Edward Bond's version of Lear's story embraces myth and reality, war and politics, to reveal the violence endemic in all unjust societies. He exposes corrupted innocence as the core of social morality, and this false morality as a source of the aggressive tension which must ultimately destroy that society. In a play in which blindness becomes a dramatic metaphor for insight, Bond warns that 'it is so easy to subordinate justice to power, but when this happens power takes on the dynamics and dialectics of aggression, and then nothing is really changed'.
- ISBN10 0413287602
- ISBN13 9780413287601
- Publish Date 6 April 1972 (first published 1 January 1972)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 18 October 2003
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Methuen Publishing Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 104
- Language English