#king leir

[shakespearenews]

Goldberg: You see the LLM as a collaborator in some ways. Where will the red line be for writers, between collaboration and plagiarism?

Akhtar: From my perspective, there are any number of artists we could look at, but the one that I would probably always spend the most time looking at is Shakespeare, and it’s tough to say that he wasn’t copying. As McNeal explains at one point in the play, King Lear shares 70 percent of its words with a previous play called King Leir, which Shakespeare knew well and used to write Lear. And it’s not just Leir. There’s that great scene in Lear where Gloucester is led to this plain and told it’s a cliff over which he’s going to jump, and that subplot is taken right out of Sir Philip Sidney. It may reflect deeper processes of cognition. It may reflect, as Bart has said, how we imitate in order to learn.

[longitudinalwaveme]

King Lear vs King Leir

King Leir (written by an anonymous playwright in the 1590s) is one of the sources Shakespeare used for his King Lear, so I decided to track it down, read it for myself, and compare the two versions. Here are my thoughts:

-Let's get the most obvious difference out of the way first. Since Shakespeare added the Gloucester subplot, and the tragic ending, to the King Leir/Lear story himself, King Leir does not contain any characters who are analogous to Gloucester, Edgar, or Edmund, no one gets blinded, King Leir gets his throne back at the end, and no one dies. Seriously---even Goneril and Regan (or rather, Gonoril and Ragan) are alive at the end (though more on that later).

-Also, all of the shared names between the two plays are spelled slightly differently (though this is probably more down to non-standardized Renaissance spelling than to Shakespeare deliberately changing the names)--we have Leir, Gonoril, Ragan, and Cordella instead of Lear, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. This is convenient as a way for me to distinguish between, say, Shakespeare's Cordelia and the anonymous play's Cordella.

-Now for the more interesting differences.

-King Leir opens with so. Much. Exposition. In Shakespeare's King Lear, there's a brief conversation between Kent, Edgar, and Edmund, and then Lear comes onstage and immediately divides his kingdom. In King Leir, there are five straight pages of exposition before the love contest starts. Admittedly, we also get some interesting character dynamics, but it makes for a very different opening.

-In King Leir, all three daughters are unmarried at the start of the play, and their mother (Leir's wife) has apparently just died. Leir plans to marry them off, split his kingdom between them, and retire. Amusingly, he also informs us that "Although ourselves do dearly tender them, yet are we ignorant of their affairs; for fathers best do know to govern sons; but daughters’ steps the mother’s counsel turns", and that, surprise surprise, he really would rather have had a son instead of a bunch of girls. But since he has no sons, this is the next-best plan.

-Leir also has two advisors. One of them, Perillus, is basically a proto-Kent (and seems to be where Shakespeare got the character from, as the versions of the Lear story from Monmouth and Holinshed don't include a Kent equivalent); the other is named Skalligar and basically exists to be evil and drive the plot forward.

-Anyway, in this version, Leir comes up with the love test not because he wants to have his ego stoked, but rather because Cordella has sworn that she won't marry someone she doesn't love, and so has been ignoring her many suitors. Leir is essentially using the love test as a trap: he assumes that Cordella will swear that she loves him more than her sisters, and that once she does, he can say "then, daughter, grant me one request, to show thou lovest me as thy sisters do, accept a husband, whom myself will woo." I...actually can't decide if this is better or worse than Lear's motivation for the love contest. On the one hand, at least he has an actual political motivation for it. On the other hand, he's planning to use the love test to trap his daughter into a marriage she doesn't want (more specifically, he wants her to marry the King of Hibernia, which seems to be a stand-in for Ireland), which is really skeevy on his part.

-Leir also plans to marry Gonoril to the King of Cornwall (which doesn't have an exact equivalent) and Ragan to the King of Cambria (which is explicitly a stand-in for Wales). So yes, King Leir gives the Goneril-character Regan's husband and gives Regan an entirely new husband (in the earlier versions of the story, I'm pretty sure that it's made clear that Goneril marries the Duke/King of Albany and that Regan marries the Duke/King of Cornwall, so it's not just Shakespeare who has the opposite setup).

-Perillus doesn't seem crazy about this plan, but doesn't really say anything to Leir about it (like Kent probably would have). Skalliger, for some reason (I guess we can assume hope for political advancement?) decides to immediately tell the two older sisters about the love competition.

-Unlike in Shakespeare's version, where Goneril and Regan are not fond of Cordelia but seem to be more quietly bitter about her than actively jealous, King Leir's Gonoril and Ragan are openly, angrily, and explicitly jealous of Cordella, because she's more beautiful and accomplished than they are and they're afraid that she'll marry before (and better than) they do. So they're kind of the evil stepsisters from Cinderella. Interestingly, Leir doesn't seem to play favorites between his daughters like Lear does---he doesn't call Cordella his favorite, and Gonoril and Ragan likewise don't claim that he favors her over them.

-Skalliger the Sketchy Advisor then comes in, tells them that their father plans to marry them off to the King of Cornwall and the Prince of Cambria (the men to whom they are already apparently in love with, or at least fond of), and that he wants Cordella to marry the King of Hibernia, and informs them of their father's brilliant "entrap Cordella into marrying my choice of husband for her" plan.

-Gonoril and Ragan immediately decide to cheat on the love test. Since they know ahead of time that their father is going to marry them off to the men they like anyway, they can promise that they love their father so much that they'll willingly marry any man he wants them to, leaving Cordella, whom they know will not say anything of the sort, facing Leir's wrath alone. This is all a noticeable contrast to Shakespeare's play, where none of Lear's daughters seem to have known the love test was coming before he announced it.

-Things play out exactly as the two older sisters plan. They make their extravagant declarations of love, Cordella refuses to do so, and, egged on by Gonoril and Ragan (in another contrast to Shakespeare, where the two older sisters don't speak at all about Cordelia until after their father has already left the room), Leir disowns Cordella for not playing along with his devious plan to entrap her into a marriage she doesn't want.

-Perillus also doesn't speak up for Cordella at all. So far, he's zero for two as Proto-Kent, but he'll get better soon.

