A STEP FURTHER FROM DEPICTING POWER AND CORRUPTION

Edward Bond feels that “the artist’s job is to make the process (of understanding

culture by one) public, to create public images, literal or figurative, in signs, sound and

movement, of the human condition-public images in which our species recognizes itself and

confirms its identity.” Bond’s primary concern in his play Lear is to preach propaganda. To

him ‘theatre must talk of the causes of human misery and the sources of human strength’.

Thus Bond shows empathetic commitment to an ideology or rather to something wider-the

presentation of the human affairs as they exist and making them aware of these affairs. So,

his play Lear can be considered as a rationale play. Bond is utilizing his play to turn down the

aesthetic pleasure from the minds of his audience and make them conscious of what is going

on around them. Though Edward Bond (1934-present) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

are not contemporaries we still find resemblance of ‘power’ and ‘corruption’ in both Lear and

Red Oleander. In Tagore’s drama Red Oleander we find a recurrent theme, he tries to bring

out the realistic mode examining social problems of the day and depicting there impact on the

people. Tagore translates human condition in a dramatic form. As Spencer comments: While

Bond writes in critical opposition to his own society and its dominant aesthetic practices, he

also writes as a confident member of an emerging social class whose ‘classics’ have yet to be

written. In other words, Bond writes consciously artistic plays (fictional, structural, and

participating in a tradition of literary forms) in behalf of a society that does not yet exist. The

desire to speak for a society rather than always and only against one is increasingly present in

Bond’s work.

Edward Bond’s Lear opens with Lear visiting ‘near the wall’ where ‘a stack of

building materials-shovels, picks, posts and a tarpaulin’ are spread. Just then an accident
occurs and the dead body of a worker is brought. The prevalence of law and order in a

socially moralised system is represented by Lear’s action of executing a worker for causing

an accidental death to another. It is ironic when Lear say “My wall will make you free”, he

thinks by building this wall he will defend the ‘peace’ and security of his people. His

obsession with the wall is clearly visible as he says ‘my wall’ though he claims the wall will

benefit the people but his actions shows a callous disregard for others. Thus we can conclude

that the reason for executing the worker is not his responsibility for the death of another

worker but his fault of building the wall ‘slow’. To Lear, the workers are not human beings

but materials needed for building of the wall as he calls the Foreman, “You waste men”. In

Tagore’s Red Oleander the world of Yakshapuri is a dead world wrecked by avarice and

forced mindless subordination, the King not only exploits the resources of the underworld, of

nature by digging the gold mines but also plunders the human mind and also the human

physique, the diggers are not allowed to go home, when Bishu pleads ‘I must go home, my

health is failing.’ The Governor replies, ‘how come you go home in such a state? However,

there’s no harm in your trying.’(Tagore, 44) The worker finds out that there is only one road

open in Yaksha’s town which leads ‘withinwards’ thus they have nowhere to escape. In Red

Oleander Tagore critiques ‘the habit of greed-greed for things, for power’. The King is using

his weapon of power and authority and the elaborate machinery of a highly centralised

bureaucracy in order to add to his wealth, “the wealth he measures in gold, or in souls or in

facts, or in human bodies, so that men are men no longer but numbers.”(Lal 48) The workers

are called not by their names but are identified by numbers as Governor calls them:

Governor: You are No.321, aren’t you?

Headman: Marvellous! Your Lordship remembers even my unworthy self!

(Tagore, 121)
 When power is wrested from Lear he does not grow morally mature, he still remains

like a child and depends on the Gravedigger’s boy and his wife Cordelia for food and shelter.

On the other hand Bodice and Fontanelle come into power, with the help of the Duke of

Cornwall and the Duke of North, the audience expects a change from the old regime for both

Bodice and Fontanelle ‘dissociate’ themselves from the ‘act’ of shooting a worker for causing

an accidental fatal injury to another worker. They had once told that ‘if the king will not act

reasonably ‘then it is a ‘legal duty to disobey him’. But ironically, the change that the

audience expects is something that gets subverted. Bodice and Fontanelle who once protested

against ‘injustice’ of Lear, are now preaching the same. Bond gains a sense of angry

recognition of the injustices and irrationalities still brutalising the people of the society. For

the harmonious co-existence, the construction of social structure seems indispensable. But

when the organised group becomes self-justifying its presence becomes unjust and

meaningless. Such unjust ‘society’ or establishment then creates aggressive disruption.

The cruelty and inhuman attitude that the two sisters show almost makes the audience dumb

as well as numb with fear. The two sisters send soldiers in search of Lear when the soldiers

come to Gravedigger’s boy’s house, in scene vii, the soldiers devastate the whole habitat –

they destroy the entire possibility of re-habitating the farm by any other human life-they kill

the boy, rape the pregnant wife, slaughter the pigs. The wife Cordelia is thus devastated

though she is saved by the Carpenter who rescues her by killing the soldier. Cordelia too after

coming into power orders the death of Bodice and Fontanalle thus we can conclude that what

really changes is the facet of power and not its intention. Instead of justice, law and order

what continue to exist is the rule of power and corruption. Spencer comments, “[w]hile new

governments with new goals come to power, the forms of oppression appear to remain the

same; and viewed by itself, this steady accumulation of incidents suggests a society trapped

in a pattern of increasingly aggressive behaviour.” We get a similar picture in Red Oleander,

piercing the earth and the other in heaven’ (Tagore, 147), the Guards call it a terrible sin and

rush to inform their Governor whom we presume to be the next embodiment of ‘power’ as we

hear the King say, “There comes the governor with his troops...They have used my own

power against me.”(Tagore, 151)

When Lear is in the prison cell, he is visited by the Gravedigger’s boy’s Ghost who

brings his daughters as young girls and we find a conscious change in Lear as he says, “My

daughters have been killed and these monsters have taken their place.” It is the first time that

we find Lear developing his own responsibility, as he says: “I did him a great wrong once, a

very great wrong.” Lear gradually progress towards moral maturity, towards the recognition

that he needs to practice compassion, responsibility and action. With Fontanelle’s autopsy

Lear becomes aware of his responsibility and thus says, “Did I make this-and destroy it?”

