#cursed king lear

[irate-iguana]

In preparation for my going to see this play, I present to you:

Goneril: Yes, Father.

Regan: Of course, Father.

Cordelia: What kind of a question is that?

Kent, post-banishment: I would’ve built him a little terrarium. ):

[visenyaism]

no cause those eclipses everyone keeps talking about in king lear portending unnaturalness betwixt parent and child really are about goneril as lear’s mother, regan as lear’s son, and cordelia as lear’s wife and it’s SO

[welcometogrouchland]

HOW AM I EXHAUSTED FROM WATCHING A VIDEO. WHO BUILT ME OUT OF STICKS AND TWIGS AND WHERE CAN I EXCHANGE THIS FORM FOR A BETTER ONE

[kraniumet]

standing in the bookstore looking at a copy of the emperor of portugallia. status report: 1. still tearing up at the back cover 2. not gonna get it today either. curse aura sort of object

[staryarn]

Theres ten of these fucking things now

(The Curse of Capistrano, The Mute Singer, Alice in Wonderland, Houseki no Kuni, The Fall of Icarus, The Raven, King Lear, TOXY (song), The Dragon and the Pearl, Journey to the West

[hannahssimblr]

The crying is relentless. All morning and well into the afternoon. It's not constant, but it is consistent, a cycle of heavy, self pitying sobs followed by these silences where I imagine she forgets what she's so sad about, or curses Evan out instead, which, if it were me, is what I would be doing. I can't understand why any person is really worth this much anguish, especially ones that don't wash their hair.

“Ah, Shell,” Jen mutters under her breath, “he’s just a stupid fucking boy, enough already.” 

The brilliant sunlight of early May streaks through the windows and over the pages of our textbooks and notebooks strewn all over the carpet. With the summer exams approaching I have accepted that it’s going to be like this all month, study, revising, shovelling snacks into our mouths and then studying some more until our eyes feel like shrivelled little raisins in their sockets. But I have nowhere else to be these days, so I am happy to spend them on my stomach in the sun with Jen, writing flashcards and highlighting entire pages about chemical erosion and igneous rock.

“Did you see him at school this week?” I ask around the pen jammed between my teeth. 

“Who? Evan?”

“Yep.”

“Unfortunately. With Carlie.”

“Oh, crazy. He moved on quickly.”

She tuts and shakes her head in disgust, “He’s horrible. He has no shame, full on knowing that Michelle can see him shoving his foul slug tongue into Carlie’s mouth, in broad daylight.”

“Mm, nothing good ever happens in broad daylight, does it?”

 There is a bang, crash and wallop as Michelle comes down the stairs and straight into the room. I steel myself defensively, waiting for, I don't know what, maybe for her to start giving out to me or screaming that I need to get the hell out, not that she’s done that yet, but there’s always a chance. I bet she would if she was feeling crazy enough.

But maybe we've caught her at a good time, because instead she looks startled to see me, while also appearing different, more vulnerable than I'm used to seeing her now that the makeup she usually rings her eyes with is absent for the first time since she was about fourteen. It feels risky to look directly in her eyes, but I can't really help myself. It's like some layer has been peeled away, and she's the girl who used to be my friend.

“Um,” she utters, voice cracked and hoarse from crying, and drags the heel of her hand beneath her still dripping nose, “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I can go.”

She hesitates. 

“Let him stay,” Jen grumbles, “He’s just studying, he’s not going to bite you, is he?” 

“Okay,” Michelle says in a voice just above a whisper, and hovers there for another few moments as Jen goes back to flipping through her geography book, no doubt taking nothing in.

“Did you need something?”

“Not really.”

“Alright.”

Flip.

Flip.

Michelle gently clears her throat, “Is it… is it for the summer exams? All the study, like.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll probably fail mine,” a feeble laugh, “and dad will be thrilled with me.”

“I’m sure he’ll understand, given the circumstances.”

