Trust and Care: Playing with Death in King Lear
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
9:30am–11:00 PST | 5:30–7:00pm BST
Lectures by Julia Reinhard Lupton
Dramatic monologues by Ava Burton
Edgar, the maligned and rejected son of the blinded Gloucester, leads his father to Dover Cliff where the despairing patriarch desires to die. Instead of honoring his father’s directive, however, Edgar takes him through a guided fantasy of death and resurrection. Has Edgar betrayed his father’s trust and denied the care his father requested, or are the two sojourners playing a trust game that is itself an act of care? In this final session, we will explore trust and care as the fragile foundations of human interaction, with special reference to the Stoic moral tradition.
This is the third in a three-part series, Shakespeare's Virtue: Three Lectures on Living, produced in partnership with the Van Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Studies, St. Edmunds College, University of Cambridge.
Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, where she co-directs the New Swan Shakespeare Center and serves as dramaturg for the New Swan Shakespeare Festival. She is the author or co-author of five books on Shakespeare and has edited volumes connecting Shakespeare to virtue, hospitality, and wisdom literature.
Ava Burton is a graduate of East 15 Acting School, London, and the University of Essex. An experienced actor and scholar of Shakespeare’s characters, Ava is associate producer with Laguna Beach Live, a California presenting company, and co-director and performer in Shakespeare’s Fool, a show of speeches and songs from the plays.
PHOTO: Twelfth Night, New Swan Shakespeare Festival, 2024, the University of California, Irvine. Photo by Paul Kennedy.