Seeing the world through the eyes of the Bard ...

For some reason I decided this summer to spend some time reading some of Shakespeare's plays ... I'm not sure why ... it could be perhaps to "hear" the language and the play of words from the hands of a master ... if could be to reconnect with my distant past when as a high school student I was given the opportunity to attend a couple of Shakespearean plays each year through school ... at the time I resented, now I look back and think - Wow! What an opportunity it was ...

But for whatever reason, I have been reading through a variety of plays penned by the Immortal Bard ... Last night I turned to one of my all time favourite plays: King Lear.

Poor foolish King Lear ... he is aging and looking for meaning ... he calls his daughters before him and prepares to divide his legacy betweent them. The oldest two speak, their mouths dripping with venom ... praising him while plotting to usurp him ... then the youngest Cordelia is invited to speak and she has nothing to say ... she trusts her father to see in her life her love, her devotion, her care for him ... but he is blinded by his own vanity. He would rather have empty words of praise then loving actions ... He rejects her ... casts her and the one loyal member of the court out of his Kingdom and throws himself to the wolves that are his older daughters ...

The poor foolish man ... in time his mind begins to slip ... His companion - the fool, becomes the true voice of wisdom throughout the play ... As the King slips deeper and deeper into madness ... the words of the fool ring within our soul ... He speaks a painful truth, a truth the king is not ready to hear ...

My favourite scene in the play comes in the 3rd Act when Lear stands on a hill top raging at the storm unfolding around him:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! Blow !
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you hae drencht our steepls, drown'd the cocks!!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!! And Thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o'the world!!
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
that make ingrateful man ...

The fool beseeches Lear to come in from the storm ... yet, Lear continues to rage against the storm ... both the physical storm in which he stood and the figurative storm that was unfolding in his life ... Lately I've been watching as the fury of various storms have left things tossed and turned and befuddled ... Events in our community ... events in my life ... the string of bad news that fills our media ... the storms $are legion. It would be too easy to stand like Lear in his madness and rage against the storms ... but there would be no healing if we merely rage against the storm and do nothing more ...

The power of the play is that at the end Lear sees the error of his ways ... but for Lear it is too late. He loses his Kingdom, he loses his sanity, and he loses his precious Cordelia ... he sees the error, but is helpless to do anything about it ... he spent too much time and energy raging ... and not enough on what's important ...

Such is the dilemma of life perhaps ... we can easily rage against the storms, both figurative and real ... we can let what's important slip away ...

Or we can leave behind the vain empty praise and like a good friend recommended to me a few days ago - put our energy caring for those people around us who are important ...

In the coming days, when storm unleash their fury around us, we can rage against them ... or we can pull down our hats, pull up our collars and face them, knowing that in time they will pass and a glorious sunny day will break upon us and perhaps even leave us a rainbow or two ... The storms will pass ... our relationships will endure ...

and some days that's enough ... dayenu ...