Contemporary Adaptations of King Lear: Power and Dramatic Space in William Shakespeare, Edward Bond and Elaine Feinstein

Abstract

In his tragedy King Lear (1605) William Shakespeare explores the human psyche through a story of an old king who gives up his land to his two eldest daughters and finds himself forced to wander in the space of the outcasts. In his modern version of this play entitled: Lear, Edward Bond resumes Shakespeare’s analysis of space and power in the figure of a monomaniac father who raises a wall against his enemies. The division of inner-outer spaces present in Bond is further explored in Elaine Feinstein’s and the Women Theatre Group’s work: Lear’s Daughters, which immerses the audience into the early years of Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. In this contemporary prequel to Shakespeare’s play the three princesses discover the world and the space they occupy in it from their seclusion in the castle.