Day 56: What I Learned: King Lear

image from ow-myeye.com

Well first of all I learned that if you are squeamish about bad things happening to people's eyes, you are NOT going to like parts of King Lear. At all. And NEVER audition for the role of Gloucester in a cinéma vérité production of the play. That's all I'm going to say about that. (BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO HIS EYES!)

The second thing I learned is that there are a LOT of words and phrases in King Lear that we still use today, but not as many direct quotes. Most of them are paraphrased or else rarely attributed to Shakespeare. Well, either that or they ARE commonly quoted AND often attributed to Shakespeare and I just didn't know that because I wasn't paying attention and need to improve my Shakespearean education. Which is what this whole year is about, so get off my back.

Anyway, here are just a few of the words and phrases that jumped out at me in the play:

"Flibbertigibbet" 
Except it was used as a proper noun to reference a specific demon...who talked a lot about stupid random stuff, I'm guessing.

"Fie, foh and fum
I smell the blood of a British man"
What the what? How old IS that phrase? And what did it even mean before the Jack and the Beanstalk story made it famous? Wikipedia wasn't sure and I stopped looking after that. Sorry.

"Kill thy physician"
Mike says he hadn't heard this phrase, but I know I have. I just didn't know it came from this play.


"Fathers that wear rags
Do make their children blind.
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind."
Not a famous phrase, but totally should be.

"Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"
Another great line that should be famous but probably isn't.

"Unfriended"

Okay, I know he didn't mean it in the Facebook sense, but it made me smile.

"Nothing will come of nothing"
Which caused me to have this song in my head on a near-constant loop:

And finally, the third thing I learned is that there finally IS going to be a major motion picture version of King Lear (there have been others but not many, and not very memorable it seems). It's scheduled to come out in 2013 and star Al Pacino! 

from filmofilia.com

It's funny because I was actually thinking of him as Lear as I was reading it, after the amazing performance he gave as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. I wasn't sure if Al Pacino would be frail enough to play the part though. Would he let them give him white hair? I've never seen him without his trademark luscious brown hair (which has to be fake by now, no?). It's hard to tell from the poster, but he definitely doesn't look grey. Still, I'm excited!