EA 190 Shakespeare and Japan Week 8 Outline

Comparative Assignment 2
Listed some material on the schedule that will be helpful for people. Look at it!

Finish Imagery in King Lear

Jay

TWO BIG QUESTIONS that concern Kurosawa and Shakespeare:

 1) Is there a god or gods who care what happens to human beings? Do we have control over our fate?

2) Can we control violence or will it control us?

Connected question:

Does evil come from outside human beings or is it solely generated from the human heart and passions?

DISCUSSION QUESTION 2 and FORUM on King Lear

a. How do Lear or Gloucester understand themselves at the beginning of the play? That is, how do they view themselves, positively or negatively and why?

b. How do the characters around them view them? For example, how do Goneril and Reagan view their father? How does Cordelia view him? How do Edmund and Edgar view their father?

c. Do you think Lear and Gloucester have learned anything at the end of the play? Can we "moralize" Lear's and Gloucester's experience --that is, is there any lesson to be learned from their suffering/ experience? Why or why not? Cite scenes/lines to support your position.

Scenes from King Lear (note that the Trevor Nunn version, with Ian McKellen as Lear, abbreviates the play quite a bit during the mad scenes)

Question: Is Lear more sinned against than sinning?

Video 33:31

End of Act 1 Scene 4, beginning of Act 1 Scene 5 ( Goneril tells Lear that she wants him to cut his retinue in half, and he curses her with sterility; Lear talks with the fool just outside the palace.)

Questions: If we only saw the play to this point, would we have much empathy for Lear? For Goneril?

Question: When is Lear most mad? When does he seem to come back to his senses? How might this be related to question of whether he learns anything from his suffering?

VIDEO 1:11:44

Staging Act 3 Sc 2 "Blow winds" scene (three different stagings)

On the heath, after Regan and Cornwall have let Lear leave their palace and go out into the storm:

KING LEAR
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
Fool
O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry
house is better than this rain-water out o' door.
Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing:
here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool.
KING LEAR
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!

Act 3 Scene 4
{Video skips down to Kent]
Thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee;
But where the greater malady is fix'd,
The lesser is scarce felt. Thou'ldst shun a bear;
But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,
Thou'ldst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the
mind's free,
The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to't? But I will punish home:
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,--
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.
KENT
Good my lord, enter here.
KING LEAR
Prithee, go in thyself: seek thine own ease:
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.
To the Fool
In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty,--
Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.
Fool goes in
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

Act 4 Scene 6

After Fool is gone (in the Trever Nunn directed version of King Lear they show him being hanged) and Gloucester has been fooled into thinking he has jumped off the cliff, Lear meets Gloucester and Edgar. Note that now Lear takes on the role of Fool as well as King. When you watch Ran, how does Kurosawa handle this scene?

Video: 1:50:35

KING LEAR
Ha! Goneril, with a white beard! They flattered
me like a dog; and told me I had white hairs in my
beard ere the black ones were there. To say 'ay'
and 'no' to every thing that I said!--'Ay' and 'no'
too was no good divinity. When the rain came to
wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when
the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I
found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they are
not men o' their words: they told me I was every
thing; 'tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

[SKIP]

GLOUCESTER
O, let me kiss that hand!
KING LEAR
Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
GLOUCESTER
O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world
Shall so wear out to nought. Dost thou know me?
KING LEAR
I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny
at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid! I'll not
love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the
penning of it.
GLOUCESTER
Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.
EDGAR
I would not take this from report; it is,
And my heart breaks at it.
KING LEAR
Read.
GLOUCESTER
What, with the case of eyes?
KING LEAR
O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your
head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in
a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how
this world goes.
GLOUCESTER
I see it feelingly.
KING LEAR
What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes
with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond
justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in
thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which
is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen
a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?
GLOUCESTER
Ay, sir.
KING LEAR
And the creature run from the cur? There thou
mightst behold the great image of authority: a
dog's obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks:
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em:
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes;
And like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now:
Pull off my boots: harder, harder: so.
EDGAR
O, matter and impertinency mix'd! Reason in madness!
KING LEAR
If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.
I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester:
Thou must be patient; we came crying hither:
Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.
GLOUCESTER
Alack, alack the day!
KING LEAR
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools: this a good block;
It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe
A troop of horse with felt: I'll put 't in proof;
And when I have stol'n upon these sons-in-law,
Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

"Moral" of this class: King Lear is not a simple play, and simplistic moral lessons cannot be drawn from it. Even at the end when two very flawed "good guys" (Edgar and Albany) are left standing, do we actually believe that justice has won out? Do we believe Edgar's moralizing about his father's fault being that he had an adulterous affair with Edmund's mother? Can we believe Edmund's deathbed conversion? And why does Cordelia die?

This week and next we'll see how Kurosawa deals with some of the same issues.

CLASS ON RAN

I. Start with character identification with King Lear

Hidetora (Daimyo)=

Ayabe (neighboring Daimyo)=

Fujimaki (neighboing Daimyo)=

Tango (Hidetora's faithful servant/retainer)=

Kyoami (Hidetora's fool) =

Taro (first son)=

Jiro (second son) =

Saburo (third son) =

Sue (Jiro's wife) =

Tsurumaru (Sue's brother) =

Kaede (Taro's wife, later Jiro's) =

Ikoma (Hidetora's top retainer) =

Ogura (Taro's top retainer) =

Kurogane (Jiro's top retainer) =

II. BASIC STORY (What is left out? What changed? What retained?)

QUESTION: What did you think was the main theme of Ran? How is this different from Throne of Blood?