-We then cut to the King of Gallia (France), who is planning to pay suit to one of Leir's daughters. He's also bringing along his pal, Mumford, whose main defining character trait is that he wants to scope out all the British women. However, because the King of Gallia is a romantic, he decides that he and Mumford will disguise themselves as pilgrims, so that, presumably, he'll know if whichever girl he decides to court will love him for himself and not his title.

-The King of Cornwall and the Prince of Cambria (whose real name is Morgan, apparently), who are going to be married to Gonoril and Ragan, respectively (remember, the sisters' husbands got switched around in this version), run into one another on the way to Leir's palace. Both are eager to marry their new brides. We will also eventually learn that these two have the combined IQ of a turnip.

-The two of them are married off to Gonoril and Ragan, and then Leir promptly divides his lands between the two of them. Both married couples seem quite happy with the arrangement and will stay that way throughout the play (which parallels Regan and Cornwall's relationship in Shakespeare's Lear but is a noted contrast to the trainwreck of a marriage that Albany and Goneril have.)

-Perillus finally tries to speak up for Cordella here, but it has no effect--though Leir doesn't actually banish him for doing so, possibly because he, unlike Kent, does not say anything like "What wouldst thou do, old man" while arguing Cordella's case.

-Meanwhile, Cordella is trying to figure out what to do with her life now that she's been disowned when she runs into the disguised King of Gallia and Mumford, who are calling themselves "Will" and "Jack". A+ fake names, guys.

-Cordella and the King of Gallia have a chat, wherein Cordella explains what has happened to her and falls in love with the King, whom she thinks is a random pilgrim. She plans to marry him even without him having any title, and then is pleasantly surprised to learn that he's actually the King of Gallia. The two then leave to get married and go to France together.

-So, you know how in Shakespeare's version Goneril gets mad at Lear because his 100 knights are destroying her house and harassing her servants? In this version, Gonoril essentially gets mad at Leir because he keeps scolding her for buying expensive dresses and throwing a lot of parties. So she kind of comes across as a rebellious teenager, and as a lot less reasonable than Shakespeare's Goneril.

-Also, instead of telling her father that he'd better get his knights under control or she'll get rid of some of them, she's already dismissed half of his "portion" (not sure what this means, exactly, as Leir doesn't seem to have an entourage of knights) and is planning to get rid of the other half to "encourage" him to leave. Man, can you imagine how Shakespeare's Lear would've reacted to this Gonoril?

-Skalliger the Sketchy Adviser encourages Gonoril in all this. But don't get used to him, because after this he's going to cease being relevant to the plot.

-Leir is talking to the King of Cornwall (the Albany equivalent), and they seem to be getting along pretty well, when Gonoril suddenly storms in and accuses her father of trying to turn her husband against her. The King of Cornwall tries to calm her down, and Leir's all like "maybe she's moody because she's pregnant". Gonoril reacts to that about as well as you would expect, and then the King of Cornwall just sort of leaves to avoid the argument.

-As soon as the King of Cornwall's gone, Gonoril tells Leir to pack his bags and get out. Which Leir....does. And Perillus goes with him. No horrible curses of infertility or anything! He just goes off to Ragan's house and assumes everything will be fine.

-One similarity between the two plays is that in both cases, the confrontation with the oldest daughter makes Lear/Leir feel guilty about his treatment towards his youngest daughter. The noticeable difference, however, is that while in Shakespeare's play Goneril is being mostly rational and Lear's the one causing friction and shouting insults, in the older play Leir's maybe mildly embarrassing at worst and Gonoril comes across as a spoiled brat.

-Ragan then gets a soliloquy that conveys, in essence "I can do whatever I want, and it's great! I'm so glad my killjoy dad is with my sister and not me!"

-Meanwhile, the King of Cornwall asks Gonoril where her father disappeared to, to which Gonoril replies "Oh, he went off to see my sister with no warning. He's impetuous like that. Don't worry about a thing, honey." The King of Cornwall plans to send a messenger to Ragan's to make sure Leir arrives okay, but otherwise questions none of this. Remember how I said he had the IQ of a turnip?

-Gonoril intercepts the messenger and tells him, to, basically, deliver a letter full of lies to the tune that Leir has been causing problems at her house (she explicitly says she'll lie about her father in her letter). In other words, she wants Ragan to believe that Leir is behaving in the way that Shakespeare's Lear...actually did behave.

-The messenger, as it turns out, is a low-down scumbag (and proud of it), so he's all too eager to deliver a letter full of lies.

-Then Cordella gets a soliloquy about how, although she loves being Queen of France, she misses her father and wants to see him again.

-Leir and Perillus arrive at Ragan and the Prince of Cambria's house (Cambria being the Cornwall equivalent. If Cornwall wasn't an eye-gouging psychopath but did have the IQ of a turnip).

-Cambria is pleased to see Leir, and Ragan pretends to be glad to see him too (though obviously she wants nothing to do with him). This actually is a little reminiscent of the interactions between Lear and Regan in Act II, scene iv, although the fact that the Cornwall-equivalent isn't acting and no one's been put into the stocks are obviously differences between the two scenes.

-Ragan's opinion of her father is naturally only worsened when the Messenger gives her Gonoril's letter full of lies, and, when the Messenger guy casually offers to murder her husband or father for her if she wants him to, she eagerly takes him up on the offer and hires him to ax her father (and Perillus). She tells him that she'll ask her dad and Perillus to meet with her at a specified location tomorrow morning, and that he can kill them there.

-Well, that escalated quickly!

-Cordella and the King of Gallia have another conversation about how much she misses her father and hopes he's okay. The King of Gallia is understandably confused by the level of concern she's showing for her jerk of a dad but agrees to send a messenger to the King of Cornwall's place to check on the old man anyway (since they don't know Gonoril booted Leir out of the house).

-The King of Cornwall and Gonoril are having a conversation, during which the King is wondering what's taking that messenger he sent so long to return with news about the king, when the French messenger shows up and asks how Leir is doing.

-Gonoril and the King both tell the Messenger that Leir isn't at their castle right now, but that they think he'll be back soon (the King really believes this, Gonoril is of course lying), and the conversation then turns to Cordella. Gonoril not-so-subtlety hints that she hopes her sister's not doing too well, and the Messenger immediately picks up on the fact that she's all sorts of sketchy (The King of Cornwall doesn't pick up on this fact, but we've already established that he's got the IQ of a turnip, so that's not surprising.)

