About the salt: It's worth mentioning that salt was one of the most important food preservants back in the day. So you're not only talking about taste here, but about edibility. Back then, salt was, at times, worth it's weight in gold.
Daughter: I love you more than salt. King: WTF, really? Get out! That really hurts my feelings! Daughter: Wait no there's a really clever explanation- King: OUT!
Michael T. Wrong, its a long misconception that salt was very prized and rare. Every nation that lived close to an Ocean had unlimited acces to salt due to boiling salt water.
@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 " … and now that it's the penultimate page of the play, some nobody runs in and announces that two minor characters that no-one can tell apart and left somewhere around the second act, have been killed far away to no effect or reaction whatsoever. I'm freaking brilliant." - W Shakespeare
@@jaewok5GI think he did this a lot because he had to reuse actors, especially those playing women because only men were allowed to act. The Fool for example, was played by the same actor as Cordelia in the original 1605 version, which explains why he randomly leaves the narrative just just Cordelia re-enters
It seems like King Lear is the first boomer in history. He gets immediately angry at things he doesn't understand, he tries to avoid responsibility for his actions, and he constantly demands respect.
I mean, he was a King and he devolved into a peasant. Misunderstanding causing anger is because he has literally spent his entire life being treated as the most important person in the world, being reduced to an unwanted husk. He apologized and took blame at the end before he died when Cordelia was there. Also, interesting fact, King Lear was supposed to be naked when he was pretending to be a beggar. Also, it’s fair to criticize old people since they more often than not have rough demeanors, but you have to cut them some slack. Being old is probably the saddest, most miserable, and most degrading point in somebody’s life, it makes sense that they’d develop a short temper.
Before refrigeration, the best way to preserve food was to salt it, and roman soldiers were payed their wages in salt, from which we get the word salary. And at least in the fairy tale nobody wound up dead.
Though the story about salt is a great story, it's not actually the source for King Lear. The source is actually the legendary King Leir who supposedly ruled Britain in the 8th century BCE. The original story had a happy ending in which Leir was restored to his throne, but Shakespeare rewrote the ending to subvert expectations.
Just wanted to add two things: 1) You forgot to mention that Cordelia was King Lear’s favorite daughter and he expected her to flatter him the most. 2) The full quote about salt is “I love you as meat loves salt.” This implies that without the salt, meat has no real appeal and is a metaphor for how she would see her life without her father in it: without any real appeal to keep on living.
I love the interpretation of King Lear as the narcissistic father, his love is conditional. Cordelia goes from golden child to scape goat. Also this is very helpful when I haven’t yet finished the book and have a knowledge test in the first English lit lesson tomorrow to see if we’ve read it
There is also another version of that fairy tail where the young girl (because she is just a kid at the beginning in this version, sending a kid alone on the street: dad of the year award!) gets taken in by an old lady/witch, grows up quite well, far from all the drama at court. One day, there is a total lack of salt in the entire kingdom and food has no taste so the king offers all the jewels and gold of the realm for someone who will bring some salt.Then the young girl arrives with some salt from her witch adoptive mother (magic thing makes it impossible to find any salt otherwise), the king offers her all the jewels and gold, she said she doesn't want them and prefer the simple salt, he recognises her and everything is beautiful. Conclusion: when you're a princess, it is sometimes better to grow up outside of the castle and have a magic adoptive mother to make everything alright.
I've been told a different version, where the king asks his two daughters how much they love him. The first daughter (who is secretly a brat) tells him that she loves him as much as she loves sweets. The second daughter (the good girl) tells him that she loves him as much as she loves salt. The king is enraged at this (because she compared him to salt) and banishes her, and some of the courtiers and such come with the second daughter and second daughter and co. make a castle thing in the woods. Meanwhile, the first daughter is being a brat and kicks her father out. The dad finds the second daughter's castle and the daughter gives him a place to stay. Knowing that this guy is her dad who exiled her cuz she loved him as much as she loved salt, the daughter orders food to be made, except it is all sweet with no salt, and when the dad eats it he's like 'But this is tasteless! Where's the salt?' and then the daughter reveals everything and they reconcile and happily ever after :D
More information: King Lear was also based on semi-mythical British history, except that Cordelia and Lear win against her sisters, Lear is restored to the kingship, and the next several generations of British kings are descended from Cordelia (not actually called Cordelia in that version). The most famous version of this tale was a play from 1591, performed by the Queen's Men. Shakespeare is bad at revisionist history.
dude this is basicly just a fan fic doesn't have to be accurate like a hearts of iron game where we have nazi canada taking over the soviet states of germany new zealand
Yes it is based of the Legendary descendants of Brutus the supposed first King of Britain a supposed descendant of Aeneas of Troy. But the next Kings do not descend from Cordelia they descend from Regan who is then made ancestress of actual historical characters like Cassivellaunus.
