The Thomashefskys brings to life the words and music of the American Yiddish theater. The storys lead characters-Bessie and Boris Thomashefky-also happen to be the grandparents of San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas. Bessie and Boris emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in the 1880s, and while still in their teens, they began to play major roles in the development of New York Citys Yiddish theater. For Jewish immigrants who settled on the lower East Side of Manhattan, the Yiddish theater was central to their lives, and provided a stage for the new ideas that were shaping the transition to an American way of life. In The Thomashefkys, Tilson Thomas serves as guide through the lives and repertoire of his grandparents. His grandfather died before he was born, but his grandmother lived until he was 17. His close relationship with her is a source of much of the performance material. Performed at the New World Symphonys spectacular new Frank Gehry-designed home in Miami, Tilson Thomas shares the stage with a 30-piece orchestra and ensemble cast to bring the repertoire and words of Bessie and Boris to life. With time, aspects of klezmer and cantorial sounds became more integrated and more American, as Jewish composers became immersed in their new surroundings, greatly influencing composers like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin.

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Adapted from a play by Alexander Pushkin about the extraordinary reign of the 16th-century tsar, Boris Godunov is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Russian operatic repertoire. The Met’s new production of Mussorgsky’s epic political tragedy was praised by critics following the first performance on October 11: The Associated Press declared “Bravo, Boris!…a huge success on every count — from the superb cast led by bass René Pape in the title role to the inspired conducting of Valery Gergiev to the remarkably fluid and psychologically acute direction by Stephen Wadsworth.” The Wall Street Journal called the performance “an engrossing theatrical event” and cited the production as a “deeply moving, complex and tragic portrait of Russia that melds historical sweep with intimate and detailed personal encounters.” Pape “is ideal for the role” of the guilt-ridden tsar, said The New York Times, and “riveting in Boris’s death scene.”

The title role of Boris Godunov is a touchstone role for operatic basses, a tour de force for an artist who can command the requisite powerful vocal and dramatic skills. The role of Boris has been played at the Met by such legendary basses as Fyodor Chaliapin, Ezio Pinza, and George London.

René Pape has built a reputation as a consummate singing-actor at the Met, including acclaimed roles in Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Don Giovanni, Faust, and Don Carlo, and his American debut in the role of Boris was highly anticipated.

The new production also features a number of leading singers performing Boris Godunov for the first time at the Met. The cast includes Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko as Grigory/The Pretender Dimitri; and Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk as Princess Marina. Other notable Russian singers making their Met role debuts in this production are bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin as Rangoni, bass Mikhail Petrenko as Pimen, and tenor Oleg Balashov as Shuisky. Bass Vladimir Ognovenko reprises his portrayal of Varlaam, which he first performed with the Met in a 1997 run of performances conducted by Gergiev.

Many of the Met cast members have performed Boris Godunov with Gergiev at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, where he is artistic director and where the opera had its 1874 premiere.

The production’s creative team includes Academy Award-nominated costume designer Moidele Bickel, prominent European set designer Ferdinand Wögerbauer, and choreographer Apostolia Tsolaki, all in their Met debuts.

The Met’s new production is primarily based on the 1875 version of the opera but will incorporate some music from the composer’s original 1869 score, notably in Boris’s Act II monologue in the Kremlin, and the entire St. Basil scene which opens Act IV. The 1874 revision is the basis for the ending of Act III, scene 2 (the end of the “Polish” act). Mussorgsky’s original orchestrations will be used.

Great Performances at the Met: Boris Godunov is directed for television by Brian Large and hosted by soprano Patricia Racette. Jay David Saks is the music producer. The performance is sung in Russian with English subtitles.

Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, public television viewers and PBS. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home-builder®. Major support for the Met telecast was provided by Mrs. Mona Webster.

For the Met, Mia Bongiovanni and Elena Park are Supervising Producers, and Louisa Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik are Producers. Peter Gelb is Executive Producer. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is Series Producer; David Horn is Executive Producer.

Viewers are treated to exclusive access to the Hermitage, Catherine the Great’s theater at the Winter Palace, the spectacular golden fountains and Golden Ballroom of the lavish Peterhof Palace, and the White Column Ball Room of the splendid Yusupov Palace. Orbelian and the State Hermitage Orchestra accompany Fleming and Hvorostovky in stirring performances of selections from Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” and “Il Trovatore,” as well as Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” “Queen of Spades” and “The Oprichnik,” with additional selections by Rachmaninov and Medtner accompanied by pianists Olga Kern (Fleming) and Ivari Ilja (Hvorostovsky). Between performances, viewers accompany the two acclaimed singers for romantic boat trips through St. Petersburg’s extensive canal system, revealing the city’s many scenic wonders.

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Great Performances is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. Recorded in high definition television and directed by Brian Large, the film—a thrilling blend of history, art and music—was conceived and produced by American conductor Constantine Orbelian, founder of the “Palaces of St. Petersburg” festival, and the only American in history to become Music Director of a Russian orchestra.

Viewers are treated to exclusive access to the Hermitage, Catherine the Great’s theater at the Winter Palace, the spectacular golden fountains and Golden Ballroom of the lavish Peterhof Palace, and the White Column Ball Room of the splendid Yusupov Palace. Orbelian and the State Hermitage Orchestra accompany Fleming and Hvorostovky in stirring performances of selections from Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” and “Il Trovatore,” as well as Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” “Queen of Spades” and “The Oprichnik,” with additional selections by Rachmaninov and Medtner accompanied by pianists Olga Kern (Fleming) and Ivari Ilja (Hvorostovsky). Between performances, viewers accompany the two acclaimed singers for romantic boat trips through St. Petersburg’s extensive canal system, revealing the city’s many scenic wonders.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major support for the telecast is also provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer and Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

Tyler Stovall: Arthur Briggs was somebody- he had come to Paris in the mid-‘20s with the first wave of African-American musicians. He had married a Frenchwoman, he had settled down. By 1939, he was French in all but name. He was also one of these musicians, by the way, that had bought a country house for himself. Actually in the same neighborhood as Josephine Baker in the 1930’s. This is the ultimate dream of every Parisian, by the way, to have a country house. And doing this showed just how Parisian he had become.

So, when the Germans arrived, Arthur Briggs simply refused to leave and continued to play until he was arrested by the German army and placed in an internment camp in Saint Denis. Saint Denis is a suburban city just outside Paris itself. And he spent four years there in the camp. He actually organized a jazz orchestra that the German commandant liked. And permitted him to play jazz while he was there.

