34 Edward Bond: Lear

Dr. Sushil Kumar

  

  

Edward Bond: An Introduction

Edward Bond (1934 – ), an angry young man with revolutionary reformist zeal is considered as a distinguished British dramatist, theatre director, poet, theorist, screen writer, all rolled into one. When the Second World War began in 1939, Bond like many children was evacuated to the countryside. During this time he was exposed to the violence of war, the bombings, and the continual sense of danger; all that shaped Bond’s image of world as a violent place. Naturally depiction of violence on stage became the hallmark of Bondian plays. He has clear cut leftist leanings too. After various jobs in factories and offices, he did his national service in the British Army occupation forces in Vienna between 1953 and 1955. During this time in the army he discovered the naked violence hidden behind normal social behaviour, and decided to start writing. His major works include The Pope’s Wedding(1962), Saved(1964) , Narrow Road to the Deep North(1968), Early Morning(1968), Lear(1971), The Sea (1973), Bingo(1973 ) The Fool(1975 ) The Bundle( 1978) Restoration ( 1981). Edward Bond has made some contribution to cinema too. He wrote an adaptation of Nobokov’s Laughter in the Dark, (1968, directed by Tony Richardson) and the drama Walk About (1971) directed by Nicolas Roeg. He has contributed dialogue to Blow-Up (1966) and Nicholas and Alexandra.

Bond is the most controversial dramatist in the post war literary oeuvre, for his exposition of violence in plays. His experiences of the evacuation gave him an awareness of social alienation which would characterise his writing. Most of Bond’s writing career span around 1970s, a period known for the political unrest and activism leading up to the election of Margret Thatcher’s Conservative Government in 1979. It was a decade of mass oppositional left wing political activity. The age also witnessed the final years of Harold Wilson’s Labour Administration which had first been elected to power in 1964. His early 1980s plays were directly influenced by the coming to power of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher and the profound social changes they were bringing about. All his works offer a fierce indictment of a capitalist system and a ruling class he believes to be unalterably corrupt and corrupting. So he has described himself as revolutionary socialist and his plays as ‘rational theatre’ parting it into question plays and answer play.

Rational Theatre

Edward Bond calls his theatre ‘rational theatre’ in the sense that it gives meaning to history, an explanation for human miseries. He says “I call my plays rational but they are often very passionate and very emotional plays, because passion and emotion are part of a rational life” (Colin Chambers, 1880:24). He is against the theatre of the absurd as it is pessimistic and cynical. According to him, it is culturally disastrous and that life is not absurd, but he is concerned with the problem of irrationality as they break the society. For Bond, the only justification for going to theatre is that it is a public institution in which our problems are made clear, are made real for us, and at the same time we are given hope and confidence in order to change the situation in which we find ourselves: “I would like to be able to create  individuals  on the stage…to be able to present people in such a way that you can understand their social relationship and be able to read the rest of their society in them, to understand them as living processes” (Chambers, 27). Bond says, “Writers of the theatre of the absurd in our time write only from weakness because they are trapped in the decadence of our time and have no rational view of the future or of anything else” (Bond, 1978: 2).

Bonds contribution to the contemporary dramatic literature lies in uncovering cultural and theoretical issues that make his works so challenging. What distinguishes Bond from many of his socialist contemporaries is an insistence on writing literature and keeping his eye on posterity and what distinguishes his plays from the dominant literary norm is their passionate Bond’s strength as a playwright is his cautious optimism. He recognizes that human beings aren’t totally perfectible, and he also knows that any movement toward the regeneration of society will be extremely difficult, that the consciousness of an entire society cannot be changed immediately. Regardless of the difficulties, however, Bond is determined to demonstrate the value of one’s action. Thus, he repeatedly stresses the need for awareness and action in his plays, this interdependence of idea and act being his most persistent theme. The subjects he deals with are not minute, they are full scale, and they are about the future of our society. As he puts it, “Whether I deal with them well, others must judge” (qtd in Malcolm Hay 1980: 22).

