ask me blessing,
0:12:44 > 0:12:47I'll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness.
0:12:47 > 0:12:55And so we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales.
0:12:55 > 0:12:58I want to stand up and shout, "How dare you!
0:12:58 > 0:13:03"How dare you presume to think that this woman wants to live with
0:13:03 > 0:13:06"you in that damn cage? How dare you?"
0:13:06 > 0:13:10What was very interesting in rehearsal was just how the
0:13:10 > 0:13:14sibling relationships and the relationships of those
0:13:14 > 0:13:17sisters to their father echoed throughout.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21Almost every actor in the company at some point in rehearsals would sort
0:13:21 > 0:13:24of say, "That is just like what my dad does,"
0:13:24 > 0:13:27or, "That's exactly how I feel about my sister,"
0:13:27 > 0:13:32and the sense of how there can be nothing deeper than
0:13:32 > 0:13:36a hatred that's rooted in a family argument and festers over
0:13:36 > 0:13:38years and years and years.
0:13:38 > 0:13:43His stuff with Goneril is so visceral
0:13:43 > 0:13:45when he curses her womb.
0:13:46 > 0:13:49I mean, it shocks us even now.
0:13:49 > 0:13:52We still go...
0:13:52 > 0:13:57"God, you know, to think that Shakespeare was writing that..."
0:13:58 > 0:14:01Into her womb...
0:14:02 > 0:14:04..convey sterility.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08Dry up in her
0:14:08 > 0:14:13the organs of increase.
0:14:13 > 0:14:15And from her derogate body
0:14:15 > 0:14:19never spring a babe to honour her.
0:14:23 > 0:14:29As a war rages between baby boomers and millennials,
0:14:29 > 0:14:32Lear's disastrous efforts to divide up his assets seem
0:14:32 > 0:14:34increasingly relevant.
0:14:35 > 0:14:38I think there is an element in the play which we very readily
0:14:38 > 0:14:40understand today that...
0:14:41 > 0:14:47..the older generation has got a lot of things wrong and we're not
0:14:47 > 0:14:51sufficiently looking after the people who have to follow us.
0:14:53 > 0:14:57We deliberately emphasised the lack of understanding between the
0:14:57 > 0:15:01generations, with the junior parts being played by graduates of
0:15:01 > 0:15:03the Bristol Old Vic theatre school.
0:15:03 > 0:15:07We old buffers, you know, standing on one side, and the other,
0:15:07 > 0:15:10and there wasn't an awful lot of sympathy between us.
0:15:11 > 0:15:14When his daughters strip him of the trappings of kingship,
0:15:14 > 0:15:19Lear begins to question what really matters to us as human beings.
0:15:19 > 0:15:22His speech, Reason Not The Need,
0:15:22 > 0:15:24is the emotional turning point of the play.
0:15:26 > 0:15:28O, reason not the need!
0:15:28 > 0:15:30Our basest beggars
0:15:30 > 0:15:32are in the poorest things superfluous.
0:15:34 > 0:15:37Allow not nature more than nature needs.
0:15:37 > 0:15:39Man's life is cheap as beast's.
0:15:42 > 0:15:44Thou art a lady.
0:15:45 > 0:15:48If only to go warm were gorgeous.
0:15:48 > 0:15:52Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
0:15:52 > 0:15:54which scarcely keeps thee warm.
0:15:54 > 0:15:56But for true need...
0:15:57 > 0:15:59You heavens,
0:15:59 > 0:16:01give me that patience.
0:16:01 > 0:16:03Patience I need.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09Reason Not The Need is about more than being a king.
0:16:09 > 0:16:13It's about being a human being.
0:16:13 > 0:16:15As opposed to being...
0:16:16 > 0:16:17..erm...
0:16:19 > 0:16:21..a dog, a horse, whatever.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24That we have something else.
0:16:25 > 0:16:26And...
0:16:27 > 0:16:30..it's important to remember that.
0:16:31 > 0:16:36And to reduce him to just need is
0:16:36 > 0:16:39to minimise what being
0:16:39 > 0:16:42a human being is.
0:16:44 > 0:16:47Recent productions of Lear are also looking to the ills of
0:16:47 > 0:16:51contemporary society for their inspiration.
0:16:51 > 0:16:55The truth of the matter is that the play will always, like a magnet,
0:16:55 > 0:16:59pick up the iron filings in the atmosphere, whatever they are.
