Shakespeare "King Lear"- (1997 TV-Ian Holm), end of play

from line 338, Edmund's: "Yet Edmund was belov'd./The one the other poisoned for my sake,/And after slew herself."

here is one link for all the excerpts uploaded of the Holm "Lear":
http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=04AC969F56A00360

Ian Holm ... Lear
Finbar Lynch ... Edmund
Victoria Hamilton ... Cordelia
David Burke ... Kent
David Lyon ... Albany



Holm has been acting professionally since joining the Royal Shakespeare Company as a spear-carrier in 1954. He was a young 66 when he filmed this "Lear".


A. C. Bradley, from "Shakespearean Tragedy", seems out of touch with our nihilistic views on Lear today:

..If to the reader, as to the bystanders, that scene brings one unbroken pain, it is not so with Lear himself. His shattered mind passes from the first transports of hope and despair, as he bends over Cordelia's body and holds the feather to her lips, into an absolute forgetfulness of the cause of these transports. This continues so long as he can converse with Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only to yield, as his eyes suddenly fall again on his child's corpse, to an agony which at once breaks his heart. And, finally, though he is killed by an agony of pain, the agony in which he actually dies is one not of pain but of ecstasy. Suddenly, with a cry represented in the oldest text by a four-times repeated 'O,' he exclaims:

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there!


These are the last words of Lear. He is sure, at last, that she lives: and what had he said when he was still in doubt? She lives! if it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt!


To us, perhaps, the knowledge that he is deceived may bring a culmination of pain: but, if it brings only that, I believe we are false to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actor is false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear's last accents and gestures and look, an unbearable joy.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Shakespeare
• King
• Lear
• KingLear
• Ian
• Holm
• IanHolm
• VictoriaHamilton

[KevinZS]

@MyBroadway1 just a correction. IIRC he said "Howl"

[MyBroadway1]

"How, How How!!!!!, Oh You are men of Stone." Ian Holm is one of the best actors in history. This performance is unforgivable touching. The line of which I have typed above is so touching. Especially when he cry's in between the How's.

[lamlyn]

Ian Holm, perhaps the greatest actor of the 20th century, or at least the most underated actor of the last century, utterly brilliant actor, and a gentle, modest and kind man. If Mckellen called him a master actor and one of the best, we better believe it! He is great as fluellen, Bilbo, King Lear, Frodo and in may other Shakepsearean performances as well as in the Cherry Orchard :)

[LuckyInLilac315]

i thought it was very sad and appropriate,

but yes, there could've been a better way, i suppose?

[StevieFan85]

Good acting, but a poorley staged direction. Wheeling the characters off into the mist?? Very strange.

[melvincrapper]

nice

[elleoneiram]

WAH! I don't know if it's possible to read or see the last scene of Lear and not be moved.

[tamedshrew4u]

Where can I get the entire play??

[szymonbokser]

fourthed.

columbine 2 just waiting to happen....

[jwdink]

Best version.