So I think that listening to jazz was one way in which you could resist Nazi ideology. By the way you had the same phenomenon in Germany itself – the whole phenomenon of the swing kids in the late 1930s. Of young people that also embraced jazz as a way of resisting ideology. Meant that this was not just a French phenomenon, but really a European-wide phenomenon, so that music became a kind of politics of resistance in this period. And I think that continued to inform the popularity of jazz after the liberation in 1944 because it was very much linked to resistance.

And they looked at jazz as a symbol of resistance to totalitarianism, but also to American [unintell]. To the American- to the increasingly Americanization aspect, the impact of American culture in France. Until the early 1960s, for example, Paris was full of American soldiers.

And many Parisians looked at them as an effective new army of occupation in the years after the Second World War. Whereas they could look at jazz as a kind of symbol of another kind of America. Now the irony of this is one of the main ways that many Parisians listened to jazz in the post-World War II era was through Armed Forces Radio. So the American Army, just as it had in the First World War was a major transmitter of jazz culture to France.

Ok, bebop is very interesting in France because it’s something that develops in the United States during the war and because of the German occupation of France, French exposure to it is somewhat delayed. And this is one example where the German occupation created a sort of cut-off between France and trans-Atlantic cultural development. So by the time bebop comes to France in the late 1940s, it’s already very well-developed in New York, Kansas City, Chicago, other places.

France is becoming close to the United States. The world is becoming smaller. It is easier for African-Americans to travel back and forth between Paris and America. Or to travel to Paris for a while then go to a jazz festival in Montreaux or Nice or other places throughout Europe. So you have this whole jazz performance circuit in the 1950s- ‘40s and ‘50s. It really didn’t exist, it was only starting to come into existence in the 1930s.

And creates a whole different image of jazz. So you have this paradox. On the one hand, jazz is seen as a kind of political music, as a kind of rejection and an embrace of Americanism at the same time. On the other hand, jazz is also becoming more respectable in and of itself. You know, leading to the point where you can have now Wall Street editorial- Wall Street Journal editorials about different kinds of jazz and which is the best kind to go to. Something that would have been completely unimaginable in the 1920s.

In Shakespeare’s day there was neither television nor radio, neither dictionaries nor history books as we know them, not even newspapers or magazines.  Formal schooling took place in Latin and covered classical texts from ancient Greece and Rome.  University schooling generally prepared students for a career in the church or the court.  Less than half the population could read.  What passed for historical understanding then came from a few Chronicles (Holinshed and Hall) and oral history, both of which forms had good helpings of myth interspersed with occasional facts.  One such popular story concerned King Leir and his three daughters, a story Holinshed dated in 800 BC.  The story had been in circulation as part of England’s mythical past for many centuries.  As it involved foolish monarchs, invidious children, and the desire for orderly succession of the crown, it had natural interest for this small island nation struggling through monarchical and religious traumas of various sorts.  The struggles of King Leir could be seen as symbolic, and Leir’s eventual triumph as a hoped-for utopian ending, even as the general story brought Cordelia down in the end.  In some ways it was a story of romance, political intrigue, travel, foreign countries, and domestic difficulties just meant for the stage.

Someone must have felt so in the early 1590’s.  It was the high moment of the English history play.  Marlowe (who died in 1593) had written Tamburlaine and Edward II.  Shakespeare had probably completed his Henry VI cycle and Richard III, and may have moved on to Richard II, to be followed shortly thereafter by Henry IV and Henry V.  Gorbuduc, about a king succeeding Leir who also divided his kingdom, but between his two sons, had been performed before Elizabeth I some thirty years preceding.  If one imagines a scene just slightly displaced from Shakespeare in Love of two or three Cambridge wits who acted in and wrote plays for the new outdoor theaters that shared entertainment space with brothels and bars on the south bank of the Thames, and puts them in a bar with paper and quills, deciding to collaborate on a new play about the old king and his daughters, one may be imagining the origin of The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters, Gonerill, Ragan, and Cordella.

Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about this play’s origins.  It was published in 1605, but a play with a similar title was entered in the Stationer’s register in 1595, and we have some evidence of a production by the Queen’s Men sometime before.  Whether Shakespeare actually saw it, or played in it, is unknown.  (That he knew it is almost certain.)  Its author or authors (some discrepancies in characterization and plotting suggest multiple authors working in haste, a common practice of the time) are also unknown.  It clearly follows the broad outlines of the story from the histories in Holinshed and Spenser, but it adds characters, motivations, and events not recorded therein.  In particular, no one is killed, but Ragan and Gonorill attempt to kill Lear directly through a long and convoluted series of scenes involving an assassin/messenger.  Unlike the histories, the final kingdom is united under France, with Cordelia as Queen.  Furthermore, the two husbands appear to have no role in Lear’s abuse (or even to know about it), yet they are the ones attacked in the end by the King of France.  The play is clearly Christian, with some Catholic overtones (mentions of Purgatory and such).  It is also smutty, crudely so, and at times quite burlesque.  While the topic is serious, the play can be seen as easily as a comedy as a historical romance (it is definitely not a tragedy).

The play features a rather large number of disguises intended to confuse the class of the disguised individual.  These disguises would have been realized in costumes of the Elizabethan period, not the supposed period of King Leir himself.  It is fair to guess then that dress carried strong class indices at the time.  The play is just over 2500 lines long, suggesting a stage time around 2-1/2 hours.  It could be cut quite a bit without losing anything, but it fits within the time parameters of Elizabethan theater as is. Unlike modern plays, there would be no program notes or auxiliary explanations available to the audience (many of whom could not read anyway).  However, the audience would surely know the title of the play.  The play begins with sixty lines before a name is announced, from which we can assume that the audience knew the general story ahead of time.  Some of the play’s interest therefore arises from how the play adds to, and changes, the common story.  As Spenser and Holinshed more or less agree on the story, which both agree with Geoffrey of Monmouth, we may fairly assume that the common story was the one they report.

INTRODUCTION TO THIS PUBLICATION OF KING LEIR

The following pages present King Leir in three forms: a brief synopsis, a detailed synopsis, and the play itself.  The detailed synopsis and the play text both divide into 32 scenes, with each scene given a page beginning with the synopsis and followed by the play text.  You will notice from the original play text that the scenes there are not numbered or marked off in any obvious way.  This publication has used the convention that a scene on the open-air Elizabethan stage began with an entrance and ended when the stage was empty again.

