This is a work about the legendary British king Lear, who in his old age divided the kingdom between his daughters, but instead of receiving gratitude was cruelly humiliated, robbed, and chased away. However, this isn’t a story about old age – it covers much broader themes than the tragedy of a single individual. This is a special performance that demanded a special stage solution.
King Lear is embodied on stage by the renowned actor Vytautas Anužis – a graduate of the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute and the winner of the 2011 Golden Stage Cross. Almost the entire theatre company is involved in the production.
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The tragedy King Lear was written in 1605–1606 by the British and world classic William Shakespeare (1564–1616). This work belongs to the late stage of the author’s mature creative period and sits under the canopy of his other masterpieces, such as Hamlet (1601) and Othello (1604). The text of King Lear is based on the transcript of this performance staged at the Globe Theatre.
As is the case with other Shakespeare’s dramas, the plot of King Lear is borrowed from earlier works by other authors. For example, in 1605, an unknown author wrote the play The True Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella, which was staged a year later at London’s Whitehall Theatre. In the finale of that production, the King of France successfully returned to Lear his lost power.
Among even older sources of the tragedy’s plot researchers mention: The History of the Kings of Britain, written by the medieval Welsh chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth; the Chronicles of the British historian Raphael Holinshed, published in 1577–1587; and, undoubtedly, Celtic and Irish folklore. For instance, in Irish and Welsh mythology, there is a sea deity called Lir, while in Welsh genealogies, Ler is mentioned as one King Arthur’s ancestors.
Shakespeare’s King Lear differs in that in Act II of the play the narrative is expanded by the story of Gloucester – a loyal nobleman at the royal court who falls victim to naive trust in his illegitimate son, the cunning Edmund, and gets his eyes gouged out. The author borrowed this subplot from the verse novel Arcadia written by the British poet Philip Sidney (1554–1586). This work tells the story of King of Paphlagonia, who was dethroned and left blinded by his illegitimate son Plexirtus, while the monarch’s legitimate son Leonatus, formerly rejected by his father, becomes his devoted guide as a result.
At the beginning of Act IV of King Lear, Gloucester's outcast son Edgar, in the guise of the madman called Tom, mentions demons who supposedly haunt him: Obidicut, the fiend of lust; Hobbididence, of mutes; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mockery and grimaces. Shakespeare borrows the names and characteristics of these demons from the then popular essay A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures written in 1603 by the Protestant theologian Samuel Harsnett (1561–1631), who later became the Archbishop of York. Several episodes from King Lear reflect the confrontation between Catholics and Protestants in Britain at that time.
Also, the total solar and lunar eclipses of 1605 deepened the atmosphere of fear among the inhabitants of the British Isles, where all kinds of soothsayers prophesying the imminent end of the world would flourish – as would exorcists, supposedly capable of expelling evil spirits from a person. All this apocalyptic and demonic atmosphere is perfectly reflected in Shakespeare’s King Lear and is an integral part of the tragedy.
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This production is based on a new translation of Shakespeare’s play by Grigory Kruzhkov, who provided his work to The Old Theatre of Vilnius free of charge. Kruzhkov is a famous Russian poet, translator and literary critic. The list of his translations includes works by English poets Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), George Gascoigne (1525–1577), John Donne (1572–1631) and many others. He has defended his dissertation at Columbia University (USA) and has been awarded several prestigious literary prizes. Kruzhkov is also a regular contributor to the Russian magazine New World.
“To translate King Lear was my old, albeit forbidden, dream,” writes Kruzhkov. “Forbidden not only because it would mean competing with Pasternak (which is unthinkable to me), but also because of the play itself, which I have always considered Shakespeare’s greatest.”
In 2016, the year that marked the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing, Kruzhkov, who is also an essayist, was awarded the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Literary Prize.
Performed in Russian with Lithuanian subtitles
Photos by Dmitrij Matvejev
