by Isaac Asimov
“So I chose F-71 at once and he was all we could want. The firm is now where you see it is, and I am chairman of the board.”
Gold
Jonas Willard looked from side to side and tapped his baton on the stand before him.
He said, “Understood now? This is just a practice scene, designed to find out if we know what we’re doing. We’ve gone through this enough times so that I expect a professional performance now. Get ready. All of you get ready.”
He looked again from side to side. There was a person at each of the voice-recorders, and there were three others working the image projection. A seventh was for the music and an eighth for the all-important background. Others waited to one side for their turn.
Willard said, “All right now. Remember this old man has spent his entire adult life as a tyrant. He is accustomed to having everyone jump at his slightest word, to having everyone tremble at his frown. That is all gone now but he doesn’t know it. He faces his daughter whom he thinks of only as a bent-headed obsequious girl who will do anything he says, and he cannot believe that it is an imperious queen that he now faces. So let’s have the King.”
Lear appeared. Tall, white hair and beard, somewhat disheveled, eyes sharp and piercing.
Willard said, “Not bent. Not bent. He’s eighty years old but he doesn’t think of himself as old. Not now. Straight. Every inch a king.” The image was adjusted. “That’s right. And the voice has to be strong. No quavering. Not now. Right?”
“Right, chief,” said the Lear voice-recorder, nodding.
“All right. The Queen.”
And there she was, almost as tall as Lear, standing straight and rigid as a statue, her draped clothing in fine array, nothing out of place. Her beauty was as cold and unforgiving as ice.
“And the Fool.”
A little fellow, thin and fragile, like a frightened teenager but with a face too old for a teenager and with a sharp look in eyes that seemed so large that they threatened to devour his face.
“Good,” said Willard. “Be ready for Albany. He comes in pretty soon. Begin the scene.” He tapped the podium again, took a quick glance at the marked-up play before him and said, “Lear!” and his baton pointed to the Lear voice-recorder, moving gently to mark the speech cadence that he wanted created.
Lear says, “How now, daughter? What makes that front-let on? Methinks you are too much o’ late i’ th’ frown.”
The Fool’s thin voice, fifelike, piping, interrupts, “Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning—”
Goneril, the Queen, turns slowly to face the Clown as he speaks, her eyes turning momentarily into balls of lurid light—doing it so momentarily that those watching caught the impression rather than viewed the fact. The Fool completes his speech in gathering fright and backs his way behind Lear in a blind search for protection against the searing glance.
Goneril proceeds to tell Lear the facts of life and there is the faint crackling of thin ice as she speaks, while the music plays in soft discords, barely heard.
Nor are Goneril’s demands so out of line, for she wants an orderly court and there couldn’t be one as long as Lear still thought of himself as tyrant. But Lear is in no mood to recognize reason. He breaks into a passion and begins railing.
Albany enters. He is Goneril’s consort—round-faced, innocent, eyes looking about in wonder. What is happening? He is completely drowned out by his dominating wife and by his raging father-in-law. It is at this point that Lear breaks into one of the great piercing denunciations in all of literature. He is overreacting. Goneril has not as yet done anything to deserve this, but Lear knows no restraint. He says:
“Hear, Nature, hear! dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility;
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth, it is
To have a thankless child!”
The voice-recorder strengthened Lear’s voice for this speech, gave it a distant hiss, his body became taller and somehow less substantial as though it had been converted into a vengeful Fury.
As for Goneril, she remained untouched throughout, never flinching, never receding, but her beautiful face, without any change that could be described, seemed to accumulate evil so that by the end of Lear’s curse, she had the appearance of an archangel still, but an archangel ruined. All possible pity had been wiped out of the countenance, leaving behind only a devil’s dangerous magnificence.
The Fool remained behind Lear throughout, shuddering. Albany was the very epitome of confusion, asking useless questions, seeming to want to step between the two antagonists and clearly afraid to do so.
Willard tapped his baton and said, “All right. It’s been recorded and I want you all to watch the scene.” He lifted his baton high and the synthesizer at the rear of the set began what could only be called the instant replay.
