King Lear (Vol. 46) - Cordelia
CORDELIA
Richard Abrams (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: "The Double Casting of Cordelia and Lear's Fool: A Theatrical View," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter, 1985, pp. 354-68.
[In the essay that follows, Abrams explores the hypothesis that in early productions of King Lear, the characters of Cordelia and Lear's Fool were played by the same actor. Abrams emphasizes the theatrical benefits of such "doubling," noting that Cordelia and the Fool both serve as Lear's "truth-tellers."]
Proposed near the turn of the past century, the hypothesis that the actor playing Cordelia doubled as the Fool in early productions of King Lear accords with our best knowledge of Shakespeare's theatrical practice and has rarely been contested. Strictly speaking, of course, the theory remains unprovable without external evidence; yet it rests on two fairly firm supports: that the two characters never meet on...
[The entire page is 12197 words long]
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