The Fool’s Place

I was perplexed to read that theater critic Sylvie Drake, in her Jan. 22 review, was disturbed that the Fool had been cut out of the Dover scenes in the Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of “King Lear.” In my longtime study of this masterwork, I have never found a version of the play that had the Fool appear at Dover.

Kenneth Branagh’s production quite properly has the Fool expire on the heath. By moving the final speech of Act III, Scene 2--the Fool’s prophecy about the fate of “the realm of Albion”--to the end of Act I and by having the Fool pass his coxcomb on to Edgar, the Fool’s death becomes a palpable landmark of the new stage of Lear’s journey through madness.

JEREMY LAWRENCE, Literary Administrator, Mark Taper Forum