In 9th grade my English class got split into groups to summarize and act out each act in "King Lear." At one point I played Edmund and got to enthusiastically declare "God, stand up for the bastards!" in front of everyone. Mostly I said it because I got to swear in front of the teacher and not get in trouble because it was a direct quote from the play. . . . . I was 14, cut me some slack.
@@darthparallax5207 I was gonna say. Most (all?) famous British actors did Shakespeare before they did Hollywood film. You do get American actors in London theater too, though. I met Matthew Lillard after a production of Fuddy Meers in 2004.
Love your work, but just a small note (because I am a history buff) kings can retire, its called abdication (although this retirement isn't always by the king's consent). An example of this is when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V abdicated the throne to his two sons because he viewed his rule as an abject failure. Furthermore, the division of a kingdom up among multiple heirs occurs under a succession law known as gavel-kind (divides land up among off-spring), which would have been considered commonplace during the time of King Lear as it and Primogeniture were the two dominant succession styles of Europe (though Primogeniture was becoming more and more prominent). Again, I love your work, but its little historical details like these in plays that history buffs like myself love to analyze! Respectfully, Declan Landau
You know, King Lear has some of the best written and most heart-wrenching parent-child dynamique in fiction. I'm talking about Edgar/Gloucester, of course
I heard there was some controversy somewhat recently with an acting troupe putting on a modern adaptation of Caesar, modern meaning all the characters were IRL political figures, taking a stab at Trump by putting him in place of Caesar. Some Trump supporters found it very distasteful and actually interrupted an in-progress show to protest as such. The RU-vidr I heard this story from said that ironically, the message of of Caesar was that he was actually more upstanding than the conspirators gave him credit for and everything went to shit when he was overthrown, ergo the Trump supporters protesting the play completely missed the point- as probably did the Acting Troupe if they were indeed intending it to be anti-Trump propaganda (which they might not have been). If they really wanted to make anti-Trump propaganda in the form of a play, they should have adapted King Lear, because it's about a crazy Narcissist making bad decision after bad decision and those who supported him paid the price for it.
@NeostormXLMAX He's done plenty: be very irresponsible with sensitive information, tick off many of our allied powers thus setting foreign relations back decades, provoke an unstable dictator of an enemy nation armed with nukes, allowing yet another attempt at repealing net neutrality to actually get some traction, appointed obviously unqualified if not blatantly liable people in powerful positions in a "fox guarding the hen house" kind of way, etc. King Lear was rather incompetent. Clinton wasn't incompetent, she was just corrupt. Trump is both. Even if he wasn't, I'd take competent evil over incompetent "good" any day.
Its also worth noting the same troupe did the same thing with Obama for years. So its not like this was biased in the slightest. People get offended over everything
All joking aside, the salt thing probably has more to do with the fact that it was the only realistic way most people could preserve food back in the day. So without it, most of the food would have spoiled before anyone could even begin to cook it. In fact, it was so valuable to armies that the phrase "Worth your salt" came to mean that you were valuable enough that you were a good enough fighter that the leaders could afford to keep you. I think that comes from the Greeks but I'm not sure.
@@maheshdangar9402 because in the myth this story is based on the youngest daughter says "I love you more than salt" and when the king comes to visit the prince the youngest married, she had the meal prepared without salt, which caused the king to realise his mistake. As you can guess the storys pretty popular.
@@matthewmac5787 ooo thats the matter anyway thank you , Dude ! Where are you from , brother ? ( from my side probably you are from U.K. may be ) I'm from India.
When fairy tales are true: During the Islamic Empires of Africa, the trade exchange rate of gold used to be equal to salt. Salt = gold. Add in the dietary benefit of salt and Salt > gold.