“I don’t think so,” she comes a bit closer, her stockinged feet padding over the carpet, and I don’t move a muscle as she approaches us, afraid to make a nuisance of myself. She perches on the edge of the sofa and folds her hands in her lap. “I think I should probably study,” she comments absently.

“If you want to,” Jen says. 

“I have so much work to catch up on…”

“Well,” Jen spreads out her fingers and gestures to the mess of paper and books on the floor like she’s presenting a gourmet meal, “you’re welcome to join us any time, babe.”

I sense Michelle’s eyes on me but I deliberately keep mine fixed on my book. The last thing I want to do is put her off the idea and then, God knows, get blamed for any and all fail grades she ends up getting.

“Hm, maybe,” she says, and leans to pluck at the corner of one of the English book covers, “I honestly know nothing, I can’t remember any of King Lear, never mind the poetry…”

“All that Shakespeare stuff is Jude’s domain, actually all of it is his, I'm clearly the idiot in the room…”

I pipe up sheepishly, “If you need help going through stuff, you know, I can, but if not it’s obviously fine too.”

“Hm,” she says, and slides to the floor with us, “Maybe. I’ll see.”

Jen gives me a secret smirk. “She'll see,” she mouths, and just like the sneaky wink she follows it with, I have absolutely no idea what she means.

Beginning // Prev // Next

[crymeariveronceagain]

Au where Keefe is a theater boy and Sophie signs up to be stage crew in order to earn extra credit

okay but literally yes

i love this headcanon with all my soul.

Like imagine, spotlights on this kid, bright eyes, blonde hair. He's giving his monologue in King Lear, his gaze about as fierce as his voice, villainy and righteous rage, "Now, Gods," he says, and his voice echoes, "Stand up for bastards!"

There's a brief moment of silence in the theatre. And Sophie in the light box dims the lights. She swallows hard.

Curses to herself. He's beautiful, she thinks.

[rillabrooke]

2024 Reading List

The Curse of Pietro Houdini - Derek B. Miller

Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie

Just Stab Me Now - Jill Bearup

The Words and Music of Paul Simon - James Bennighof**

The Paul Simon Companion: Four Decades of Commentary - Stacey Luftig**

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

The Zookeepers' War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War - J.W. Mohnhaupt

The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan

The Screaming Staircase - Jonathan Stroud

Tress of the Emerald Sea - Brandon Sanderson

The Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

The Whispering Skull - Jonathan Stroud

King Lear - William Shakespeare

The Duke and I - Julia Quinn

Macbeth - William Shakespeare

Siege and Storm - Leigh Bardugo

Redeeming Love - Francine Rivers

The Titan's Curse - Rick Riordan

Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo

The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

The Battle of the Labyrinth - Rick Riordan

The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis

The Hollow Boy - Jonathan Stroud

* reread ** for school

[crazylittlejester]

The other swan transformation Irish myth that I grew up reading (and my personal favourite of the two), is called the Children of Lir.

Now, I know this myth off by heart as it is genuinely my favourite Irish myth ever and means a lot to me so I'll be a little looser with how I describe its story.

It starts with a king (more like a noble lord than a monarchy king, as mentioned in the last myth and something I forgot to elaborate on, the High King is the King of Kings, or an equivalent to the prime minister/president).

This king, was a man named Lir (who was also the God of the sea but that's not important because he wasn't technically a god yet). And much like the Shakespeare play of the anglicised name, King Lear (though the play is based on a different myth) this too is a tragedy around a king and his children.

King Lir failed to become the High King, and due to the various politics and relationships between those vying for the title of High King of the time, the new High King offered him the hand in marriage of one of his daughters. King Lir accepted this and the High King sent him one of his daughters. She gave Lir four healthy and happy children: Fionnghuala (pronounced Fin-oo-lah) the eldest (and only) daughter, Aodh (pronounced Ay), and twins Fiachra (pronounced Fee-ack-rah) and Conn.