This particular play text was compiled, edited, and modernized by B. Flues and R. Brazil for their website elizabethanauthors.com.  The synopsis was written by your guest contributor.

Sir Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was a courtier, soldier, and poet, who, with the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh and Thomas Wyatt, were the English examples of the Renaissance man.  Also like Raleigh and Wyatt, he ran afoul of the reigning monarch, and was dispatched to the Netherlands to fight rather than sail the seas as he wanted.  He was killed there at the age of 32.  He left a magnificent sonnet sequence called Astrophel and Stella, the single best work of literary theory of the Renaissance, and a long, rambling mixture of various stories set amongst pastoral poetry called The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia that was quite popular for the next hundred years, but only read now by academics devoted to the period.  All were published after his lifetime, but just as Shakespeare was coming of age on the London stage.  Among the stories in the Arcadia was one Shakespeare used for the second plot of King Lear.

Summary . . . Geoffrey of Monmouth . . . Holinshed . . . Spenser . . . King Leir the play

Synopsis

It begins quite near the end as we see it in Lear, with the unnamed Prince of Paphlagonia (the Gloucester counterpart) hiding against the bitter winter elements with his son Leonatus (Edgar) when they are discovered by two princes of Galacia.  The Prince, blinded, is pleading with Leonatus to leave him there to die if he is not willing to lead him to a cliff to commit suicide.  The princes of Galacia wonder about their condition, and hear part of the story from Leonatus, that the blind Prince had been deprived of his sight and his kingdom by his unnatural son, and so wished this son to take him up a rock, to enable him to hurl himself to his death.  But the blind Prince intervenes, and tells the story himself, with moans and constant confessions of shame.  He was fraudulently carried by his bastard son Plexirtus to dislike, then hate, then order to have killed, his legitimate son Leonatus.  The latter was saved only by the Prince’s servants’ having a better nature, letting him escape to live poorly as a private soldier in a nearby country.  But Plexirtus gradually usurped everything, finally blinding the old Prince but not killing him, so he might feel the fullest measure of misery and disgrace.  He was only salvaged by his son Leonatus.

This lamentable tale moved the two Galacian princes (Pyrocles and Musidorus) to compassion and thoughts of redress when Plexirtus himself arrives with a small force in search of Leonatus.  Finding him, a few attack him, but Leonatus kills the first, warns off the rest, and Pyrocles and Musidorus join the frey.  It was still three against forty until the King of Pontus, who was stirred by a dream, arrived with a superior force.  However, Plexirtus was in turn aided suddenly by Tydes and Telenor, life-long friends who, while not counseling his offenses, nevertheless stood by Plexirtus.  They fought the good fight, and could not win, but were sufficient to speed Plexirtus into another country.  There he languished, as those he had tyrannized went back to the blind King’s son with great happiness. However, the old Kind still died of a broken heart.  Leonatus pursued Plexirtus in revenge, but, against the advice of his two friends, Plexirtus prostrated himself in the torments of his own conscience, begging for his life, which finally moved Leonatus to pardon him.  Sadly, his friends were not so lucky, for they were betrayed by the still-wicked Plexirtus and cruelly executed.

Full Text

It was in the kingdom of Galacia, the season being (as in the depth of winter) very cold, and as then suddenly grown to so extreme and foul a storm, that never any winter (I think) brought forth a fouler child, so that the Princes were even compelled by the hail, that the pride of the wind blew into their faces, to seek some shrouding place which a certain hollow rock offering unto them, they made it their shield against the tempest’s fury. And so staying there, till the violence thereof was passed, they heard the speech of a couple, who not perceiving them, being hid within that rude canopy, held a strange and pitiful disputation, which made them step out, yet in such sort, as they might see unseen. There they perceived an aged man, and a young, scarcely come to the age of a man, both poorly arrayed, extremely weather-beaten, the old man blind, the young man leading him.  And yet through all those miseries, in both there seemed to appear a kind of nobleness, not suitable to that affliction. But the first words they heard, were these of the old man.
“Well Leonatus,” (said he), “since I cannot persuade thee to lead me to that which should end my grief, and thy trouble, let me now entreat thee to leave me.  Fear not, my misery cannot be greater then it is, and nothing doth become me but misery.   Fear not the danger of my blind steps, I cannot fall worse then I am.  And do not I pray thee, do not obstinately continue to infect thee with my wretchedness.  But fly, fly from this region only worthy of me. “

“Dear father,”  (answered he), “do not take away from me the only remnant of my happiness.   While I have power to do you service, I am not wholly miserable.”

“Ah my son,” (said he, and with that he groaned, as if sorrow strove to break his heart), “how evil fits it me to have such a son, and how much doth thy kindness upbraid my wickedness?”

These doleful speeches, and some others to like purpose (well showing they had not been born to the fortune they were in) moved the Princes to go out unto them, and ask the younger what they were?  “Sirs,” (answered he with a good grace, and made the more agreeable by a certain noble kind of piteousness), “I see well you are strangers, that know not our misery, so well here known, that no man dare know, but that we must be miserable. Indeed our state is such, as though nothing is so needful unto us as pity, yet nothing is more dangerous unto us, then to make our selves so known as may stir pity.  But your presence promiseth that cruelty shall not over-run hate.  And if it did, in truth our state is sunk below the degree of fear.”

“This old man (whom I lead) was lately rightful Prince of this country of Paphlagonia, by the hard-hearted ungratefulness of a son of his, deprived, not only of his kingdom (whereof no foreign forces were ever able to spoil him) but of his sight, the riches which Nature grants to the poorest creatures. Whereby, and by other his unnatural dealings, he hath been driven to such grief, as even now he would have had me to have led him to the top of this rock, thence to cast himself headlong to death.  And so would have made me, who received my life of him, to be the worker of his destruction.  But noble Gentlemen, said he, if either of you have a father, and feel what dutiful affection is engraffed in a son’s heart, let me entreat you to convey this afflicted Prince to some place of rest and security.   Amongst your worthy acts it shall be none of the least, that a king of such might and fame, and so unjustly oppressed, is in any sort by you relieved.