Not just in Islamic Golden Age Africa; but most of ancient times. Salt was extremely valuable for preserving food for long trading journeys and for soldiers stationed away from homelands.
The idea that salt was as valuable as gold seems very dubious to me. I suspect it comes from a misunderstanding. All the steel in our world is far more valuable than all the gold in our world, but pound for pound, gold is far more valuable. Likewise, all the salt could indeed be as valuable or even more valuable as gold, but salt was even back then available in greater quantities than gold. A quick Google search tells me that salt = gold is indeed a very disputed claim.
That seems to be a widely propagated myth - but a myth nonetheless. Salt was a very widely demanded chemical (not just for food, but for dyes and such), but it wasn't as valuable as gold. Just think about that statement. Gold was rare and used for coinage; salt was right there for anyone who was willing to go up to the Mediterranean and dry out some water. Of course, not everyone could do so, which means that people capitalized on it in the salt trade. Now, the salt trade was big, but "salt is more valuable than gold" misrepresents the market. In fact, we have figures for the price of salt. In 1590 Venice, a tone of salt costs 33 ducats - not even a hundred kilograms of salt. But salt is even cheaper than that further up in the supply chain. The salt merchant bought the salt for only 1 ducat. He paid 3 ducats to ship it to Venice, and the rest was tax and profits. It's a bit like someone hundreds of years in the future saying "did you know that, in the late 20th and early 21st century, printer ink was worth more than gold?" It is, plainly, ludicrous. @Antti: The salarium wasn't the soldier's payment. It was a ration of salt or money for buying salt, perhaps used as incentive for doing a good job. It could also have been instead a sum given for raiding or guarding salt merchant routes. However, Roman soldiers were certainly *not* paid in salt. We have plenty of evidence stating that they were paid in coins and land just like any other profession post-Marian reforms. The most famous example you may know of is Caesar forcing the gates of the temple of Saturn to pay his IOUs to his troops.
I was told a different version of the fairytale. He did still want to know which of his daughters loved him, which he would then use to decide who he married them off. The eldest went to a ruler, the middle a general, and the youngest to a soldier.Time skip, and the King’s land got invaded. He sent letters to his three daughters asking for aid. The eldest sent a few knights, and the middle child offered her home to him (none of the things really help with getting his kingdom back). The youngest, on the other hand, led an Army to help her father. In return, her dad gave her inherit the kingdom once he kicked the bucket. Moral: go big or go home when sending aid.
The story with the salt was a little bit more than that (obviously lol), but to add context, the entire feast was prepared without salt at all...meaning none of the meat had been salted to be preserved, ect. The point she was making was that you cant live without salt, meaning her love was beyond being able to even exist without him. It's really sweet.
This is very good. The only thing I hoped was discussed more was Cordelia. It turns that she cared the most for her father, to the point that she deploys the French army to look for her father, and goes to war not for an ambition to conquer the Kingdom, but to protect her father's right to the throne, "No blown ambition doth our arms incite, But love-dear love!-and our aged father’s right."
Moral of the story: When your emotionally abusive relatives and the people who enabled them come crawling back to you with the consequences of their actions hanging over their heads, leave them to it.
It has been forever since I read King Lear for school. I forgot most of it, but remembered that most everybody is dead in the end. This was a nice review.
We did that fairytale for my elementary school play. The line we used was “I love you more than fresh meat loves salt” I remember it because it was so bizarre
Yeah it makes more sense when you know that before refridgerators were readily available (so, nearly all of human history) if you wanted to preserve meat you had to salt it. Weird thing to make kids perform out of context.
In the play he disappears after act 3. In the final scene Lear exclaims "And my poor fool is hanged!" When he is holding Cordelia's body. He's probably referring to her in his mad state, but some adaptations interpret this as the fool also dying.
@@Blokewood3 The commonly accepted theory I've heard is Cordelia and The Fool were played by the same actor in the original play, so the character simply had to disappear the moment Cordelia came back into the story.
@@dr.g5261 Although that has been suggested before, that is unlikely. The role of the Fool would almost certainly have been played by Robert Armin, who was the lead comedic actor in the King's Men at the time, while the role of Cordelia would have been played by one of the boy actors who could still play female parts.
"Kings do not ordinarily retire and there is in fact no protocols regarding this." Abdication? Isn't that a thing? Probably not in Lear's time, but there are certainly protocols regarding it now.