However, shortly after the twins are born, their mother dies. This brought Lir great grief but fortunately he's an actually good father and the loss of his wife only makes him treasure and adore his children even more. To Lir, his children are the light of his life. There's nothing and no one he cherishes more than his children, and his children adore him back. Their grandfather, the High King also greatly treasures and adores his grandchildren.

Upon hearing news of the death of his daughter, the High King sends another of his daughters to marry Lir, Aoife (pronounced Ee-fah). Lir happily accepts since his last marriage to one of the high king's daughters was a resounding success!

Unfortunately, Aoife grows bitterly jealous of all the love and affection both her husband and father give to the four children. She feigns illness and gets to plotting their murders. Firstly by trying to murder them with a chariot and her entourage of knights (her knights refuse to harm the children, however). Aoife decides to take a sword and slay them herself but ends up unable to go through with the act.

Deciding brute force wasn't the answer, Aoife takes the children down to the lake that they love playing in and once they're in the water, casts a curse. Transforming them into Swans. She tells them the curse will only break once nine hundred years have passed, in which they'll be forced to spend three hundred years at this lake, three hundred years in one part of the sea, and three hundred years in another lake. She allows them to keep their voices in the cursed form but only so they can sing mournful songs like no other.

With the curse done, Aoife returns to her father's castle, where he asks her why she had not brought the children with her, she responds that Lir did not trust her with them. Worried that she had done something to his precious grandchildren, he sends a message to king Lir. Lir, devastated that his wife would do something to endanger his children, he rushes to the last place he knew they'd been, the lake.

And there he finds four beautiful swans, singing with human voices. He immediately recognises their voices as his childrens' and kneels by the shore, allowing them to swim up to him so he can pull them all into a tearful hug. They tell him what Aoife did, and so her father curses her with a druid's wand, into taking on the form of a demon of the air (which is not as cool as it sounds because demons of the air in Irish mythology are genuinely just moths. Your average common moth).

The high King, Lir, and their people regularly visited the lake to listen to the swans sing and keep them company. (Also the killing of all swans is banned in the area.)

However, soon the three hundred years on the lake were up and they were forced to swim to the sea to the north. Where bitter cold, fierce storms, and rough waves tormented the swan children. At one point a particularly wretched storm split the children up. Though luckily they were eventually able to reunite with none of them too worse for wear. They would spend these three hundred years completely and utterly miserable.

Finally, the years were up and they travelled to the final lake. Here they met a scribe who recorded their tragic tale. At one point the cold and harsh weather got so bad that their feet became frozen in ice and they pleaded to king of heavens to grant all birds the gift of protect from the dangers of rough weather. Their pleas were heard and from then on they were granted that protection.

However, once the final three hundred years were up, they immediately returned to their father's home. Only to find their childhood home in ruins and heavily overgrown. Devasted, they returned to the final lake they had spent the last three hundred years at.

Until finally, christianity came to Ireland and the swans came across a Catholic monk ringing a bell. They asked him what the ringing was for and he explained it was to call people to come to morning prayer at the church. (So technically upon hearing that the siblings are like "oh perfect a Christian bell, it shall free us of the curse" but firstly that's because the story has been christianised, and secondly Aoife never said christianity would save them (so how do they know it will 900yrs later), and thirdly these swans are 900yrs old they'd have no clue what christianity is and would not have believed in it even once told!)

(For context, christianity arrived in Ireland around the 5th century so they lived as humans around 500bce, so during the height of the Irish iron age!)

Anyway back to the story, the swans tell the monk of their tale and stricken by their plight, he blesses them, using silver chains. Which magically transforms them back into humans (I would like to state that I disagree with the ending because if you can't tell yet I have my gripes with the christianisation of Irish mythology). However depending on the translation/telling, some say that the children upon becoming human stay the same age as they were when cursed and began dancing and singing in joy. Whereas others say that they immediately aged before the monks eyes and became extremely elderly, asked the monk to baptise them, he did so, and then they immediately keeled over and died. Which is certainly an ending.

