Despite the clamour of the internet and the universality of the cellphone, there remains a thirst for literature – Joe Bennett

Last weekend Joe Bennett proposed The Best Bits of Shakespeare at an event. Photo / Getty Images

Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton-based writer and columnist. He has been writing a column since 2017.

OPINION

What’s 419 years old and still works? King Lear.

Last year, at the local arts festival, I did a show called Eight Great Poems and discovered that despite the clamour of the internet and the universality of the cellphone, there remains a thirst for literature. I offered Hopkins, Eliot, Betjeman, Auden, the exquisitely miserable Larkin and other darlings. For me, the session was an indulgence, a wallow.

This year I proposed The Best Bits of Shakespeare. I would take familiar quotations, the bits that everyone knows, or half knows, or at least recognises, and rattle through them, putting them in context, pointing out what has made them renowned. I’d do “to be or not to be” and “the quality of mercy is not strained” and “is this a dagger that I see before me” and “build me a willow cabin at your gate” and “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” and even “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” – if only to point out that wherefore means why, not where, and so rather than wondering where he is, Juliet is actually asking the cruel gods why Romeo has to belong to a family that is off limits. It promised to be fun on a wet Sunday afternoon in midwinter.

The event was last weekend so a few days beforehand I sat down to assemble the goods, beginning with the greatest of all Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear. It bowled me over when I was 16 and again at university and again when I taught it to assorted sixth form classes, and though it left some kids cold there were always plenty whom it bowled over, or at least moved. But it must be five years or more since I last read it.

Well now, by the end of Act I not only was I bowled over all over again, but I’d also marked half a dozen speeches as indispensable for my wee gig. By the end of Act II, I had a dozen. Halfway through Act III, I made a decision. I was no longer going to do the Best Bits of Shakespeare. I’d do the Best Bits of the Best Bit of Shakespeare. I’d do the highlights of King Lear. And if anyone in the audience felt short-changed, they could have their money back.

The play’s a moral strip show. It rips the clothes off, reducing everything to nothing. Lear starts as an arrogant bully, accustomed to kingship, power, flattery, robes. “Know that we have divided in three our kingdom,” he announces. Note the commanding “Know”, the royal “we”.

One act later, he’s consumed with rage. “Darkness and devils. Saddle my horses. Call my train together. Degenerate bastard.” He aims his rage at his daughters, but its source is his own impotence.

Another act and he has staggered out into the storm, maddened by his own folly, dressed in rags and self-pity. “I am a man more sinned against than sinning,” he bellows to the thunderclouds, who pay him no attention.

Another act and he’s lost his wits but found the truth.

“When the rain came to wet me once and the wind to make me chatter, when the thunder would not peace at my bidding, there I found ‘em, there I smelt ‘em out. Go to, they are not men o’ their words. They told me I was everything; ‘tis a lie. I am not ague-proof.”

Reunited with the daughter whom he maltreated in Act I, he now sees himself for what he is. “I am a very foolish fond old man... if you have poison for me, I will drink it.”

His daughter forgives him. Though the two of them are now prisoners he doesn’t care. “We two will sing like birds in the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness.” The old man has never known such happiness. His reward – to have it ripped from his grasp. He re-appears with her corpse in his old arms.

“Howl, howl, howl, howl. Oh, you are men of stones.

Had I your tongues and eyes I’d use them so

That heaven’s vault would crack. She’s gone for ever.”

There is nothing left but to die. He dies.

It’s the bleakest, truest play in the language. On Sunday afternoon, I went through it in an hour and I didn’t do it justice. But you can never do it justice, and no one asked for their money back.

Shakespeare wrote Lear when he was just 41. Four hundred and nineteen years ago.