Lear: An Introduction to the Play

Edward Bond’s Lear had its premiere, produced by the English Stage company at the Royal Court Theatre on 29 September 1971, directed by William Gaskill and revived in 1982 by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place. Harry Andrews lead the title role. The zeitgeist of Bond’s Lear, also tuned to a turbulent period in history. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, bloody assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and Israel was unrest with Six Day War. During these years the war in Vietnam was escalating and British troops were sent into Northern Ireland to quell unrest over that country’s sovereignty. Students were deeply involved in politics and there were mass demonstrations. It became clear that the students could turn violent as well. In 1970, three members of the radical American group, “The Weather Men” were killed when the bomb they were building for terrorist purpose exploded. It was this type of violence is dramatized in Lear a play in which all governments and all revolutions are shown to be violent and ultimately, alike in their ruthless cruelty and disregard for human life.

It has been called the most violent drama ever staged as well as the most controversial of Bond’s plays. The play is a fine reworking of Shakespeare’s King Lear but the well-known source is barely recognizable. As the playwright has pointed out it is important to note that Bond’s Lear is not an adaptation of Shakespeare, but a comment on that play. His purpose is to make Shakespeare’s play more politically effective, more likely to cause people to question their society and themselves, rather than simply to have an uplifting aesthetic experience. As a social playwright Bond writes plays that are not meant merely to entertain but to help to bring about change in society.

Act I

Lear opens at the site of a wall King Lear is having built in order to keep enemies out of his kingdom. Two workers carry a dead laborer onstage just before Lear enters with Lord Warrington and Lear’s daughters, Bodice and Fontanelle, among others. When Lear sees the dead man, his primary concern is with the resulting delay to the building of the wall, and he shoots the worker who accidentally caused the man’s death. Bodice and Fontanelle object to Lear’s violence and reveal their own plans to marry Lear’s enemies, the Duke of North and the Duke of Cornwall, respectively. Lear’s daughters believe their marriages will lead to peace, but Lear believes that only the wall can protect his people. After Lear and the others leave, Bodice and Fontanelle reveal the plans they share with their husbands to attack Lear’s armies. In Scene 2, as Lear prepares for war, Warrington informs him that each daughter has written separately, each asking Warrington to betray Lear, then the other daughter. In Scene 3, each of the daughters complains about her husband and reveals plans to have him killed.

In Scene 4, the audience discovers that the sisters’ armies have been victorious, but Bodice and Fontanelle each has failed at having her husband killed. Warrington, now a prisoner whose tongue has been cut out, is brought before the sisters. Bodice calmly knits while Warrington is tortured by her soldiers. Fontanelle calls for increased violence against Warrington, then  deafens him by poking Bodice’s knitting needles into his ears. Warrington is taken out by a soldier.

In Scene 5, Lear, in the woods, finds bread on the ground and eats it. Warrington, crippled, and for whom the bread is intended, sneaks up behind Lear with a knife but leaves when the Gravedigger’s Boy arrives with bread and water for Lear. The Boy asks Lear to stay with him and his wife. Scene 6 takes place at the Boy’s house, where Lear finds out how the Boy lives.

The Boy has two fields and his pregnant wife, Cordelia, keeps pigs. When Lear goes out with the  Boy, Warrington returns with a knife, and the Boy’s wife calls out, saying that the Wild Man has returned. While Lear sleeps, Warrington returns with a knife, attacks Lear, then leaves.

In Scene 7, the Boy complains to Lear about the king who caused so much suffering for the workers building his wall, but asks Lear to stay. A sergeant and three soldiers come on stage looking for Lear. Warrington’s body is discovered plugging the well. The soldiers kill the Boy, rape Cordelia, and kill the pigs. The Carpenter arrives and kills the soldiers. Lear is taken prisoner.