It was watched in silence, and Willard said, “It was good, but I think you’ll grant it was not good enough. I’m going to ask you all to listen to me, so that I can explain what we’re trying to do. Computerized theater is not new, as you all know. Voices and images have been built up to beyond what human beings can do. You don’t have to break your speechifying in order to breathe; the range and quality of the voices are almost limitless; and the images can change to suit the words and action. Still, the technique has only been used, so far, for childish purposes. What we intend now is to make the first serious compu-drama the world has ever seen, and nothing will do—for me, at any rate—but to start at the top. I want to do the greatest play written by the greatest playwright in history: King Lear by William Shakespeare.
“I want not a word changed. I want not a word left out. I don’t want to modernize the play. I don’t want to remove the archaisms, because the play, as written, has its glorious music and any change will diminish it. But in that case, how do we have it reach the general public? I don’t mean the students, I don’t mean the intellectuals, I mean everybody. I mean people who’ve never watched Shakespeare before and whose idea of a good play is a slapstick musical. This play is archaic in spots, and people don’t talk in iambic pentameter. They are not even accustomed to hearing it on the stage.
“So we’re going to have to translate the archaic and the unusual. The voices, more than human, will, just by their timbre and changes, interpret the words. The images will shift to reinforce the words.
“Now Goneril’s change in appearance as Lear’s curse proceeded was good. The viewer will gauge the devastating effect it has on her even though her iron will won’t let it show in words. The viewer will therefore feel the devastating effect upon himself, too, even if some of the words Lear uses are strange to him.
“In that connection, we must remember to make the Fool look older with every one of his appearances. He’s a weak, sickly fellow to begin with, broken-hearted over the loss of Cordelia, frightened to death of Goneril and Regan, destroyed by the storm from which Lear, his only protector, can’t protect him—and I mean by that the storm of Lear’s daughter as well as of the raging weather. When he slips out of the play in Act III, Scene VI, it must be made plain that he is about to die. Shakespeare doesn’t say so, so the Fool’s face must say so.
“However, we’ve got to do something about Lear. The voice-recorder was on the right track by having a hissing sound in the voice-track. Lear is spewing venom; he is a man who, having lost power, has no re
course but vile and extreme words. He is a cobra who cannot strike. But I don’t want the hiss noticeable until the right time. What I am more interested in is the background.”
The woman in charge of background was Meg Cathcart. She had been creating backgrounds for as long as the compu-drama technique had existed.
“What do you want in background?” Cathcart asked, coolly.
“The snake motif,” said Willard. “Give me some of that and there can be less hiss in Lear’s voice. Of course, I don’t want you to show a snake. The too obvious doesn’t work. I want a snake there that people can’t see but that they can feel without quite noting why they feel. I want them to know a snake is there without really knowing it is there, so that it will chill them to the bone, as Lear’s speech should. So when we do it over, Meg, give us a snake that is not a snake.”
“And how do I do that, Jonas?” said Cathcart, making free with his first name. She knew her worth and how essential she was.
He said, “I don’t know. If I did I’d be a backgrounder instead of a lousy director. I only know what I want. You’ve got to supply it. You’ve got to supply sinuosity, the impression of scales. Until we get to one point. Notice when Lear says, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’ That is power. The whole speech leads up to that and it is one of the most famous quotes in Shakespeare. And it is sibilant. There is the ‘sh,’ the three s’s in ‘serpent’s’ and in ‘thankless,’ and the two unvoiced ‘th’s in ‘tooth’ and ‘thankless.’ That can be hissed. If you keep down the hiss as much as possible in the rest of the speech, you can hiss here, and you should zero in to his face and make it venomous. And for background, the serpent—which, after all, is now referred to in the words—can make its appearance in background. A flash of an open mouth and fangs, fangs—We must have the momentary appearance of fangs as Lear says, ‘a serpent’s tooth.’ ”
Willard felt very tired suddenly. “All right. We’ll try again tomorrow. I want each one of you to go over the entire scene and try to work out the strategy you intend to use. Only please remember that you are not the only ones involved. What you do must match the others, so I’ll encourage you to talk to each other about this—and, most of all, to listen to me because I have no instrument to handle and I alone can see the play as a whole. And if I seem as tyrannical as Lear at his worst in spots, well, that’s my job.”
Willard was approaching the great storm scene, the most difficult portion of this most difficult play, and he felt wrung out. Lear has been cast out by his daughters into a raging storm of wind and rain, with only his Fool for company, and he has gone almost mad at this mistreatment. To him, even the storm is not as bad as his daughters.