0:16:59 > 0:17:04For me, the reason why we're seeing Lears sprout like mushrooms today
0:17:04 > 0:17:11is that in the last ten years you're seeing a broader recognition
0:17:11 > 0:17:15that some form of the social contract has broken down,
0:17:15 > 0:17:18that there are the permanently disenfranchised.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26Well, I suppose he becomes a socialist.
0:17:26 > 0:17:28If you want to put it in a box.
0:17:28 > 0:17:31You know, he becomes an egalitarian
0:17:31 > 0:17:34suddenly, and that's always going to be a very strong thing for
0:17:34 > 0:17:37a contemporary audience.
0:17:37 > 0:17:41Poor naked wretches,
0:17:41 > 0:17:43whereso'er you are,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm...
0:17:49 > 0:17:51How shall your houseless heads
0:17:51 > 0:17:53and unfed sides,
0:17:53 > 0:17:55your looped and windowed raggedness,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58defend you from seasons such as these?
0:18:00 > 0:18:02O...
0:18:03 > 0:18:06I have ta'en too little care of this.
0:18:07 > 0:18:09Take physic, pomp.
0:18:09 > 0:18:13Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
0:18:13 > 0:18:16that thou mayst shake the superflux to them
0:18:16 > 0:18:19and show the heavens more just.
0:18:19 > 0:18:24Both Elizabeth and King James' reign had this profound sense that
0:18:24 > 0:18:30there were both floods of immigrants and sturdy beggars striding through
0:18:30 > 0:18:34the country, so there was a sort of national paranoia about this
0:18:34 > 0:18:38tide of vagrancy.
0:18:38 > 0:18:43And I think it was fascinating to see that Shakespeare ties
0:18:43 > 0:18:46into that, and that seemed so current.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49It'll make you think this year of the Calais jungle.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52It'll make you think of the people sleeping in the underground
0:18:52 > 0:18:54stations or indeed in the street. Of course it does.
0:18:54 > 0:18:56It's one of those wonderful Shakespeare moments when you
0:18:56 > 0:18:59think he actually has been listening to the news that morning
0:18:59 > 0:19:01on the radio and sat down and written an extra speech about
0:19:01 > 0:19:03what it's like to be poor and have no home.
0:19:06 > 0:19:08You see me here, you Gods.
0:19:08 > 0:19:14A poor old man, as full of grief as age, wretched in both.
0:19:14 > 0:19:17You think I'll weep.
0:19:17 > 0:19:19No, I'll not weep.
0:19:19 > 0:19:21I have full cause of weeping.
0:19:21 > 0:19:25But this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere
0:19:25 > 0:19:28I'll weep.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31O, fool, I shall go mad.
0:19:31 > 0:19:33I shall go mad.
0:19:35 > 0:19:37Lear gives you a kind of...
0:19:37 > 0:19:40a look into a very dark mirror.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43And I think most people want to have a glimpse.
0:19:45 > 0:19:48So that maybe they can prepare themselves.
0:19:48 > 0:19:52When we are born, we cry
0:19:52 > 0:19:55that we've come to this great stage of fools.
0:19:55 > 0:19:57Ah!
0:19:57 > 0:19:59This is a good block.
0:19:59 > 0:20:00It were a delicate stratagem
0:20:00 > 0:20:03to shoo a troop of horse with felt.
0:20:03 > 0:20:07When I've stol'n upon these son in laws, then kill, kill, kill!
0:20:07 > 0:20:10Kill, kill, kill!
0:20:10 > 0:20:13With our increasingly ageing population,
0:20:13 > 0:20:17the play's tragic study of old age has fascinated contemporary
0:20:17 > 0:20:20directors from Brook onwards.
0:20:25 > 0:20:27O, let me not be mad.
0:20:30 > 0:20:32Not mad, sweet heaven.
0:20:33 > 0:20:35Keep me in temper.
0:20:37 > 0:20:39I would not be mad.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44My goodness, don't we all feel that? Me, of my age.
0:20:44 > 0:20:48Let me not be mad. I mean, dementia nowadays.
0:20:48 > 0:20:50What we would now call dementia or Alzheimer's,
0:20:50 > 0:20:53there's not a person in a theatre on any given night that doesn't
0:20:53 > 0:20:54have an opinion about that, one way or another.
0:20:54 > 0:20:57It's either something they feel, they've seen.