A. Kurosawa:

"I started out to make a film about Motonari Mori, the 16th century warlord whose three sons are admired in Japan as paragons of filial virtue. What might their story be like, I wondered, if the sons had not been so good? It was only after I was well into writing the script about these imaginary unfilial sons of the Mori clan that the similarities to Lear occurred to me. Since my story is set in medieval Japan, the protagonist's children had to be men; to divide a realm among daughters would have been unthinkable." (Interview with Peter Gilli, p. 60)

Question: How does changing Lear's daughters to sons affect the meaning of the story for you?

B. Big difference between King Lear and Ran is that in King Lear there isn't much motivation for:

1. Why he divides his kingdom.

2. Why the daughters hate him so much. (A bit more motivation for Edmund maligning Edgar.)

C. Kurosawa found this problematic:

"What has always troubled me about King Lear is that Shakespeare gives his characters no past. We are plunged directly into the agonies of their present dilemmas without knowing how they come to this point. How did Lear acquire the power that, as an old man, he abuses with such disastrous effects? Without knowing his past, I've never really understood the ferocity of his daughters' response to Lear's feeble attempts to shed his royal power. In Ran I've tried to give Lear a history. I try to make clear that his power must rest on a lifetime of bloodthirsty savagery. Forced to confront the consequences of his misdeeds, he is driven mad. But only by confronting his evil head-on can he transcend it and begin to struggle again toward virtue." [p. 106]

1. Kurosawa added motivations in Throne of Blood for the same kinds of reasons, that he found Shakespeare's opaqueness on this point inexplicable.

2. How does this affect our response to Hidetora? Do we feel more empathy or less for him, given that he has so much bloodier a past?

D. Effect of removal of Gloucester subplot, insertion of Kaede/Jiro as Edmund character?

Question: How does the subplot of Lady Kaede, Lady Sue and Tsurumaru substitute both for the Gloucester-Edmund-Edgar subplot, and supplement the story line of the filial/unfilial daughters?

Discussion Question: Pick one example of how Kurosawa borrows an image or action from Lear and discuss how Kurosawa's borrowing from King Lear moves the character or plot development forward

Certain resonances from Shakespeare remain but meaning has changed (examples):

a. Saburo shades Hidetora like Edgar shades Gloucestor: What does this tell us about Saburo?

b. Hidetora leaps from battlements like Gloucester's "leap" from cliffs of Dover (video: 2:04)

(Has a really important effect on the storyline: this is where Kyoami loses him, and this is why Saburo has to go after him on the Asuza plain. Leads to fight between Saburo and Taro and ultimately tragedy.)

c. Gloucester and Tsurumaro are both blinded; but by whom?

d. At climax Kurogane denouces Kaede as a fox, compared to Albany denoucing Goneril as a fiend: but are Albany and Kurogane equivalent characters?

Summer of Shakespeare: Ran: The Shakespearian Apocalypse

 Come back to this later in the class after we watch some clips from the movie

III. Comparison of opening scenes in King Lear and Ran

A. King Lear (review): Shakespeare misdirects us, or is (at best) unclear about who is good and who is evil.

1. Lear wants power and respect without the weight of responsiblity that comes with it ("crawl unburdened to death")
2. Places conditions on his love (tell me how much you love me and I'll give you land), but wants unconditional love in return
3. Believes that you can place an economic value on love and respect (still arguing about valuation of love with Regan and Goneril later in play: "oh reason not the need" )
4. Wants his daughters to marry but wants them to remain his daughters. Cordelia is being auctioned off, but clearly Lear doesn't want her to go to France, because then he wouldn't be able to live with her?
5. Gloucester subplot sets son against son because of the rule of primogeniture. It is a structural inequity that Edmund deeply resents and Edgar (and his father) seems oblivious to it.

B. RAN Opening Scene (watch video)

A. What do we know about the characters from this opening scene?

1. Hidetora?

2. What do we know about the brothers and their relationshp to their father?

3. Fujimaki and Ayabe?

4. Is Kurosawa clearer than Shakespeare about the good guys and the bad guys?

B. Animal Imagery

1. Boar

2. Kyoami's comic (kyogen) piece with Saburo's comment

a. What was kyogen?

b. Kurosawa's comment on Kyoami's role in the story

C. Weather/natural landscape

1. Use not always straightforward

D. Use of Sound

1. Kurosawa:

"From Drunken Angel onward I have used light music for some key sad scenes, and my way of using music has differed from the norm--I don't put it in where most people do. Working with Hayasaka I began to think in terms of the counterpoint of sound and image as opposed to the union of sound and image."

2. Use of diegetic versus non-diegetic sound.

a. cicadas (Video 55)

b. flute

C. In Ran we see:

1. A society in which concepts such as "kill or be killed" and "the low overthrow the high" have set the moral framework that Hidetora has followed most of his life, and which he now hopes to end by relinquishing power to his sons.

2. A society in which primogeniture is used to consolidate power within the family, which leaves second and third sons out in the cold (similar to King Lear)

3. A society whose social chaos is considered symptomatic of the degenerate age of Buddhism (an age in which we must rely on the interventions of Buddhas and Bodhisattva’s to achieve enlightenment)

NEXT TIME: A "Journey of Self Discovery" for Lear versus Hidetora.

1. At what moments does Hidetora become mad? When is he capable of learning from his mistakes?

2. Question for forum next week: What does Hidetora learn? How does he learn it? And is there any lesson to be drawn from his suffering?