Act 11

In the first scene, saying Lear is mad, Bodice and Fontanelle bring him before a judge. When asked about Bodice and Fontanelle, Lear denies that they are his daughters. Bodice has her mirror given to Lear, as she believes that madmen are frightened of themselves. Lear sees himself in the mirror as a tortured animal in a cage. He is found mad and taken away. Bodice tells Fontanelle that there are malcontents in the kingdom and that there will be a civil war. Fontanelle replies that the rebels are led by Cordelia.

In Scene 2, the Gravedigger’s Boy’s Ghost appears to Lear in his cell. Lear asks the Ghost to bring him his daughters. The apparitions that appear are of Bodice and Fontanelle as young girls. Lear and his daughters talk as the two girls sit with their heads on his knees. Lear asks the daughters to stay, but they leave him. The Ghost reappears and asks Lear if he can stay with him. Lear agrees, saying they will be comforted by the sound of each other’s voices.

In Scene 3, Cordelia appears with her soldiers, one of whom was wounded in a skirmish with Bodice and Fontanelle’s troops. The Carpenter arrives. A soldier captured by Cordelia’s men asks to join their forces, but Cordelia has him shot because he does not hate. The others go offstage, leaving the wounded soldier to die alone. In Scene 4, Bodice and Fontanelle, talking at their headquarters, reveal that their husbands have tried to desert. Fontanelle is given Lear’s death warrant by Bodice and signs it. The Dukes of North and Cornwall arrive and are told they are to be kept in cells unless there is a need for them to be seen in public. Left alone, Bodice reveals that she started to have the wall pulled down, but that she needed the workers as soldiers.

In Scene 5, Cordelia’s soldiers, who appear leading Lear and other prisoners, have lost their way. Lear says that he only wants to live to find the Ghost and help him. Fontanelle is brought in, a prisoner also. In Scene 6, Lear and the other prisoners, including Fontanelle, are in their cell. The Ghost arrives. He is cold and thin. Lear says he wishes he’d been the Ghost’s father and looked after him. Fontanelle tells Lear that if he helps her, she will protect him if Bodice is victorious. At the Carpenter’s command, a soldier shoots Fontanelle. A medical doctor who is also a prisoner arrives to perform an autopsy on Fontanelle. Lear is awed by the beauty of the inside of her body, in contrast to her cruelty and hatred when alive.

Bodice arrives as a prisoner, indicating that Cordelia’s forces have defeated the last remnants of  the daughters’ regime. Lear tells his daughter that he destroyed Fontanelle. Bodice too has been sentenced to death. The soldiers stab her with a bayonet three times. Cordelia, now the Carpenter’s wife, has asked that Lear not be killed. Using a “scientific device,” the doctor removes Lear’s eyes. In terrible pain, Lear leaves the prison with the Ghost. In Scene 7, Lear meets a family of farmers by the wall. They reveal that the father will go to work on the wall and the son will become a soldier. Lear feels pity and tells them to run away. Lear says that Cordelia does not know what she is doing and that he will write to tell her of the people’s suffering.

Act III

In Scene 1, Lear is living in the Boy’s old house with Thomas, his wife Susan, and John, all of whom care for Lear in his blindness. A deserter from Cordelia’s wall arrives; the Ghost wants him to leave for the sake of everyone else’s safety. Soldiers arrive, looking for the deserter, but Lear hides the fugitive. Unable to find him, the soldiers leave. The others want the deserter to leave as well, but Lear insists that he—and all escapees who come to the house—can stay.

Scene 2 occurs some months later. At the Boy’s house, Lear tells a group of people a fable. The audience learns from Thomas that hundreds gather to hear Lear’s public speeches, but Thomas believes it is dangerous for Lear to continue speaking out against the government. An officer arrives with Lear’s old Councilor and accuses Lear of hiding deserters. The deserter from scene 2 is taken away to be hanged. The Councilor tells Lear that Cordelia has tolerated Lear’s speaking; but now he must stop. The Councilor and those who came with him leave. Lear complains that he is still a prisoner; there is a wall everywhere. The Ghost enters; he is thinner and more shrunken. The Ghost suggests that he poison the well so others will leave; he will take Lear to a spring to drink. Lear sleeps, and John tells Susan that he is leaving and asks her to come with him. John leaves, Thomas enters; and susan crying, asks Thomas to take her away from Lear.