But before they could make him answer, his father began to speak. “Ah my son, said he, how evil an Historian are you, that leave out the chief knot of all the discourse—My wickedness, my wickedness.  And if thou doest it to spare my ears, (the only sense now left me proper for knowledge) assure thy self thou doest mistake me.  And I take witness of that Sun which you see (with that he cast up his blind eyes, as if he would hunt for light) and wish my self in worse case then I do wish my self, which is as evil as may be, if I speak untruly, that nothing is so welcome to my thoughts, as the publishing of my shame. Therefore know you Gentlemen (to whom from my heart I wish that it may not prove some ominous foretoken of misfortune to have met with such a miser as I am) that whatsoever my son (Oh God, that truth binds me to reproach him with the name of my son) hath said is true.  But besides those truths, this also is true, that having had in lawful marriage, of a mother fit to bear royal children, this son (such a one as partly you see, and better shall know by my short declaration) and so enjoyed the expectations in the world of him, till he was grown to justify their expectations (so as I needed envy no father for the chief comfort of mortality, to leave another oneself after me) I was carried by a bastard son of mine (if at least I be bound to believe the words of that base woman my concubine, his mother) first to mislike, then to hate, lastly to destroy, or to do my best to destroy this son (I think you think) undeserving destruction. What ways he used to bring me to it, if I should tell you, I should tediously trouble you with as much poisonous hypocrisy, desperate fraud, smooth malice, hidden ambition, and smiling envy, as in any living person could be harbored.  But I list it not.  No remembrance of naughtiness delights me but mine own; and me thinks, the accusing his traps might in some manner excuse my fault, which certainly I loathe to do. But the conclusion is, that I gave orders to some servants of mine, whom I thought as apt for such charities as my self, to lead him out into a forest, and there to kill him.

“But those thieves (better natured to my son than myself) spared his life, letting him go to learn to live poorly, which he did, giving himself to be a private soldier in a country here by.  But as he was ready to be greatly advanced for some noble pieces of service which he did, he heard news of me, who (drunk in my affection to that unlawful and unnatural son of mine) suffered my self so to be governed by him, that all favor and punishments passed by him, all offices and places of importance distributed to his favorites, so that ere I was aware, I had left my self nothing but the name of a King, which he shortly wearied of too, with many indignities (if any thing may be called an indignity, which was laid upon me) threw me out of my seat, and put out my eyes.   And then (proud in his tyranny) let me go, neither imprisoning, nor killing me, but rather delighting to make me feel my miser—misery indeed, if ever there were any, full of wretchedness, fuller of disgrace, and fullest of guiltiness.

“And as he came to the crown by so unjust means, as unjustly he kept it, by force of stranger soldiers in Cittadels, the beasts of tyranny, and murderers of liberty, disarming all his own countrymen, that no man durst show himself a well-willer of mine.  To say the truth (I think) few of them being so (considering my cruel folly to my good son, and foolish kindness to my unkind bastard), but if there were any who felt a pity of so great a fall, and had yet any sparks of unslain duty left in them towards me, yet durst they not show it, scarcely with giving me alms at their doors, which yet was the only sustenance of my distressed life, no body daring to show so much charity as to lend me a hand to guide my dark steps, till this son of mine (God knows, worthy of a more virtuous, and more fortunate father) forgetting my abominable wrongs not reckoning danger, and neglecting the present good way he was in of doing himself good, came hither to do this kind office you see him perform towards me, to my unspeakable grief, not only because his kindness is a glass even to my blind eyes of my naughtiness, but that above all griefs, it grieves me he should desperately adventure the loss of his well-deserving life for mine, that yet owe more to Fortune for my deserts, as if he would carry mud in a chest of Crystal.  For well I know, he that now reigneth, how much so ever (and with good reason) he despiseth me, of all men despised, yet he will not let slip any advantage to make away him, whose just title (ennobled by courage and goodness) may one day shake the seat of a never secure tyranny. And for this cause I craved of him to lead me to the top of this rock, indeed I must confess, with meaning to free him from so serpentine a companion as I am.  But he finding what I purposed, only therein since he was borne, showed himself disobedient unto me. And now Gentlemen, you have the true story, which I pray you publish to the world, that my mischieuous proceedings may be the glory of his filial piety, the only reward now left for so great a merit.  And if it may be, let me obtain that of you, which my son denies me.   For never was there more pity in saving any, then in ending me, both because then my agony shall end, and so you shall preserve this excellent young man, who else willfully follows his own ruin.”

The matter in itself lamentable, lamentably expressed by the old Prince (which needed not take to himself the gestures of pity, since his face could not put of the marks thereof) greatly moved the two Princes to compassion, which could not stay in such hearts as theirs without seeking remedy.  But by and by the occasion was presented.  For Plexirtus (so was the bastard called) came thither with forty horse, only of purpose to murder this brother, of whose coming he had soon advertisement, and thought no eyes of sufficient credit in such a matter, but his own.  And therefore came himself to be actor, and spectator. And as soon as he came, not regarding the weak (as he thought) guard of but two men, commanded some of his followers to set their hands to his, in the killing of Leonatus.  But the young Prince (though not otherwise armed but with a sword) how falsely so ever he was dealt with by others, would not betray himself, but bravely drawing it out, made the death of the first that assaulted him, warn his fellows to come more warily after him. But then Pyrocles and Musidorus were quickly become parties (so just a defense deserving as much as old friendship) and so did behave them among that company (more injurious than valiant) that many of them lost their lives for their wicked master.

Yet perhaps had the number of them at last prevailed, if the King of Pontus (lately by them made so) had not come unlooked for to their succor. Who (having had a dream which had fixt his imagination vehemently upon some great danger, presently to follow those two Princes whom he most dearly loved) was come in all hast, following as well as he could their track with a hundred horses in that country, which he thought (considering who then reigned) a fit place enough to make the stage of any Tragedy.

But then the match had been so ill made for Plexirtus, that his ill-led life, and worse gotten honor should have tumbled together to destruction, had there not come in Tydeus and Telenor, with forty or fifty in their suit, to the defense of Plexirtus.  These two were brothers, of the noblest house of that country, brought up from their infancy with Plexirtus, men of such prowess, as not to know fear in themselves, and yet to teach it others that should deal with them, for they had often made their lives triumph over most terrible dangers, never dismayed and ever fortunate, and truly no more settled in their valor, than disposed to goodness and justice, if either they had lighted on a better friend, or could have learned to make friendship a child, and not the father of Virtue.  But bringing up (rather than choose) having first knit their minds unto him, (indeed crafty enough, either to hide his faults, or never to show them, but when they might pay home) they willingly held out the course, rather to satisfy him, than all the world, and rather to be good friends, than good men.  So as though they did not like the evil he did, yet they liked him that did the evil.  And though not counselors of the offense, yet protectors of the offender.  Now they having heard of this sodaine going out, with so small a company, in a country full of evil-wishing minds toward him (though they knew not the cause) followed him, till they found him in such case as they were to venture their lives, or else he to lose his, which they did with such force of mind and body, that truly I may justly say, Pyrocles & Musidorus had never till then found any, that could make them so well repeat their hardest lesson in the feats of arms. And briefly so they did, that if they overcame not, yet were they not overcome, but carried away that ungrateful master of theirs to a place of security.  Howsoever the Princes labored to the contrary. But this matter being thus far begun, it became not the constancy of the Princes so to leave it; but in all haste making forces both in Pontus and Phrygia, they had in few days, left him but only that one strong place where he was.  For fear having been the only knot that had fastened his people unto him, that once united by a greater force, they all scattered from him like so many birds, whose cage had been broken.

