Diagnosis of the (former?) West

When I first read these lines in my senior year of high school, and when I first saw them acted a year later in an off-off-Broadway production in a basement theater in Manhattan that was so powerful, so moving, and so right that I’ve never wanted to see a live production of King Lear again because nothing could approach it, it didn’t occur to me (obviously) that they would have the specific application they now have.

O Goneril!
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition:
That nature, which contemns its origin,
Cannot be border’d certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.

(Albany to Goneril, King Lear, Act IV, Scene 2.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 28, 2005 02:00 AM | Send