Monday, March 12, 2018

Musical Version of King Lear's Madness

"King Lear in the Rain." Lear! Unproduced Off-Broadway Musical.

As Bardfilm loyalists know (and I know you want to count yourself among their number), I often write songs to help students remember the key terms of the plays we've covered in my Shakespeare course.

Past hits include Bob Dylan singing the plot of Measure for Measure (for which, q.v.) and "Bottom Dreamed a Dream" from the hit off-Broadway musical Pyramus! (for which, q.v.).

This past semester, I decided that King Lear needed some attention. And our university had just produced a delightful version of Singin' in the Rain, so it seemed only natural to think of some way to articulate King Lear's thoughts while he heads out into the rain to rage against the machine . . . or, really, against fate, his daughters, his losses, his madness—what have you.

Here, then, is "King Lear in the Rain." Enjoy!



Note: In case the video above fails to embed properly, I'm attaching a blog-native version here.


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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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