Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

King Lear, and: Howard Katz (review)

2002; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tj.2002.0014

1086-332X

Stanton B. Garner,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

To talk about "tragedy" these days is to speak a language of the dead, literally as well as metaphorically. Given the twentieth century's displacement of classical paradigms, its hollowing out of tragedy's metaphysical foundations, and its refusal of the self-transcendent gesture, perhaps no term feels as archaic, as historically bound, and in some sense as discredited for the contemporary theatre. "I was Hamlet," begins the speaker/protagonist of Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine, the "ruins of Europe" behind him. His declaration, at once evocation and disclaimer, reflects a historical relegation of tragedy in terms of traditional social and economic formations, ideologies, and modes of subjectivity. At the same time, of course, the performance of tragedy continues to thrive on the modern stage. Two recent London productions--King Lear, directed by Barry Kyle at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and Howard Katz, written and directed by Patrick Marber on the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe stage--suggest the extent to which tragedy continues to compel attention both in its classical forms and in its contemporary appropriations of it.