ABSTRACT
While preparing for a production of this great tragedy (perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest?), the director entertained a fanciful scholarly speculation that Lear thanks the servant for undoing the button not on his own collar (as in most productions), but Cordelia’s, and that, with her head now relaxed, she lets out an “Ah,” that vestigial breath escaping from the lungs—physicians tell us—sometimes heard seconds after death. Cordelia, who at the start of the play incurs Lear’s wrath with the word “nothing,” here, even in death, delivers an “ah” with breath that is the basis of speech, of language itself. This led to seeing Lear at his end, however deluded the old man may be, expiring in “an ecstasy of joy,” as A. C. Bradley has said. The once haughty father, who tragically has misjudged Cordelia, is solicitous of his daughter’s comfort, even in death. In part, because of that same fanciful scholarly speculation adding an “Ah” to the script, this production of King Lear turned out to be open-ended, with the audience, onstage and off, asked to come to their own conclusions about whether Lear is delusional or visionary.
