King Lear treatment – Gloucester in the hovel

The action of the play takes place within a small, enclosed space, in which the audience also finds
itself. If there are seats, they seem to be made out of improvised materials (accommodations are to
be made to allow people with reduced mobility to be present) generally, the audience should be
pushed towards sitting on the ground, as comfortable as they can make themselves.

Cast :

Gloucester – an old man, recently, both of his eyes have been gouged out.

Edgar – his older son

Edmund – his younger son. The two brothers do not really get on.

Lear – an old man

Cordelia – Lear’s daughter

Scene I
The light is very low. The audience enters the theatre and take their seats. Enter GLOUCESTER guided
by , EDMUND, and EDGAR. They walk him to the centre of the room, where there is small rock upon
which GLOUCESTER sits. The sons light a fire, illuminating them and their father, and casting
shadows onto the walls of the room. There is silence for several minutes. Occasionally, Edmund or
Edgar will make as though he has something to say, but will stop before actually speaking his
thought.

Gloucester : outside, is it dark yet? Has night fallen?

Edmund : you won’t know any night, ‘ere this one falls.

Edgar : No, father, it’s still day, I think, though the evening birds are calling.

Edmund, low, to Edgar : he will be gone before they stop calling, mark you.

Edgar low, to Edmund : I mark it well, but I would rather mark his words than yours.

Edmund : ha! Of such stuff is the noble Edgar made. Well you know his end, but you won’t hear he is
gone.

Edgar : Would you at least attend him in his dying hours? Or are you that full of your own wit that
you can’t bear turning your eye to anyone else even so long as an evening?

Edmund : Do you call me a coward?

Edgar : Do you not act as one?

Edmund : I would sooner be a coward than a pretentious fop, and I know you cannot refuse those
titles

Edgar : I would be a fop bef-

Gloucester suddenly loud : enough! The pair of you, enough. I will not have you squabbling at each
other like chickens in a roost as I prepare my dying day. My eyes may be gone, but I hear yet clear.
And what I hear is discord, and a like sound I have never heard before, and it cuts me. Pauses.
It cuts me to the quick to know my own two children hate each other so that they cannot bear, even
the space of an evening to stay in a room together.

Edmund : It pains me too, to have such a conniving fool for a brother

Edgar : Oh cruel Edmund, how your harsh insults pierce my soul

Gloucester : No, enough. No more of this bickering, this fighting, this petty childishness. My children
cannot bear each other a civil word, and I fear that through all your childhood, you have heard not a
word of what I have said to you, but you will listen now, and I will tell, and you will come to know
how it was that we came to this. So now come here to me, and shut your mouths and listen, and
listen well, because I will not tell it twice.

Both sons go to their father, sitting on either side of him, each facing a different way. Edmund is face
to the fire, Edgar had his back to it.

Gloucester :

When I was a young man, I came to be in the service of a king. He too was young at the time, much
younger than you could imagine him, seeing him now, and his name was Lear. The king of all of
England was he, aye, and Wales too, and if I know kingship, then I think he was a good king. For
many years, it was but him on the throne, but he did come to marry, and he married a young woman
of one of his baron’s daughters. And they had three children, daughters all. Their first born they
named Goneril, because that was her mother’s mother’s name. The second was called Regan,
because she seemed to be a regal little girl, even fresh out of the womb. And the third they called
Cordelia, for that her mother’s name, and her mother died giving birth to her.

Lear loved all his daughters very much when they were children and tried to teach them how to be
women worthy of that name, and when he was young, he acquitted himself well of the task. But he
was not a man without faults, and so he taught his children some of the same. Lear was covetous of
his power, though he hid it well, but he could not hide it from the eyes of his children, who saw how
much a kingdom can mean to a man, and the glory that comes with the seat of the throne. So,
Goneril and Regan both came to love the seat their father cherished, and looked upon it with greedy
eyes.

It was a few years before they were born that I had had some dalliances of my own, and wedded
too, and had two children, little sons, each more like his father than the last, but I would like to think
you know your own story better than I do.

Being as it is, there came a time when Lear knew himself too old to rule, having felt death’s breath
brush along his neck, so he summoned his lords to him, that they might witness the sharing out he
was to do of his realm. I don’t think the separation came easily to him, between his kingdom and his
self, having spent the better part of his life being a king before any other thing. And I do not know
what thoughts were in his mind when we came upon him in the throne room, looking upon the great
map of England that lay at his feet. But this I do know, for I heard it with mine own ears. He spoke to
his daughters, all together, and asked them to tell them how they loved him, to give a share of the
kingdom equal to their love to each in turn. And Regan and Goneril both sang their father’s praises,
with keen flattery and keener wit, and Lear was wont to give either the whole thing, save that the
other spoke so fairly.

