Lear to Tile

Lear, sear, bear, beer, bier, tier, ties, hies, hiss, kiss, kist, kilt, tilt, tile. I invested 2.5 hours in the Trevor Nunn production of King Lear on PBS Wednesday night, and then another hour watching the later rebroadcast before I fell asleep. //I loved the ease with which Ian McKellen portrayed being nudged by his Fool to slip from his heart-bursting torment into soft laughter. Cordelia (Romola Garai) in scene one seemed to assume she and her fatal profession would be received through that same special door shared by Lear & Fool; hence her (to me) surprising chuckle as she walked straight into a storm. //I thought the shot of Edgar-Tom writhing almost naked on his back with limbs flexed like an infant was terrifyingly true to the play's evocation of "unaccommodated man." // The image of Lear (bottom) is a daguerrotype of Edwin Forrest in that role, attributed to Matthew Brady. (Courtesy of the Harvard Theater Collection). We carry a ceramic art tile of a Julia Margaret Cameron Lear albumin photograph (top)--among other Camerons.