In which season the blind King (having in the chief city of his Realm, set the crown upon his son Leonatus head) with many tears (both of joy and sorrow) setting forth to the whole people, his own fault and his son’s virtue, after he had kissed him, and forced his son to accept honor of him (as of his new-become subject) even in a moment died, as it should seem, his heart broken with unkindness and affliction, stretched so far beyond his limits with this excess of comfort, as it was able no longer to keep safe his royal spirits.  But the new King (having no less lovingly performed all duties to him dead, than alive) pursued on the siege of his unnatural brother, as much for the revenge of his father, as for the establishing of his own quiet, in which siege truly I cannot but acknowledge the prowess of those two brothers, than whom the Princes never found in all their travel two men of greater ability to perform, nor of abler skill for conduct.

But Plexirtus finding, that if nothing else, famine would at last bring him to destruction, thought better by humbleness to creep, where by pride he could not march. For certainly so had nature formed him, and the exercise of craft conformed him to all turnings of sleights, that though no man had less goodness in his soul than he, no man could better find the places whence arguments might grow of goodness to another, though no man felt less pity, no man could tell better how to stir pity, no man more impudent to deny, where proofs were not manifest, no man more ready to confess with a repenting manner of aggravating his own evil, where denial would but make the fault fowler.  Now he took this way, that having gotten a passport for one (that pretended he would put Plexirtus alive into his hands) to speak with the King his brother, he himself (though much against the minds of the valiant brothers, who rather wished to die in brave defense) with a rope about his neck, barefooted, came to offer himself to the discretion of Leonatus.  Where what submission he used, how cunningly in making greater the fault he made the faultiness the less, how artificially he could set out the torments of his own conscience, with the burdensome comber he had found of his ambitious desires, how finely seeming to desire nothing but death, as ashamed to live, he begged life, in the refusing it, I am not cunning enough to be able to express.  But so fell out of it, that though at first sight Leonatus saw him with no other eye, than as the murderer of his father, and anger already began to paint revenge in many colors, ere long he had not only gotten pity, but pardon, and if not an excuse of the fault past, yet an opinion of future amendment, while the poor villains (chief ministers of his wickedness, now betrayed by the author thereof) were delivered to many cruel sorts of death he so handling it, that it rather seemed, he had rather come into the defense of an unremediable mischief already committed, then that they had done it at first by his consent.

Summary . . . Geoffrey of Monmouth . . . Spenser . . . Sidney . . . King Leir the play

Synopsis

Holinshed’s narrative follows essentially the same lines as Geoffrey of Monmouth.  It omits the detail about the daughter’s reducing Leir’s knights, leaving their abuse in generality, measure’s Leir’s reign as 40 years, not 60, and makes the deaths of Cornwall and Scotland specifically during the incursion.  Otherwise, it is a tight fit.

Full Text

The story of King Leir comes from the second book of Holinshed’s Chronicles, chaps. v, vi.  The following text has not been modernized, just so something on this King Lear segment of Great Performances has original spelling.  Be grateful that we cannot reproduced the elongated ’s’ or the German Bold typeface used in the early editions.

King Leir

Leir the sonne of Baldud, was admitted ruler ouer the Britaines, in the yeere of the world 3105, at what time Ioas raigned as yet in Iuda. This Leir was a prince of right noble demeanor, gouerning his land and subiects in great wealth. He made the towne of Caerlier nowe called Leicester, which standeth vpon the riuer of Sore. It is written that he had by his wife three daughters without other issue, whose names were Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla, which daughters he greatly loued, but specially Cordeilla the yoongest farre aboue the two elder. When this Leir therefore was come to great yeeres, & began to waxe vnweldie through age, he thought to vnderstand the affections of his daughters towards him, and preferre hir whome he best loued, to the succession ouer the kingdome. Whervpon he first asked Gonorilla the eldest, how well shee loued him: who calling hir gods to record, protested, that she loued him more than hir owne life, which by right and reason shoulde be most deere vnto hir. With which answer the father being well pleased, turned to the second, and demanded of hir how well she loued him: who answered (confirming hir saiengs with great othes) that she loued him more than toung could expresse, and farre aboue all other creatures of the world

Then called he his yoongest daughter Cordeilla before him, and asked of hir what account she made of him: vnto whome she made this answer as followeth: Knowing the great loue and fatherlie zeale that you haue always borne towards me, (for the which I maie not answere you otherwise than I thinke, and as my conscience leadeth me) I protest vnto you, that I haue loued you euer, and will continuallie (while I liue) loue you as my naturall father. And if you would more vnderstand of the loue that I beare you, assertaine your selfe, that so much as you haue, so much you are worth, and so much I loue you, and no more. The father being nothing content with this answer, married his two eldest daughters, the one vnto Henninus, the Duke of Cornewal, and the other vnto Maglanus, the Duke of Albania, betwixt whome he willed and ordeined that his land should be deuided after his death, and the one halfe thereof immediatelie should be assigned to them in hand: but for the third daughter Cordeilla he reserued nothing.

Neuertheles it fortuned that one of the princes of Gallia (which now is called France) whose name was Aganippus, hearing of the beautie, womanhood, and good conditions of the said Cordeilla, desired to haue hir in mariage, and sent ouer to hir father, requiring that he mighte haue hir to wife: to whome answere was made, that he might haue his daughter, but as for anie dower he could haue none, for all was promised and assured to hir other sisters alreadie. Aganippus notwithstanding this answer of deniall to receiue anie thing by way of dower with Cordeilla, tooke hir to wife, onlie moued thereto (I saie) for respect of hir person and amiable vertues. This Aganippus was one of the twelue kings that ruled Gallia in those daies, as in the Brittish historie it is recorded. But to proceed.