0:20:57 > 0:20:58You know, it's very, very familiar.
0:20:58 > 0:21:03This process whereby Lear seems to talk close to gibberish,
0:21:03 > 0:21:06rather beautiful gibberish, in fact, but then suddenly the mists
0:21:06 > 0:21:09clear for a minute and he becomes completely sane and
0:21:09 > 0:21:12completely as he was before,
0:21:12 > 0:21:14and then goes off the rails again,
0:21:14 > 0:21:19it's something that everybody has seen in this dreadful condition.
0:21:19 > 0:21:21Through tattered clothes,
0:21:21 > 0:21:23small vices do appear.
0:21:24 > 0:21:28Robes and furred gowns hide all.
0:21:30 > 0:21:33Plate sins with gold, and the
0:21:33 > 0:21:37strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.
0:21:37 > 0:21:42Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw doth pierce it.
0:21:43 > 0:21:46None does offend.
0:21:46 > 0:21:48None, I say,
0:21:48 > 0:21:49none.
0:21:51 > 0:21:54Get thee glass eyes,
0:21:54 > 0:21:59and like a scurvy politician seem to see the things thou dost not.
0:22:02 > 0:22:06The 20th century's most legendary Shakespearean actor,
0:22:06 > 0:22:08Sir Laurence Olivier,
0:22:08 > 0:22:10played Lear in 1983.
0:22:10 > 0:22:14But in this, his last Shakespearean role,
0:22:14 > 0:22:19he appeared not on stage but in an award-winning film made by Granada.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23Sir, as he was known, was 75.
0:22:23 > 0:22:28What's he that has so much thy place forgot to set thee here?
0:22:28 > 0:22:31Sir wanted to be able to say all the speeches the way
0:22:31 > 0:22:33he would have said them on stage.
0:22:33 > 0:22:37In one, without everything being chopped up,
0:22:37 > 0:22:39as they do in film.
0:22:39 > 0:22:44But it's the great, great sadness, and one wept for him, was that
0:22:44 > 0:22:46he could never get through a speech
0:22:46 > 0:22:51without drying and it was...
0:22:53 > 0:22:55..I haven't been able to watch it.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58I've never been able to see it.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02Because I remember being so...
0:23:04 > 0:23:10..saddened by this ambition being thwarted.
0:23:10 > 0:23:16I pray you, Father, being weak, seem so, if till the expiration of your
0:23:16 > 0:23:19month, you will return and sojourn with my sister,
0:23:19 > 0:23:20dismissing half your train,
0:23:20 > 0:23:23come then to me.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27Return with her and 15 men dismissed, never!
0:23:27 > 0:23:30Rather I abjure all roofs than choose to wage against the enmity
0:23:30 > 0:23:34of the air, to be accompanied with the wolf and owl. Return with her!
0:23:34 > 0:23:35It's your choice, Sir!
0:23:35 > 0:23:39You'd be in a scene with him and suddenly the eyes would
0:23:39 > 0:23:41blank.
0:23:41 > 0:23:43And you'd know he was going over and over.
0:23:43 > 0:23:46He really, really, really screwed himself
0:23:46 > 0:23:49up to do this.
0:23:49 > 0:23:52But he couldn't succeed. You know, age...
0:23:55 > 0:23:58..sort of Lear and age.
0:24:04 > 0:24:08One man who experienced the relationship between Lear and
0:24:08 > 0:24:14old age in a very real sense was the actor Edward Petherbridge.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18When I was asked out of the blue from New Zealand to do Lear,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21a thing that I never thought would happen to me,
0:24:21 > 0:24:23I naturally thought the old thing of Everest,
0:24:23 > 0:24:25cos it's there, of course.
0:24:27 > 0:24:28Who wouldn't?
0:24:29 > 0:24:31However foolish it may be.
0:24:33 > 0:24:37This breathing, raging, foolish, fond old man
0:24:37 > 0:24:40leaving some pen marks on a page,
0:24:40 > 0:24:44invites the mortal actor if he can
0:24:44 > 0:24:47to breathe in time with him upon a stage,
0:24:47 > 0:24:50commit his thoughts to memory and stand within the theatre,
0:24:50 > 0:24:52held in Shakespeare's mind
0:24:52 > 0:24:57a platform and a world, its hinterland.
0:24:57 > 0:24:58Today,
0:24:58 > 0:25:01we murmured on this garden seat.
0:25:01 > 0:25:03I made his wreath of flowers.