Anyway as I mentioned in the first ask, this doesn't translate into an au as well but also if we go by the elderly ending, it's kinda funny to imagine that poor Warriors, finally free of being cursed to be a swan for nine hundred years, only to immediately become an old man and die. At least the other ending gives them time to celebrate breaking the curse.

The children could be Wars, Wild, and the twins could be Mask and Wind (since they're the Links who've all been in the hw games).

I would say Dink, or even Zant since he's in hw and the twilight causes the animal forms, could be Aoife but then that brings to mind the hilarious and awkward concept of either of them failing to be Warriors, Wild, Mask, and Wind's stepdad.

Time however is usually the one who's assigned Dad vibes however but he's already Mask so he can't be the father in this au. Unless we have Fierce deity as Lir instead but I can't see him letting dink/zant off that easily for hurting his boys? Or we steal Wild's royal guard dad but he doesn't have a name canonically or much personality (although he would fit the nobility part of hyrule follows medieval accuracy that knights are part of the nobility but the one piece of art we have of him doesn't scream noble. So we might as well just make up a father instead since it's not like he'll be around long after the hw siblings get turned into swans anyway.

(Perhaps Wild loses his memories during the storm that separates them all and even though it's not his fault, as the oldest, Warriors blames himself)

Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble about the myths and a rough idea of what au versions could look like! I'm going to sleep now since it definitely isn't almost 4am whoops.

— Shams-of-the-Wild

‘She feigns illness and gets to plotting their murders’ <- not sure why this caught me so off guard but I feel bad for laughing because i was like ‘oh this is such a sweet story we love a loving father OH SHES DOING MURDERS.’

The idea of Swan Wars being like ‘IM FREE’ and then IMMEDIATELY ageing to 900+ and falling over dead is hilarious and so so tragic

I can for sure just make up a father, and like the other one, I’ll probably make another little fic that follows closer to this, or like, mention it IN the swan au (maybe it’s a story Legend knows (?)) because this is really cool and I like it a lot :)

thank you so much for sharing these!! I hope you got good eep last night :)

[lizardrosen]

@glintglimmergleam the play that's near and dear to my heart and very hard to cast with eight bridgertons is king lear, partly because so many of the characters would suit multiple siblings, mostly because i can count twelve fairly important characters - lear, kent, gloucester, three lear daughters, two duke husbands, two gloucester sons, oswald, and the fool - which. oof, that's a lot to distribute!

as i've discussed, i would love to see cordelia, the fool, and edmund all played by the same person, though i'm flexible on edmund. if we're going just by Type, daphne would be the obvious cordelia, but would honestly rock it as goneril, so as with ophelia, eloise is going to steal the role. is this also because i desperately want to see eloise as edmund? obviously. i was going to have her battle it out with benedict, but my own triple casting convinced me

daphne is goneril, francesca is regan, and they each play each other's husbands (albany and cornwall). in the first scene when everyone's together they link arms and have their hands wear little hats. daphne getting to play the oldest sister who has to lock all her emotions down tight because she cannot afford to make a slip and the guy who pulls out someone's eye is beautiful to me; and francesca is both the husband who's afraid to make a move for fear of disrupting the extremely delicate political balance and the woman who will literally kill the servant who just stabbed her husband. i am gnawing on the parallels between these two marriages like a chew toy at all times.

that's seven characters handled by three actors, now for the rest!

at the beginning of the play edgar is the exact character profile you'd expect colin to play - legitimate, trusting, unobjectionable - but then he gets forced out of his home by edmund's maneuvering and is forced into a radical transformation, pretending to be a madman who calls himself poor tom, speaking in riddles and hiding knives under his pillow, and then he slowly comes out the other side, saving his blinded father from throwing himself off a cliff and from a guy paid to kill him, and watching him die anyway. but he finally returns to civilization and successfully challenges his brother, and is one of the last characters left standing!