When the Ghost tried to take Lear away from the jail, Lear answered, “I ran so often but my

life was ruined all the same. Now I’ll stay.” Lear now tries to face the reality -“I must open

my eyes and see.” Lear’s desire to ‘see’ is followed by his blinding. After his blinding when

Lear is released in the countryside, he meets the Farmer, his wife and son near the wall who

tell him how Lear’s wall has destroyed their lives. Now, Lear realises how he has harmed not

only isolated individuals but all of his society. He falls on his knees, in a posture as if praying

for forgiveness, and begs the farmer’s son not to join army but his effort is turned down. The

society of law and order which Lear had created has been perfected by Cordelia. The people

are socially moralised and go to their consumption by the social order without questioning.

We can find a similar imagery in Red Oleander where Nandini and Ranjan point out

the similar disposition to the King, they partly play the role of the Gravedigger’s boy. The

King of Power wants to possess everything, even Nandini. Though he can possess all the

materialistic objects and become the master of the universe yet he is unable to get love
because of the net which he has created in order to veil himself. After the death of Ranjan

when Nandini prepares for the final fight “King, the Time is indeed now come. . . For the last

fight between you and me” (Tagore, 168), we find the King who is going against his own

frankenstein “make me your comrade today. . . to fight against me, but with your hand in

mine” (Tagore, 169). He breaks his own flagstaff and begs, “Let your hand unite with mine to

kill me, utterly kill me. That will be my emancipation” (Tagore, 169-170). When Phagulal

tells that they will break the prison gate and for doing so “We may lose our lives, we shan’t

fall back” the King announces “I too am out for breaking.”(Tagore, 148) We can well relate

with Bond’s Lear, when Cordelia informs Lear that he will be sent for trial and executed,

Lear moves far beyond his self absorption and almost transcend himself by attempting to dig

up and destroy the wall he created. Lear’s act of breaking the wall is neither final nor futile.

In Red Oleander as the King marches to break his own prison he tells, “We shall be able to

die! At last I have found the meaning of death.”(Tagore, 151) It is a demonstration to those

whom he leaves behind that not only compassion and responsibility are required but action is

also necessary.

In the last scene of Red Oleander Nandini runs off to face the Governor and his army

and the King follows her. While in Bond’s Lear, Lear dies believing in change, he is shot

while he pulls down the wall. He says “I can still make my mark.” In his play Lear Bond

argues that direct action is imperative, but revolution in Lear is not a theory channelled into

practice. It is not an ideology made operational and it does not accept the idea of ends

justifying means. The play continually demonstrates the nature and interaction of social and

personal circumstances as the guiding determinant of subsequent action. Bond also shows the

growth of organized and developing resistance to a repressive government in the last scenes.
Action is thus the only moral response, we can conclude “Lear is, then, a play about political

education.”(Clout 46) The concept of life as a dream and the world as a stage imply an

interaction between life and the theatre. Sombhu Mitra comments on Red Oleander:

It is a total picture of the crisis in civilization of the contemporary world. It deals with the

frightful dilemma of the modern man in the grip of an acquisitive society. And because the

dilemma and the prospect have a larger-than-life nightmarish quality about them the form

given to the play is larger than the frame of a picture depicting the particular and the

individual. The form had to be such as to be adequate to the content, which stretches down to

level after level of meaning and extends beyond particular problems of a particular individual

and family. Bond in contrast to the conventional treatment, demands that the theatre must

attack what he sees as bourgeois sensibilities complacency.

Thus we can consider Lear as “a play about a society in the process of birth. It is

concerned with the problem of how freedom becomes a ‘practical possibility in the present

world’ and its conclusions present a figure who accepts moral responsibility for his life and

who acts to show this acceptance” (Hay 103). Bond through his play invited us to jolt the

audience into active awareness and rejects romanticising and glamorising theatre. “Theatre”

he argues must talk of the causes of human misery and the sources of human strength1.

NOTES
1Sambhu Mitra: Reflection on Tagore’s Plays. The Illustrated Weekly of India, 7 May, 1961
WORKS CITED

Primary Sources:

Bond, Edward. Lear edited by Eyre Methuen. Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1972
Tagore, Rabindranath. Red Oleanders, A Drama in One Act. Macmillan edition, 1925

Secondary Sources:

Bond, Edward “The Notebooks of Edward Bond-Vol. 1: 1959-1980 (Diaries, Letters and

Essays), Bloomsbury edition.

Klein, Hilde “Edward Bond’s use of Sociolects in his Dramatic Work”. Source: Atlantis,

Vol. 13, No. 1/2 (Nov 1991), pp. 93-101. AEDEAN

“http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054654”, 14/5/2015

Konar, Ankur “Discourses on Indian Drama in English”, Avenel Press

Nodelman, Perry “Beyond Politics in Bond’s Lear” Modern Drama, Volume 23, Number 3,

Fall 1980, pp. 269-276 (Article)Published by University of Toronto Press

Spencer, Jenny S “Dramatic Strategies in the Play of Edward bond”, Cambridge University

Press. 1992