-Leir and Perillus are waiting outside for Ragan when the Messenger she hired to murder them shows up. He announces to them that he's going to murder them, and also tells them that Ragan was responsible for the whole thing (after Leir initially assumes that Cordella must have hired the murderer since she's got the best reason to want him dead). Interestingly, the Messenger also claims that Gonoril hired him to kill Leir even though we only saw Ragan doing so. He does have a letter from her with a commission to murder them, though, so maybe she wrote that alongside the letter she sent to Ragan.

-Leir takes the news...shockingly well, all things considered. What's even more shocking is that the two of them manage to talk the Messenger out of killing them. Seriously, he just gives up and leaves, never to be seen again in the play (though presumably richer thanks to still having money from Ragan for the hit he didn't carry out).

-Leir and Perillus then decided to set sail for France and the last remaining daughter. They exchange their fancy clothes with the clothing of some mariners to pay for the passage on the ship.

-The French Messenger, having determined Leir's not at Cornwall, decides to go look for him at Cambria.

-In France, meanwhile, Cordella, the King of Gallia, and Mumford decide to go for a walk on the beach together...in disguise! Apparently the King of Gallia just loves disguising himself as a common person. It's actually kind of an endearing character trait.

-Mumford also gets his second fake name in the play. For their beach walk, he's going to be called Roger.

-The Prince of Cambria, who has noticed that his father-in-law has gone missing, is getting kind of worried about where he might have gone. Ragan replies by telling him that it was probably her evil sister Cordella who was responsible for his disappearance. She puts on a bravura performance of mourning her father's fate, and Cambria, who has the IQ of a turnip, immediately buys it.

-Then the French Messenger comes in and asks them where Leir is. Ragan replies by basically accusing Cordella of murdering Leir. The Messenger is not impressed, but Cambria seems to think his wife's story is true (because, again, he's got the IQ of a turnip).

-The French Messenger makes it clear that he thinks Ragan is responsible for Leir's disappearance, which prompts her to slap him. The Ambassador wisely chooses to get out of dodge, and, as soon as he leaves, Ragan starts fake-crying and claims that Cordella is probably trying to steal their land now that she's totally murdered their father. Her husband, who, bless him, totally believes her, promises that he'll punish Cordella for what she (allegedly) did to their father. He may have the IQ of a turnip, but at least he means well.

-Leir and Perillus, upon their arrival in France, are close to starving for want of food (probably because they couldn't pay for food on the boat). By sheer coincidence, they run into the disguised Cordella, King of Gallia, and Mumford, who are having a picnic on the beach.

-Cordella and the King of Gallia immediately recognize her father and invite him and Perillus to eat with them (which is a good thing, because Perillus was trying to convince Leir to cannibalize him rather than starve! There's the proto-Kent we all know and love!)

-After they eat, Cordella reveals her true identity to him and they reconcile. Leir having also told her and her husband about Gonoril and Ragan's plot to murder him, she and the King of Gallia immediately promise to invade England and restore him to the throne.

-The invasion is a complete success, in part because the two soliders on watch decide to abandon their post and get drunk rather than actually doing their jobs. It also helps that most of England is still in support of Leir.

-That being said, Cambria and the King of Cornwall do manage to raise armies against the King of Gallia's army, and they and their wives confront King Leir, Cordella, and the King of Gallia.

-Gallia accuses the two daughters of plotting to murder their father. They of course deny this and claim that he's just using that as an excuse to justify the invasion. Cambria and the King of Cornwall still back their wives up, which is nice and all, but you'd think they'd be getting at least a little suspicious by now (especially Cambria!). IQs of turnips, the both of them.

-Leir even has the letters that they wrote to have him murdered! Sure, Ragan tears them up (in a scene reminiscent of Goneril trying to tear up her letter to Edmund in the end of Shakespeare's King Lear), but still neither of them get suspicious. Nor do they seem to be suspicious of the fact that Leir is with Cordella in spite of the fact that presumably at least Cambria should believe that she tried to murder him! Seriously, how are they possibly that stupid?

-Anyway, the two sides fight, and the King of Cornwall and the King of Cambria both run away (presumably with Gonoril and Ragan) when they lose. Leir is restored to the throne, and he gets to be happy with Cordella and the King of Gallia.

-Except that his daughters, who tried to murder him, are still alive. And so are their idiot husbands, who are still presumably in total support of them and would be on board to fight against Cordella and Gallia again as soon as they manage to regroup and gather up new men for their armies. And no one seems intent on doing anything about that!

-And then the play just ends, as if we're operating under the assumption that Gonoril and Ragan are just going to go "Oh, well. Our plan to kill our dad and take his crown failed. Guess we're just going to do something else with our lives now." or something.

-Seriously, Gonoril and Ragan's husbands are unbelievably stupid. Albany and Cornwall aren't geniuses, but they're a million times smarter than the King of Cornwall and the Prince of Cambria from King Leir!

TL; DR: Shakespeare's play is obviously more complex and better-written, but there's something very entertaining about reading this earlier play that tells the same story in such a wildly different fashion.

I honestly think the three daughter's husbands may be the best part of King Leir. They all clearly love their wives, the King of Gallia's passion for disguising himself is great, and I can't help but kind of smile at how stupid the King of Cornwall and the Prince of Cambria are. They may have the combined IQ of a turnip, but they mean well.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Okay so Once and Future is a really great comic book series and whilst seeing an undead Arthur murder Boris Johnson would be worth the price of admission alone, the rest of the comic more than meets that level of energy whilst being funny and engaging to boot.

That being said, the comic also pulled my two biggest pet peeves when it comes to King Lear in quick succession:

Implied that Shakespeare invented the story of King Lear, which particularly annoys me because 'King Lear as Adaptation' is my favourite avenue to analyse the play.

Syncretised Lear/Leir the legendary king and Llŷr/Lir the Welsh/Irish mythological god(?), which particularly annoys me because every justification I've found for this conflagration amounts to 'their names sound the same'.

As such, I have been compelled once again to work on the training montage scene between Arthur and Cordelia for The Boy King. Curses.