Thomas tells Susan to come into the house.

In scene 3, Lear is alone in the woods. The Ghost arrives; he is deteriorating rapidly and appears terrified. The Ghost believes he is dying and weeps because he is afraid. Cordelia and Carpenter enter. Cordelia speaks of how the soldier killed her husband and raped her and of the way in which her new government is creating a better way of life. The Ghost watches his former wife, wishing he could speak to her. Cordelia asks lear to stop working against her. Lear tells Cordelia she must pull the wall down,but she says the kingdom will be attacked by enemies if she does.

When Lear continues saying he will not be quiet, Cordelia says he will be put on trial, then leaves. The Ghost is gored to death by pigs that have gone mad.

In scene 4, Lear is taken to the wall by Susan. He climbs up on the structure inorder to dig it up. The Farmer’s son, now a soldier, shoots Lear, injuring him. Lear continues to shovel. The Farmer’s son shoots Lear again, killing him. Lear’s body is left alone onstage.

Major Style, Themes and Settings

Epic Theatre

The most important thing about the structure of Bond’s plays is that it shows the relationship of human beings to their society and the sort of society in which they live. Bond believes that is the real problem of human beings because we fail to solve it, and it will just blow us to bits. The only sort of structure according to Bond which is good is the structure of the epic theatre, and it is interesting that all writers who have been aware of the importance of the social problems have written in that way. It is a consequence of seeing modern problems properly. Bond believes theatre should reassure them about their strength to alter the society. The  problems have to be handed over to the audience. This is because our problem is created all the time, constantly recreated. Unlike Shakespeare, Bond makes use of Epic Theatre in Lear. Lear was his first epic play. It was Bertold Brech, the twentieth century playwright who developed the modern concept of the epic theatre for use in his political dramas. Unlike conventional plays, epic theater develops from a sequence of many scenes, as in Lear that often takes place over a considerable time period and employs a large number of characters. The continuous movement from scene to scene in meant to keep the audience from becoming too emotionally involved with the characters.

This lack of emotional involvement is developed through Brecht’s alienation effect, which occurs when the audience is continuously made aware that they are not watching reality but a play. In Lear characters periodically speak to the audience rather than to one another. This sort of aside contributes to the alienation effect. When Warrington is tortured the darkly comments of Bodice and Fontanella remind the audience that it is an exaggerated fiction removed from reality. The purpose of this alienation method is to force the audience to use its intellect rather than its emotions in considering the themes and actions of the play.

 Violence 

Bond directs the audiences to observe the social evils from a different perspective. Art to Bond is a close scrutiny of reality and therefore, he puts on the stage only those things that happen in our society. There are often violent things in our society, and when they occur he depicts them as truthfully and honestly as a sincere artist should. But he is not interested in violence for the sake of violence. He says “I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society and if we do not stop being violent we have no future” (Bond, 1994: 34). Violence is never a solution in his plays, just as violence is never a solution in human affairs, “violence is a problem that has to be dealt with” (Ian Stoll, 1976: 115). In Bond’s plays violence is a defensive strategy to survive in an unjust and irrational system. “People turn to violence as they are deprived of their physical needs. Since man is alienated from his natural self, he becomes nervous, tense and begins to look for threats everywhere” (Bond, 1972: 10). He always tries to relate the problem of violence to society and doesn’t see it just a theatrical technique He is aware of the fact that violence is an overriding social phenomenon in the modern society. So the presentation of violence on the stage disturbs the audiences and generates a socio-political alertness. He describes images of violence in his plays as “Theatre Events”. “A theatre event in his dramaturgy is a complex movement of social analysis” (Jenny Spencer, 1992:17).