0:25:03 > 0:25:05Soon we're seeing,
0:25:05 > 0:25:07"Look, look! A mouse."
0:25:08 > 0:25:11Illusion incomplete.
0:25:11 > 0:25:14But Edward was never to go on stage as Lear.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19I touched down and started rehearsal the next day.
0:25:19 > 0:25:21Madness.
0:25:21 > 0:25:24Doctor didn't tell me to take aspirins and statins or
0:25:24 > 0:25:25anything like that.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28So I collapsed in the middle of the night.
0:25:30 > 0:25:35Luckily, it wasn't the kind of stroke that puts you out.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39I was able to crawl. I knew it was a stroke because I couldn't...
0:25:39 > 0:25:44I had to crawl and drag myself. You know, this side wasn't working.
0:25:44 > 0:25:48And I... So I was completely compos and I thought,
0:25:48 > 0:25:50"That's Lear gone." I knew.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54I didn't have any regret.
0:25:54 > 0:25:59I had a new job to do, which was instead of climbing Lear,
0:25:59 > 0:26:04I was on the nursery slopes of trying to touch my finger and thumb.
0:26:04 > 0:26:06Be able to see, to read, be able to walk.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11Six years later, he put his experiences into a new play,
0:26:11 > 0:26:13My Perfect Mind,
0:26:13 > 0:26:16about the experience of NOT playing Lear.
0:26:17 > 0:26:21..divided our kingdom and tis our fast intent to lay all cares
0:26:21 > 0:26:24and business from our age confirming them on younger strengths,
0:26:24 > 0:26:27while we, unburdened,
0:26:27 > 0:26:30crawl towards death.
0:26:30 > 0:26:32Our son of Cornwall...
0:26:33 > 0:26:34Is this going to be here?
0:26:34 > 0:26:37LAUGHTER
0:26:38 > 0:26:42Who ever played King Lear with a cane-back chair?!
0:26:42 > 0:26:45Somebody in Belarus at this very moment.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48If Timbuktu
0:26:48 > 0:26:53rang up on my iPhone now and offered me the part, I would go.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01I would pick up the script, learn the bits I've forgotten,
0:27:01 > 0:27:02and be on the next plane.
0:27:05 > 0:27:10In time, we shall express our darker purpose.
0:27:10 > 0:27:14Draw me a clothier's yard.
0:27:14 > 0:27:19And we take upon us the mystery of things as if we were Gods.
0:27:20 > 0:27:23The text is only a part of the story.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26These plays, whether they're about fathers and daughters,
0:27:26 > 0:27:29or whether they're about the destruction of power structures,
0:27:29 > 0:27:33inescapably refer to whichever world it is that performs them.
0:27:35 > 0:27:39Every performer and director will have their own distinct
0:27:39 > 0:27:42understanding of Lear and his tragedy.
0:27:42 > 0:27:45I don't think he completely learns.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49I think he learns what is important to him.
0:27:49 > 0:27:52And what is important to us
0:27:52 > 0:27:54in life,
0:27:54 > 0:27:58which is to cling on to the things that respond to you,
0:27:58 > 0:28:01the love that people give you.
0:28:01 > 0:28:07I don't think he is really aware of all the awful damage he has done.
0:28:07 > 0:28:09I was amazed at the exhilaration the audiences felt,
0:28:09 > 0:28:11both times I was in it.
0:28:11 > 0:28:13They leave the theatre exhilarated,
0:28:13 > 0:28:16as if they were saying, "We've now learned the worst that human
0:28:16 > 0:28:19"beings can do to each other, and we feel very good."
0:28:19 > 0:28:22Because they've taken Shakespeare's medicine.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26Every actor who's played it in this astonishing Jubilee year is
0:28:26 > 0:28:30bringing something completely different to it, whether that's
0:28:30 > 0:28:34Don Warrington, Tim West, Glenda Jackson, Michael Pennington,
0:28:34 > 0:28:38are all bringing something different in their experience and their
0:28:38 > 0:28:40life journey to bear upon that play,
0:28:40 > 0:28:43and that's why we keep on going back to Shakespeare, we keep on
0:28:43 > 0:28:46going back to see different productions of Shakespeare.
0:28:46 > 0:28:49You don't kind of go, "Oh, I've seen King Lear. That's it."
0:28:49 > 0:28:54Shakespeare has this capacity for almost infinite interpretation.