Lear's Daughters

by Elaine Feinstein

Genres: Plays, Shakespeare

Unknown Binding

About the author

Elaine Feinstein was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an editor for Cambridge University Press (1960-62), as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College (1963-6), as Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Essex (1967-70), and as a journalist.

She has contributed to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, and was formerly Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsø, Norway.

Of Russian-Jewish ancestry, she has been influenced by Russian writers, especially Marina Tsvetayeva and Anna Akhmatova.

She is the author of a number of plays for television and radio and several biographies, including singer Bessie Smith, writer D. H. Lawrence, Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and Anna Akhmatova.

Reviews

[Joti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sexual abuse prequel and super feminist!! Would love to see it performed!! I love when the adaptations flesh out the characters and give them an entire history that Shakespeare never did!!

[Carmela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aside from Midsummer’s most play I read is for classes and this play made me want to pull all my hair out. I like though in it weird way.

[nashaly · Rating 2 out of 5]

the fool is the saving grace of this play.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the main thing I enjoyed about this play was the Fool. It (the Fool is purposefully androgynous) is an interesting character because of how Feinstein and WTG build on the Fool's metadramatic performances in King Lear. Here the Fool behaves somewhat like a narrator, but is also continuously at play, in multiple senses of the word. It plays games--word games, for instance--it plays roles--Lear and the Queen--and it plays its role as Fool.

I'm not sure how I feel about making Goneril and Reagan into victims of Lear's patriarchal oppression and implied child molestation. I think I see why WTG wanted to go that route, but I'm simply not sure I like it. I find it difficult to see Lear as an incestuous child molester, though I must also admit that the Lear of Lear's Daughters is a very different figure than he is in Shakespeare.

[Laurien · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked it, but it wasn't as detailed as other adaptations I've read of Shakespeare's plays. I felt like it missed something, as it mostly just spoke to the emotional deviation of sisterly love and the cruelty of their father, King Lear.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still not sure about this one...

[Alyssa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting to read, as a prequel to King Lear itself, but it's not my favourite story ever.