[creator-of-calm-queer-chaos]

“Here, take care of your dad who has just had his eyes gouged out”

- My English Teacher

[mask131]

On a technical level it is a post about fairy tales, but since it contains Shakespeare stuff I'll reblog it here

Cinderella Tales from Around the World now traces the Love Like Salt motif to England.

*Here, of course, we find the most famous example of this motif, King Lear. I won't bother to summarize it, both because it's so well-known and because it doesn't follow the typical Cinderella/Donkeyskin model of a Love Like Salt tale, but becomes a different story after using that motif at the beginning. Still, Heiner's book wouldn't be complete without it.

**This already doorstopper-sized book doesn't have room for the full text of Shakespeare's play. But it does feature the source material: the story of King Leir from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae (History of the Kings of Britain). It also features two short prose retellings of Shakespeare's version that were written for children: one from Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and one from E. Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.

**Geoffrey of Monmouth's King Leir is interesting to compare to the more familiar Shakespeare version: it differs in more ways than just the characters' names (e.g. King Leir and his daughters Gonorilla, Regau, and Cordeilla). In the source material, the love test takes place long before the rest of the action, when none of the sisters are married yet, and Leir uses the test to decide whom to choose as their husbands as well as how to divide the kingdom. Gonorilla and Regau claim to love him "more than my own soul" and "above all creatures," and receive half the kingdom and the Dukes of Albania (sic) and Cornwall as their husbands, while Cordeilla tells Leir that "As much as you have, so much is your value, and so much do I love you," and is disinherited and unceremoniously married off to the first willing foreigner, who fortunately is king of the Franks. Meanwhile, Lier doesn't retire from power just yet: his plan is for his daughters and sons-in-law to rule half the kingdom in his lifetime while he retains the other half, which will only become theirs after his death. But many years later, when Leir has grown old and feeble, his sons-in-law rebel against him and overthrow him. Only now, as effectively a prisoner of war, does he go back and forth between living with each daughter and face their abuse. (It's interesting that Shakespeare makes Lear old, feeble, and likely in failing mental health from the start, and has him choose from the start to give up ruling and place himself in his daughters' hands. Was this a change Shakespeare made himself, or did he inherit it from other adaptations?) Nor does Leir end up out on the heath in a storm, or go mad. He simply sails to Gaul in hope of Cordeilla's forgiveness, having realized all the value of what he once possessed now that it's gone, and that his other daughters and subjects only loved him for what he could give them while Cordeilla loved him as a person. Last but not least, the ending is completely different from Shakespeare's. The army of Cordeilla and her husband succeeds in overthrowing her sisters' husbands (no mention of what happens to Gonorilla or Regau themselves), and Leir is restored to the throne. When he dies three years later, Cordeilla, who by now is a widow, succeeds him. The story still ends tragically, though: Cordeilla is eventually dethroned by her sisters' sons and commits suicide in prison.

**Since we're looking at King Lear as a Love Like Salt tale, I think it's worthwhile to compare the response Shakespeare's Cordelia to her father's love test to that of the princess in most versions of the fairy tale, or for that matter to Cordeilla's speech in the source. When the princess in the fairy tale says she loves her father like salt, she means that she loves him more than anything, because food is tasteless without salt. The king just misunderstands her words. The same is true when Cordeilla tells Leir that she loves him as much as the value of all he possesses, and he fails to appreciate it until he loses everything, just like the fairy tale king doesn't appreciate salt until he tastes saltless food. But Shakespeare's Cordelia makes two different points in her speech: (a) that her love for her father is beyond words, and she can't truthfully express it in words more beautiful than her sisters' carefully crafted lies, as Lear expects, and (b) that a daughter has a duty to love her father a certain amount, but no more. (In the source, Cordeilla also touches on this by telling Leir that her sisters' words of love aren't trustworthy because they exceed their duty.) Unlike in the source, Goneril and Regan are already married when the love test takes place, and Cordelia emphasizes that it's wrong of them to claim to love their father more than anything else, including, implicitly, their husbands; nor can she make that claim, because when she marries, she'll owe just as much love to her husband too. In a way, the shadow of Donkeykin with its incestuous father hangs even more over King Lear than over the Love Like Salt tale, because rather than giving a profound declaration of love and having it misunderstood as the opposite, Cordelia puts a limit on the amount of love her father can demand from her (though still loving him with all her heart) in the name of propriety.

**By the way, both the Lamb and the Nesbit retellings downplay the storyline of Gloucester, Edmund, and Edgar for more exclusive focus on Lear and his daughters (and probably to avoid talking about illegitimacy and eye-gouging in retellings meant for children). Nesbit omits it altogether, only attributing Lear and Cordelia's defeat to Goneril and Regan's forces and saying that Goneril poisons Regan out of "jealousy" with no further explanation, while the Lambs only mention Edmund and Edgar in passing.

*After the Lear retellings, Heiner's book offers probably the best known fairy tale version of Love Like Salt: the tale of Cap O' Rushes from Joseph Jacobs' collection. In this tale, both the heroine's father and her eventual husband are just rich gentlemen, not royalty. When her father asks his daughters how much they love him, the older two reply "as I love my life" and "better than all the world," but the heroine says "as fresh meat loves salt." After being banished, she covers her fine gown with a hooded cloak made of rushes (obviously linking this tale to the Scottish Cinderella tales of Rashin Coatie) and becomes a scullery maid. From there the story plays out as it does in so many Donkeyskins: she attends three dances, the young master falls in love with her, at the third dance he gives her a ring, then falls ill with longing, and she sends him a bowl of gruel with the ring inside. Then when they marry, she invites her father to the wedding incognito, teaches him his lesson by serving food without salt, and then reveals her identity and happily forgives him.

*In one last, lesser-known English version, Sugar and Salt, instead of asking his two daughters how much they love him, the father asks them "What is the sweetest thing in the world?" The older sister replies "Sugar," but the younger says "Salt," so the father banishes her for stupidity. But the girl is befriended and protected by fairies in the woods, and one day a prince goes hunting in those woods, sees her, falls in love, and takes her home to marry, with the requisite invitation sent to her father and lack of salt at the feast.

