Filming Metatheatre: the ‘Dover Cliff’ Scene on Screen

doi:10.1017/9781108589727.004

Chapter 4 - Filming Metatheatre: the ‘Dover Cliff’ Scene on Screen

from Part II - Lear en Abyme: Metatheatre and the Screen

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019

Sarah Hatchuel

Edited by

Victoria Bladen ,

Sarah Hatchuel and

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

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Victoria Bladen: Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier

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Summary

In 4.6, Edgar, who pretends to be Poor Tom, guides his blind father Gloucester towards Dover. Gloucester has asked to be led to the top of a cliff so that he can end his days. But the cliff is only an illusion created verbally by Edgar who wants to protect his father’s life. This scene uses the power of the Elizabethan stage to become a moment of pure theatre, calling for a bare stage to retain all its ambiguities. The aim of this contribution is to show how cinema and television can sometimes maintain, and even foster, the scene’s paradoxes of a non-space. The chapter interrogates the possibilities offered by the screen to reflect the complex dramatic and metadramatic tensions in several film productions of King Lear that use Shakespeare’s playtext. These screen productions, emerging from different media and production contexts, all present different strategies to represent the ‘cliff’ scene. From Richard Eyre’s 1998 film, to films made for television and video release, to feature films (Peter Brook’s in 1971), they all attempt, through textual cuts, framing and/or editing, to circumvent the problem posed by a scene that seems to encapsulate the very essence of the bare Elizabethan stage.

Keywords

King Lear cliff illusion Edgar Gloucester screen film stage theatre

Type: Chapter
Information: Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear , pp. 65 - 77

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108589727.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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