But then it was Cordelia’s turn, Cordelia who spoke true so often as to make it a fault, and Cordelia
had truer sight than either of her sisters by far, and Cordelia did not flatter. She did not praise, she
did not please. She spoke sooth, that she loved her father as was his right and her duty, but not to
the loss of all other things, for she was yet to be married, and the one that married her, surely she
must love also, and if she were to have children, surely they too must take some share of her love.
Thus, could she not love her father all, for such love would not be true.

Lear could not this reasoning make out, and thought she must hate him and be damned, and
deserve none of the spoils of the kingdom he had fashioned himself, so cast her out across the sea,
never to see her again.

He pauses for a time here.

There were some who defended her, the good earl of Kent for one, the very King of France for
another, but the earl was cast out for that self-same defence, and so the King took her for his wife,
and that was the way of it for a time.

But then, Lear’s rule came to its appointed end, and so, he had to give up sovereignty of his castles
and his land, and entrust himself into the hands of his two elder daughters, those that had said they
loved him so. And I am sure that they had loved him, once, as if they hadn’t they wouldn’t have
know how best to flatter him and appease him when they were bargaining for their share of his
inheritance. But whatever love was there within them, that dissipated, like a late bloom in
November frost, and Lear found himself entrusted to the hospitality of good dame Nature, who
cares not for men, no matter how heavy the crown they bear or how good the soul.

He wandered with his good Fool through forest and heath, briar and brush, until I came upon them,
similarly abandoned, and looking for a place to rest. And so, we sat there, in the quiet in a hovel I
knew of, wherein resided already a strange man who spoke passing fair riddles, and whispered and
murmured strange truths into the old King’s ear, and Lear seemed to grasp them more clearly than I
yet could.

[interlude about Regan and Goneril, how they are like, not great, the bit where Gloucester looses his
eyes]

I would have rather died then, than live more as I had been, I hoped for death to come then with her
all healing bite and swallow me whole, sweep me up and set me away from the wrongs I saw I had
committed unto my sons, my two darling boys here he reaches out to touch them, but both pull
away from his touch, deep in contemplation of the things he has told them.

But when I stood there, a strange man who’s voice I felt I had known in a different life, who had
brought me to the cliff off of which I wished to cast myself, spoke. “Lo,” said he, “white sails on the
sea, galleys from France”, and his sight must have been true indeed, for he spied in in the flag ship,
queen Cordelia and her husband, looking to England. I knew then, hoped then, that the terrible
crimes Goneril and Regan brought forth against us were going to be at an end, and the king would
live and be restored to his mind, if not his throne.

But when they landed, quickly did the two sisters forces surround Lear and Cordelia, and though the
power of goodness be strong, it cannot overpower a spear to the chest

Lear walks in, bearing Cordelia

GLOUCESTER : How now, who goes there?

LEAR : The father that was.

Edgar goes to Lear.

LEAR : A long way hence. A long way.

GLOUCESTER : She loved you best, you know.

LEAR : She did, aye.

GLOUCESTER : You were a good father, my lord.

LEAR : No I wasn’t. Not a good father, nor a lord any longer, my friend. And now I am nothing.

EDMUND : she loved you best.

EDGAR : But it was you that betrayed her.

LEAR : who are these, Gloucester?

EDMUND AND EDGAR : Gloucester’s sons.

EDMUND : The base born and the beloved legitimate.

EDGAR : He loves us both, Edmund.

EDMUND : He loves you better.

GLOUCESTER is quiet, despairing.

LEAR : Enough, cease your squabbling. My own have pecked enough at your father, carrion birds
that they are.

[LEAR begins building up the fire.]

LEAR : there is nothing left of me now. Not a bed, nor a castle, nor a kingdom, nor a child. I lost
them all, one way or another.

[LEAR sobs]

GLOUCESTER, very quietly : I think I have lost mine too. The one is blind to wrong, the other blind to
right, and I blinder than both together.

LEAR bitter : for all that, you were a better father than I.

GLOUCESTER : None of your children hate you. None thinks you hate them.

LEAR : and none of them yet live.

EDGAR : We ever knew you loved us,