Willard pointed his baton and Lear appeared. A point in another direction and the Fool was there clinging, disregarded, to Lear’s left leg. Another point and the background came in, with its impression of a storm, of a howling wind, of driving rain, of the crackle of thunder and the flash of lightning.
The storm took over, a phenomenon of nature, but even as it did so, the image of Lear extended and became what seemed mountain-tall. The storm of his emotions matched the storm of the elements, and his voice gave back to the wind every last howl. His body lost substance and wavered with the wind as though he himself were a storm cloud, contending on an equal basis with the atmospheric fury. Lear, having failed with his daughters, defied the storm to do its worst. He called out in a voice that was far more than human:
“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires.
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world.
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once.
That make ingrateful man.”
The Fool interrupts, his voice shrilling, and making Lear’s defiance the more heroic by contrast. He begs Lear to make his way back to the castle and make peace with his daughters, but Lear doesn’t even hear him. He roars on:
“Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man….”
The Duke of Kent, Lear’s loyal servant (though the King in a fit of rage has banished him) finds Lear and tries to lead him to some shelter. After an interlude in the castle of the Duke of Gloucester, the scene returns to Lear in the storm, and he is brought, or rather dragged, to a hovel.
And then, finally, Lear learns to think of others. He insists that the Fool enter first and then he lingers outside to think (undoubtedly for the first time in his life) of the plight of those who are not kings and courtiers.
His image shrank and the wildness of his face smoothed out. His head was lifted to the rain, and his words seemed detached and to be coming not quite from him, as though he were listening to someone else read the speech. It was, after all, not the old Lear speaking, but a new and better Lear, refined and sharpened by suffering. With an anxious Kent watching, and striving to lead him into the hovel, and with Meg Cathcart managing to work up an impression of beggars merely by producing the fluttering of rags, Lear says:
“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm.
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.”
“Not bad,” said Wilbur, eventually. “We’re getting the idea. Only, Meg, rags aren’t enough. Can you manage an impression of hollow eyes? Not blind ones. The eyes are there, but sunken in.”
“I think I can do that,” said Cathcart.
It was difficult for Willard to believe. The money spent was greater than expected. The time it had taken was considerably greater than had been expected. And the general weariness was far greater than had been expected. Still, the project was coming to an end.
He had the reconciliation scene to get through—so simple that it would require the most delicate touches. There would be no background, no souped-up voices, no images, for at this point Shakespeare became simple. Nothing beyond simplicity was needed.
Lear was an old man, just an old man. Cordelia, having found him, was a loving daughter, with none of the majesty of Goneril, none of the cruelty of Regan, just softly endearing.
Lear, his madness burned out of him, is slowly beginning to understand the situation. He scarcely recognizes Cordelia at first and thinks he is dead and she is a heavenly spirit. Nor does he recognize the faithful Kent.
When Cordelia tries to bring him back the rest of the way to sanity, he says:
“Pray, do not mock me.
I am a very foolish fond old man.
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less.
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skills I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For (as I am a man) I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.”
Cordelia tells
him she is and he says:
“Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause, they have not.”
All poor Cordelia can say is “No cause, no cause.”
And eventually, Willard was able to draw a deep breath and say, “We’ve done all we can do. The rest is in the hands of the public.”
It was a year later that Willard, now the most famous man in the entertainment world, met Gregory Laborian. It had come about almost accidentally and largely because of the activities of a mutual friend. Willard was not grateful.
He greeted Laborian with what politeness he could manage and cast a cold eye on the time-strip on the wall.
He said, “I don’t want to seem unpleasant or inhospitable, Mr.—uh—but I’m really a very busy man, and don’t have much time.”
“I’m sure of it, but that’s why I want to see you. Surely, you want to do another compu-drama.”
“Surely I intend to, but,” and Willard smiled dryly, “King Lear is a hard act to follow and I don’t intend to turn out something that will seem like trash in comparison.”
“But what if you never find anything that can match King Lear?”
“I’m sure I never will, but I’ll find something.”
“I have something.”
“Oh?”
“I have a story, a novel, that could be made into a compu-drama.”
“Oh, well. I can’t really deal with items that come in over the transom.”
“I’m not offering you something from a slush pile. The novel has been published and it has been rather highly thought of.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be insulting. But I didn’t recognize your name when you introduced yourself.”
“Laborian. Gregory Laborian.”