do we think he can do it? more importantly does his family think he can do it? before everything happened with marina thompson and he conveniently took his Grand Tour, i don't think even colin would think he's up to the role, but after his travels, getting to know himself better, he gets a new set to his shoulders and thinks about how he can be better than he is. and then the additional journey of playing edgar makes him think differently about the things and people he's taken for granted and he begins to treat penelope like a person.

now, there's another character in this play who gets banished from his home and comes back in disguise, and that's kent. everything he does is driven by loyalty to his king; sometimes that means telling the king who he loves "thou dost evil", and sometimes that means returning to his side even though being revealed would mean his death. he's a fascinating character, and i really want to see anthony play him, with a balance of duty and protectiveness - impulsive anger when lear is attacked, but good humor when he's threatened.

so that means benedict gets to be king lear! sorry, gregory and hyacinth, but this is a challenging role, and even benedict can get wiped out by the end of rehearsals, because the old man has so many conflicting emotions and impulses At All Times. benedict is goofy and patient, but damn, he can be scary in the scenes where lear is cursing his daughters and possibly threatening to throw furniture at them (violet and anthony both veto the actual throwing of furniture). but what really makes lear tick as a character is that he can see his mental health deteriorating and can't figure out how to stop it, so he's terrified of it, and benedict taps into that very well. he also kicks ass in the scenes where lear remembers that other people exist and that the world has been unfair and he helped make it that way.

gregory is oswald, goneril's steward and designated punching bag of the play - kent beats him up twice, he gets caught in a power play between the two sisters, he tries to kill gloucester for a reward and gets killed by edgar and then buried ignominiously by the side of the road. he's a fun role with lots of opportunity for physical comedy, which fits in with what we've been giving him in other plays!

and hyacinth is gloucester. i don't have much justification for this one, but i do think it's funny for the youngest kid to play the father of two of her older siblings (plus she was a really good horatio to anthony's hamlet, so there's precedent). she really plays up the earnest and well-meaning side of him but doesn't shy away from the ways he's a sort of terrible dad. maybe while edgar is leading gloucester around colin gives her a piggyback ride, that would actually be adorable!

there are sundry other characters - burgundy and france, lear's soldiers, curran (edmund's informant), the servant who kills cornwall, an old man who helps gloucester, the captain who hangs cordelia and makes it look like an accident, etc but most of those people don't show up in more than one scene, so they can figure it out themselves

[what-immortal-hand-or-eye]

Hi!!!!

I know it’s been a minute since I posted a new chapter, but I’ve been living a lot of life recently, so things have been hectic. I promise RYV has NOT been abandoned, and I am still working on it. Teaser for everyone being so patient:

“Oh you are so full of shit.”

“No, I’m not! The production I saw had Cordelia and the Fool played by the same person, which makes total sense thematically.”

Wolfwood snorted. “So what if it makes thematic sense? It’s not in the book-”

“It’s a play,” Meryl corrected. “Plays are oh, you know, performed? Which was absolutely a part of Shakespeare’s original intent-”

“Obstacle ahead!” Livio shouted.

Meryl jerked her attention back towards the ground and cursed as she swerved around a chunk of rock twice the size of their car. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said weakly.

Meryl glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do you have any opinions on King Lear, Livio?”

He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Nah, I was never into that nerd shit, that was all Nico.” Registering what he’d said, he clapped his hand over his mouth, sputtering apologies. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with it! I just never was a big reader, y’know?”

Wolfwood was shaking his head in mock betrayal. “Called a nerd by my own brother.”

Keeping her eyes on the road this time, Meryl snorted. “You are a nerd.”

“Wha-! I just read it! You’re the one who has stagecraft opinions, Shortie! That makes you double the nerd, at least.”

“Put down the shovel, hermano.”

[orangepanic]

Irohsami as different Shakespearian works 👀 my mind is churning Irohsami McBeth AU take my humble cursed offerings. They’re both highly intelligent so it would be so fun to watch them scheme.

Also them as Moliere works… Tartuffe maybe ? Hiroshi tries to marry Asami to a fraud: tartuffe/ Varrick ? But she needs to conceive of a way out of this so she can marry Iroh.