The next set of tales are from Pakistan and India.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[ink-and-pages]

One of my favourite Shakespeare facts is that in previous plays about King Lear (or King Leir), Cordelia doesn't die but wins and assumes the throne. This is 'historically accurate' according to texts about her at the time.

So I can't imagine the shock and upset when they see Shakespeare's version and she. just. dies. It also kind of explains the drawn out teasing of if she's still alive

A truely unrepeatable experience.

[lesbiansforangusmcdonald]

Ok, finals are over, so now I can FINALLY post my Pepe Sylvia theory about Porter actually being evil that has been ruminating in my head ever since I saw season 2! (spoilers for s2 of fantasy high, obviously)

(sorry if someone’s talked about it before and I couldn’t find it, but like WE NEED TO DISCUSS THIS BEFORE S3!)

Ok, so I noticed something when Ragh talked about the first time he saw Kalina in episode 4 of season 2 (“Heartache on the Celestine Sea”). He says that he saw Jace talking to some elven woman (who is revealed to be Adaine’s mom, Arianwen) and to “someone he couldn’t see. I just assumed somebody was invisible.” This is most likely Kalina, as Arianwen was there to get the Nightmare King’s crown and Kalina could have been helping her do that. However, this is important because, since Ragh could obviously see Kalina later on, this is a point in time when he couldn’t see Kalina.

Then Ragh says that after he saw that, Jace and Porter came to talk to him, and “Porter did some barbarian healing with me.” This seems normal enough, as Ragh had just been in a huge fight, but Ragh stipulates that “I didn’t feel that injured, honestly.” So this line already makes it seem as though Porter may have had some ulterior motive for healing Ragh.

Then, Ragh says that as he was walking home after this, he was approached by Kalina, who threatened to kill his mom if he said anything about seeing Arianwen at the school.

(the clip of the scene is here, if you wanna watch it, edited slightly for clarity)

So this makes me think that Jace and Porter knew Ragh saw Arianwen at the school, knew he would probably tell the Bad Kids about it, and Porter intentionally passed Kalina to Ragh through healing in order to ensure his silence.

AND if you’re thinking this may be a bit far-fetched, I’ll remind you that Landren Leir, the cleric of the unnamed goddess who infiltrated the elven Galicaean church after the fall of the unnamed goddess, also passed on Kalina via healing of the high-elven clergy, which she was then murdered for.

But in order to pass it on to Ragh at all, Porter must have been infected with Kalina as well, so here are some of my theories of what that could mean;

1. Porter had no idea he was infected and was just trying to heal a student.

I mean, totally possible, right? From most of the other angles, Porter seems like a decent guy; he supports Fig in barbarian class, he’s part of a community at his local gym, and he did get sucked into a palimpsest when Kalvaxis/Goldenhoard was trying to take over the school — why would that happen if Porter wouldn’t have been opposed to what Kalvaxis/Goldenhoard was doing? And there are plenty of people who are infected with Kalina and never show any symptoms, and therefore never know. It could have been totally innocent. BUT it’s just a little too convenient, isn’t it? Ragh sees Arianwen at the school, and then right after he’s “randomly” infected with Kalina? It just doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

2. Porter knew he was passing Kalina onto Ragh, but wasn’t aware of the full plot to steal the Nightmare King’s crown.

I mean, also possible, right? Maybe Jace put Porter up to it, maybe he knew more than Porter did about the whole situation? Porter wasn’t initially mentioned as talking to Arianwen, maybe Jace just manipulated Porter because he knew that Ragh would trust Porter as his teacher. BUT I think that it would be kind of weird for Porter to be in the school, be infected, be around all of these other people who are in on this wider plot, but they don’t get him involved. Maybe they thought he wouldn’t go for it, thought he was too nice, but I’m not sure. I mean, I think this theory has more merit than the first one, like it’s possible, just would be a little weird.

3. Porter was in on the plot to bring back the Nightmare King.

I mean. Like I know this may not be another Loose Duke situation. But it’s possible! Like, he’s in the right positions! He works at the school. He has the trust of some of the bad kids. He didn’t openly support Kalvaxis or anything he did. Maybe their larger organization (which they do hint that there are more people throughout the world that want to bring back the nightmare king throughout the campaign) thought that he should lay low and hold onto the trust of the bad kids, just wait until the right time to strike. Again, the fact that he would knowingly put a student, one of HIS barbarian students, in such serious danger, in order to protect the larger interest of bringing back the Nightmare King, does not stack up well against him.

So, do I think that Porter will end up being the big bad of season 3, or even the elusive season 4? No, probably not. BUT I do think that he’s sus as fuck and we need to stay on our toes, because he could turn out to be more of a threat with the right opportunities.

[gawrkin]

(From The Welsh Triads, translated and edited by Rachel Bromwich)

Man, the concept of Wizard-King Uther Pendragon...

Like, the idea Uther never really needed Merlin for anything magical - he would've just it done by himself.

Also, the implication that Uther is very magically powerful. The other people listed in this triad are nothing to scoff at: Math and Gwydion are the two supreme magician characters of the Mabinogi. Gwythelyn/Rudlwm the Dwarf is unknown, but his protege, Coll ap Collfrewy, is a powerful swineherd who owned Henwen, the magic pig that gave to a bunch of things, including the dreaded monster Cath Palug.

Neither Merlin nor Blaiddud (the Necromancer King from Historia Regum Britanniae and father of King Leir) are included here. AFAIK, Merlin's magical deeds are seemingly never lauded by the surviving Welsh poetIc material.

[anghraine]

I wrote this when I was sleepy and stuck it in the queue, so to clarify: there are things common to English early modern literature that fanfic does not have to deal with, including the examples I gave of state censorship, dependence on patronage or personal wealth, and writing opportunities primarily existing for a very narrow segment of the population.

But I've never seen anyone who could identify some common trait of early modern literature, or even just early modern literature that uses pre-existing stories, themes, and characters, that makes it intrinsically better or worse than anything else.

Additionally, the obsession with "coming up with your own stuff" as a mark of superior writing simply does not work in an early modern context, along with many other contexts, and it's perfectly fair for fans to point that out. There is a long, long tradition of storytelling that retells another story in a different way, or fuses different stories together, or takes a story for a twist, or simply invents things to add to the pre-existing story, or actively changes part of the story and its consequences. Doing this doesn't necessarily make something good, but it doesn't make it bad, either—it depends on the piece.

