KING LEAR

“It’s the king I feel sorry for,” said the voice behind me. At a push I’d say the voice was from Lancashire. North West at any rate.

We shuffled out of our seats for the interval. The people behind naturally followed us, and kept discussing the first half of the play as we queued. I eavesdropped.

“I mean he’s just trying to do the best he can, but it’s his fam’ly who are all rotters. I just feel sorry for him.”

“Often the way.”

“Terrible really.”

I smiled.

The sky had indeed dimmed over the Abbey Ruins, and Luke and I headed for the bar. It was a sumptuous summer night, still warmish, with a cool breeze. It was perhaps perfect for open-air Shakespeare.

Good old Shakespeare. Our northern friends were feeling sorry for a character in a 400-year-old story brought to life by an actor, reciting the most exquisite words this language ever produced.

King Lear is a tragedy. I don’t want to give spoilers if you haven’t seen it, but it doesn’t end well. And yet, weirdly, when the grim tale was over, I felt strangely uplifted by the experience. We left the rough stones of Reading Abbey’s Chapter House and found ourselves walking by torchlight towards the inky river by Chestnut Walk. There were more voices this time...

“So when did Edgar reveal who he was?”

“Did Gloucester die?”

“Was King Lear foolish all along?”

“So... was that the origin of ‘last but not least?’”

I’m afraid the people behind us had already left and didn’t make the second half. I wondered whether they had felt uplifted, or just baffled by the storyline. 

Perhaps it’s the natural conclusion of the plot that gives the play its weirdly satisfactory ending - it was always headed in one direction only and Shakespeare’s genius is teasing out what we know to be inevitable?

Or perhaps it was just the way the actors did it, by taking their bows by candlelight, singing the final lines to the tune of ‘I vow to thee my country’. Maybe we felt part of that, because we were there, eyeball to eyeball. The magic of theatre eh.

Anyway, Luke and I happily wrapped ourselves in our jackets, threw our rucksacks over our shoulders, and headed contentedly for the Number 17 bus.