Novelists rework Shakespeare's King Lear to explore gender, power and inheritance
In We That Are Young, author Preti Taneja sets the story of King Lear in contemporary India and Kashmir
A powerful man decides to divide up his vast property among his three daughters. It doesn't go as planned — in fact, things go very badly. The daughters have minds of their own, the old man won't get out of the way, a family implodes, and all is lost.
That's the familiar plot of Shakespeare's King Lear.
"It covers a lot of ground, from justice to forgiveness. But really, at its heart, it's about family dynamics, as great tragedies usually are," said Stratford Festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino.
It's also the plot of novels written in our own times.
When Preti Taneja first read King Lear in high school in England, "the play just fused itself into my imagination as an Indian story," she said.
"I recognized Indian family structures here, mothers and aunts who were constantly trying to manage households, as well as be honourable, as well as perform that honorability."
The play also struck her as a powerful exploration of the consequences of a 'divide and rule' approach that splits different factions against each other.
"The stories of Partition, of the British history in India, they are not taught in British schools ... the first time that I'd ever seen that discussed in the classroom was through Lear."
Years later, Tanjea wrote We That Are Young — a retelling of King Lear set in contemporary India and Kashmir that explores the long-term ramifications of Partition.
Taneja was also inspired by Jane Smiley's novel A Thousand Acres, a retelling of King Lear set on a family farm in Iowa. Smiley's novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992, is told from the perspective of Lear's eldest daughter, Goneril who is typically understood as one of the play's villains.
"What always struck me was what a schmuck Lear was," Smiley said.
"I was always sort of blown away by the fact that we, as the audience, were supposed to be on Lear's side, when he was evidently not in his right mind and also pretty brutal. I really wanted to see him — or have him be seen by the reader — from the point of view of his daughters."
Taneja, Smiley, and Cimolino spoke with Nahlah Ayed about what King Lear has to say to us today about gender, power, loyalty and inheritance.
This is the first episode in the 2021 edition of IDEAS at Stratford, a long-running project produced in collaboration with the Stratford Festival in Ontario. The focus this year is "Shakespeare's Novels" — all about novels that have been inspired by a Shakespeare play.
Guests in this episode:
Preti Taneja was born in England to Indian parents. She has worked with youth charities, with refugees, and in conflict and post-conflict zones on minority and cultural rights, and teaches writing in prisons and at the University of Newcastle. We That Are Young, a retelling of King Lear set in contemporary India, won the 2018 Desmond Elliot Prize for the U.K.'s best debut novel. Her forthcoming nonfiction book Aftermath explores the language of terror, trauma, and grief.
Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres, a retelling of King Lear set on a family farm in Iowa. She is the author of many books, including The Greenlanders, Moo and The Last Hundred Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She won the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.
Antoni Cimolino is the artistic director of the Stratford Festival, North America's largest classical repertory theatre company. In 2013, his first season as Artistic Director, Cimolino introduced The Forum, a season-long series of events illuminating the themes of the playbill and illustrating their relevance in today's world. Among the many plays he's directed is a wildly successful production of King Lear, with Colm Feore in the title role.
* This episode was produced by Philip Coulter and Pauline Holdsworth.