It's still so weird when I see people hand wringing about comparisons of fanfiction to early modern literature, usually with the assumption that the people making the comparisons only read fanfic or they'd know that there's some special quality to early modern writers re-purposing pre-existing stories, themes, and characters that fanfic doesn't have.

But it's glaring that despite all the theatrics and how daaaaares and "read real literature" etc, it's not really possible to define what that quality is.

Early modern literature is not automatically good just because it's old. As in any era, plenty of it sucks! So it's not just "well, fanfic is bad/mediocre and early modern literature is definitionally brilliant and that's what makes them different." It's not that early modern literature comes from an era of unhindered artistry or some nonsense like that. At least for English writers, it was in fact an era of heavy censorship, and opportunities for writing the kind of literature under discussion were sharply restricted by who got access to education and patronage.

Now, those kinds of concerns do make the creative process for early modern English literature different from the far fewer restrictions on writing fanfic. The trends are (sometimes) different and the goals are often different. I don't think they're actually the same thing. But I do think fans are 100% right to point out that the modern obsession with originality, novelty, and copyright is not some absolute standard for all kinds of writing and can't even be consistently applied to works considered literary given how wildly ahistorical it is for things like early modern literature.

If you're going to argue that there is some intrinsic quality about fanfic that makes it Just Worse by definition—and especially if you're going to grandstand and sneer at people about it—then you should be able to define what that is. And it is fair to point out that this concept that originality of plot, theme, and character are intrinsically better, more creative, and even sometimes a defining quality of literature cannot account for things like early modern literature and don't make any sense in many contexts.

[butchhamlet]

what are your favourite things about king lear? also do you know any really good productions that i can watch online for free? asking because i didn’t really like king lear when i read it (except for edmund. i love edmund) and knowing why other people like it might let me look at it from a different angle. because i know it’s objectively a good play, and there’s a 50% chance of me having to study it next year so i want to like it

so i started writing a response to this ask and then paused to plot out my points (as if writing a goddamn essay) and then i looked at my points and i had written

fucked-up families

apocalypse vibes

women are hot

which. yeah, that's it, isn't it

anyway, to elaborate on that: i will admit that some of this is just personal preference, because i love stories about complicated nuclear-waste-toxic family dynamics, and lear is, like, one of the original Nuclear Waste Family Dynamic plays. (so is the oreisteia, incidentally.) what gets me specifically is that this is a play about power, yeah, but also about love: everybody in lear wants love, and nobody is getting enough of it. and the dynamics of the two families here get immediately more interesting if this isn't JUST a who-inherits-the-throne thing. edmund wants political sway, yeah, but maybe he also wants to be seen as more than a bastard. goneril kills her sister out of jealousy, yeah, but also, has she ever had a person care about her like edmund? (does he care about her? how much of the love triangle is about love vs lust vs calculation? these are questions that could be answered a thousand ways.)

i also read this play counter to old white guy traditional scholarship because i think lear (the guy) sucks. sorry. i think he sucks. i think he's terrifying and tyrannical and his daughters can do whatever they want (imo, his main problem is trying to apply his political power to his personal relationships, and that's not something caused by his senility. goneril and regan state at the end of 1.1 that, while he's going off the deep end a little more these days, "the best and soundest of his time hath been but rash." this guy has always sucked). speaking of goneril and regan, they're not evil hags--they're women trying to live with an unpredictable father, as well as trying to retain the little power they have in a male-dominated world. (notably, regan's husband is on her team, while goneril's isn't, and lear seems to have a lot of hatred for goneril specifically. which colors how both of them interact with power, edmund, and each other.)

i could actually talk about lear family dynamics forever (do cordelia's sisters love her, resent her, or both? how does edgar feel about edmund? how does edmund feel about edgar, for that matter? does he feel guilty at all for doing what he does? does edgar feel guilty about killing him? is the relationship between lear and gloucester entirely professional, or are they friends? can lear even have friends when he sees everything as some sort of zero-sum power love game? is kent gay for lear? <- yes) but i won't. because i have another point to make!

which is that it's somewhat comforting to me, in an era of [gestures at the news and broad state of the world], to read a play where people are like "holy fuck the world's going to shit and all the rules of society are inverted!" i read lear for the first time during pandemic quarantine, so. it felt fitting. your mileage may vary here (maybe you prefer escapism), but i think one could draw a lot of parallels between lear and [gestures out the window again]. this play is bleak in a way that few other shakespeare plays are bleak. (maybe timon of athens.) it's set in pre-christian britain, and the gods are invoked, but they're not really present. no one who appeals to higher powers ever seems to get any help or even comfort. and the original story of king leir didn't end Like That. shakespeare decided his play was going to end with the emotional equivalent of getting bricked in the face. cordelia's death doesn't mean anything at all! it didn't have to happen! edmund tried to stop it! she doesn't die in the original myth! and yet we're left with this horrifying apocalyptic last scene, where all the struggles for love and power come to almost nothing. maybe, if one is concerned about current events, this would make one feel worse. but i fucking love tragic catharsis and i feel bleak about the modern world so this horrible upsetting play is quite close to my heart <3

finally: i've already touched on Hot Women, but . i am a simple butch. i think goneril and regan are soooooo sexy. i love when women are mean and ruthless. i love when women kill with swords. i think conflating the two of them/treating them like two halves of the same Evil Daughter Character is a cardinal sin of shakespeare studies; you have to be reading with your eyes shut not to note stuff like regan's desire to outdo goneril, goneril's comparative lack of fulfilling relationships (re: lear fucking hates her and her husband sucks), or the differences in their dynamic with edmund (regan is still mourning cornwall at this point--does she love edmund at all, or is she just playing the political long game?). and cordelia, too, is more than just the Angelic Good Daughter; she's on stage much less frequently, but she shows a stubborn virtue that honestly borders on naivete and maybe an inclination toward martyrdom. how does she feel about her father? does she really forgive him? how does she feel about her sisters, for that matter? i'm not saying this play is, like, the most feminist shakespeare play ever written; i just really love the lear sisters.