After that Leir was fallen into age, the two dukes that had married his two eldest daughters, thinking long yer the gouernment of the land did come to their hands, arose against him in armour, and reft from him the gouernance of the land, vpon conditions to be continued for terme of life: by the which he was put to his portion, that is, to liue after a rate assigned to him for the maintenance of his estate, which in processe of time was diminished as well by Maglanus as by Henninus. But the greatest griefe that Leir tooke, was to see the vnkindnesse of his daughters, which seemed to thinke that all was too much which their father had, the same being neuer so little: in so much, that going from the one to the other, he  was brought to that miserie, that scarslie they would allow him one seruaunt to waite upon him.

In the end, such was the vnkindnesse, or (as I maie saie) the vnnaturalnesse which he found in his two daughters, notwithstanding their faire and pleasant words vttered in time past, that being constreined of necessitie, he fled the land, and sailed into Gallia, there to seeke some comfort of his youngest daughter Cordeilla whom before time he hated. The ladie Cordeilla hearing that he was arriued in poore estate, she first sent to him priuilie a certeine summe of monie to apparell himselfe withall, and to reteine a certein number of seruants that might attende vpon him in honorable wise, as apperteined to the estate which he had borne: and then so accompanied, she appointed him to come to the court, which he did, and was so ioifullie, honorablie, and louinglie receiued, both by his sonne in law Aganippus, and also by his daughter Cordeilla, that his hart was greatlie comforted: for he was no lesse honored, than if he had beene king of the whole Countrie himselfe.

Now when he had informed his son in law and his daughter in what sort he had beene vsed by his other daughters, Aganippus caused a mightie armie to be put in readinesse, and likewise a greate nauie of ships to be rigged, to passe ouer into Britaine with Leir his father in law, to see him againe restored to his kingdome. It was accorded, that Cordeilla should also go with him to take possession of the land, the which he promised to leaue vnto hir, as the rightfull inheritour after his decesse, notwithstanding any former grant made to hir sisters or to their husbands in anie maner of wise.

Herevpon, when this armie and nauie of ships were readie, Leir and his daughter Cordeilla with hir husband tooke the sea, and arriuing in Britaine, fought with their enimies, and discomfited them in battell, in the which Maglanus and Henninus were slaine: and then was Leir restored to his kingdome, which he ruled after this by the space of two yeeres, and then died, fortie yeeres after he first began to reigne. His bodie was buried at Leicester in a vaut vnder the chanell of the Riuer of Sore beneath the towne.

Cordeilla, the yoongest daughter of Leir was admitted Q. and supreme gouernesse of Britaine, in the yeere of the world 3155, before the bylding of Rome 54, Uzia was then reigning in Juda, and Jeroboam ouer Israell. This Cordeilla after hir father’s deceasse ruled the land of Britaine right worthilie during the space of fiue yeeres, in which meane time hir husband died, and then about the end of those fiue yeeres, hir two nephewes Margan and Cunedag, sonnes to hir aforesaid sisters, disdaining to be vnder the gouernment of a woman, leuied warre against hir, and destroied a great part of the land, and finallie tooke hir prisoner, and laid hir fast in ward, wherewith she tooke suche griefe, being a woman of a manlie courage, and despairing to recouer libertie, there she slue hirselfe ‘

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100—c. 1155), an English bishop and scholar, wrote what he called a translation of an ancient history of English kings which told largely legendary stories of English kings from the original Brutus, held to be a descendant of the Greek founder of Rome, Aeneas, through the seventh century AD Cadwallader.  It includes the earliest extensive treatment of King Arthur.  He wrote an independent treatise on Merlin.  His early kings included Leir and Gorbuduc, both of whom divided their kingdoms among their children with disastrous consequences.

Summary . . . Holinshed . . . Spenser . . . Sidney . . . King Leir the play

Synopsis

After leading his country for 60 years, Leir, without male issue, decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, that they might attract thereby the most suitable husbands to rule the segments.  He proposes a love test to judge their worthiness.  After Goneril and Regan flatter him outrageously, Cordelia promises no more than her natural love for her father.   Angry, he dispossesses her, marries Goneril to Maglaunus, Duke of Scotland and Regan to Henvin, Duke of Cornwall, grants them some portion of the country, but keeps half for himself, promising it to them when he dies.  Meanwhile, Aganippus of France, hearing of Cordelia’s beauty, decides to take her regardless of her dower-less status.

As Leir grows more sluggish, his two sons-in-law usurp his half, but, to smooth the pain, agree to maintain him with forty knights.  But after two years living with Maglaunus and Goneril, Leir is reduced to twenty knights because they complain too much.  Affronted, Lier moves to Regan’s, who after a year reduces him to ten.  Goneril then reduces him to one when he returns to her.  Aggrieved, he swallows his pride and moves to France, suffering the further indignity of third place behind his sons-in-law who circumstantially make the same journey.  Learning of his arrival, Cordelia forgives Leir, restores his forty knights and regalia, and hides him in another city until he has regained his regal bearing.  Royally fit, he meets Aganippus, tells him that he was driven out of England, and comes in hopes of aid in recovering his lost lands.  Aganippus raises the necessary army, and with Leir and Cordelia leads it to victory over Leir’s renegade children.  However, three years later Leir and Aganippus both die, leaving the realm to Cordelia.  Five years later, the sons of her sisters, now Dukes themselves after the deaths of their fathers, find it not fit to be ruled by a woman, and rise up and usurp her crown.  In prison, overwhelmed with grief, Cordelia takes her own life.

Full Text Version

When Bladud was thus given over to the destinies, his son Lear was next raised to the kingdom, and ruled the country after manly fashion for three-score years. He it was that builded the city on the river Soar, that in the British is called Kaerleir, but in the Saxon, Leicester. Male issue was denied unto him, his only children being three daughters named Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, whom all he did love with marvelous affection, her most of all the youngest born, to wit, Cordelia. And when that he began to be upon the verge of eld, He thought to divide his kingdom amongst them, and to marry them unto such husbands as were worthy to have them along with their share of the kingdom. But that he might know which of them was most worthy of the largest share, he went unto them to make inquiry of each as to which of them did most love himself.

When, accordingly, he asked of Goneril how much she loved him, she first called all the gods of heaven to witness that her father was dearer to her heart than the very soul that dwelt within her body. Unto whom saith her father: “For this, that thou hast set mine old age before thine own life, thee, my dearest daughter, will I marry unto whatsoever youth shall be thy choice, together with the third part of Britain.” Next, Regan, that was second, fain to take ensample of her sister and to wheedle her father into doing her an equal kindness, made answer with a solemn oath that she could no otherwise express her thought than by saying that she loved him better than all the world beside. The credulous father thereupon promised to marry her with the same dignity as her elder sister, with another third part of the kingdom for her share.

