King Lear

Finally! We have finished study King Lear! What a relief! Honestly, it was so boring. However, it is actually interesting indeed. In a way that it has something that should be learnt to by any students especially TESL students as it is a necessity for them and me in order to be a better person.

I do not even know what actually King Lear is about when we first were asked to buy the book by Dr Edwin and I thought it would be more interesting than some of Shakespeare’s pieces of arts such as Midsummer Nights’ Dream, which have I studied before. However, I then found out that it is in fact different but there are conflicts that involving parent in both plays; Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear.

In King Lear, it is obvious that both Lear and Gloucester have been blind and make a false decision and their weakness has been taken granted by their children. In this play too, we can see that the role of the wheel of fortune in our life does takes its place and role. I said this because I can see that it is true that sometimes we can be at the highest place or hierarchy in our life but then, there are times when we move or go down and own nothing compared to what we used to have. As we can see in this play, Lear at the beginning is the most powerful person, as everybody has to follow what his rule is. For example, when he banished Kent and Cordelia, nobody can question what he said. But we then see that he has no power at all and it turn worse when he could not even have many men to follow him as Goneril against it.

Lastly, I was hoping that we could watch the movie or video of the play King Lear so that I would see and understand it better. Besides that, it will also be more interesting.

open text

What is an ‘open text’? As what I understand, it is called open text because it help the director in a drama or play as he can do whatever he want the text or speech or dialogue be read by the actor. Well, if it is not an open text, the director has to follow what have the scriptwriter planned. In the text, the speaker can be anybody. There is no rule that needs a specific person to read it as there is no name or gender of character is written. There is also no stage direction in the text. Again, the director has the opportunity to do anything as what he wishes it to be.

All these years of learning, I never realise that there are such dialogue like open text until the day my classmates and I were assigned by Dr Edwin to read some lines in the book, ‘Now Read On’. I still remember the day; it was Monday, 15 January 2007. At first, we were asked to read those lines for quite a few times according to any mood that we like. My partner, Adibah bt Abdul Latip and I, tried to read the lines several times with different ways of pronunciations and moods. Besides that, we tried to make it so real as we even volunteered to present in front of the class. Earlier, I was confused of how to pronounce those lines differently because there was no reference how to do it at all. But then, I was quite happy at that time because our presentation was good and most of the students enjoyed and laughed when we do the presentation.

Personally, I like the way Dr Edwin taught the open text stuffs to us because he some kind had let us experienced the learning and it is somehow had helped me to remember the key words, the criteria of open text as I had to relate it to myself when I personally practices and do the presentation.