other misc stuff: the themes are tasty! look at the authoritarianism! (is it right for one man to have this much power? see that line about the king being a wheel rolling down a hill destroying everything in his path as he destroys himself, or whatever). look at the gender dynamics! (goneril's dominance over albany and edmund in turn; the question of her womb; the mutual violence of regan and cornwall; cordelia leading an army.) look at the debate about fate and predestination! (#redditatheist edmund i love you). ++ the fact that it's set in some kind of nebulous unclear time period and the fool sings about merlin who wasn't even alive yet. i just think it's neat <3

as far as productions, i have a friend who swears by the bob jones university prod, though i haven't seen it in full (hi @lizardrosen :D). i also hav NTLive and RSC lears somewhere, i think, but shhhhh don't tell

i'd apologize for this ask being this long, but when my parents asked me to explain the plot of lear to them in 2020 i talked for 25 minutes so i guess we're all getting off lucky here

[etymology-of-the-emblem]

The Sword of Begalta / ベガルタの剣 and Sword of Moralta / モラルタの剣

The Sword of Begalta (JP: ベガルタの剣; rōmaji: begaruta no ken) and the Sword of Moralta (JP: モラルタの剣; rōmaji: moraruta no ken) are two sacred swords of similar appearance and name; the former is tied to the Crest of Reigan, while the latter is to the Crest of Fraldarius. As you likely expected, the names of these blades are intertwined: in the Irish folklore, Moralltach and Be[a]galltach, rendered with the same katakana as in Three Houses, are two swords originally belonging to the sea god Manannán mac Lir. Their names meaning "Great Fury" and "Little Fury", respectively, the blades were handed over to the god Aengus Óg, who then gave them to his foster son, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. Diarmuid was a member of the fianna (a band of warriors) of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the star of the tale The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne. At the wedding of their leader and Gráinne—daughter of the High King Cormac mac Airt—the bride and Diarmuid grew attracted to each other (or in some versions, Diarmuid's loyalty succumbed to a geis placed on him by Gráinne). After the guests of the wedding fell asleep from the drinks Gráinne gave them, she eloped with Diarmuid.

Fionn, furious that one of his men had taken his wife, designated Diarmuid a rival he and his fianna must kill. However, his men still respected their former ally, and would often betray their leader to allow Diarmuid and Gráinne safe passage. When next Fionn and Diarmuid met, it was for a year-long feast Gráinne and her children held to repair bonds with Fionn and Cormac. When trouble sounded from the mountain Benbulbin, Diarmuid disregarded his wife's advice and took not his more powerful blade Moralltach, which he used in every previous instance in the tale, but the weaker Be[a]galltach. After learning of the wild boar that has claimed thirty warriors' lives, Diarmuid challenged it. He claimed victory, but not before getting gored himself and breaking his blade on it's hide. Though water consumed from Fionn's hands had healing properties, the bitter warrior twice let his fingers run dry, letting Diarmuid slowly die.

In Fire Emblem, the stats of the Sword of Moralta and Sword of Begalta resemble their inspirations: The Sword of Moralta has one more point of Might and a Critical stat equal to a Killing Edge. The Sword of Begalta makes up for the deficit with a Hit stat of 100, rather than 75, and 5 Weight points less. It's also possible the reason one of the blades is related to the leading house of the Leicester Alliance is due to the occasional conflation of Manannán mac Lir and King Leir, supposed founder of the city of Leicester and inspiration for Shakespeare's King Lear.

This was a segment from a larger document reviewing the name of most every weapon and item in Three Houses and Three Hopes. Click Here to read it in full.

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

King Lear is volume 17 of the thirty-seven volume The Comedies Histories & Tragedies of William Shakespeare, published by the Limited Editions Club (LEC) from 1939-1940. King Lear was first performed in 1606. In 1608 two slightly different versions of the play were printed. The play also has similarities to an earlier play, King Leir, performed in 1594. Shakespeare’s Lear was published in the folio of 1623, but it differs significantly from the first two printings. 

Nova Scotian painter, illustrator, and cartoonist, Boardman Robinson (1876-1952), illustrated King Lear with six drawings that are reproduced in print. Robinson moved to New York City in 1904 where he failed at first, buy then succeeded at making a living off of his talents illustrating for various magazines and papers.  He eventually moved to Colorado and took a position as art director at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, where he was settled when he illustrated this book. 

On illustrating this Shakespeare's play he notes: 

“I just read and read and re-read till I find out whether my first notions of the characters and scenes still hold in my mind. If they don’t, I keep studying the text until the material takes shape in my mind. Then I make preliminary sketches. Then follow studies from a model, usually myself, for gestures, etc. I wished to suppress the factor of costume as much as possible, so I paid no particular attention to [it] period.”

The volumes in the set were printed in an edition of 1950 copies at the Press of A. Colish, and each was illustrated by a different artist, but the unifying factor is that all volumes were designed by famed book and type designer Bruce Rogers and edited by the British theatre professional and Shakespeare specialist Herbert Farjeon. Our copy is number 1113, the number for long-standing LEC member Austin Fredric Lutter of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

View more Limited Edition Club posts.

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts.

-Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

So I know you’re a huge fan of “The Dark is Rising”…have you read “King of Shadows”?

That's the one based on the original idea for The Dark is Rising, right? Kid time travels and meets Will Shakespeare?

I have not, but I'll probably check it out at some point - I came to the conclusion last year as I listened to Greenwitch on a car journey to Cornwall that one of Cooper's great achievements with the Sequence is perfectly characterising the Old Ones as human-but-not, in particular making Will and Merriman's relationship notably different from Will and Jane or even Will and Bran, so I'm interested to see how that translated from the original concept.

[creator-of-calm-queer-chaos]

*Plucks out your other eye* WHERE IS THY LUSTER NOW?

[princesssarisa]

My Cinderella Tales From Around the World recap has gone out of order, because I forgot to make this post earlier today. I typed it out this morning, but I was so eager to move on to the English tales and read Geoffrey of Monmouth's King Leir that I forgot to change "Save draft" to "Post now."

The next Love Like Salt tales in Cinderella Tales from Around the World are from Belgium, France, Spain, and Portugal.

