From Leir to Lear | Martin Mueller, Northwestern University
From Leir to Lear
Martin Mueller, Northwestern University
There are echoes of The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir in Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Hamlet, and there is a curious give and take between these plays, the Leir play, and King Lear.1 Consider the following features that are not found in the old Leir play and may be said to be bequeathed to King Lear by the plays that show traces of The True Chronicle Historie: a villain named Gloucester who conspires against his brother, the education of a ruler reduced by exile to a state of nature, and a plot that interweaves the fortunes of the family of the king's chief counselor with those of the royal house.
If we follow the Leir play and the flow of its consequences, we observe a highly path-dependent sequence of compositional decisions that generate useful insights into the metabolism of the creative process,...
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