Anachronism

An anachronism is a term applied to a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.it is something that is clearly out of context with the rest of world’s environment. The modern workers building Lear’s wall are an anachronism, as is the futuristic “scientific device used to blind Lear. Anachronisms have two major effects.they are sometimes used to make the story more universal to illustrate that the story is not only about the time in which it is set but that it uses themes and ideas that applay to all tunes. It can also contribute to the alienation effect, creating a sense of the surreal that reinforces the unreality of the proceedings. In Lear anachronism serves both purposes.

Allusion

Though a complete story in itself, Bond’s play is an allusion to William Shakespeare’s King Lear. As the play is about Shakespeare’s text, familiarity with King Lear will deepen the audience’s understanding of Bond’s interpretation. Bodice’s knitting in tunes of Mayhem is an allusion to Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, where Madame Defarge one of the revolutionaries, knits a list of aristocrats who must die into a scarf. In Bond’s deconstruction of Shakespeare’s classic Jacobean tragedy, Cordelia is portrayed not as Lear’s youngest and compassionate daughter, but as a ‘rural female Castro’, as Bond described her. She is a young woman catapulted into radicalized political consciousness. Driven to action through her experience of being raped by the soldiers under the authority of Fontanelle and Bodice, Cordelia then leads her own revolutionary army against their regime

Setting

Bond’s play takes place in the year 3100, presumably in ancient Britain, though he fills his story with modern devices, indicating that the action may be taking place in some distant future. The action of the play takes place in a multitude of location. Although the audience does not actually see Lear’s wall until the final scene the play opens near the wall, which becomes a pervasive symbolic presence throughout the play. Frequent references to the wall cause the audience to sense of feeling of enclosure and claustrophobic that is the representative of the oppression caused by different regimes throughout the play.

The Gravedigger’s Boy’s house is also an important location. It is in this more pastoral setting that Lear experiences the possibility of change and the depth of human kindness.

Conclusion

Edward Bond is the representative of a new theatrical formula that is distinct from the realism of the ‘kitchen sink’ trend. Preoccupied with the contradictions of a society based on class, the dramatist highlights the social, economic and political factors which shape the protagonists’ consciousness. Edward Bond thinks that playwrights must be morally responsible to their societies. His notable use of language is designed to illustrate a complex process. Ranging from the naturalistic dialect of his working class characters to the poetic reflections of Shakespeare, the different types of discourse reveal how ideology influences human behaviour. Although the unfolding of the plot in scenic units is of Brechtian order, Bond’s dramatic style is highly personal. Visual poetic images, a logical cause-effect structure, as well as dialectical relationships involving characters, plot construction and dramatic movement, constitute the distinctive characteristics of an outstanding dramatic creation which, as John Russell Brown writes, tries to understand the present day crisis and to show potential for achieving a sane society (A Short Guide to Modern British Drama, page 62). Exploring the meeting point between ideology and the art of the writer, Edward Bond’s controversial and influential plays continue to offer a wide-ranging political and moral critique of human society, paving the way for a radical new theatre of the future.

Reference 

• Banham, Martin. Ed.The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.Print.
• Bond Edward. Notebooks of Edward Bond. London: Methuen London Ltd, 2000-2001
• Bradbury Malcom. Ed. Contemporary English Drama. Stratford: Stratford- Upon-Avon, 1981. Print.
• Brown, John Russell. A Short Guide to Modern British Drama. London: Heinemann Educational Books,1982.Print.
• Cave, Richard Allen. New British Drama in Performance on the British Stage 1970-1985. London: Colin Smythe Gerrards Cross, 1987. Print.
• Hirst, David L Edward Bond, Macmillan, 1985. Print.
• Sked, Alan, and Chris Cook. Post-War Britain: A Political History, Penguin, 1990.Print.
• Spencer, Jenny S Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond, Cambridge, 1992. Print.
• Trussler, Simon. Ed. New Theatre Voices of the Seventies, Eyre Methuen, 1981.Print
• Worth, Katharine. 1973. Revolutions in Modern English Drama. London: Methuen London. Print.