*The Belgian versions are very Cinderella-like for the most part. After being banished, the princess becomes a scullery maid in another castle, and she's often given a demeaning nickname, like "Slut-Sweeps-the-Oven" (Vuiltji-Vaegt-den-Oven – the English translation uses "slut" in the old-fashioned sense of "a dirty woman"), "Little Dirty-Skin" (Vuilvelleken), or "Ash-Blower" (Asschepoester), which is a Flemish version of the typical Dutch name for Cinderella.

**She also typically loses a shoe, or in the case of Slut-Sweeps-the-Oven, a shoe, a glove, and a ring, one item at each ball. Although oddly, in that particular tale, when each of those objects fit her, the prince and his mother still don't realize that she was the beautiful lady – just that she has remarkably pretty feet and hands for a dirty servant girl. But one day, some time after the third ball, she hears the queen give her son permission to marry the lady if he should find her, then offers to "fetch her," goes out, and comes back in her finery. Most other versions just follow Cinderella and have her marry the prince as soon as the shoe fits her.

**The older sisters' typical responses to the king's "How much do you love me?" are "as the pupils of my eyes," "as the sun," or "as my life." One version uses "bread" and "wine" like the Italian variants, though.

**One version combines the love tests with the archetypal "father goes on a journey and asks for gift requests" scenario. The king asks each daughter to chose a gift for him to bring back based on how much she loves him. The eldest asks for a golden spinning wheel, because her father is as precious as gold, the second asks for a silver gown because her father is as precious as silver, and the youngest asks for a lump of salt because her father is as precious as salt.

**One version even uses the recurring theme of the disguised princess being beaten and later alluding to it at the ball – a common feature of Cinderellas and Donkeyskins not seen in any other Love Like Salt so far – but the perpetrator is the prince's mother, not the prince himself.

**As implied above, the princess in these versions tends to be merely banished by her father, not ordered killed, and allowed to take her elegant dresses and jewels with her, which she hides in a hollow tree or other secret place until the balls.

**Two versions have her finery provided by a magical old woman, however: one who gives her a magic box to hide in a hollow tree, which will give her finery when she requests it (although the magic only lasts until midnight), and one more in the vein of Cinderella's fairy godmother, who turns a mousetrap into a coach, mice into horses, and matchsticks into footmen, then breathes on the princess's rags to turn them into finery.

*In two Belgian versions, however, the heroine doesn't go through a Cinderella story or get married. Instead, in one version, another king simply takes her in out of kindness, then invites her father to a feast with no salt some time later, while in another, she comes back to her own father's court disguised as a page boy and teaches the king his lesson by instructing the cook not to salt the food at a feast.

*The French versions strongly resemble either Cinderella or Donkeyskin too, as well as more strongly resembling King Lear in some cases than any other versions so far.

**In The Turkey Girl, the king doesn't just ask "How much do you love me?" but like Lear, divides his kingdom among his daughters based on their love. The older two both claim to love him "more than anything in the world," and when the youngest says "like salt," he orders her killed. But a devoted servant – a figure who's a bit like a cross between Shakespeare's Kent and the Fool – secretly disguises her as a peasant girl and finds work for her at another castle. Soon afterward, the elder daughters turn their father out, and the faithful servant finds a small farm where the two of them live. Meanwhile, the princess goes through a Cinderella story, attending three balls, fleeing at midnight, losing a shoe, etc. After she forgives her father, the prince's family overthrows the wicked sisters and restores the old king to his throne, and the servant is rewarded.

**In Marie the King's Daughter, the heroine doesn't claim to love her father like salt, but instead, more like Cordelia, claims to love him just as much as she "ought to love such a father." After being banished, she dresses in a donkey skin and becomes a goatherd. One day out in the fields she secretly puts on an elegant gown she's kept hidden, and a prince happens by, sees her, and falls in love. When she notices him she runs off, losing a shoe, and he finds her Cinderella-style. She then learns that her brother and sister (a rare difference from the usual two sisters) have dethroned their father and locked him in a dungeon, where he's gone mad. Marie insists that her prince wage war to overthrow her siblings, which he does, and Marie nurses the king back to health and sanity. Only then does she marry the prince.

**The third French version is The Dirty Shepherdess (La Pouilleuse), found in Andrew Lang's The Green Fairy Book. Here there are only two daughters, one who loves their father "as the apple of my eye" and one who loves him "as salt." After being banished, she dirties herself because no housewife would employ a servant girl who was too pretty (their husbands might have roving eyes, after all), and then finds work as a shepherdess. From there it plays out like Perrault's Donkeyskin: the prince sees her in her beautiful gown in the woods, falls ill, and asks for bread baked by the shepherdess, and she drops a ring into the dough, which fits only her. In the end her father comes to the wedding already knowing her identity and regretting having banished her, so they joyfully reunite before she uses the saltless meal to teach him what she meant.

*The book includes one variant from Spain, Xuanón del Cortezón, or "Johnny of the Bark." The princess claims to love her father "as bread loves salt," so a servant is ordered to kill her but lets her go. She disguises herself as boy and becomes a turkey herd, but when she's alone in the fields she changes into her own gowns, and one day the prince sees her. He claims to be sick and asks for "Xuanón the turkey boy" to bring him broth, and when "Xuanón" obeys, the prince admits he knows her true gender and proposes marriage. When her father comes to the wedding, he's served a loaf of bread made without any salt, and when he realizes his mistake and his daughter reveals her identity, he instantly dies of joy.

*In the one variant from Portugal, the two older sisters claim to love their father "better than the light of the sun" and "better than myself," while the youngest loves him "as food loves salt." After her banishment, she goes to work as a cook at another palace, but only cooks alone, wearing her own elegant clothes as she does so. One day she drops a ring into a pie, the prince tries it on every lady of the court, and finds that it fits only her. She doesn't reveal her identity right away, but from then on the prince spies on her, and finally sees her in her princess gown. For their wedding, she insists on cooking the feast herself, and of course she invites her father and puts no salt in his food, leading to their reunion.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[une-sanz-pluis]

William Kelly, Royal Progresses and Visits to Leicester: From the Reputed Foundation of the City by King Leir, B.C. 844 (S. Clarke, 1884)