But the last, Cordelia, when she saw how her father had been cajoled by the flatteries of her sisters who had already spoken and desiring to make trial of him otherwise, went on to make answer unto him thus: “Father mine, is there a daughter anywhere that presumeth to love her father more than a father? None such, I trow, there is that durst confess as much, save she were trying to hide the truth in words of jest. For myself, I have ever loved thee as a father, nor never from that love will I be turned aside. Albeit that thou are bent on wringing more from me, yet hearken to the true measure of my love. Ask of me no more, but let this be mine answer: So much as thou hast, so much art thou worth, and so much do I love thee.”

Thereupon forthwith, her father, thinking that she had thus spoken out of the abundance of her heart, waxed mightily indignant, nor did he tarry to make known what his answer would be. “For that thou hast so despised thy father’s old age that thou hast disdained to love me, even as well as these, thy sisters love me, I also will disdain thee, nor never in my realm shalt thou have share with thy sisters. Howbeit, sith that thou art my daughter, I say not but that I will marry thee upon terms of some kind, unto some stranger that is of other land than mine, if so be that fortune shall offer such an one; only be sure of this, that never will I trouble me to marry thee with such honour as thy sisters, inasmuch as, whereas up to this time I have loved thee better than the others, it now seemeth that thou lovest me less than they.”

Straightway thereupon, by counsel of the nobles of the realm, he giveth the twain sisters unto two Dukes, of Cornwall, to wit, and Scotland, together with one moiety only of the island so long as he should live, but after his death he willed that they should have the whole of the kingdom of Britain. Now it fell out about this time that Aganippus, King of the Franks, hearing report of Cordelia’s beauty, forthwith dispatched his envoys to the King, beseeching him that Cordelia might be entrusted to their charge as his bride whom he would marry with due rite of the wedding torch. But her father, still persisting in his wrath, made answer that right willingly would he give her, but that needs must it be without land or fee, seeing that he had shared is kingdom along with all his gold and silver betwixt Cordelia’s sisters Goneril and Regan. When this word was brought unto Aganippus, for that he was on fire with love of the damsel, he sent again unto King Lear saying that enow had he of gold and silver and other possessions, for that one-third part of Gaul was his, and that he was fain to marry the damsel only that he might have sons by her to inherit his land. So at last the bargain was struck, and Cordelia was sent to Gaul to be married unto Aganippus.

Some long time after, when Lear began to wax more sluggish by reason of age, the foresaid Dukes, with whom and his two daughters he had divided Britain, rebelled against him and took away from him the realm and the kingly power which up to that time he had held right manfully and gloriously. Howbeit, concord was restored, and one of his sons-in-law, Maglaunus, Duke of Scotland, agreed to maintain him with forty knights, so that he should not be without some semblance of state. But after that he had sojourned with his son-in-law two years, his daughter Goneril began to wax indignant at the number of his knights, who flung gibes at her servants for that their rations were not more plentiful. Whereupon, after speaking to her husband, she ordered her father to be content with a service of twenty knights and to dismiss the others that he had.

The King, taking dudgeon, left Maglaunus, and betook him to Henvin, Duke of Cornwall, unto whom he had married his other daughter, Regan. Here, at first, he was received with honour, but a year had not passed before discord again arose betwixt those of the King’s household and those of the Duke’s, inasmuch as that Regan, waxing indignant, ordered her father to dismiss all his company save five knights only to do him service. Her father, beyond measure aggrieved thereat, returned once more to his eldest daughter, thinking to move her to pity and to persuade her to maintain himself and his retinue.

Howbeit, she had never renounced her first indignation, but swore by all the gods of Heaven that never should he take up his abode with her save he contented himself with the service of a single knight and were quit of all the rest. Moreover, she upbraided the old man for that, having nothing of his own to give away, he should be minded to go about with such a retinue; so that finding she would not give way to his wishes one single tittle, he at last obeyed and remained content with one knight only, leaving the rest to go their way.

But when the remembrance of his former dignity came back unto him, bearing witness to the misery of the state to which he was now reduced, he began to bethink him of going to his youngest daughter overseas. Howbeit, he sore misdoubted that she would do nought for him, seeing that he had held her, as I have said, in such scanty honour in the matter of her marriage. Nonetheless, disdaining any longer to endure so mean a life, he betook him across the Channel into Gaul. But when he found that two other princes were making the passage at the same time, and that he himself had been assigned but the third pace, he brake forth into tears and sobbing, and cried aloud:

“Ye destinies that do pursue your wonted way marked out by irrevocable decree, wherefore was it your will ever to uplift me to happiness so fleeting? For a keener grief it is to call to mind that lost happiness than to suffer the presence of the unhappiness that cometh after. For the memory of the days when in the midst of hundreds of thousands of warriors I went to batter down the walls of cities and to lay waste the provinces of mine enemies is more grievous unto me than the calamity that hath overtaken me in the meanness of mine estate, which hath incited them that but now were groveling under my feet to desert my feebleness. O angry fortune! will the day ever come wherein I may requite the evil turn that hath thus driven forth the length of my days and my poverty? O Cordelia, my daughter, how true were the words wherein thou didst make answer unto me, when I did ask of thee how much thou didst love me! For thou saidst, ‘So much as thou hast, so much art thou worth, and so much do I love thee.’ So long, therefore, as I had that which was mine own to give, so long seemed I of worth unto them that were the lovers, not of myself but of my gifts. They loved me at times, but better loved they the presents I made unto them. Now that the presents are no longer forthcoming, they too have gone their ways. But with what face, O thou dearest of my children, shall I dare appear before thee, I who, wroth with thee for these thy words, was minded to marry thee less honorably than thy sisters, who, after all the kindnesses I have conferred upon them, have allowed me to become an outcast and a beggar?”

Landing at last, his mind filled with these reflections and others of a like kind, he came to Karitia, where his daughter lived, and waiting without the city, sent a messenger to tell her into what indigence he had fallen, and to beseech his daughter’s compassion inasmuch as he had neither food nor clothing. On hearing the tidings, Cordelia was much moved and wept bitterly. When she made inquiry how many armed men he had with him, the messengers told her that he had none save a single knight, who was waiting with him without the city. She commanded also that he should have a retinue of forty knights well appointed and armed, and that then he should duly announce his arrival to Aganippus and herself. The messenger accordingly forthwith attended King Lear into another city, and hid him there in secret until that he had fully accomplished all that Cordelia had borne him on hand to do.