💗🤍💗🤍💗🤍💗🤍💗🤍💗🤍💗🤍

also have the loveliest day and i hope you ate the yummiest food .

I love this! They're definitely smart, though I wonder what could make them as motivated by power as the Macbeths? Scheming to get Asami out of an undesirable marriage sounds good for them. Though Hiroshi Sato would also make an epic King Lear.

Incidentally I wrote Irosami as a terrible cross between Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet and it's one of my proudest moments as the girl who won "best English student" in my high school graduating class. Clearly I'm living up to expectations.

[1indigoisles]

Chapter 1 - Excerpt 7

This is it! The end of Chapter 1! Hope you like it!

I was probably the only person ever to get lost in Knightville High School.

It was the middle of the school day, and I’d just spent what Jolene would surely call a productive lunch chattering away about several topics, murder included (I guess the Frost siblings like talking about this stuff). It was also when I discovered that Rowan could paint like Picasso, and Jolene wasn’t a terrible hand at volleyball either.

I look at the Frost siblings – Irish twins, I was told they were – and cannot help but think that they seemed in no way siblings at all. Very good friends, maybe, but not siblings with any blood relationship at all. Siblings tend to have an invisible bond to them, something that marked them as a unit, but there was no such tether to Rowan and Jolene.

Even their overall closeness was questionable; Jolene had not caught Rowan’s eye even once throughout our conversations, the way that siblings did when they shared secret opinions. And if Rowan had noticed, then it was something that had been going on a long time, since he hadn’t seemed bemused or bewildered by it in any way.

There was also the matter of how they didn’t look alike at all.

But I could not think about that now. If I did, I was going to be late for English.

I soon realised, rather stupidly, that I’d been close to the classroom all this time. Cursing my idiocy, I made my way to the open door of the classroom as though it led to heaven.

And that was when I bumped staight into a girl.

Our shoulders collided messily, and my copy of King Lear fell spine-first onto the other person’s foot, making them flinch in surprise.

“I am so sorry,” I immediately said, and bent to retrieve my book.

The girl didn’t say anything – just did the same for one of her own things, a leather-bound sketchpad with the silhouette of a crow on it as the cover design.

And it was then, kneeling on the ground and apologizing faintly, that we finally looked at each other.

Scarlett Raynott was staring right at me, her blue-black eyes fixated on mine. Her skin was deathly pale, as though it’d been drained of all blood and then white-washed for good measure, contrasting starkly with her black hair. Her blue eye glittered like a gemstone, but her black eye remained stubborn of light, completely dark. Her expression was totally neutral.

And something was wrong.

Something was very wrong.

But before I could name or place what that something was, Scarlett was getting back on her feet, not even sparing me a look as I did the same, and she was stalking away, her shadow clinging to her feet.

It barely registered into my mind that this was the first time we’d actually met, because something more disturbing caught my attention; two identical narrow, white slits at the apex of Scarlett’s shadow, where her head was.

I squinted.

Were those eyes?

Taglist: @jeahreading, @mayaheronthorn, @fantasyquinn, @damn-this-transgirl-hella-gay

[alphacrone]

the hopkins/pugh king lear is testament to the curse of being your father’s daughter

[quillaffinity]

web weaving about rivalry

p.s. glad you're back!! missed u

"call me by my name, curse me all the same"

---

my dear, what need do we have for fighting? beloved, what we do is much more.

---

the front bottoms, "twin size mattress" / edwin austin abbey's king lear, act I, scene I / ??? / lidia yuknavitch / lady gaga, "always remember us this way" / unknown's battle sarcophagus / sky ferreira / florence + the machine, "king" / school of katsushika hokusai's pheasant and snake / john banville / edwin lord weeks's study of two figures / traci brimhall / alicia ostriker / francois andre vincent's arria and paetus  / anna akhmatova

quill notes - tysm! im trying to be as back as i can possibly be :D