ABSTRACT
Leaning against a child’s toy castle, Kent takes a swig of Budweiser and shakes her head. “I thought that Lear had more affected her elder Goneril than Regan,” she says. “It did always seem so to us,” replies Gloucester, also sucking on a beer. “But now in the division of the household, it appears not which of her sons she values most.” Like a couple of small-town gossips, they await Lear’s ceremonial division of her property at her backyard barbecue birthday party. Meanwhile, they introduce us to Gloucester’s illegitimate daughter, the leather-clad Elva. Their expository chatter is interrupted when Cordelion runs in, dodging his brother Regan. He fakes to the left and catches a beercan, passed football style by a hooting Goneril. Such is the fanfare that prepares the entrance of Lear, a Southern matriarch in 1950s America, who hopes to divest herself of estate and cares and “unburthen’d crawl toward death.” 1