As soon therefore, as he was meetly arrayed in kingly apparel and invested with the ensigns of royalty, and a train of retainers, he sent word unto Aganippus and his daughter that he had been driven out of the realm of Britain by his sons-in-law, and had come unto them in order that by their assistance he might be able to recover his kingdom. They accordingly, with the great counselors and nobles, came forth to receive him with all honour, and placed in his hands the power over the whole of Gaul until such time as they had restored him unto his former dignity.

In the meanwhile, Aganippus sent envoys throughout the whole of Gaul to summon every knight baring arms therein to spare no pains in coming to help him to recover the kingdom of Britain for his father-in-law, King Lear. When they had all made them ready, Lear led the assembled host together with Aganippus and his daughter into Britain, fought a battle with his sons-in-law, and won the victory, again bringing them all under his own dominion. In the third year thereafter he died, and Aganippus died also, and Cordelia, now mistress of the helm of state in Britain, buried her father in a certain underground chamber which she had bidden be made under the river Soar at Leicester. This underground chamber was founded in honour of the two-faced Janus, and there, when the yearly celebration of the day came round, did all the workmen of the city set hand unto such work as they were about to be busied upon throughout the year.

Now, when Cordelia had governed the kingdom in peace for five years, two sons of her sisters began to harass her, Margan, to wit, and Cunedag, that had been born unto the Dukes Maglaunus and Henvin, both of them youths of notable likelihood and prowess, Margan being son of Maglaunus and Cunedag of Henvin. These, after the deaths of their fathers, had succeeded them in their dukedoms, and now took it in high dudgeon that Britain should be subject to the rule of a woman. They therefore assembled their hosts and rebelled against the Queen, nor were they minded to put an end to their outrages until after laying waste a number of provinces, they had defeated her in several battles, and had at last taken her and put her in prison, wherein, overwhelmed with grief for the loss of her kingdom, she slew herself.

Forthwith the youths divided the island between them, whereof that part which stretcheth from the Humber towards Caithness fell to Margan’s share, and the other, on the other side of the river, that vergeth toward the West, was allotted to Cunedag. After the space of two years, certain of them that rejoiced in making disturbance in the realm, joined them with Margan and began to tempt him to walk in crooked paths, saying that foul shame it was he, the eldest born, should not have dominion over the whole island; so that, what with this and other grievances, they at last egged him on to march with an army into Cunedag’s territories, and thus began to heap fuel on the fire they had kindled. On the war breaking out, Cunedag with all his host marched out to meet him, and in the battle that was fought inflicted no small slaughter, driving Margan in flight before him, and afterwards following his flight from province to province, until at last he overtook and slew him in a village of Wales, which after that Margan was slain there hath been called by his name, Margan to wit, ever since by the country folk even unto this day. Cunedag, accordingly, having won the victory, possessed himself of the monarchy of the whole island and governed the same gloriously for three and thirty years.

(At that time Isaiah and Hosea prophesied, and Rome was founded the eleventh of the *Kalends of May by the twin-brethren, Romulus and Remus.)

Copyright © 2005 B. Flues, R. Brazil and elizabethanauthors.com

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” To understand Elizabethan drama it is necessary to study a dozen playwrights at once, to dissect with all care the complex growth, to ponder collaboration to the utmost line. Reading Shakespeare and several of his contemporaries is pleasure enough, perhaps all the pleasure possible, for most. But if we wish to . . . refine this pleasure by understanding it, to distil the last drop of it . . . to apply exact measurement to our own sensations, then we must compare; and we cannot compare without parcelling the threads of authorship and influence. One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good ones make it into something better, (that) welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn. T.S.Eliot, from “Philip Massinger” in The Sacred Wood

Shakespeare wrote King Lear against a background of a known story, indeed, a kind of history of England story, about an ancient king (Leir was the common spelling) who decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, but administering a love test before doing so.  His youngest daughter refuses, and disaster ensues.  The four most commonly attested Leir stories come from Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing around 1136, two very close recapitulations of that story from Raphael Holinshed and Edmund Spenser in the late sixteenth century, an expanded version by Higgins in the compilation The Mirror for Magistrates, and a wild, often comedic variation of the story written as a play sometime in the early 1590’s.  All these stories end with Leir, Cordelia, and her husband, the King of Gallia, defeating Leir’s other two daughters and their husbands, regaining the kingdom.  How it unfolds thereafter varies a bit, but the Leir story itself ends happily for Leir.  None of these stories presents Leir as mad, or going mad, although the play shows Leir in serious decline, starving, and in borrowed clothes before reuniting with Cordelia.  None of course involve a second plot or a character like the Fool.  Most importantly, none are written like the Shakespeare version.

The second plot borrows from a short story contained in Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, a disconnected selection of stories of various kinds bound together by segments of pastoral poetry.  It was published in 1590 after Sidney’s death.

This section provides short synopses of the Lear story from Geoffrey of Monmouth and the play, The True Chronicle History of King Leir.  It gives the few stanzas from Spenser directly.  It also provides links to the original texts of Geoffrey, Holinshed, Sidney, and the play, as well as a scene-by-scene synopsis of the play.  The play seems to be the most proximate source Shakespeare actually used.  It is interesting in itself, and worth the read.  It implicitly raises some of the same issues Shakespeare raises (royal succession, class, disguise, connection between domestic and civic turmoil, aging, loyalty, the vagaries of the written word).  And its religious, burlesque, and bawdy overtones, all unnecessary to tell the story, suggest ways in which playwrights of the period engaged audiences.  Shakespeare’s gestures in the same direction are more sophisticated (instead of drunk watchmen he creates lunatics out of Kent and Edgar, for example), but they are none the less written for entertainment.  It is also interesting to see how Shakespeare actually develops characters during the play, rather than give them some set roles at the beginning and watch them unfold.  We see real changes in Lear, Gloucester, Edgar, Edmund, Goneril, and Regan as Shakespeare writes them.  The degree to which Shakespeare shines, earns his keep as the greatest writer in the English language, can be seen in part by comparison with other efforts at the same story, both before and after his own Lear was produced for the first time.

More background on King Lear:

Geoffrey of Monmouth on King Leir

Holinshed on King Leir

Spenser on King Keir

From Sidney’s Arcadia

The Play (anonymous) of King Leir