Yeah, because they're useless. But back in the feodal time, when a king abdicated, it was because someone was pushing him to do so with a very big stick.
5:09 the evil league of evil is watching so beware the grade that you receive’ll be your last we swear so make the bad horse gleeful or he’ll make you his mare you’re saddled up there’s no recourse it’s “hi-yo, silver!” signed bad horse.
So like on a happier note, i heard fo a story similar to this but very much nicer and not as trajic. So there were 3 princesses and a king. This king also wants to split his land to those who love him. So the first daughter goes and he asks How much do you love me? And she says she loves him more than jewlery and so he stupidly believes her and she gets the biggest piece of land. His second daughter comes forth and he asks her the same and she says she loves him more than the gems, he believes her stupidly again and gives her the second largest piece of land. Now the third daughter actually loves him and she says she loves him more than food loves/needs salt. So he is like, are you serious!?! Something as common and pathetic as salt?!?? So he sends her out of his castle since she clearly doesnt love him. When he does she goes and works for some other place and then a prince finds her and loves her for her beauty and everything and decides to propose. So they go and plan the wedding and they invite people and the king and his two other daughters. Now the youngest daughter who is getting married also wants to prepare all the food and since shes an amazing cook they let her. However there is a twist. She uses salt for everyone elses food exceot for her fathers (the king). And he comes and eats and complains about his food. He demands for his to be switched but they say the bride of the prince refuses. So he demands to see this woman not knowing that she is his daughter. So she goes over and he asks what is the meaning of this and she tells him that the food he got has no salt and then he realizes who she is and then he understands and he is super happy and he knows that she was the only one who actually cared because the other girls compared her to just a bunch of items that mean nothing while she said more than salt which did have meaning. So blah blah blah the father forgives her and she forgives him to and they live happily ever after
Kurosawa did a marvelous retelling of King Lear with one of his last period pieces, Ran. I particularly loved the performance of the lead actress. Her range of emotion and confidence with such a diabolically written character, was as delicious as piece of chocolate cake.
Oh, btw this is sorta random but I have a request, if that's okay. I was wondering if you could cover the myth of Adonis sometime, if you haven't already that is.
In the version of the fairytale I know, the Prince is the son of the King of salt, who puts a curse on the Kingdom after Hearing the King comlain about worthless salt when compared to Gold. This curse turns all the Kingdoms salt into gold, teaching them the importance of salt.
Knights but with modern 19th-20th century looking weapons but clothes that could be ambiguously anywhere between the Renaissance and the late 19th century nobility... when the heck does this movie take place?
Contemporary author Christopher Moore did a hilarious retelling of this in his book "Fool". It's worth hunting up, along with its sequel, "The Serpent of Venice".
This reminds me so much of the first Female King of Poland. Her germanic name is Hedwig, but I would highly recommend watching Lindsay Holiday's Video on her for historical context. :)
incredibly sad that it's unavailable. I love your vids. They're so awesome. I try to share them all the time. I'd love to do something similar concerning my own cultures folklore someday
"Sweet Child O' Mine" always breaks my heart when I hear it, because it reminds me of a Lover of mine that died. He was homeless because he ran away from an abusive family and then he got into drugs and one day I just never heard from him again. R.I.P. Ari Michael Lochaert, 2001 - February 24th, 2019.
Even Good Eats did a reference skit of that story I. Their Salt episode special. Gotta remember back in those days, salt was SUPER expensive and super valuable. 😉
@@matthewmac5787 “worth his salt” comes from Roman days when soldiers would be paid a “Selary” of salt... (old Latin word Sel, as in salt) and “salt of the earth” comes from Jesus in the bible where he said to the masses “you are the salt of the earth, and if it lose its flavour, what good is it but to be thrown away and trodden upon”. Back in Those days, salt had to be mined by hand and was very valuable.
I loved your video (I love all of 'em!). Apropos of salt, a boy was asked what he thinks of salt. He replied, "Salt makes food taste horrible when you don't put any on." (True story.)
I am learning bout Othello at school and that got me interested in Shakespeare. your vids r funny and entertaining and when I learn about another Shakespeare I will come here
aannd.... I can’t watch the video. Do you guys put any restrictions in it?? (I know this video is hella old and I won’t probably get an answer bot whatever)
