{"id":141352,"date":"2020-12-25T02:14:09","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T23:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/consider-2020-the-year-of-king-lear-for-all\/"},"modified":"2020-12-25T02:14:09","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T23:14:09","slug":"consider-2020-the-year-of-king-lear-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/consider-2020-the-year-of-king-lear-for-all\/","title":{"rendered":"#Consider 2020 the year of \u2018King Lear\u2019 for all"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Consider 2020 the year of \u2018King Lear\u2019 for all<\/strong>”
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It\u2019s one of the most gut-piercing scenes ever to be enacted on the theatrical stage. An old man, bleary-eyed and half-naked in an ancient English heath, rages against a pitiless storm: \u201cBlow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench\u2019d our steeples, drown\u2019d the cocks!\u201d<\/p>\n

His shrieking at the cutting rain is unworthy of his royal pedigree, for he is a king: King Lear. And if we could match every year to a Shakespeare play, 2020 would undoubtedly be a \u201cKing Lear\u201d type of year.<\/p>\n

\u201cLear\u201d is the greatest tragedy ever written, because it\u2019s so damned tragic. Schoolchildren are taught \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d and even \u201cHamlet,\u201d but fewer teachers dare go near \u201cLear.\u201d From its hopeful opening, which finds a royal father planning to magnanimously bestow his kingdom upon his three daughters, to its bloody end, where nearly every meaningful character lies dead, the Bard is unsparing.<\/p>\n

The play was so dark that for more than 150 years, eminent critics like Samuel Johnson app<\/a>roved Nahum Tate\u2019s rewritten happy ending. Johnson admitted he couldn\u2019t re-read the last crushing scenes until the work of editing Shakespeare\u2019s collected works forced him to do it.<\/p>\n

And America\u2019s 2020, as I say, was a \u201cLear\u201d type of year. No, it didn\u2019t feature a revolutionary or civil war. There were bread lines, but not as bad as the Great Depression\u2019s. Nor did 2020 pile up the body counts of World War II. Even our social<\/a> unrest, bad as it was, didn\u2019t reach the militant lows of the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Still, 2020 did have a paralyzing pandemic that consumed lives, destroyed jobs and shuttered businesses. The violence of riots was surpassed only by the vitriol of the mind, manifested in critical race theory, cancel culture and unapologetic censorship. As hatred abounded, and mercy was in short supply, there was no lack of cultural storms and bodies strewn about the stage; 2020, too, was \u00adunsparing.<\/p>\n

But returning to \u201cKing Lear,\u201d it\u2019s instructive \u2014 and deeply heartening \u2014 to know that there can be great light amid darkness, hope in the presence of tragedy. An often-ignored scene in \u201cLear\u201d reminds us of this enduring truth. Lear, in the crashing storm, has been betrayed by two of his daughters. His friends have abandoned him. He has lost his sense, never mind his kingly comforts.<\/p>\n

Worse, his conscience<\/a> torments him over his treatment of his one honest daughter, Cordelia, who loves him, though pride and misunderstanding led him to banish her.<\/p>\n

As the storm subsides and his other, wicked daughters continue to pursue Lear\u2019s life, Cordelia (now the queen of France) rescues her father. The scene of their reconciliation, the sheer grace a wronged daughter visits upon her shamed father, is so poignant that it nearly rivals Christ\u2019s Parable of the Prodigal Son.<\/p>\n

Upon reuniting with his once-lost daughter, and notwithstanding the perils that are to come, Lear abounds in joy. Even as the two are captured and facing harsh imprisonment, he comforts Cordelia. Lear\u2019s joy doesn\u2019t fade: \u201cNo, no, no, no! Come, let\u2019s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i\u2019 the cage.\u2009.\u2009. . And take upon\u2019s the mystery of things, as if we were God\u2019s spies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grace enters Lear\u2019s bloodstained world, suddenly, in a moment\u2019s reconciliation. It\u2019s almost like, well, Christmas, when, we Christians believe, the creator of the universe entered human history as a baby \u2014 that most joyous arrival \u2014 to reconcile humankind to himself.<\/p>\n

In the year 2020, as we arrive at Christmas, we likewise have reason for great hope and sublime joy. While the storm wracks mercilessly outside, let\u2019s find what Pope Francis calls \u201cthe joy [that] may reach the ends of the earth, illuminating even the fringes of our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s discover what Saint Paul calls \u201cthe peace that passes all understanding\u201d \u2014 the peace of the divine-child in Bethlehem, who promises reconciliation between God and man.<\/p>\n

We can find enduring joy like Lear\u2019s, even and especially in this pandemic- and riot-battered moment in American history, by being open to the graces of the season. Christmas is the hour of hope and the season of joy inextinguishable.<\/p>\n

Tod Worner is a practicing physician and the managing editor of Bishop Robert Barron\u2019s Evangelization & Culture, the journal of the Word on Fire Institute.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Consider 2020 the year of \u2018King Lear\u2019 for all” It\u2019s one of the most gut-piercing scenes ever to be enacted on the theatrical stage. An old man, bleary-eyed and half-naked in an ancient English heath, rages against a pitiless storm: \u201cBlow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/Empire-State-Bldg-Christmas.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[87636,66,1545,72936],"class_list":["post-141352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-24-20","tag-christmas","tag-coronavirus","tag-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}