Topical Guide 153
Mark Dorset
Acting: Playing the Fool, Playing the King
To tell the truth, I had wanted all along to play Lear myself, but I knew that no one could do a better job than Matthew, and so I gave the part to him. He was superb.
I played the Fool. Judging from the applause, I was good enough, but some people may have been applauding only out of sympathy for my broken foot.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1982 production of King Lear, Antony Sher played the Fool and Michael Gambon played King Lear. In the RSC’s 2016 production of King Lear, Sher played Lear and Graham Turner played the Fool.
Antony Sher, an actor known for his masterly interpretations of Shakespeare’s great characters and for his versatility, died on Thursday at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He was 72. …
His breakthrough came in 1984, in the title role of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” He performed on crutches, which he used as an extension of Richard’s contorted physique and psyche to evoke Shakespeare’s description of the character as “a bottled spider.” …
In what was to be his last role, he played a terminally ill South African actor preparing to play King Lear. In the interview, he said that he had tried to leave his South African identity behind when he moved to Britain, but that he could now celebrate the way his life “had come full circle.”Roslyn Sulcas, “Antony Sher, Actor Acclaimed for His Versatility, Dies at 72,” The New York Times, December 5, 2021
Life Imitates Art (More or Less)
I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader’s mind. No matter how many times we reopen “King Lear,” never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs . . . . Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us.
Humbert Humbert, in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (the epigraph to “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”)
VERONICA’S PARENTS threw a cast party in their playroom. … I was sitting at a table with Veronica, Spike, and Clarissa. …
“Say,” I said. “I’d like to make a toast.” The girls sat up straight. They raised their paper cups as I had raised mine.
“To Regan, to Goneril, and to Cordelia,” I said, saluting each of them in turn with my cup. “I’m glad it’s over, and I’m glad we’re friends.”
“To Peter,” they answered, and we touched our raised cups. When we lowered them again, I was looking into Clarissa’s big eyes. The reflection in them of the fluorescent light overhead brought on an annoying itch inside the cast on my foot.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
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